Transcript

Welcome to this meeting of the London Barium Overview and Scrutiny Committee. Can everyone present hear me, which I assume you can, and those viewing online, can you all hear me? This evening meeting is held in East Ham. Members unable to join us physically at this location are able to join us remotely. However, they will not be able to vote as their attendance will not be officially recorded, although their virtual attendance will be noted in the minutes. With regards to meeting etiquette, please can I ask members of the concert to indicate when you wish to speak by raising your physical hand there, or those remotely raising your virtual hand. Concerning the order of the agenda, I plan to take the agenda items in the foreign order, item 1 to 5, then I would move to item 8A, item 8B, item 8, and then 6, 7, and then 9 to 11. That agreed? Yeah, agreed. This meeting of the London Barium Overview and Scrutiny Committee is now called to order. Of course, I introduce myself for the benefit of the viewing public. I'm Councillor Anthony McCormack, Chair of Overview and Scrutiny Committee. I'm on my left, immediate left. Councillor Bournemouth, Mr Boleyn Ward, leader of Newham Independents. Councillor Seuss-Masters, East Ham South, and Chair of Health and Adult Social Care. Blackmini Shah, Councillor for East Ham South Ward, and Chair of Education, Children and Young People's Services. Councillor Mr Hudson, Mr Boleyn Ward. Councillor Bournemouth, Mr Boleyn Ward. Sorry, Terry Paul Stratford Ward, Chair of Crime, Iran and Transport, Scrutiny, and also Vice-Chair of the Audit Committee. Thank you, Mr Bournemouth. And supporting me this evening is Artemis, who is on my immediate right, and we have our SSO card. Now, I recognize the Mayor, and I'm looking, oh yes, our new monitoring officer. You want to give us a wave so everyone know who Rachel is? And this is your first meeting of overview and scrutiny committee, and we aim to impress you. Thank you. Okay. And when officers are speaking for the first time, please, can I ask that you give us your name and position within the Council for the benefit of the viewing of the public. First item on our agenda is apologies for absence. Is there any apologies for absence? Poor Leslie. Poor Leslie, the independent co-opty. Is there any other apologies? To my knowledge. I understand that Corporate Director Paul Kitson was invited, but regretfully, he can't be here this evening. So just to note his apologies. Okay. Okay. Are those apologies noted? Yep. The Co-opty note was apologies. Decoration of interests. Are there any members wishing to declare any interest? Co-opty note that there's no interest to be declared, and no members declared any interest. The next item on the agenda is our minutes. Yes, I recognize. I have two amendments to make for the minutes for accuracy. The first one, section 8.5 on the result, I think it was chair, but the paragraph being made to scrutiny on the compensation payment paid to all those found to be wrongly judged by the local authority. I think about 186 people who were found, but should have got freedom passes, and they didn't. And I could certainly ask that progress is made back on how and when we are paying compensation payments to those individuals. As you may have noted from the dialogue chair, it was at the meeting you said, but there is a compensation payment scheme and efforts will be made to pay the people the right amounts of money. Just one minute to reflect, but scrutiny is an update on that fact. That's 8.5. Also on 11.8 chair, I move the motion was accepted in the agenda. To be kind chair, for you to say, and you'll consider on the vitamin, doesn't supersede the motion passed on that night. Therefore, as it stands, chair, motion was passed and part of this meeting for all future meetings of public scrutiny should be held in public and not behind closed doors in camera. You've noted concert hall's first observation. With the next concert hall, it was proposed by yourself, seconded by concert. We as a committee did not have the time because of the constraints of time at that time. But I should have done, and it's not on this agenda, but I endeavor to bring it to a future agenda where this meeting debates the pros and cons of that and to see whether we agree with that. A motion was passed and seconded. I think it's for the committee to vote on the matter, and if so, a debate, chair. I want that recorded. And that is what I just said. We would bring it to a future meeting. For a vote, not a debate, chair. I bring it to a future meeting, Councillor Paul. Sorry to labour the point. At a meeting, and I'm making the point, chair, you seem to be basically in your language, a vote was passed and seconded by this committee. The next phase would be a vote by the committee on that proposal. It is not, therefore, for a debate, it's for a vote, chair. As I understood it, and I don't want to do it too much, you proposed, Councillor Morris has seconded, the committee did not have the time to discuss it. It was not discussed, that discussion at the future meeting. I can assure you, I can assure you, Councillor Paul. For a vote, chair. Without further discussion, before we vote, thank you. If there is no other contribution towards the minute, I now move that the minutes of the meeting aired on the 6th of August be agreed as a correct record. Do I have a seconder to that? Councillor Shaw, thank you very much indeed. We then move on to item 8a. This report provides scrutiny with information and new asset management strategy. The item contains exempt material, and so this meeting, and it is proposed that this meeting moves into closed session. However, as chair of this committee, I have some concerns and can I ask officers, especially the managing officer, I see Conrad putting up his hands, why this paper is a green paper? Yes, so what you have here is a draft paper. That would be formal in policy formulation. Discussions around that are not held in public, because of course the intention would be that once the asset management strategy is finalised, it would of course be published. So it would be normal to have a discussion on such matters in private to enable the process of the formulation. So you are saying this paper before us is a draft paper, and what makes it a draft paper, Conrad? I don't see anything here. It's not been signed off by the council through the ordinary process, so it's part of the regular liaison with scrutiny in order to discuss proposals at a formative stage, in order to ensure that the final version is as good as can be. But it's draft because it's not been signed off, for example, it's not been to cabinet for approval, not completely convinced it necessarily would need to go to cabinet for approval, but it's not been through a formal sign off process at the council, and therefore it would be normal to discuss draft policies like that in private to enable a full and frank exchange of views at that last stage. Members of the committee, you've had a response what's the any contribution? Yes, I always thought that papers given to scrutiny are always signed up by officers. I've never known a paper being given to us as draft, because if it is draft, how do we know it's correct? You don't know it's correct, it's draft. The committee asks for information on it, so this is the current stage of the policy, so it's not exclusionary. I'm not quite sure whether you expected a finalised policy or not. The point is there is not a finalised policy, so it seems eminently sensible, it revolves between the process of discussing that final posted policy and such you should look at. But that wasn't agreed, that wasn't understanding. If someone had come to us and said we're going to give you this paper under the guise of pre-decision scrutiny, then I would have understood that, that it's a pre-decision and it's not, it's supposed to be on green paper, et cetera. We were not, and when I read this paper, I read it in our good faith and I looked at the content and I'm thinking to myself, what is air that warrants it being on green paper? Now you're saying that it's draft, why wasn't that communicated to us before, but it's not, why wasn't it communicated to us before, but it's for pre-decision scrutiny, which we didn't ask, but if you recognise that it's for us to make our input, which we always welcome the opportunity to make our input, provided it's taken on board, then we could have been to it before and I would not have been laughing in this conversation now.

• I apologise for the oversight, but the conversation would have been saying, had we had it a day, a week or whatever ago, but I apologise for the oversight about not making that clear earlier.
• Yeah, yeah.
• Thank you, Casa Zulfiqali, Government for Finance and Resources. Yeah, thank you for reading that point, Chair, but I think as Connor has explained, this document has not been signed off, and if you look at the note, the covering note that Giles sent, it clearly states that this is draft strategy for confidential use, and I think in the spirit of sharing information as early as possible, this is what seemed to be helpful, and that's why we did it, but the note that accompanied the paper clearly states that this is internal, and this is draft as a strategy for internal confidential paper, which hasn't yet been formally approved.
• Thank you, Zulfiqali, I wish to bring this to an end. If there's no other contribution, I would, on this occasion, take it as a draft, and therefore remain on green paper. All I would ask is that next time we avoid this confusion, okay? So, if we treat it as a pre-decision and scrutiny, colleagues, and I'm an opportunity to have an input in that, can I have your assurance that our recommendation or input would be seriously considered?
• Of course.
• Okay, thank you. Can we form up the recording, please?
• Yes.
• Okay, the recording is now stopped.
• Thank you, we arrive again. Is Kevin still with us?
• Yes, we're moving on to the next item on our agenda for discussion, which is item 8B, and this is the organizational transformation. This report presents the transformational and the transforming new one for the future plan, which was approved by committee 6th of August. The transformation plan sets out the strategic initiative necessary for Myanmar to meet its culture and its future challenges. These challenges include financial sustainability, improving service delivery, and resident satisfaction and enhancing operational efficiency. Can I ask in no more than two minutes, the mayor or the designated officer to present these reporters to set the context?
• I'm going to basically introduce this report formally, and I suggest that we go straight into questions because it's a pretty comprehensive report if you also read it in conjunction with the cabinet report. And as previously stated, this is in line with the insight generated from the LGA corporate pair challenge, reflections by the chief executive and the corporate leadership board around how the organization, as part of moving towards a new model state, whereby we are able to deliver through a high-performing and good quality output for our residents, a good value for money in an organization that needs to be improving, and something that we've commenced with since May 2018. So this is the next era, as it were.
• Thank you very much, ma'am. Members, the master's then, charter then, Watson.
• Thank you. If I can reference point 5.4, the top two challenges you're saying we face, the quality of our current technology and finance, the technology we've put in when we had money was poor, and we're admitting it in this paper. My worry is if we're going to a system which, as far as I can see reading between the lines and discussions in previous meetings, is more technology and more digital, have we actually got the money to do it properly? I can see that you're proposing that, hopefully, through this, we'll save £30 million, but how do we know that this technology is going to be sufficient and that it isn't going to sort of damage relationships with our residents further, given that a large part of their complaints come down to technology not working when they want to report issues?
• I'm going to pass over to James to respond to that, and then I'll add some commentary.
• That's it. James passes the system, chief approximation. It's a known organizational capability gap, without being too jargonistic about it. There are significant legacy challenges around our technology estate, linked to some long-standing and pretty significant historic decisions made as part of the sharing of technology services in one source, which remains with kind of good intentions at the time, particularly around efficiency and sharing of back office services at a time when that was quite a popular method of reducing costs to those services, which over a pretty substantial period of time has left us with what it's called a significant technology deficit gap. Now, that's a lot of technology at place at work, but in essence what it leaves us with is a number of systems that are either end of life, currently on premises, and that's quite an old-fashioned way of maintaining services, but lots of modern public sector organizations have moved those services to cloud, ultimately leading us to a position where it's very costly to upgrade and update systems in order to deliver the benefits we know they can, particularly around things like automation, automation of access to residents into services automation, the way staff work, there's a lot of manual processing in the council that a lot of the activity analysis highlighted. The way in which we're going to tackle that through the program is, firstly, there's a very specific program, a world program file underneath the overarching market structure, dedicated to accelerating our technology transformation programs, and there are significant dependencies within that program, particularly on the ICT disaggregation project with one source, and the need to kind of accelerate that program of moving to kind of modern, up-to-date, fully supported systems, we're not saying that it's kind of an easy-to-resolve issue, but it's one that the program kind of is actively acknowledging, and there were some very specific early problems that the program is developing, particularly around the transformation, the technology transformation strategy, which we've already done some support for, which will look at how we can accelerate the development of those projects. It's one final contribution on how the program more widely is tackling that issue. We are doing whatever we can within the current technical environment to create kind of accelerator processes for improving technology, so what that means is, rather than trying to build everything on our current old infrastructure, we are looking at so much support partners to use their up-to-date infrastructure to build new forms for us, build new processes, and where possible, have them rebuilt and land them quickly into our technology estate, rather than trying to work our way through the very naughty, challenging estate that we're working through. So I don't think that it says in any way that we've resolved that risk, but it's a significant one, and it's a correct one for the committee to kind of highlight and probe on. I'm just really concerned that with our financial constraints, we're not going to be able to afford the appropriate know-how to actually sort of bring about that transformation. I think there's a huge area of risk, and also the kind of consultation that's been done says that our residents don't want this huge expansion of digital, and that's been clearly sort of shared in the papers, so how are we going to take them on the journey? So what residents currently experience when it comes to our technology offer is a quite segmented and more quality technology offer, one practical set of examples to kind of offer. If a resident wants to pay for a part of a permit online, they have to use our MyPermit system. That requires its own logon, its own passwords, its own technology pathway, and its own set of kind of rules around how to use that. And heaven forbid, you have to remember your own reminder dates for how and when you commit to pay for your permit, and that. To access a lot of our other services, that sits on our MyCRM portal, so one of the, and that's where it's centered, usernames, passwords, etc. So we know that residents face a lot of inherent kind of social barriers to access to digital, and there's a lot of libraries for our digital inclusion program, and this program will continue to support that. But there are some fundamental user experience issues behind a lot of that resistance to access to digital, and that is a result of our ineffective digital infrastructure that sits around that. We can simplify that, and the program will be doing this by looking at a single sign-on, for example, for residents, so they only have to remember one password, one username, and they can do that and refresh that on a regular basis, and only access one portal for accessing their information. The other key thing to add is, we're not looking at digital as the only solution to all resident contacts, and you'll see in the program of overall architecture a significant amount of energy and effort is going to go into improving our telephony offer, particularly around looking at accessing the best, again, technology as a solution in telephony, so how can we use best-in-task technology to improve skills allocation in the call centre? How can we integrate all of the call, the many call centres like this, and accountants who are robust and integrated after that is professionalised and accessible to all residents? We're looking at a multi-channel approach, just kind of key thing of what to do with as part of a bit of a reassurance around that important risk around relying to having digital as the only solution to resident fee, and then finally we'll continue to use mechanisms like the resident survey and our other resident engagement pathways and processes to check in with residents on how that's going, and resident-led design of a lot of our solutions will be a key part of our approach as well, so ensuring residents have a raw voice in the program is a key element as well. Thank you. Maria? Just kind of following up on that, I think one of the things to note is that the whole issue around digital, it would be remiss of us as councillors if we didn't point out, but basically you cannot access it, and I think that goes without saying, and obviously the numbers of people active because of a lack of digital capability will go down over the years. However, there is also a risk factor here as well, when we look at Happy Council and what happened there, the British Library as well, so perhaps in some of this planning and design we can always also think about the contingencies because it's going to be terrible if we go live with a new format and it crashes on the same day, and I think if it's included in papers like this that would be helpful. My second point was around the role of members in this. Now, quite rightly, this is an operational document and this is very much focused on the delivery, but I think there is a difference here because we as councillors, I'm speaking in the collective and I hope colleagues are backing up, we experience good and bad services. It's the residents who come and shatter us and the mayor when things don't go right, and it was quite surprising to find that we'd actually stated publicly on LinkedIn that we had actually made great improvements to our complaints service and actually, I'm being perfectly honest, that's not how it feels on the ground, so in order for us not to keep coming across those hiccups, I think a small stake doesn't have to be big, but something about member checking on this would be really helpful going forward. And then our final point, page 87, talks about portfolio consolidations. Where are we with that? Because the LGA peer review also gave us a deadline as well, didn't it? How we get when we're back? I'll go first on a number of those points. On the cybersecurity risk point, and I think that there are powerful lessons to learn from HAPNY and from British Library and from a number of other organisations. The NHS only spoke even more recently, some of the challenges that they face, and the more it can be a truism, the more reliant you become on digital as a solution, the more risk you are exposed to if that digital solution doesn't work out. The strategic response to that, from my perspective, must be around how that risk is managed rather than turning away from digital as the kind of transformation sort that we know exactly. In Newham, our current cybersecurity risk is probably characterised, our most significant cybersecurity risks are probably characterised by two core issues, the first being, and this is common in all organisations, that the human element of how users use their systems is one of the most exposed part of your cybersecurity records. And often it's the user who downloads the wrong bit of software that clicks on a phishing email that exposes your systems to risk and, you know, separately, I'm sure the security will welcome some further information on how it's happening, cybersecurity around user issues, and how staff are being trained on how to avoid that. The second is when you have end of life legacy architecture, and that's actually a common problem for the organisation, actively in the programme, under programme 5, moving to the found resilient, third-class, supported arrangements that are integrated 24/7/4, and kind of best in class global testing and challenge programmes to check how robust your systems are. That is the way that many, many national and international organisations are protecting against cybersecurity risk. So we absolutely accept that we need to be much more, we need to be featuring more prominently the kind of expression of that risk within pagers like this. And I do think the programme is offering some solutions that will help reduce that risk over time. And we need to kind of monitor that. Just a quick question. Is the risks in transformation plans included in the corporate risk register? What does it want its own risk register? Yeah, there's a dedicated transformation risk register highlighted in the emerging risks from this programme. I believe the next report for those risks is going to the next audit committee. As part of that review, any strategic risks that need to be escalated to the corporate risk register will also be discussed and brought forward through that. And we'll continue to develop and then share that. On the second point around – Member engagement. Yeah, member engagement. I personally think I might defer to that, but I'll kind of hold a response to that. But I think that's a positive thing to say, that the member engagement that we've been talking about on the members' enquiries process has been extremely beneficial for exactly the reasons that you've outlined in terms of the conversations we have had about user experience and member learning from casework, from the direct feedback that yourself and other members of that working group have offered us. And I'd certainly say that that positive development in terms of the kind of member experience and member reality of particularly things like resident experiences has been valuable. And no doubt, there's lots of further value we can draw from that through how we – I'll let the Mayor answer more on that. Just to say, going back to what Conrad said before, if it's not in the document, it doesn't exist. And our casework, I agree, and thank you for your comments, it has been a valuable experience. But there's other areas members could get. And I am for one minute suggesting that as members we should be involved in everything here. What I'm saying is, if it says it's happening in here and we're not engaging with it, we're at a loss when we take residence there. Understood. So that's in progress. And we're in a position – we're working towards being in a position to update the LGA when they come back for their – I don't know what you called it, is it? Yeah. Will that affect the transformation plan and the budget planning process? Just in terms of portfolio consolidation. If you're consolidating your line, you're probably going to have shared back office functions for certain areas. Does it need to happen sooner rather than later? That's my point. Because it's going to have a knock-on effect on everything else we're doing, isn't it? The transformation, the budget, etcetera. So I'm being misunderstood in a question. Apologies. So from a transformation perspective, when we refer to portfolios in our reporting, we're more focusing on the kind of functional departmental portfolios of services that are – we'll get around to doing extra, for example. So which portfolio of services sit under resources as a director or which portfolio of services sits under the children and young people services as a registrar? From our perspective, the operation model that this report agrees does recommend a need to review and change how those can be configured. If I want to speak on the chief executive's behalf, there is an active piece of work that she is leading to review people's organisationally structural portfolio arrangement. And that is going to be kind of walked through as soon as it practically can be in line with her kind of change management plans and how it's going to deliver more than that without her being interested in it. It's a very rough timeline on that. So, I mean, I can provide some insight. So there's a very live and active process underway being led by the chief executive as it relates to how she would like to see the organisational structure evolve in. There are a couple of outstanding issues with regards to whether it needs to come to Cabinet for approval as part of sort of the governance arrangements there. And then that will also help inform the other element of the portfolio scope to be Cabinet and members and myself. And there's an active piece of work in addition to that popped here underway as I understand it by corporate directors as it relates to their tier 2 and tier 3 officers and how that will shape their service areas in order to deliver against the transformation plans and with an eye to the financial constraints and pressures facing the organisation to ensure enhanced and accelerated efficiency, if that helps. Timeframe wise, I would say certainly by the end of the year. Can we move on, please? So, Richard, I think you had a good image in that one. The next question is less than. Thank you. Just a couple of questions. In page 64 about the cost of this programme, it's coming out to $1.12. So, you talked about 100 million being left in the Denmark reserve. So, I'm going to take you to the Denmark reserve. No, this is separate to that. Okay. No, this is separate to that. This was set aside in order to move these costs. Okay. And the second question is about the savings. And it's talking about having to be able to save. There doesn't seem to be a lot of pace. There doesn't seem to be a lot of urgency. If you're transforming, you transform. If you're talking about transforming, you're thinking about you're only going to get 80% savings. Are we going to pay people 80% of their fee because it ain't working? No, that's not how that line should be read at all. I think it is sensible to budget only if you expect to deliver. That's how you leave some contingency in your budget. It doesn't mean that we're trying to deliver 80% of it. I'd like to deliver 110% in plan savings. I think it is sensible to leave some contingency against non-delivery. In other words, to sort of work ambitiously but budget cautiously. What about a cultural change about doing things quicker and more efficiently? If you're budgeting six, it just implies that it's like a supertanker moving slowly rather than being unflexible. I understand the point you're making. But it's a cone, isn't it? Yeah. I think we'll agree. The sort of budgeting strategy is sensible. I accept that there's a point in that. We're certainly not conveying or certainly not intending to convey any sort of impression about not getting on with it, not being ambitious and so on. We can certainly double check that that message isn't seeking out anywhere. As I understand it, I think we're agreeing on the point about budgeting prudently and working ambitiously. You're objecting to that. It's just the sort of how that message is communicated. Forget the point you're making. If I may, I would also just want to add, with the verb and the turbocharged temperament that James and his team, along with Abby and everyone else, is driving this, we also recognise that conversely, we could be accused of sort of being over-optimistic and may put the organisation's ability to embed and entrench the change that we're wanting to see too rapidly so it doesn't sustain. So we're doing things at pace because we know that we don't want to wait too long for the changes and the impact to our residents. So just really echoing the points that Comrade has made, but also just to provide assurance that it is happening and recognising that if we talk to the language of turbocharging, that probably won't be credible either. Thank you very much and I move on to Macmillan and Terry. Thank you, John. I want to understand how do the transformation plans will be attributed to the building of our renewal, such as cycling inequalities, neighbourhood improvements and community safety, what want to be transformation initiatives will be supporting these initiatives that I mentioned. What is it that transformation initiatives will be different, will be doing differently than what we are doing already, and the second part is putting residents first and always behind due to a lack of digital skills to support our residents. What sections are you referring to, if you could highlight? Yeah, I think some of that is coming under paragraph 5.7 in the main report for the corporate plan. I have to go first on that one. So the key thing that characterises this programme in sort of distinction from our overall budget setting process is what is primarily focused on is a kind of ruthless attempt to drive out as much internal inefficiency as possible. That's sort of one of the core objectives and that's what the PwC supported activity and I just highlighted as an opportunity area for us. So when we do look at delivering efficiencies, they are most likely to be realised through reducing manual processing time, staff effort, duplication of efforts, looking at more efficient ways of structuring teams and integrating teams and specialisms to achieve better value for residents and use the best of available technology to deliver that. In programme 8, the overall programme architecture, that is where we start to look at some of the more outcome-focused parts of the Council's business, particularly on the service delivery, and underneath that there is a specific initiative that can earn intervention, prevention or approach to face-to-face delivery for residents. What the overall programme will do is provide a leaner, more efficient organisation that is therefore better able to release more resources for efficiencies and savings into the budget process which will then hopefully reduce the burden on the budget setting process to make difficult policy decisions. Now this programme will not eliminate that, but it will reduce the overall burden that the budget will have to take on board when it comes to making those difficult policy decisions that will reduce our ability to build a fair and doing plan. So in many ways this programme releases resources to reduce the impacts of budget reductions on the corporate plan and therefore enables a further and more ambitious future outlook for delivering the corporate plan, if that makes sense. In many cases, we think efficiencies on the resident facing parts of the programme like resident experience and access and programme A will result in higher levels of resident satisfaction because we'll be reducing that duplication and reducing the kind of disjointed and disparate way in which our residents have the contacts and access services. And we know that that is another core aspect of building a fair and doing, it's really about ensuring that residents get a better value for the money, experience and a more easy to access council at the end of the day and that's what we're hoping the programme will deliver. With regards to our policies ambitions and exactly particularly the kind of policies risks that the programme poses, we are very much working in partnership with key departments in the council like the resident engagement team, our libraries team, our community participation and research team to ensure that where we are making changes in the way in which services are delivered, for example if we are integrating different face-to-face locations for residents to access, that any significant policies impacts arising from that with regards to disabled access or language barriers that residents may be experiencing, we're building in opportunities in the programme to reduce those impacts and just to give one example under project 1.3 being quite specific, I'll make this kind of as real as possible, project 1.3 speaks to our desire to improve information access and guidance to the residents, that's a really important gap in our current organizational efforts of residents at the moment, there's a range of different ways in which residents receive information advice and guidance, not all of it is easily accessible at the moment, lots of residents don't have this language skills to interact with that part of our offer, the website isn't particularly helpful as a tool and actually one of the key improvements we're going to be delivering to the website is a multi-language, key screen accessible for residents to use going forward, so what we're trying to do is wherever we're making the efficiencies within the programme we're also building inequalities as a kind of key consideration and the final point I want to make is in the operating system or slides that are appended to this report, one of our five key design principles for the whole programme is ensuring that the policies remain central to our design thinking, wherever we are making changes to services so we'll keep that principle apart of everything that we do, sorry it's quite a lot of questions and not like I could say on that but I'm giving you some level of specifics that can help you understand how we're thinking at this early stage in the programme. Thanks and I need to move on, I'm afraid I'm already against time on this, Terry can I have something to be short and sweet? Yeah one comment on the project this year, the comment is James on the back of some of the answers you gave to Rita, what I reflected on there seems to be a drive to digitisation computers to solve interactions with residents but I will say there's often a simpler solution right, if you approach it from the my 80 year old mother trying to navigate the parking system who doesn't do computers, doesn't work right, so rather than you sit down and say digitisation whatever, parts of our organisation, our service, our residents interact, it doesn't work and I guarantee anyone here go on the website now and try and book your parking ticket or work out, it's not good, I just have to comment, I think we should start looking at technological answers. My major question is this, the cabinet did this report on the 6th of August I think, so obviously it passed it on historical information, since that cabinet report which is talking about a £39 million transformation, today at this speed looking forward facing, we have an additional 136 million have to cut the revenue by 40%, so in actual fact the real transformation is four times the size of the program, would it not be fair, and perhaps it might be a question to bear, to perhaps pause what was passed in the cabinet and rewrite this transformation program in line with the real challenge and transformation facing the organisation, because looking at the, and I have read the papers quite a few times, there is the potential for confusion to adopt, right, because we've got over here we've got our £39 million transformation program and over here we've got an organisation looking to cut £175 million, the question is whether they meet in the middle, who does what, does that £39 million campaign sort out the 175, and maybe it's already been thought about, but obviously it's not in the papers, however looking at the paper, section 5.6 does allude to the linkage to the median term financial strategy, that financial strategy has not been completed, it's in draft, we've been told next week or the week after it's coming, right, so I suspect half the answer will be, you know, it's here and it's not being fleshed out, but my basic point here, there was a bigger transformation and it's much better, so when can we get some strategic alignment in the real challenge facing the organisation, long way for a question. Sorry Conrad, if I may, because the question was asked to me, well you referenced me in your position statement as to what you can see and what you can't see and what you would like to see, and your assertion that there are these multiple things hurtling at the council and they're being addressed either incrementally or in a way that's disassociative from each other, and that's not the case, this transformation plan in the eight full phases that will come are inherent to the way in which we're going to deal with a significant financial challenge but some of that significant financial challenge is a consequence of a dynamic at play which no council will be able to deal with, no matter what type of structure or organisation mode it enters into, and I noted earlier in reference to your mother who, like my mother, is of a particular resident, cohort and type, my mother similarly would be looking at me or my nieces and nephews to be able to navigate the council system, and she's lucky in that regard, to be able to lean on families, but we've never said that we will be replacing human contact in its entirety as we transform the council, but there is a utility for technology, there is a utility for AI, there is a utility for all of those things, for all modern organisations in order to arrive at efficiencies, and I know Conrad wants to come in as well? Maybe in short, Conrad, your response? Yeah, I don't believe that there is a transformation program that can somehow identify savings of £175 million entirely through efficiencies. No organisation would be able to find efficiencies of that scale. I don't believe that we'll, to pause this, as was suggested, I think absolutely we should be getting on with it. I agree that of course there is a risk which is every organisation facing any budget always faces that, you know, different programmes sort of intersect, and if you're not careful you end up with sort of ambiguity about where savings are falling on individual budget lines or double counting between those. We're very alert to those risks, but I agree with you it's a significant thing to be managed as it is in any budget process. Thank you, and the next person is body members with the last. Thank you, thank you, chair. I just had a question on Clinton 6, 5.7 on post 26, and it talks about the transformation and improvement plan, and that's at the question answer. However I just wanted to understand, are we on track? So I did hear some commentary on Iran, specifically around the question that Council of Chad approach to regards to the litigation of responsibilities, and I think I heard by the end of the calendar year, no, yeah, calendar year, but looking at the doctrine as the action plan, it states here it should have been 30th of October. So I just want to understand, are we on track to do what it is that we said we were going to do, because what I'm reading in various different documents doesn't correspond to what I'm hearing. Which page are you referring to, which document? Page 46 in regards to transformation, but my actual question is based on a document that we received regarding the action plan, given the commentary that was given in this room. It's not actually written in this space, apart from on the improvements part, it does state the delegation of responsibility. The timeline in which we heard and was made to the public doesn't correspond with the documents that we were sent previously, not for this meeting but previously, okay, so 30th of October. All right, so to reiterate, I made a reference to portfolio scopes and assignments, that's a work in progress, and that will be ready to be, that is, yeah, that's work in progress, and there will be an update provided to the pair challenge team when they come back to the council as part of their review and check-in, and that will conform to the 30th that you're referring to, and I'm understanding you meaning, yeah, I'm understanding that to mean the LGA corporate pair challenge action plan that the council issued as it relates to that particular item alongside other items, and then the end of the year comment was in relation to a wider chief executive led restructure that she's undertaken with regards to her corporate leadership board and the organisational hierarchy, as it were, and where officers will sit within which types of departments, service areas, that will likely complete by the end of this year, that's what I understand. But I'll just come back to you, James, then just listening to what the manager said, according to this document, that should also be at the same time 30th of September, so maybe we can have some clarity later, because in the document we received, the dates are all lined to the same date, the only thing that should have been by the end of the year is the constitutional review. I'll come back on that one. Then we passed that chief executive led review of the corporate leadership team and functional structure for the council, that wasn't in scope for the LGA peer challenge action plan, there wasn't an action relating to that, so the LGA peer challenge plan was specifically focused on the kind of capita portfolio level scope review cycle, not the organisational restructure exercise which has been referred to as a clarification. Can I, before I sum up, can I ask a question to the Mayor Conrad, to James, is there anything that you've heard from the Squidney benches this evening that tweak your interests? You know what, let's go away and try that. Is there anything? Yeah, James. On the overall observations from the Squidney on the need for kind of expanded pace and vulnerability of savings through this programme, I just wanted to offer kind of an immediate response to that, because that's the big question for the programme. If this programme isn't often kind of meaning for strategic sort of budget challenge the council's facing, that is a kind of existential question for this programme to answer, and we need to continue to answer that question, and I welcome the challenge from Squidney on the scale and scope of it. One thing I wanted to kind of just offer off quickly is the savings that have been offered up in the August report that you've got access to only relate to programmes one and two within the programme. There are six additional programmes, not all of them are savings, some of them are enabling notes, but I particularly want to kind of highlight programmes seven and eight, which focus on our third-party spend and in this rate of service delivery, and those are programmes that we absolutely should be seeking to provide as much efficiency through the transformation principles and the adoption of the programme that's great going forward, and I just want to kind of say to, you know, the response to working directly, the challenge that I'm hearing is very much well received and, you know, the programme is rapidly mobilising the business case development process for those two additional three key work streams, and I would agree, you know, very much welcome continued input personally as a sort of lead officer for this area from Squidney, and how those programmes very much help us expand our scope. The other point I'd like to kind of just say in terms of tweaking interest is the contribution made around practical basic solutions to basic problems being a kind of principle that we adopt. It's a very helpful reminder for us in the programme to kind of stay kind of cognizant of those sorts of opportunities that appear to us, and I just want to offer one quick kind of example as a response to that. One of the key things we've discovered early on in the resident experience programme is it's our homelessness applications process, it's very proactive, but it's a good, it's a useful kind of symbol of the sorts of changes we can make very simply that deliver significant efficiency, because currently, given the current process classes, a resident fills in a form, that form turns into a 10-page, that form is online by the way, but that form turns into a 10-page PDF, that PDF is then emailed to the HPAS team, and, you know, this is a genuine reality of the current process. A member of SARC in that team manually copies the information on that PDF form onto a back office system. There is a very simple, not complex, not AI, not chatbot related answer to that problem, and that is a simple basic service improvement, process improvement opportunity that the programme is actively tailored. And I just want to offer that response as a kind of, you've offered a very helpful challenge to the programme, we are seeing examples of that within the programme environment, and we are very keen to kind of accelerate as many of those opportunities as possible, wherever we see them, you know, that's a useful dialogue for us to maintain. Thank you, and the reason I asked the question last year, this meant to the conversation between the benches and the executive. Sometime I'm left wondering, is there anything that the executive is taking on board, because as a government partner, as a track and balance, we're here to tease out and also to give you useful suggestions, and so that is why I asked the question. But I'm pleased to hear your response that we are, we are having value to the process. Conrad, and then I will sum up. Since I'm such a cooperative chap though, can I perhaps... But then I didn't get that, Conrad. Since I'm such a cooperative chap, if I perhaps push back on one of the things that was said, you know, we all have relatives who are elderly and would struggle with online forms. We design our systems to allow them, you know, face-to-face or telephone contact. You will not save as much money. Most, not all, most of that generation of people have, as has been said, you know, sons and daughters and nieces and nephews and grandchildren who can help with that, and we can make systems online as simple as possible. I just offer it as a challenge back. I acknowledge the point. You don't want to set up a system that people can't access, but equally, if you start from a design principle about we must make sure that they have as much access as they can at the moment, you are adding costs in of people to answer phones and run manual processes and so on. So, I just offer that as a challenge back when it was made. Just on that point, I think on board your point, but this era of co-production is gone. Everyone's now talking about human-centered design, and human-centered design has got to include all aspects of our community and the law of unintended consequences. It's a dilemma. I mean, I'm not recognizing anyone else. No, I'm sorry. We must move on. Sorry. All right. Because really, shouldn't everyone come in there anyway? Okay. So, what we're hearing, James, what you're seeing is that there's a legacy challenge. Technology is not fit for purpose. Basically, what you're seeing, the one source in, what we did, left us behind. You're now trying to develop our technology to fix this DNA, but we operate it in. Residence experience, you said, you tell us it's fragmented. Sorry, it's fragmented, it's poor, and because of the inherent barriers which we all know and get testified to. And I'm pleased to hear, despite what Conrad said just now, is that you're not just looking at the digital offer for everyone. You are also having, you're considering other options so people can interface with the council in a cost-effective money way. And so, that's, and it's also comes to the poor, and I don't want to go on that, which I agree to some extent about the transformation, but James, you picked up on that anyway, in terms of the speed of the transformation against our financial pressures. And we, on these benches, are very, very concerned. About that, us with the executive, but we have a checks and bottoms, obviously, so we have to be concerned about that. I will say, and also, I just ask colleagues to know this observation, and we then move on to the next item on our agenda. But before I go on, yes, right, before I go on, the clock is just up for the whisper, but we may need to extend our standing order. We can go until 9.30, but just in case, we need to go anymore. So, I am having to do the technicality, the bureaucratic bit of it, so let me go on. And it says under Article 29.1 of the concept procedure rule, as they apply to the duration of the meeting, can I propose that we extend standing order by no more than half an hour. >> Seconded. >> Okay. That does not give us the license to take us to the limit. Okay. Thank you, colleagues, for that. If there's any member wishing to leave at this time, you may. That is badly worded. It is not members. It's officers. Members have to stay put. Can we now move on to the climate emergency item on our agenda? And for this, we have the mayor of St. Pius, we have John Whitworth, we have Penrad, of course, we have Adelaide Richards, but we have Jacob here. So, can I ask whether it's John or the mayor to introduce the item, two minutes, John? >> A couple of minutes. Well, you've seen the -- you've all been -- you've all seen the report, which gives -- starts with a summary of the decision plan, and you've also had a copy of the plan. This came in, as you know, in -- we voted for this in December, 2023. Our action on climate goes back, actually, to our declaration of the climate emergency in 2019, and the appointment -- we have an appointment of a manager of climate action, we have here, Jacob Hytland, sort of accelerated and consolidated this process, which led to the creation of this plan, which is a strategy for dealing with the effects of climate change now and in the future. And you can see that the measures do rely on gathering funding from different sources, it's not all out of the council's pocket by any means, it depends on gathering funding from various sources, and we've got a record of this in the last year, because it's been carried out by a team of nine persons, and it says that the total salary -- because we're interested in finance at the moment -- total salary, £400,000 per annum, and it does give, so far in recent months, we have had this team has gathered in £4.7 million of funding, so as far as finance is concerned, I think we are quite assured that the stream of income coming in and the value of the team in place, and we've also talked about what the money is used for, there are various projects listed, and there's also a question of other funding, which we get from section 106, which is by the team, through different projects in the council. The results of this, of course, will be seen, some of them now, others far in the future, but I think I'll just conclude, if I've got two minutes, by saying this activity is absolutely crucial to the borough, because nobody doubts that climate change exists and that climate change will degrade the environment and living conditions, and this plan is designed to carry out measures that will counteract this harm and actually mitigate the damage that it's caused and enable people to live a decent life, so this expenditure, the work of this team is absolutely essential for the future well-being, I think, of this borough. Thank you, and I'll join Rita, then Lachmani, and Susan. A couple of questions, just building on that, John, Councillor Whitworth, have you said that, am I to take what you've said, that the activity, which I think is to be applauded, I think the ambition is to be avoided, that the activity is more or less self-financing? Well, I haven't got the details on this, but we know, which I'm sure Jacob has. Yeah, hi everyone. So, essentially, yes. I mean, there is some core funding that's coming from the council to fund my role and a couple other team members' roles. The majority that you can see on the kind of organogram, a lot of that from a, our only core costs at the moment are some resourcing and a small bit of budget to actually do some work, but the vast majority of that funding is coming from external sources, from a GLA, national government level, but we're raising sort of, you know, 10 times more than we cost. And I note that you've also said that you, on the final page, one of the agencies that either you've got funding for or you're looking for funding from, is the national council? Correct, yeah. Will that include, or is that completely for the council, does that include all of the sector organisations? Partnering with the voluntary sector to do that. Fantastic, thank you very much. And my final question, no, two points. On page seven, you say that this is quite unusual or quite a, that this is an unusual plan, it's not norm, is what's implied in this. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but with that, does there come some risks that we should be considering as a committee? What are we doing that's so unusual to other boroughs that may link to a risk adventure? And then my final point is, how does this relate to our website? Because our website has a carbon rating of F. Sorry, the website? The council's website has a carbon rating of F. 83 percent of, it's bad. Is this the council scorecard you're referring to, or is it the actual website itself? You think we're now great at websites, can't you? Okay. I'll send you the link. But the fact that we, as our front page, what can we do maybe that's an unfair question, maybe you need to have a think about that. So I'll withdraw that question. No, no, no, keep it because it's relevant because of the ambition of the just transition plan. So I'll address the first question first. So in traditional climate action plans since sort of 2015, but notably since 2019 when councils up and down the country started declaring a carbon emergency. This is true not just of public authorities, but of big private institutions as well. A lot of the focus, as you would all know, is on carbon and the reduction of carbon by X percent by this state or net zero by 2030. There's a lot of nuance in there. There's a lot of asterisks within that in terms of what that actually means. You've seen in the news recently that a lot of larger banks, institutions are saying, hey, we're actually not going to hit our X target of 2030 or 2050. That was solely based on carbon emissions. But I think what we recognize within the creation of the plan was that if you said to a layperson or to a resident, we're going to reduce carbon emissions by 20% by next year. What does that mean? What's the benefit of that? Who is that helping? Is that making my life any better? Yes or no? So I think where we took inspiration from and whether the term just transition comes from is actually a workers union movement, which is saying that if we're going to transition to a net zero economy, which is a fundamental shift of how we organize our lives on this planet, it cannot go through what I think the most recent example of an unjust transition would be coming off of an industrial and coal mining type economy in the late 70s and 80s, where whole towns are sort of left to fend for themselves after one big factory shuts down. Pertinent to that is the last coal factory in the UK just shut down its operators earlier this week. To be more succinct, we wanted to have a much more specific view of what climate change actually means to people and not just an abstract figure. I think those things were designed in 2015, as you can imagine, by a lot of politicians in a room in Paris saying, what can you compete to? And they're purposefully vague. So we're trying to make it more clear for residents. And I think if you bring it back to the idea of Newham, Newham has, and we'll touch on this I'm sure in further questioning, some of the highest risk of extreme heat, some of the highest risk of surface water flooding in the country. You mix that with the overall kind of economic perspective of many of our residents, and that is a recipe for disaster, quite frankly. So it's showing that as many times we talk about the global south being more susceptible to the risks that climate change presents, but obviously not pausing those risks. Newham is a sort of localised example of that when we talk about the UK. So we wanted to bring in, therefore there's three principles in the plan. Yes, we know we need to decarbonise and that can be done in many different ways and is really, really complex for a globalised economy. We also need to talk about resilience, which is getting people ready for the changes that are already baked in. We could wave a magic wand tomorrow and make the UK net zero, but carbon emissions don't work that way. You know, they don't stay within the boundaries of our individual countries, and therefore there's so much climate change already baked in, we are going to see more extreme heat, more extreme weather, and that will be impacting residents. And then we wanted to kind of weave in the building of Fair Noob into that, which is the equity bit. So yes, I can go and put solar panels across our state, but who does that help? So how do we do that in ways that's actually helping residents and making sure that as people are transitioning to that kind of new net zero economy, there's actual real benefit and tangible benefits for people, residents, et cetera on that journey too. I won't go off that, if that's helpful. And on the website, send me a link because I was first up getting that. Similarly, I'd be really interested because we appreciate that there is a carbon impact on the use of technology and it would be remiss if we're not showcasing, in line with our Just Transition, a technological use that isn't conforming with Just Transition, but they may well be a cost, but I have every confidence in the team to get some money from somewhere to offset that because of how high performing they are. And I wanted to make two points. First, I think the question that you raise around the uniqueness or how exceptional Just Transition is, because we're the first in this country to adopt a Just Transition approach to climate emergency and whether or not there are any risks for us that you need to be alert to. Do you feel that that's adequately being addressed or answered? No, sorry, I didn't actually answer that. And then the second, I wanted to say that the value that this team has brought in is a demonstration of the potential that this organisation can get to if we have the right culture across the officer corps in enabling us to drive in more income, to help offset revenue pressures in ways that we've been spending revenue on certain items in the past and to date, and that's one active area that we're looking at. Sorry, just to come back to the risk question, I actually would say that we've done this plan in preparations for those risks and actually what I'm seeing across at a London level, at a national level, international level is the swing from, away from actually what we call mitigation, so decarbonisation, getting rid of emissions, to resilience and adaptation, so the kind of 'it's happening, what do we do now?' type thing. And I think we're well placed to be working on both of these, but I do believe that we're actually ahead of the game in terms of bringing resilience really core into that conversation, because if we were just sat over here talking about decarbonisation, we'd missed this complete bit and I think that would be putting our residents at risk. Thank you, and next question is Susan. Thank you, Tony. So I think in your team you're having young people from UCL and UEL working, is that from the apprenticeship levy, are they going to be paid or it's not very simple to be from? And it also says here that there's some strategic studies happening at all maintained schools, 15 keeps for corporate buildings, EV trade strategies, Bridge Road and books and road premises giving studies, and when the studies are completed, we need capital for decarbonising, whereas I haven't got it already, and if we don't find the funding, how are we going to achieve our net zero targets? And the final one is how are we educating our residents to achieve the goal of net zero? Cool, I'll start with UCL and UEL students. So working really closely, as you can imagine, there's a number of departments in both institutions that are looking at climate change overall and students looking for both work experience as mandatory to their courses as part of master's programmes typically or bachelor's programmes as well. We've had both, but at the moment we have a master's in law and human rights with a focus on climate sitting in our team for 10 months as a mandatory work experience. We offset some costs around travel if required, but that's paid for by the university. On the incredible amount of work that needs to be done for us to even get to the point that we can ask various sources for money, yes it's a huge risk. It's really unfortunate the state of play in terms of funding available for these types of things and funding available for public institutions to be accessing. They're highly competitive, they're long and a bit messy to get into and long and a bit messy to deliver, and also require you to actually put a lot of upfront money to do rather technical pieces of work to then say to government we're ready, please give us some money to do the work. But in short answer to that, we continue to do both the preliminary work but then also raising money through things like public sector decarbonisation scheme work, which we're putting some applications in for now, which raises the actual capital to do that. So we're not expecting the council to be footing the bill for that. In addition to that, as mentioned in the report where we just really unlocked this carbon offset fund, which has been sitting in a very specialised S106 bucket for a long time, but because of legislation around how that money is ring fenced it needs to be spent on carbon offset measures in some way. So we've just actually worked with the planning department to actually bring the management of that fund, which is in the multiple millions of patents, over from planning over to our team as a specialised format. We still collaborate on how we run that process, but that money actually we've got a new strategy for that can be spent on both the upfront works and the actual capital works required. But I would be remiss in saying that it's a huge challenge. But luckily with the election, we are seeing a move at DESNA, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, in the right direction. And a lot of stuff that we're campaigning for, London Council's GLA and national government stuff, is slowly coming into the mix. And the third question was on... I apologize. So this is something that we are working on kind of all the time. It's somewhat of an ad hoc basis based on interest levels from, for example, we had a head teacher's conference earlier in the year. That led to head teachers wanting to do a student's conference, which we're now planning for later this year, early next year. Attended interfaith sufferers, faith leaders around what this means in terms of faith, but also what it means for them as leaders of the community. And we're planning a series of community engagements. We've done a bunch of research with UEL, part of one of our funded programmes, which had 1200 plus residents that actually came forth and filled out the survey with almost 300 residents saying, Yes, I want to be engaged further on that. So now we've got a cohort of people who've actually said, Yes, I want to work further on this with the council. So we're planning a series of workshops. I think why we haven't done something in big scale at the moment is I think a lot of people understand climate, but it's sort of like, What are you going to do about it? And how can you help me do something about it? And because quite frankly, we haven't had the tools necessarily just yet, or previously since the inception of the plan, so eight months ago, nine months ago, to give something back. I don't want to just go and say, What do you think about climate change? I think it wants to be a collaborative effort. So we're getting closer to that moment now, running a series of engagements, businesses, residents, schools, voluntary place like this. So we've done a lot. It's ongoing at the moment and we're planning to do a lot more, plus training a lot of internal council officers like adult social workers who are going out into the community. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Sue. Right, I've got two points. I mean, a lot of what I've heard so far has been really positive. You're bringing in more money than this is costing to do, which forces music to our ears. I guess my two points are, and you kind of touched on this earlier, I couldn't believe when I saw the slide in the pack. Slide 18, where you're talking about you being the second most prone area to extreme heat in the UK. Why is that based on? Where does that come from? And then my second question is, we've done a lot of stuff so far, and a lot of it, particularly now, does not make our residents mentally happy. A lot of our work around, you know, parking and, in fact, you know, parking policies in general. And I'm just wondering, the stuff we've done so far, what has the impact been? Can you sort of speak to the residents who are tuning in today and say that it has impact on things like, you know, the quality of air, the quality of our environment? Yeah, let me just pull up. So I'll start with the second question first. So it is worth noting that I'm the director of climate action. I sit in resources. I work very closely. So Allid leads in transport. We work really closely with Richard Wady, who's leading a lot of the transport work. So we're working kind of directly in collaboration across his efforts, but I'm not leading, you know, no traffic neighbourhoods, for example, but they're very supported and they're in the plan. I've got some high levels, and I know Allid and I spoke earlier today, but he is going to bring a kind of full synopsis in terms of hard data back to the, I forget the name of the other scrutiny commission, but it's something with some communities environments, community commission. Apologies for my ignorance on the names of various scrutiny formats, but top high level things on those is we're actually reducing driving. So there's a modal shift happening. We're reducing overall levels of motor traffic, reducing car dependency, increasing walking and cycling, improved to pedestrian road safety, and an improved, improving air quality. But what you're telling us is you're taking cars off the cars which are being used for our residents business and sort of make journeys that they considered important. But I'm asking, and maybe I have to go and crash Councillor Paul's scrutiny to see the status you're talking about, is how has all of this which has had an impact in some cases on our residents ability to follow particular livelihoods, what are the positive impacts of impacts of that? That's what we're not hearing at the moment. I mean, I think, you know, if you're talking healthy school streets, we can see the positive impacts of that in terms of safer roads, and we can understand how dispersing car arrivals has a positive impact. But I'm just wondering generally, what has been the impact on air quality? Because I don't think we're feeling that particularly. So it'd just be really interesting to see that, but I'm quite happy to wait and go and crash Councillor Paul's scrutiny if I have to do that. Yeah, I mean, without having all the data on that in front of me, I would say that air quality is really localised. So high streets is where it's at its worst. And I think the A13 is one of the most polluted roads in London. That's because of the nature of which people travel. It clearly is outside air control. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But also, you know, there's ways in which we're working on potentially being able to influence that. But it's highly localised. So if you have a low traffic neighbourhood, the air inside that is going to be simply much better. The high street sometimes could be a bit busier at different times. You'll feel those impacts. But again, it's also really localised. And if I kind of weave into the heat question, kind of why Newham is the way it is. So in the same way that you've probably heard why East London has traditionally been set up in the way that it has as compared to West London, in terms of smells and prevailing wind, that also has an impact on heat. So if London is heating up all day, that wind then prevails back to the east. So we're getting hot air on top of already what we call the urban heat island effect. So we basically have all these concrete brick materials that warm up, hold the heat, and then release that at night. So again, it's creating a much warmer environment than if you were, say, under a tree. So you've got some components of materiality, lack of green space, the way in which buildings are built. So if they're just south facing, you have to imagine a six-storey apartment block, south facing, no shade, that's coming into people's homes, that's heating things up as well, but there's not proper ventilation. There's an incredible amount of factors, but those are some of the biggest ones, kind of built environment access to green space. And because of sometimes the lower quality of housing stock, and you can imagine a tree in Islington, sorry not a tree, a leafy kind of terraced house tree, if that same terraced house street is in Newham, at the moment there's a lot less tree cover than other parts of London, so less shade. And also we've got issues where because there's no shade, there's also people have concreted over their front and back gardens, which is a huge issue, both for heat and for flooding. So there's a lot of effects going on, but I think I would kind of dub it overall with the kind of urban heat on the fact, but because of the makeup of Newham, that's made worse than other bits of London. Thank you. Number one. Susan, I'm just going to be your last intervention. It was a really quick question. But I'll be able to come in. After you come in, I will bring you in after Susan. If we're second most, what's the place that is most prone to extreme heat then? I imagine it'd be another very urbanized part of either London or another major city in the UK, so I don't have that. I can find that out. But yeah, just to come back to the point about the improvement in air quality for measures we've taken, we have got data on healthy school streets and it is shown that at the times of arriving at school and leaving, the air quality has improved from what it was, that there is much less oxygen dioxide pollution than there was before. So we have data on that, that it does work at the times when the children are actually in the vicinity of the school. So that is having a benefit effect on them. Okay, right. So of course the mother. Oh yes, thank you Jay. My question is, you know, is this the geographical area where we're sitting? We are living in the kind of a sandwich situation, one side of an A406 and one side of an A13, and we also have a city airport. Is this contributing to worse, towards the climate and the carbon dioxide? And what impact has this lower Trafford neighbourhood have made? Because if you wanted to go in a straight direction, if you end up driving five, seven minutes extra, yes, you are benefiting the one street, but you're not looking after the area, the higher traffic on the other streets, and obviously they are getting the poor air quality, just benefiting one street. And the mission-based parking charges we have introduced in recent years, what impact has this provision have made? And where has this money been spent? These are my questions, anybody can answer. I'm going to answer a couple of those questions, if I may, in relation to any income generated from mission-based parking can only be used as it relates to highways and the like, it can't be used for anything else. I understand the direction of your question with regards to the modal modal that we're adopting as it relates to mitigating high traffic volumes on residential streets, and by doing so, that leading to cars being on the main routes, and you are right to say that we are exposed to the traffic flow that uses Bloorham as a wrap run from the A406 to another part of London, which is what we're trying to reduce. As you will be aware, the impact of that is the following, several of our neighbourhoods exceed the World Health Organisation targets as it relates to damaging particulates in the air, that leads to some four and a half thousand children being admitted into hospital each year for serious respiratory conditions, and it is also leading to some 115,000 people dying prematurely, primarily because of vehicle fumes. That is the framework through which we are applying all of these measures, and I'm sure that Jacob will talk to the contribution that the City Airport makes, and the way in which booting heavy traffic that is using our residential streets as wrap runs, the benefit of that and the corresponding impact because there will always be, for the sake of a higher and better good, i.e. the health and wellbeing of our residents, who disproportionately are impacted because of climate change and climate emergency and bad air quality, we've got to start addressing that. Yeah, I mean, one small comment just on the emissions of the airport, we're trying to work more closely with the airport to bring them on board to actually fund things that we can do, because at the moment, and this is the complex framework at which people record their carbon emissions, they would say the carbon emissions of the planes taking off are British Airways and not the airports, which is a really tricky place for us to be working with them, but I'm just being very transparent around their stats, which I'm pushing hard against, but fundamentally the emissions from those planes are not good, especially private jets, so we are working with them to reduce that. My question, I mean, I understand, I acknowledge that we had made significant differences in certain neighbourhoods, but is it working and how much difference have you made during the last few years since we have Eltgen imposed on certain neighbourhoods, is it not, are we just looking after certain neighbourhoods and the traffic going on the different streets, is it not giving back the air quality to the surrounding streets, because the heavy traffic on that street, you're just trying to save one part of the street or area, but that is, you know, you end up driving extra miles to get to that destination, is it not, I'm just, I'm just wondering, is it working, and the other thing I was gonna ask, the last thing, do you know that we had what we have achieved as polishing the paper residence permits, is it, are we trying to just to, because of the deep abolishing of paper, is because of the environment, or is it working, or is it, because this is the last segment, because it says someone coming to your property, if somebody have this paper permit, they can use it, and people used to, I'm just giving my family's example, if my mum's stays at home and she waits for the carer to come all day, because nobody can visit parking restrictions, and if we had that opportunity for the paper permit, visitor permit, life would have been much better, thank you Jay. Thank you. I don't want to be unhelpful, and I mean, Jay is already given, you know, some sort of general thoughts on the, you know, issues and complexities around most of the papers, I think if we're going to get into a substantive discussion on, you know, I'm not trying to be unhelpful, but in a substantive discussion on such wide-ranging aspects of parking policy, I think the suggestion has already been made that that should be picked up at the crime environment and regeneration, transport, sorry, transport, and so I'm really not trying to be unhelpful, Councillors, but I'm just not sure we can address such a complex and large subject in this meeting tonight, but there is a forum to do that soon. Can I rattle through my question quickly? Nice to meet you, and I'm the chair of the scrutiny of your committee, you're coming again in a couple of weeks, so nice to meet you. New residents have the lowest carbon emission in the country, and my question is about the value of the work you're doing. What's your target? It's 3.57 kilotons in 2020, on the lowest in the UK. What's the ambition of your team to get that down to earth? What does success look like? Yeah, so I put that in the plan because it demonstrates in clear data that, again, the point that's always belaboured on climate is that the people who are contributing least to the problem are bearing the brunt of the problem, so I did not put that in there to have a target against it and say we need to get that down to zero, absolutely not. I'm saying that new residents are not the problem. Okay, I'm glad you said that. We've got the lowest, so I'm thinking, pardon me, why are we doing it? However, the biggest point, where we are the biggest carbon emitted in housing, right? The blue bit on your chart. So how many of our council properties have the appropriate level of insulation? So that is a huge topic of conversation, which is on the retrofit of our social housing stock. So that alone, we've costed this up a fair range. If we were to do all of our properties, we're talking 800 million to a billion pounds. We're paying this up with housing in terms of efforts that's already working on dampen moulds, windows, window replacements, other kind of temporary maintenance requirements, but it is a huge issue that we are working around the clock. And if I may just add to that, because this is pertinent, it's the reason why there's a really live debate around the level of retrofit grant that central government will be given to the regional authorities and the devolution of that grant as headlined in the news over the last 24 hours to local government, because the point you've made has been well made elsewhere. Newham, in terms of the council stock, yes, it is significant and we recognise in the context of our transition, we're going to have to address that, but we don't want to carry a significant borrowing exposure in order to correct that. We need to have the grant from government. And then the second thing, please let's not forget, we have 68% of our resident population living in the private rented sector. Of those properties, the majority of them are those lovely Edwardian and Victorian type houses, which emit lots and lots of energy and are not energy efficient. And we need to find a way in which to make those through retrofit and incentivise owners to make the changes to their properties.
• I was going to think about our properties. We might be concerned about it, but we can't do anything about the private sector. Because I think in terms of, you know, in terms of adjustments that you get, talk about food property, cost of living, neighbourhood vibrancy and less traffic. Looking at the data, I would say, if we just focus on the thing which impacts our residents in our own council of properties, it is working to do insulation. And that will be the biggest impact we can make to their lives and to the thing, be the focus on how we need insulation to get the rest. We can't make a difference there. We talked about resilience and flooding, that's about soakaways, that's about cleaning the gullies and the gutters, park 24 miles in Newham. We just got a man and woman with a pole, who wouldn't have any flooding. And the final point, I know you've got six futures, but I can't see what success looks like. In each of your six futures, it's a narrative description, it doesn't tell me the measure of your impact, right? So what I would say, I'm going to solve it in the next two minutes, it'd be useful in any further drafts you do with this document to put down what does success look like in each of those characters, not the moment, but lots of work being done, people working hard, but to be really hard about it, I can't see the value of being bad. There's no reflection using the visual or your team, it's just I cannot see the value of the work when our residents are the lowest carbon emitters in the country. Even with time constraints, how quick can you be, John? Just I think Councillor Paul touched on an aspect of the circular economy, which we want to develop, but it's only the beginning, and it's all about behaviour change. And it's about reducing waste, upcycling, repairing, recycling things, and reducing excessive consumption. And these measures are behaviour change, which we can encourage people to do to help themselves, not necessarily a huge cost, but will benefit the least well off. If so, John, if that's fine, but in the sixth future, tell me what success looks like. I think, Mayor, because I can tell about the thickness of your papers that you have the executive summary version, not the hundred- Well, there is- No, no, I've read it, right? I respected your work, and I read it. Good document, but it's about, if we're doing this work, tell me what success looks like, talking about porous residents, the lowest carbon emissions, and we're just disrupting their lives for the sake of it, right? I think the point has been made, so can you take a answer? No, I would really, really, really profoundly argue against that point, because people, again, are at some of the highest risk. They may not be causing the problem. That number is only talking about consumption-based emissions, so what people get up to that causes emissions. It does not talk to the impact that they're going to experience from fuel poverty. If there is climate change in Spain, tomatoes rise, but the cost of living in terms of food continues to hinge off climate change. How are we making more resilient systems here in Newham, both energy, food, circular economy, skills, full range of it that's in that plan? Everything that we do has to, and that's why there's the three principles, increase equity, improve people's lives. If it's not doing all three of those things, we're trying to work, you know, we're not doing it until... We're going to get loads of time through the committee, yes. Don't feel like you have a lot of time to expand it, but look, it's a lot of work, and I think just focus on the outcome. Tell me what success looks like, otherwise you're just working very, very hard, and every year you're going to tell me you're working very, very hard. But can I just make one comment by way of a challenge back? If you hear what the outcome is, Councillor Paul, would you be open to accepting it? Because it may not align to your definition of what a viable outcome is, but it doesn't mean it's not a viable outcome. Yeah? Thank you very much. I'm shocked what I'm about to say, but I'm not always right, and I think it's useful. Look, I like the bit about people, I accept the point about tomatoes and stuff like that. For example, in Tennessee, where it floods at the moment, that means our semiconductor computer is going to be more expensive in 18 months time. I accept the point that's well made, but I think we've got to be clear with residents what success looks like. So when you do well, you can say, I did that because of your work, rather than sitting back and hoping to change. But what I'm asking you to do is to say exactly what you're going to do. And you'll accept our metrics of success? Yes. Thank you. Be careful what you agree to, Terry. Okay, all right. Thank you. I will bring this to a close here, and thank you, Jacob and John, for attending. So this brings us to the end of our substantive items, and I can see Councilor Ali is ready to go. Thank you, Councilor Ali, for attending. I'm Conrad. I'm also for attending. Are you welcome to stay? It should be on the paper as well. So, can I ask Mr. Gray the deferral of and the change of date? The appointments. I am informed that Paul as an appointment, and Shaw as an appointment, in terms of your advice, Mayor? Oh, yeah. Okay, so Councilor Paul. Okay, can we appoint Savio Kamali to my committee? Dr. Gray. Great. So you're saying that I'm... Strutiny Commission. Okay, so he's appointed. So this will be our point, Councilor Hudson, as the Deputy Chair for Children and Young People's Scrutiny Committee. Dr. Gray, can I ask for us to defer the forward decision? I thank you, colleagues, for bringing this meeting. Also, the work program connects with the work program to be noted as it is. I will now bring this meeting to a close at 21.45. Thank you all. It's recording off. Not yet. Not yet. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]