Transcript

Transcript

speakers and myself to please turn on the microphone by pressing the speaker icon when speaking and often finished please speak directly into the microphone so that the audio can be picked up for those joining the meeting in the gallery and remotely. The first item are the minutes of the previous meeting of the 17th of September. Are they agreed as a correct record? An absence of the only member absent here is Councillor Bakes, because of care and responsibility. Do members have any declaration to make in relation to the agenda items? Okay, thank you. The Constitution states that Councillors may ask the cabinet member a question on any matter which is on the cabinet agenda. The first four questions will be opposition group members, who I can see lined up. So, if you want to come forward, we have 15 minutes for this section, as you know, and the 15 minutes will start when you ask the first question. Over to you. I thought we might start somewhere different than you probably were expecting on the agreed syllabus for religious education, which I read with a great deal of interest and there are five, six key questions which is the basis of this syllabus and they were very interesting questions and I do understand that 22% of the borough is not religious and therefore you've reflected that in the way the syllabus has been drawn up, but it just struck me as a person who is involved in religion as slightly strange that the religious syllabus for the London Borough of Barnet, which has probably got the most diverse religious set of groups in the land, probably is a more religious borough than many, that those six questions which are the core of the syllabus neither mention the word religion or God or a supreme being. I'm not saying that it's not there because when you read further into the syllabus you see that in when you look at the sub questions around the first of the items that those questions then appear, but it did strike me that for a religious syllabus, even though it's based on the works that I'm sure a very respected academic, like the syllabus and therefore whether it really is what Barnet needs, and I just leave that thought with you when you come to that later in the evening. To initiate discussions. They are the core and if you read the syllabus, which I did, that is the core of which the whole of the education of children in non-religious schools is going to be based, and it just struck me as odd and it's maybe something which you might want to reflect on, but you agree this, as the legal requirement for schools to teach. Moving on to what you probably did expect us to want to talk about. You have a line in section 1.4. You say the indexation of fees and charges to the level of inflation at 4.5%. When you analyze the 4.5%, what you discover is that you've made a difference around 1% per annum higher, and randomly you've then added 1% of that to the RPI, and 1% because you've just added it on, and therefore to me it is just completely disingenuous to say that that is inflation. It isn't. Half of it is things that you've done using a discredited measure for inflation, which is no longer a national statistic. All statisticians as being a poor and imperfect measure, and it's misleading to the residents of the borough, and it's just absolutely wrong. Well, one of the parts of what you said is also playing it wrong about adding 1%, because this is based on the bigger -- I think it's from June. It's not the present day. No, I understand that, Barry. But that was 4.5. The June CPI, it wasn't. The June CPI, as it says in the paper, was -- well, it was the RPI number, but I've looked up the June CPI number, and the June CPI number was around 2.5%. The RPI number is roughly 1% bigger than the CPI number, and you've then added another percent to that. So it is just wrong to say that it relates to adults, one of which relates to parking. Now, there's a number of aspects that I don't understand in relation to this. The first is that in paragraph 1.2, you say these proposals are the best way of doing that by meeting financial requirements and delivering outcomes and ambitions for Barnet. You haven't said these proposals are being consulted as the best way, but you've stated in 1.2 that they are the best way, which means the consultation is completely pointless, because you've already decided clearly that this is the best way, and there is no ambiguity in 1.2. Troy, there's also no ambiguity in the recommendations, which are the important things, the things we vote on, so you'll go out to consultation, and there's no presumption in the recommendations. But the reason for the recommendations in 1.2 is extremely clear. I'm very happy to be corrected if I got it wrong, but there is no indication in Appendix A as to which lines you're supposed to know what they're supposed to be consulting. In many ways, you've said on quite a few occasions you don't understand, so hopefully we'll be able to educate you on these. Thank you very much, Lita. I was wondering if Councillor Zinkin wanted an answer to questions or whether this was soliloquial. Councillor, I'll take your queries in order. In relation to the methodology we've employed and whether or not the retail price index is discredited, I suppose that's an argument for you to take up with your conservative colleagues in Harrow, because the methodology that we've adopted is precisely the one that Harrow Council has and arrived at precisely the same figure. Now, perhaps I can give you a bit of assurance that the retail price index is an unreasonable measure to use currently as opposed to CPI. So the main difference between the two is that RPI takes into account housing-related costs and pressures, mortgage costs, council tax, so things that are actually relevant to the current financial climate of the local authority and costs that residents actually are experiencing skyrocketing as a result of decades of conservative mismanagement. So we thought it was a fair reflection of the reasons why they're currently seeing increased costs. The other thing that it uses is the arithmetic mean rather than geometric mean. I won't necessarily deal with the difference between the two, but basically it's more sensitive to immediate pressures that are more current, whereas we thought that using a longer-term measure wasn't going to be reasonably reflective of the current financial climate we face. The RPI is an arithmetic index, and CPI is a geometric index. The geometric index, correct, yes. And the arithmetic index has been discredited by statisticians, and it's been removed from being a national statistic. And the fact is that we use CPI when we talked about inflation, and you moved to RPI. I suppose we can talk about macroeconomics at a different juncture. I've given you an answer as to why we've adopted the one measure rather than the other. In relation to consultation, we wouldn't consult necessarily on individual lines of increased fees in each particular area. It's the general principles that you would consult on. So I think that that's the basis upon which officers would go out and explain to residents why an increase has been adjusted at the level that it has in the methodology that we've-- Thank you. I was looking at the cost of checking the CCTV, and amazingly enough it's gone up 150 percent. So you talk about methodology, you talk about RPI. No, no, it's 150 percent for checking on the CCTV, and for downloading it's a whopping great 650 percent increase. And all in the commentary it says, well, we did a bit of benchmarking, and we just thought we'd charge more. So could somebody explain why you're charging such enormous great increases on our hard-pressed residents? Thank you. Partly it's full cost recovery, but I don't know if the officer has any comment. Yeah, sorry. Yes, so in terms of we've done the benchmarking exercise and the charges haven't been put up for a number of years. So obviously with the increase in the system we've done it against cost recovery. Most of the applications that come into the CCTV for CCTV requests of this kind are not from residents. They're from insurance companies for insurance claims. But in the end we all still pay the money. So in the end insurance companies get their money from the residents. But it's far more complicated than that. All you've done is you say it's cost recovery, but the officers who are sitting there monitoring the CCTV and do the downloads already do them for 10 pound, which is what was originally stated in the Data Protection Act. And what you've done is added on 650 percent to that. But the officers haven't done any extra work. I find it extraordinary that you're raising CCTV, but we've made huge improvements, as you know. And that is reflected in the quality of the images and the range of use of CCTV as well. So I thought I'd just add that. And the officers are very busy because they're doing a huge amount of work as well. And they're there 24 hours, which I don't think was the case under the last administration. Yeah, but that's not I think to do with this question because the CCTV has already been paid for by the residents in case you hadn't noticed. It's not paid for by the council. It comes from the residents' money. And if officers are working 24 hours a day, surveying 24 hours a day, and it's the officers who are going to do the downloading, which can't cost 75 pound, why can't they do it at 3 a.m. when there's very little going on? I don't understand why you're doing so. And you can sit there, but if you look up on the data sets, go and look on the data sets and see how many cameras we've got. And you'll find out, according to the latest May 2024 data set on cameras, we've only got 134. So perhaps you really ought to check the data that you'll keep telling everybody that we've got hundreds of cameras. Thank you. I think Claire Green might have something to add on that, but there's really no need to shout about it either. I can actually hear you. I think I can shout if I want to. It's up to me. Thank you. Well, all right, let's take the obvious thing. You've got a number of cameras places, if you like, where the camera is. But a lot of these are the catch-all cameras that can take many images, 360 degrees. So the CCTV covers a far wider area than the number of cameras. It is important, I do not feel any guilt for asking for insurance companies for more money as they're getting it on the tree. And the other thing, I suppose, is to say that you will have the ability to try the kit. They can't go past without pressing something that says press. We all do it. The other thing, you will have the opportunity in an alternate budget to put these things down. And we'd be interested to see what you come up with. Thank you. Thank you very much, leader. One final question in relation to adults, which is, I don't understand from the borough. Mr. Chairman, yeah, this is quite simple. Basically, this is a service that this council has been providing over the years to people who are self-funders at a cost to the council and not a cost to the self-under. We're bringing these prices in line with what the actual cost to the council is to arrange somebody's care. And that's all we're doing. And that's why it looks bigger than it sounds. But the fact is, it's not fair that the council taxpayers should be funding people who already fund their own care, but funding, in addition to that, the arrangements for that care package with a particular provider. So we're only asking people to pay what's officer's time, and that's what it costs. That's adults, so that will be part of the consultation. The 15 minutes are one up. I've given you a bit of allowance because you take so long to get to the questions. So we do have to move on with the agenda. The consideration of reports from the overview and scrutiny committee, or the two task and finish groups. The first one we're looking at is elective home education. And that was created by --

Thank you. I won't take up too much of your time, as hopefully you've all read the report. But, yeah, we began on this back in June last year and spent a long time looking into home elective education. The elective -- the education landscape for home elective families has changed quite drastically in recent years, both in Barnet and across the country. You'll see that throughout the report. In the five years prior to the pandemic, the population was growing EHE families by 20% each year. And then during the pandemic, it raised by 38%. It has reduced a bit, but it's still not gone down to pre-pandemic levels. And I want to start this by acknowledging the work that the team has been doing in Barnet for EHE families to really build up a positive relationship that wasn't there initially. You can see that through the work they've done on the website. On the main Barnet council website, which we made some recommendations about, and also building up those relationships. What we found throughout doing this work is a lot of families are quite skeptical of working with local government and working with councils and government in general. And the work the team is doing in Barnet is really positive to try and build up those relationships further. So the recommendations we've made are really to try and develop that a bit further and to support the work the team is doing. So the task and finish group we met with 10 different experts, including people from the Barnet and Parent Carers Forum, with university lecturers, with the chair of the Association of Elective Home Education Professionals, head teachers in Barnet, officers within the council as well. So we've spoken to a lot of experts and had a lot of conversations. And then from that, and we also did a survey to families in Barnet that are EHE, and we got 49 responses, which is quite positive actually, I think that's good engagement. And we've got our nine recommendations. I won't talk through all our recommendations because I'm sure you've all read the report. But yeah, I'm hoping cabinet will take this forward and look into some of our recommendations. We took a long time. Thanks for the report. I can see that an awful lot of work's gone into it. If I sort of take you back to when we were originally concerned about home education, obviously it increased during the pandemic. A lot of those have gone back into mainstream, which is good. And you will have discovered, same as me, is that there's an awful lot of different reasons why people choose to home educate. Some it's just a lifestyle, that's exactly what they want to do. And I know that when over at UNITAS, one of the mornings there were these groups of parents got that cohesion to mix with other children and with other families. So I think what we'll probably be able to do is actually look. I mean, I would say that we need to look at the recommendations and then to come back to see where, if any, we can go from there. But certainly very comprehensive. I can see that an awful lot of work has gone into it. And it was certainly an important thing. We originally looked at this. And when it first came up as an issue, one of my first concerns is that if any young people were actually falling through the gap that we didn't know about, especially in terms of safeguarding. So regardless of the education aspect of it, it was the safeguarding, the communication between them in all directions all the time. But thank you for the report. Yeah, I would completely agree. And safeguarding was obviously a big part of the report. I think the reason there were so many issues or concerns about safeguarding is a lot of these families didn't want to engage at all initially before the work the officers had done in the last few years. And I think that's why some of the offers we've had are there. So like the library cards, like potentially the exams, I know there's issues about costs with that. As you speak to the council, I think will help families feel more comfortable. They'll get to know the officers. And then if they are concerned about safeguarding issue, they'll already know the officers to come and speak to. And I think that's something that came up a lot of the experts that you sort of sometimes have to offer the families some benefit. Like different areas have done lots of different things like days out and trips and a lot have done the library cards. Doing that helps build those relationships. But hopefully the cabinet will consider those. I think the library cards would be really good in particular. I know our recommendation on the exams is a cost. If I was looking at it, I would want to do it so that it's not a blank check. Do a fund where parents could apply. They did need help with the cost of exams. Some of the families spoke about the difficulty accessing exams as well. Thank you for your positive comments on our report and I look forward to hearing what cabinet reports back. If not, we can go on to the recommendations. Okay, the recommendations are one cabinet is asked to note the referral from the children education overview and scrutiny subcommittee and elective home education officers to prepare a report on the task and finish group recommendations with full legal, financial and other comments so that cabinet may fully consider the recommendations. Thank you, Lucy. The next one is the youth homeless task and finish group and Councillor Grohkopf will be introducing and it's the same thing that you have three minutes and it will start when you start speaking. Thank you very much. This was the first task and finish group for youth homelessness and can I acknowledge a huge thanks, especially Scarlett Wright, one of the officers. All the partners are involved, and also all the amazing young people that we met. I hope everybody has had opportunity to read the document. It was a very interesting item to look at what might have been helpful, perhaps something for a future task and finish is actually engaging with the parent carers of those young people might have given a different perspective. There's seven recommendations. One is possibly with a financial item that would obviously need to be looked at, but we did think it would be something to consider, which would be helpful to those young people. The other recommendations are obviously could be absorbed quite easily and is not beyond the remit of those particular items. Now, what we did want our committee, although they are recommendations, we would very much welcome if the cabinet was minded to perhaps make and yes, get things a little bit better for them. The one thing I would like, if that is possible, although it is an objective procedure. Anybody else got any comments or questions? We can move to the recommendations, but I won't say that. This includes all of us, but all can return. The cabinet is asked to note the referral from the overview and scrutiny committee and the youth home. This task report and the task and finish group recommendations with all legal, financial and other comments so that cabinet may fully consider the recommendation. The next item on the agenda is item 10, which is the corporate parenting annual report. There is so much in these reports, but it is really good. We do a corporate parenting annual report every year. We have a corporate parenting panel. We are all corporate parents. Then you've got the fostering report, you've got the IRO report and you've got the BOP report, which I don't know if any of you would have been at the scrutiny when they did a short film. We know Manchester and fingers crossed they will come back with an award, but I am just so proud as to what the young people do. It is probably still going on at the youth assembly this evening. The amount of co-production we have done with young people over the past few years and how they appreciate what we do in consulting them on things that affect their lives. I would just say that if you have not had a chance to read through all of this, please do because it is all my point of view. Really good news to show how the staff and the department really care and actually, the only thing in their life is to make sure that we do the best for all the young people that we care for. Whether it is for fostering, whether it is for children in care, whether it is for their education, whether it is for the virtual school. Right across the board, everyone has one thing in mind and that is to make sure that all those young people get the absolute best what they deserve in life. Any questions, please ask Mr. Munday or ask myself. Thank you. All the reports are interesting. I did have to look up what BOP stood for. I don't know if the officers want to add anything and then we can open it up for questions. If I can just say a couple of words later. I am old enough to remember when Frank Dobson, as the relevant Secretary of State, wrote to councils to express his concern that local authorities were not undertaking their responsibilities as corporate parents seriously enough and set out a whole range of changes that needed to be undertaken. And that included ensuring that we all work together to ensure that children and young people that we were responsible for and care leavers were cared for effectively. I was just looking at the guidance that is set out and it talks about our unique responsibility as councils to care for children and that a strong ethos of corporate parenting means that a sense of vision and responsibility towards children and care leavers is a priority for everyone. But I think what we can see in the work that we do, in the reports that you've received, the mighty tone that they are, sets out a range of whole council approaches to responding to children and young people's needs. We're happy to take any questions. I appreciate you're done. The relevant director is also on the call to answer anything that you may have to ask us. Just add one thing that people might or might not know, but the whole cost of care, especially for vulnerable young people, has been one of the things that's really stretching budgets. I'm pleased that we've now managed to purchase another property which will then be able to take two vulnerable -- A brief comment to what is a really excessive report and those two comments would be it's really, really good to see within all of this the sense of children and young people's voices being heard and compliment you on the work that's gone on particularly over the last several years in that. And actually also just noting that real sense of supporting mental and physical health for young people who often have come from difficult circumstances. And right at the top of your list of pledges to young people in the corporate parenting strategy, there are two things that ring out because of some of the horror stories we've heard historically about children in care, not in Barnet, but elsewhere. One is we will support you to fulfill your dreams because we aspire for these young people as we would for our own children. And I think that's really important that whatever their starting point, we support them to be the best people they can be and that we will be there for you when you need us. And I think that is something that comes through in former generations, children in care haven't always felt that that was the case across the piece, not necessarily in Barnet, but actually how really important that is for us. So those ring out through this report, but there is huge amounts of detail and hugely heartened as a corporate parent to know the depth of work that we're putting in. And I know it is backed up by enormous amounts of work by a whole range of staff across the service. So congratulations. I'm sorry, but I mean, has there been any work to look at areas that are more successful? Are there other birds that are more successful in fostering this level of difficulty in attracting families to foster? Thanks, Councillor Clark. I might bring in Ms. Jordan in a minute, but I think just to say our fostering data is better than a lot of authorities. We've done better than a number. We have looked at best practice elsewhere. I'm interested in the fact that there are real challenges in London across the whole of London to recruit foster carers. And we were, you know, we've been the best in terms of offering homes for Ukraine in Barnet. Yeah, we can't get people to be foster carers, which I think is a really interesting challenge. And I think we need to reflect on what does that mean about us as a society? We're clearly very welcoming. We've welcomed thousands of people from the Ukraine, from Hong Kong, from Afghanistan, from Syria. We've been hugely welcoming. Yet we can't find enough foster carers for our own children here in Barnet. I wonder what we need to do to think about that as a as a place. And I suppose that's a challenge that I would throw to all of you as members as well to think about what what is it about Barnet that makes it so welcoming to everybody, apart from our own children? Just on that, I mean, one of the barriers I hear to fostering is, oh, I'd love to do that, but I don't have a spare room in my home. But the people who were sponsoring those programs would have had to have had that space. Have you gone back to those? I mean, I don't even know if you have the data available to you, but we have spoken with those families. If that's all I can move to the recommendation, which I want a cabinet note, the content of the corporate parenting annual report, and that the report be referred to council for noting to ensure understanding of their statutory role as corporate parents and to be aware of progress and challenges for services to children in care and care experience young adults. We have those recommendations and move on to item 11, which is the agreed syllabus for religious education. I'll introduce this item and Neil and there's some colleagues on on the call who Neil will introduce who've been involved in this. I think it would be really helpful to just speak firstly to the question from the opposition members. The reason that we have used the approach that we've used is because of our absolute focus on religious education and the importance of religious education and the religious diversity of Barnet. We I think the census and shows that Barnet is one of the most religious boroughs in the country. And the syllabus that's been developed by faith leaders across Barnet is a testament to the importance of that. And so I think it's it's not fair to say that those questions are not questions that everybody should be answering and everybody should be asking. You do it through the just framing that you grow up with, and that's what the approach is about. But I'll hand over to Neil and colleagues on the call who will be involved in developing the syllabus to to really reinforce the really important work that we've been doing in this space. Just to comment on that, I think the question counts as thinking all the comments, it's education, but sorry. To back up what Chris said, I think it's important to remember that in every local authority has to have a sacre by law legally being required. Every local authority has to have a standing advisory council on religious education. So every council in the country has got one. A lot of those sacres across the country are dormant or nonexistent. You have a really thriving sacre in Barnet and the sacre represents and reflects the religious makeup of the borough. So I'm just going to read a list of the different faith groups that make up that sacre. We have Baha'i, Buddhist, free churches, Greek Orthodox, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Sikh, Salvation Army, Methodist, Muslim, Humanist, Church of England and Catholic. All of those religions are represented on sacre. By the way, we do have a vacancy for for a Sikh and Salvation Army at the moment. So if you do know anyone who would like to be on our sacre who's from one of those areas, please, please get in touch. So all of those people come together three times a year in a sacre meeting and perform the statutory duties that every sacre has to perform. And the most important statutory duty is to create an RE agreed syllabus. So a syllabus that all community schools in Barnet are going to follow and a syllabus that academies may decide to follow. And a syllabus that some faith schools may decide to dip into and take some elements from it as well. So when when sacre decide, I should also mention that sacre has seven councilors on it as well, and those councilors are Labour, Conservative and Independent as well. So the whole makeup of the political side of the council is also represented on sacre too. So sacre decided back in twenty twenty one that they would ask schools what they were looking for from a new syllabus, because the syllabus that we had in place was originally originally designed in written in twenty twelve with a minor revision in twenty nineteen. So it was it was it was due a refresh and it was a due a complete rewrite. And so we first of all went out to schools and said, we're looking for from your syllabus and from that survey, then sacre then decided to meet some other sacres who have produced syllabuses, syllabi, syllabi, syllabuses, syllabi, who produced. If only there was a head teacher in the room, a syllabi to to see whether it was appropriate for for Barnet. We met with a number and we didn't. The sacre all agreed that it wasn't appropriate and we didn't just want to take one of someone else's shelf. We wanted something that was right for the community of Barnet. And as as Chris said, the recent the last census was showing the diverse makeup of the Barnet community, but also the increasing number of those in Barnet who have no religion. Twenty percent identified at the census that they had no religion. So we needed to have an Ari syllabus that was appropriate for all. So when we decided to write our own, a writing group was formed, and that writing group involved two primary teachers, two secondary teachers. And you're going to hear from one of those secondary teachers in a minute. The primaries were head were re leaders in primary schools. And we had head of Ari in Ashmore secondary and Queen Elizabeth Boys School secondary. We had Ari advisors, we had writers, we had members of the local authority on it. We had other members of Sacre and we had academics who all sat in a darkened room for a number of months. And then following the when we made the decision to use the work of Antaves, Professor Antaves from America, decided to then use that and then create a syllabus that was right for us. So I'm just going to hand over to Jack Robertson, who's on the call here. He's the head of religious education in Queen Elizabeth Boys School. And he was one of the writing group. And I thought it'd be useful for him to talk about the process of coming up with this syllabus. Over to you, Jack. Thank you. Thank you, Neil. Hopefully you can all hear me OK. Do just let me know if not. I do have a headset and a microphone, which might help if needs be. Yeah, my name's Jack Robertson, head of Ari at Queen Elizabeth School, and I've been on the Sacre for a number of years. So I was just going to spend three or four minutes just going over a little bit of the process in a touch more detail. So, well, Neil's already covered quite a bit of the process anyway and the collaborative effort and the role that the Sacre played at various stages of it. I'll just add very briefly that, you know, that was additional funding as well from St. Gabriel's Trust, which is very much the kind of authority and key funder of different religious education projects. And they were huge fans of the project itself and the ideas behind it. And the council as well have expressed similar say, you know, it's quite a lot of excitement about the work that's been done, which is obviously obviously great and great for Barnet as well. So in terms of the kind of academic side of it, so I'll touch upon that slightly and why we decided to go down the ANTAVS route and then go into a little bit about the teacher's perspective, I suppose, and why it's a good fit and why we're looking forward to seeing this locally grid syllabus work in the classroom. So first of all, with ANTAVS work, yeah, as Neil kind of touched upon, it kind of fitted perfectly with Barnet. The reason she's kind of come up with these six big questions, and I should say she's not an isolated individual, it's very much grown out and evolved from work in religious studies around the world, effectively, she came up with these to try and solve a few issues within religious studies, which are around the complexity of religious belief, essentially. So how do we compare different religions? How do we make sense of the diversity and complexity within a religion? So, you know, it's easy to talk about Christian belief or Christians, but actually within that there's great diversity of belief and opinion. And the same applies for any religion. And of course, the same will apply for religious communities within Barnet. On top of that, there is the sort of growing non-religious groups of people within the UK and Barnet is no exception there. Although perhaps Barnet has lower numbers of people saying they're non-religious than other parts of the country. But what's good about the approach is it does allow for comparison between different religious groups, but also non-religious worldviews as well. And I'll just add briefly as well, this is very much part of the direction of travel within the religious education community in schools as well. When I trained to be a teacher about 15 years ago now, I remember in my training being told, you know, in 10 years time, it might not be called RE anymore. It'll be called maybe religion and worldviews or something to this effect. So, you know, it's kind of been evolving over time and we're very much a part of that direction of travel. It's not it's not like a kind of radical idea or anything like that, but it is a forward looking idea. And I think that's only a good thing. But in terms of finally thinking about from a classroom perspective, the approach is great for all the reasons sort of touched upon the recognition of diversity and it's very inclusive in that sense. It's, you know, this sort of six questions give a really good structure to teaching and learning. That's sequenced all the way through from early years up to key stage five, which is I gather is not something that's done in any other locally agreed syllabus. So, you know, that kind of continuity and sequencing is only going to benefit students in Barnet, which is great, of course. Yeah, I think that's that's it. And just to add as well, you know, with key stage four and key stage five in particular sixth form, the approach really does lend itself very well to being adopted within that kind of context. So, you know, one thing that came out of some of our research was that sometimes key stage five in particular students might not get not might not be given their statutory re as it should be done. And I you know, I'm confident that this approach is one that head teachers and heads of re in schools and students get behind a big part of it, as I say, is its inclusiveness, but it also allows for a personal expression of personal beliefs and that sort of recognition of complexity and so on. So that's my bit. I'll leave it there. And perhaps if there's any questions, I might be able to answer some of those as well. Thank you. Thanks, Jack. And just to finish to say that what we've been doing in Barnet has got national interest and international interest. And what we would want to do if you're if you agree the syllabus today and then it goes to the Department of Education for formal agreement and then it becomes statute in in Barnet. What we hope to then do is see if we can market that across the country, because there's been an awful lot of work that we put in. And it would be good that we can actually bring some income into Barnet by and by by selling the syllabus. Thank you. I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone for their work on this as well, both in the council, but also very much residents, teachers, et cetera. I think it's a really welcome approach, echoing what the leader was saying before that you're talking about communities, which is something that we try and do a lot, recognizing the difference rather than just talking about the community. So I think that's really welcome, too. I think it dovetails really nicely with the work that we're starting to do across the council on community cohesion and the approach to that. And which I know you've been involved with and different departments. And I think that reflection of the way in which it's possible to have these conversations and develop something and learning together as well is really, really important. And lastly, just as a side point, the work that the Sacre Choir have done, sort of at various events through the past couple of years, it's been aware. It is exactly where you should start. And I think actually bizarrely, I think Richard Dawkins and somebody like John Lennox, who's a leading Christian professor of mass. I shall echo that, but with a particular twist on it, as mayor, I presided at the Sacre meeting where you started the discussions. And I'm really pleased to see how they've panned out what the outputs are and the fact that you've come out with something that is getting such full recognition. That's really heartwarming. Really commend that co-production with particularly with faith leaders. You're bringing together something that's innovative, but also really meets the needs of all of those faiths across the borough and that it's that it's Barnett tailored. But the point I would particularly make is, I think, and it gets to the point that Councillor Houston was making. I think what it is doing is feeding into the inquiry minds at a time when you're shaping them, scoped around those key questions to help develop their knowledge and their skills to engage with those. It's constructive discussion to navigate what is an increasingly complex world. We're a really diverse borough and I think equipping our young people vital to equip them with both the understanding about the breadth of faith and belief, but actually also giving them the skills to have constructive, engaged discussions. And that, as Councillor Conway says, really does support cohesion across the borough. Not being afraid to discuss because they've developed those skills and taking it right on to sixth film at the point when those young people are really engaging independent discussion is. Are we happy to move on to the recommendation? The recommendation, really, that cabinet approved the Barnet Greed Syllabus for religious education. I come from a suggestion more exciting than that. I just a couple of points. I suppose the Councillor Houston's point about the induced nature of what's happening. There's a variety of blocks coming, which are designed to incorporate that. I suppose the other comment just to add, which isn't really picked up in the report, it's just worth noting is what we're seeing an increasing number of was just about the status of the heating system in 54. So this is an area at the moment, just to remind as a temporary arrangements in place. Sorry. Thank you, Luke. I was just going to ask a quick question regarding the. It says the contractor is continuing to undertake those works and expected to be completed in December, but not not transferred over to after Christmas. Are we are we sure that that work is on track and that fairly early in the new year, they'll be able to be switched over to the to the news in terms of how we kind of keep close to people's energy. What throughout that process is very regular meetings now between our various teams to make sure that that is the case. It's any further delay at this point. And just a question on different subject, just in case any residents on the Golden Green Estate are watching tonight. I wondered if you could just say a quick word about the plans for the control parking zone in those areas and when when we might expect engagement to start. Yes, of course. So one of the planning requirements in Section 73 to the big, the big outline planning commission to bring this town talks about parking zone. It's not just called Green Estate. So the emerging messages from that analysis is underway. Actually, there's been quite a significant increase in. And that does suggest actually there's a stronger case for it to interrupt the later in terms of the actual program. What we're expecting next is outlined and. Completion of the analysis. And sorry, just at the risk of doing case work in a cabinet meeting. The informal engagement would start before the new would start at the end of this year. Yeah, thank you. So in terms of there is, of course, a pre consultation period, which has actually just been. Coming in the future. Yes, absolutely. So, yeah, thank you. So originally said that the way the phasing that the timing, the way the. Sequencing that thoughts are on breakfast town and the demolition. Thank you, Lita. The report is fairly straightforward in what it's asking us to do and what it what the outcome of the increase of fees and charges would be. Residents minded to accept the methodology and determination that we've come to. But naturally, I'm not indifferent and neither I'm certain are my cabinet colleagues, no officers as to the additional financial pressure it puts on the residents that need to make use of chargeable services. So I thought I'd comment on that point in light of one slightly unreasonable allegation that Councillor Zinkin made in his questioning relating to reasons recommendation one point two, which suggested that there was a determination of a sort that the the proposals are the ones that are going to emerge from any consultatory process we might have. Naturally, when you put reasons for recommendations together, it's a summary of one's thoughts. And we've come to a judgment based on our determination of the various factors and and assessments that we have made. It's entirely reasonable for officers to express an opinion as to which one of a multiplicity of of various options they consider most reasonable and appropriate. That's all recommendation one point two alludes to, that this is in our best judgment, a mechanism by which to meet the financial pressures we face as a local authority. The other point to note is that we are in historically unprecedented times of high inflation interest rates. And it's unfortunate, but the chargeable services that we offer need to reflect the current financial climate of the country and the pressures that local authority faces. It's not something that we do lightly, but it is something that is realistically meeting current demands and pressures. And that's all I have to say on that. Thank you. But because there are some changes, they will need to be seconded before they're on proposing and they need to be seconded and then voted on. Finally, the cabinet authorized officers to adopt the consultation, responsibility and the equality of impact assessment. And this time I have remembered that there is also an exempt report, which will be for noting, but if anybody wants to ask questions on the exempt report, please let us know before. Oh, sorry. You want to introduce Councillor Hinchliffe? Thank you, Councillor. Yeah, I think you get most of the points because I was going to just touch on the. Not question, but comment, just reinforcing and drawing to the committee's attention on the comments in one point one six, which deals specifically with the GP surgery, referring to the fact that the current GP surgery is old, not for. I think we'd all appreciate that if we wish to have the the 21st century NHS and particularly GP provision, we want to actually it needs to happen in fit for purpose and modern premises where that's possible. This is an opportunity to do that. And it it makes it clear that with these changes, they could accommodate more than 9000 patients with the amount of building that's going on in the area. They will need to do that. So I'm really pleased to see a creative in which that surgery building can be replaced. So thank you. As we agree that we also want to note the exempt report at the same time. Okay, because we've already noted that to accept reports and therefore the meeting finished. Thank you, everybody.

Transcript

speakers and myself to please turn on the microphone by pressing the speaker icon when speaking and often finished please speak directly into the microphone so that the audio can be picked up for those joining the meeting in the gallery and remotely. The first item are the minutes of the previous meeting of the 17th of September. Are they agreed as a correct record? An absence of the only member absent here is Councillor Bakes, because of care and responsibility. Do members have any declaration to make in relation to the agenda items? Okay, thank you. The Constitution states that Councillors may ask the cabinet member a question on any matter which is on the cabinet agenda. The first four questions will be opposition group members, who I can see lined up. So, if you want to come forward, we have 15 minutes for this section, as you know, and the 15 minutes will start when you ask the first question. Over to you. I thought we might start somewhere different than you probably were expecting on the agreed syllabus for religious education, which I read with a great deal of interest and there are five, six key questions which is the basis of this syllabus and they were very interesting questions and I do understand that 22% of the borough is not religious and therefore you've reflected that in the way the syllabus has been drawn up, but it just struck me as a person who is involved in religion as slightly strange that the religious syllabus for the London Borough of Barnet, which has probably got the most diverse religious set of groups in the land, probably is a more religious borough than many, that those six questions which are the core of the syllabus neither mention the word religion or God or a supreme being. I'm not saying that it's not there because when you read further into the syllabus you see that in when you look at the sub questions around the first of the items that those questions then appear, but it did strike me that for a religious syllabus, even though it's based on the works that I'm sure a very respected academic, like the syllabus and therefore whether it really is what Barnet needs, and I just leave that thought with you when you come to that later in the evening. To initiate discussions. They are the core and if you read the syllabus, which I did, that is the core of which the whole of the education of children in non-religious schools is going to be based, and it just struck me as odd and it's maybe something which you might want to reflect on, but you agree this, as the legal requirement for schools to teach. Moving on to what you probably did expect us to want to talk about. You have a line in section 1.4. You say the indexation of fees and charges to the level of inflation at 4.5%. When you analyze the 4.5%, what you discover is that you've made a difference around 1% per annum higher, and randomly you've then added 1% of that to the RPI, and 1% because you've just added it on, and therefore to me it is just completely disingenuous to say that that is inflation. It isn't. Half of it is things that you've done using a discredited measure for inflation, which is no longer a national statistic. All statisticians as being a poor and imperfect measure, and it's misleading to the residents of the borough, and it's just absolutely wrong. Well, one of the parts of what you said is also playing it wrong about adding 1%, because this is based on the bigger -- I think it's from June. It's not the present day. No, I understand that, Barry. But that was 4.5. The June CPI, it wasn't. The June CPI, as it says in the paper, was -- well, it was the RPI number, but I've looked up the June CPI number, and the June CPI number was around 2.5%. The RPI number is roughly 1% bigger than the CPI number, and you've then added another percent to that. So it is just wrong to say that it relates to adults, one of which relates to parking. Now, there's a number of aspects that I don't understand in relation to this. The first is that in paragraph 1.2, you say these proposals are the best way of doing that by meeting financial requirements and delivering outcomes and ambitions for Barnet. You haven't said these proposals are being consulted as the best way, but you've stated in 1.2 that they are the best way, which means the consultation is completely pointless, because you've already decided clearly that this is the best way, and there is no ambiguity in 1.2. Troy, there's also no ambiguity in the recommendations, which are the important things, the things we vote on, so you'll go out to consultation, and there's no presumption in the recommendations. But the reason for the recommendations in 1.2 is extremely clear. I'm very happy to be corrected if I got it wrong, but there is no indication in Appendix A as to which lines you're supposed to know what they're supposed to be consulting. In many ways, you've said on quite a few occasions you don't understand, so hopefully we'll be able to educate you on these. Thank you very much, Lita. I was wondering if Councillor Zinkin wanted an answer to questions or whether this was soliloquial. Councillor, I'll take your queries in order. In relation to the methodology we've employed and whether or not the retail price index is discredited, I suppose that's an argument for you to take up with your conservative colleagues in Harrow, because the methodology that we've adopted is precisely the one that Harrow Council has and arrived at precisely the same figure. Now, perhaps I can give you a bit of assurance that the retail price index is an unreasonable measure to use currently as opposed to CPI. So the main difference between the two is that RPI takes into account housing-related costs and pressures, mortgage costs, council tax, so things that are actually relevant to the current financial climate of the local authority and costs that residents actually are experiencing skyrocketing as a result of decades of conservative mismanagement. So we thought it was a fair reflection of the reasons why they're currently seeing increased costs. The other thing that it uses is the arithmetic mean rather than geometric mean. I won't necessarily deal with the difference between the two, but basically it's more sensitive to immediate pressures that are more current, whereas we thought that using a longer-term measure wasn't going to be reasonably reflective of the current financial climate we face. The RPI is an arithmetic index, and CPI is a geometric index. The geometric index, correct, yes. And the arithmetic index has been discredited by statisticians, and it's been removed from being a national statistic. And the fact is that we use CPI when we talked about inflation, and you moved to RPI. I suppose we can talk about macroeconomics at a different juncture. I've given you an answer as to why we've adopted the one measure rather than the other. In relation to consultation, we wouldn't consult necessarily on individual lines of increased fees in each particular area. It's the general principles that you would consult on. So I think that that's the basis upon which officers would go out and explain to residents why an increase has been adjusted at the level that it has in the methodology that we've-- Thank you. I was looking at the cost of checking the CCTV, and amazingly enough it's gone up 150 percent. So you talk about methodology, you talk about RPI. No, no, it's 150 percent for checking on the CCTV, and for downloading it's a whopping great 650 percent increase. And all in the commentary it says, well, we did a bit of benchmarking, and we just thought we'd charge more. So could somebody explain why you're charging such enormous great increases on our hard-pressed residents? Thank you. Partly it's full cost recovery, but I don't know if the officer has any comment. Yeah, sorry. Yes, so in terms of we've done the benchmarking exercise and the charges haven't been put up for a number of years. So obviously with the increase in the system we've done it against cost recovery. Most of the applications that come into the CCTV for CCTV requests of this kind are not from residents. They're from insurance companies for insurance claims. But in the end we all still pay the money. So in the end insurance companies get their money from the residents. But it's far more complicated than that. All you've done is you say it's cost recovery, but the officers who are sitting there monitoring the CCTV and do the downloads already do them for 10 pound, which is what was originally stated in the Data Protection Act. And what you've done is added on 650 percent to that. But the officers haven't done any extra work. I find it extraordinary that you're raising CCTV, but we've made huge improvements, as you know. And that is reflected in the quality of the images and the range of use of CCTV as well. So I thought I'd just add that. And the officers are very busy because they're doing a huge amount of work as well. And they're there 24 hours, which I don't think was the case under the last administration. Yeah, but that's not I think to do with this question because the CCTV has already been paid for by the residents in case you hadn't noticed. It's not paid for by the council. It comes from the residents' money. And if officers are working 24 hours a day, surveying 24 hours a day, and it's the officers who are going to do the downloading, which can't cost 75 pound, why can't they do it at 3 a.m. when there's very little going on? I don't understand why you're doing so. And you can sit there, but if you look up on the data sets, go and look on the data sets and see how many cameras we've got. And you'll find out, according to the latest May 2024 data set on cameras, we've only got 134. So perhaps you really ought to check the data that you'll keep telling everybody that we've got hundreds of cameras. Thank you. I think Claire Green might have something to add on that, but there's really no need to shout about it either. I can actually hear you. I think I can shout if I want to. It's up to me. Thank you. Well, all right, let's take the obvious thing. You've got a number of cameras places, if you like, where the camera is. But a lot of these are the catch-all cameras that can take many images, 360 degrees. So the CCTV covers a far wider area than the number of cameras. It is important, I do not feel any guilt for asking for insurance companies for more money as they're getting it on the tree. And the other thing, I suppose, is to say that you will have the ability to try the kit. They can't go past without pressing something that says press. We all do it. The other thing, you will have the opportunity in an alternate budget to put these things down. And we'd be interested to see what you come up with. Thank you. Thank you very much, leader. One final question in relation to adults, which is, I don't understand from the borough. Mr. Chairman, yeah, this is quite simple. Basically, this is a service that this council has been providing over the years to people who are self-funders at a cost to the council and not a cost to the self-under. We're bringing these prices in line with what the actual cost to the council is to arrange somebody's care. And that's all we're doing. And that's why it looks bigger than it sounds. But the fact is, it's not fair that the council taxpayers should be funding people who already fund their own care, but funding, in addition to that, the arrangements for that care package with a particular provider. So we're only asking people to pay what's officer's time, and that's what it costs. That's adults, so that will be part of the consultation. The 15 minutes are one up. I've given you a bit of allowance because you take so long to get to the questions. So we do have to move on with the agenda. The consideration of reports from the overview and scrutiny committee, or the two task and finish groups. The first one we're looking at is elective home education. And that was created by --

Thank you. I won't take up too much of your time, as hopefully you've all read the report. But, yeah, we began on this back in June last year and spent a long time looking into home elective education. The elective -- the education landscape for home elective families has changed quite drastically in recent years, both in Barnet and across the country. You'll see that throughout the report. In the five years prior to the pandemic, the population was growing EHE families by 20% each year. And then during the pandemic, it raised by 38%. It has reduced a bit, but it's still not gone down to pre-pandemic levels. And I want to start this by acknowledging the work that the team has been doing in Barnet for EHE families to really build up a positive relationship that wasn't there initially. You can see that through the work they've done on the website. On the main Barnet council website, which we made some recommendations about, and also building up those relationships. What we found throughout doing this work is a lot of families are quite skeptical of working with local government and working with councils and government in general. And the work the team is doing in Barnet is really positive to try and build up those relationships further. So the recommendations we've made are really to try and develop that a bit further and to support the work the team is doing. So the task and finish group we met with 10 different experts, including people from the Barnet and Parent Carers Forum, with university lecturers, with the chair of the Association of Elective Home Education Professionals, head teachers in Barnet, officers within the council as well. So we've spoken to a lot of experts and had a lot of conversations. And then from that, and we also did a survey to families in Barnet that are EHE, and we got 49 responses, which is quite positive actually, I think that's good engagement. And we've got our nine recommendations. I won't talk through all our recommendations because I'm sure you've all read the report. But yeah, I'm hoping cabinet will take this forward and look into some of our recommendations. We took a long time. Thanks for the report. I can see that an awful lot of work's gone into it. If I sort of take you back to when we were originally concerned about home education, obviously it increased during the pandemic. A lot of those have gone back into mainstream, which is good. And you will have discovered, same as me, is that there's an awful lot of different reasons why people choose to home educate. Some it's just a lifestyle, that's exactly what they want to do. And I know that when over at UNITAS, one of the mornings there were these groups of parents got that cohesion to mix with other children and with other families. So I think what we'll probably be able to do is actually look. I mean, I would say that we need to look at the recommendations and then to come back to see where, if any, we can go from there. But certainly very comprehensive. I can see that an awful lot of work has gone into it. And it was certainly an important thing. We originally looked at this. And when it first came up as an issue, one of my first concerns is that if any young people were actually falling through the gap that we didn't know about, especially in terms of safeguarding. So regardless of the education aspect of it, it was the safeguarding, the communication between them in all directions all the time. But thank you for the report. Yeah, I would completely agree. And safeguarding was obviously a big part of the report. I think the reason there were so many issues or concerns about safeguarding is a lot of these families didn't want to engage at all initially before the work the officers had done in the last few years. And I think that's why some of the offers we've had are there. So like the library cards, like potentially the exams, I know there's issues about costs with that. As you speak to the council, I think will help families feel more comfortable. They'll get to know the officers. And then if they are concerned about safeguarding issue, they'll already know the officers to come and speak to. And I think that's something that came up a lot of the experts that you sort of sometimes have to offer the families some benefit. Like different areas have done lots of different things like days out and trips and a lot have done the library cards. Doing that helps build those relationships. But hopefully the cabinet will consider those. I think the library cards would be really good in particular. I know our recommendation on the exams is a cost. If I was looking at it, I would want to do it so that it's not a blank check. Do a fund where parents could apply. They did need help with the cost of exams. Some of the families spoke about the difficulty accessing exams as well. Thank you for your positive comments on our report and I look forward to hearing what cabinet reports back. If not, we can go on to the recommendations. Okay, the recommendations are one cabinet is asked to note the referral from the children education overview and scrutiny subcommittee and elective home education officers to prepare a report on the task and finish group recommendations with full legal, financial and other comments so that cabinet may fully consider the recommendations. Thank you, Lucy. The next one is the youth homeless task and finish group and Councillor Grohkopf will be introducing and it's the same thing that you have three minutes and it will start when you start speaking. Thank you very much. This was the first task and finish group for youth homelessness and can I acknowledge a huge thanks, especially Scarlett Wright, one of the officers. All the partners are involved, and also all the amazing young people that we met. I hope everybody has had opportunity to read the document. It was a very interesting item to look at what might have been helpful, perhaps something for a future task and finish is actually engaging with the parent carers of those young people might have given a different perspective. There's seven recommendations. One is possibly with a financial item that would obviously need to be looked at, but we did think it would be something to consider, which would be helpful to those young people. The other recommendations are obviously could be absorbed quite easily and is not beyond the remit of those particular items. Now, what we did want our committee, although they are recommendations, we would very much welcome if the cabinet was minded to perhaps make and yes, get things a little bit better for them. The one thing I would like, if that is possible, although it is an objective procedure. Anybody else got any comments or questions? We can move to the recommendations, but I won't say that. This includes all of us, but all can return. The cabinet is asked to note the referral from the overview and scrutiny committee and the youth home. This task report and the task and finish group recommendations with all legal, financial and other comments so that cabinet may fully consider the recommendation. The next item on the agenda is item 10, which is the corporate parenting annual report. There is so much in these reports, but it is really good. We do a corporate parenting annual report every year. We have a corporate parenting panel. We are all corporate parents. Then you've got the fostering report, you've got the IRO report and you've got the BOP report, which I don't know if any of you would have been at the scrutiny when they did a short film. We know Manchester and fingers crossed they will come back with an award, but I am just so proud as to what the young people do. It is probably still going on at the youth assembly this evening. The amount of co-production we have done with young people over the past few years and how they appreciate what we do in consulting them on things that affect their lives. I would just say that if you have not had a chance to read through all of this, please do because it is all my point of view. Really good news to show how the staff and the department really care and actually, the only thing in their life is to make sure that we do the best for all the young people that we care for. Whether it is for fostering, whether it is for children in care, whether it is for their education, whether it is for the virtual school. Right across the board, everyone has one thing in mind and that is to make sure that all those young people get the absolute best what they deserve in life. Any questions, please ask Mr. Munday or ask myself. Thank you. All the reports are interesting. I did have to look up what BOP stood for. I don't know if the officers want to add anything and then we can open it up for questions. If I can just say a couple of words later. I am old enough to remember when Frank Dobson, as the relevant Secretary of State, wrote to councils to express his concern that local authorities were not undertaking their responsibilities as corporate parents seriously enough and set out a whole range of changes that needed to be undertaken. And that included ensuring that we all work together to ensure that children and young people that we were responsible for and care leavers were cared for effectively. I was just looking at the guidance that is set out and it talks about our unique responsibility as councils to care for children and that a strong ethos of corporate parenting means that a sense of vision and responsibility towards children and care leavers is a priority for everyone. But I think what we can see in the work that we do, in the reports that you've received, the mighty tone that they are, sets out a range of whole council approaches to responding to children and young people's needs. We're happy to take any questions. I appreciate you're done. The relevant director is also on the call to answer anything that you may have to ask us. Just add one thing that people might or might not know, but the whole cost of care, especially for vulnerable young people, has been one of the things that's really stretching budgets. I'm pleased that we've now managed to purchase another property which will then be able to take two vulnerable -- A brief comment to what is a really excessive report and those two comments would be it's really, really good to see within all of this the sense of children and young people's voices being heard and compliment you on the work that's gone on particularly over the last several years in that. And actually also just noting that real sense of supporting mental and physical health for young people who often have come from difficult circumstances. And right at the top of your list of pledges to young people in the corporate parenting strategy, there are two things that ring out because of some of the horror stories we've heard historically about children in care, not in Barnet, but elsewhere. One is we will support you to fulfill your dreams because we aspire for these young people as we would for our own children. And I think that's really important that whatever their starting point, we support them to be the best people they can be and that we will be there for you when you need us. And I think that is something that comes through in former generations, children in care haven't always felt that that was the case across the piece, not necessarily in Barnet, but actually how really important that is for us. So those ring out through this report, but there is huge amounts of detail and hugely heartened as a corporate parent to know the depth of work that we're putting in. And I know it is backed up by enormous amounts of work by a whole range of staff across the service. So congratulations. I'm sorry, but I mean, has there been any work to look at areas that are more successful? Are there other birds that are more successful in fostering this level of difficulty in attracting families to foster? Thanks, Councillor Clark. I might bring in Ms. Jordan in a minute, but I think just to say our fostering data is better than a lot of authorities. We've done better than a number. We have looked at best practice elsewhere. I'm interested in the fact that there are real challenges in London across the whole of London to recruit foster carers. And we were, you know, we've been the best in terms of offering homes for Ukraine in Barnet. Yeah, we can't get people to be foster carers, which I think is a really interesting challenge. And I think we need to reflect on what does that mean about us as a society? We're clearly very welcoming. We've welcomed thousands of people from the Ukraine, from Hong Kong, from Afghanistan, from Syria. We've been hugely welcoming. Yet we can't find enough foster carers for our own children here in Barnet. I wonder what we need to do to think about that as a as a place. And I suppose that's a challenge that I would throw to all of you as members as well to think about what what is it about Barnet that makes it so welcoming to everybody, apart from our own children? Just on that, I mean, one of the barriers I hear to fostering is, oh, I'd love to do that, but I don't have a spare room in my home. But the people who were sponsoring those programs would have had to have had that space. Have you gone back to those? I mean, I don't even know if you have the data available to you, but we have spoken with those families. If that's all I can move to the recommendation, which I want a cabinet note, the content of the corporate parenting annual report, and that the report be referred to council for noting to ensure understanding of their statutory role as corporate parents and to be aware of progress and challenges for services to children in care and care experience young adults. We have those recommendations and move on to item 11, which is the agreed syllabus for religious education. I'll introduce this item and Neil and there's some colleagues on on the call who Neil will introduce who've been involved in this. I think it would be really helpful to just speak firstly to the question from the opposition members. The reason that we have used the approach that we've used is because of our absolute focus on religious education and the importance of religious education and the religious diversity of Barnet. We I think the census and shows that Barnet is one of the most religious boroughs in the country. And the syllabus that's been developed by faith leaders across Barnet is a testament to the importance of that. And so I think it's it's not fair to say that those questions are not questions that everybody should be answering and everybody should be asking. You do it through the just framing that you grow up with, and that's what the approach is about. But I'll hand over to Neil and colleagues on the call who will be involved in developing the syllabus to to really reinforce the really important work that we've been doing in this space. Just to comment on that, I think the question counts as thinking all the comments, it's education, but sorry. To back up what Chris said, I think it's important to remember that in every local authority has to have a sacre by law legally being required. Every local authority has to have a standing advisory council on religious education. So every council in the country has got one. A lot of those sacres across the country are dormant or nonexistent. You have a really thriving sacre in Barnet and the sacre represents and reflects the religious makeup of the borough. So I'm just going to read a list of the different faith groups that make up that sacre. We have Baha'i, Buddhist, free churches, Greek Orthodox, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Sikh, Salvation Army, Methodist, Muslim, Humanist, Church of England and Catholic. All of those religions are represented on sacre. By the way, we do have a vacancy for for a Sikh and Salvation Army at the moment. So if you do know anyone who would like to be on our sacre who's from one of those areas, please, please get in touch. So all of those people come together three times a year in a sacre meeting and perform the statutory duties that every sacre has to perform. And the most important statutory duty is to create an RE agreed syllabus. So a syllabus that all community schools in Barnet are going to follow and a syllabus that academies may decide to follow. And a syllabus that some faith schools may decide to dip into and take some elements from it as well. So when when sacre decide, I should also mention that sacre has seven councilors on it as well, and those councilors are Labour, Conservative and Independent as well. So the whole makeup of the political side of the council is also represented on sacre too. So sacre decided back in twenty twenty one that they would ask schools what they were looking for from a new syllabus, because the syllabus that we had in place was originally originally designed in written in twenty twelve with a minor revision in twenty nineteen. So it was it was it was due a refresh and it was a due a complete rewrite. And so we first of all went out to schools and said, we're looking for from your syllabus and from that survey, then sacre then decided to meet some other sacres who have produced syllabuses, syllabi, syllabi, syllabuses, syllabi, who produced. If only there was a head teacher in the room, a syllabi to to see whether it was appropriate for for Barnet. We met with a number and we didn't. The sacre all agreed that it wasn't appropriate and we didn't just want to take one of someone else's shelf. We wanted something that was right for the community of Barnet. And as as Chris said, the recent the last census was showing the diverse makeup of the Barnet community, but also the increasing number of those in Barnet who have no religion. Twenty percent identified at the census that they had no religion. So we needed to have an Ari syllabus that was appropriate for all. So when we decided to write our own, a writing group was formed, and that writing group involved two primary teachers, two secondary teachers. And you're going to hear from one of those secondary teachers in a minute. The primaries were head were re leaders in primary schools. And we had head of Ari in Ashmore secondary and Queen Elizabeth Boys School secondary. We had Ari advisors, we had writers, we had members of the local authority on it. We had other members of Sacre and we had academics who all sat in a darkened room for a number of months. And then following the when we made the decision to use the work of Antaves, Professor Antaves from America, decided to then use that and then create a syllabus that was right for us. So I'm just going to hand over to Jack Robertson, who's on the call here. He's the head of religious education in Queen Elizabeth Boys School. And he was one of the writing group. And I thought it'd be useful for him to talk about the process of coming up with this syllabus. Over to you, Jack. Thank you. Thank you, Neil. Hopefully you can all hear me OK. Do just let me know if not. I do have a headset and a microphone, which might help if needs be. Yeah, my name's Jack Robertson, head of Ari at Queen Elizabeth School, and I've been on the Sacre for a number of years. So I was just going to spend three or four minutes just going over a little bit of the process in a touch more detail. So, well, Neil's already covered quite a bit of the process anyway and the collaborative effort and the role that the Sacre played at various stages of it. I'll just add very briefly that, you know, that was additional funding as well from St. Gabriel's Trust, which is very much the kind of authority and key funder of different religious education projects. And they were huge fans of the project itself and the ideas behind it. And the council as well have expressed similar say, you know, it's quite a lot of excitement about the work that's been done, which is obviously obviously great and great for Barnet as well. So in terms of the kind of academic side of it, so I'll touch upon that slightly and why we decided to go down the ANTAVS route and then go into a little bit about the teacher's perspective, I suppose, and why it's a good fit and why we're looking forward to seeing this locally grid syllabus work in the classroom. So first of all, with ANTAVS work, yeah, as Neil kind of touched upon, it kind of fitted perfectly with Barnet. The reason she's kind of come up with these six big questions, and I should say she's not an isolated individual, it's very much grown out and evolved from work in religious studies around the world, effectively, she came up with these to try and solve a few issues within religious studies, which are around the complexity of religious belief, essentially. So how do we compare different religions? How do we make sense of the diversity and complexity within a religion? So, you know, it's easy to talk about Christian belief or Christians, but actually within that there's great diversity of belief and opinion. And the same applies for any religion. And of course, the same will apply for religious communities within Barnet. On top of that, there is the sort of growing non-religious groups of people within the UK and Barnet is no exception there. Although perhaps Barnet has lower numbers of people saying they're non-religious than other parts of the country. But what's good about the approach is it does allow for comparison between different religious groups, but also non-religious worldviews as well. And I'll just add briefly as well, this is very much part of the direction of travel within the religious education community in schools as well. When I trained to be a teacher about 15 years ago now, I remember in my training being told, you know, in 10 years time, it might not be called RE anymore. It'll be called maybe religion and worldviews or something to this effect. So, you know, it's kind of been evolving over time and we're very much a part of that direction of travel. It's not it's not like a kind of radical idea or anything like that, but it is a forward looking idea. And I think that's only a good thing. But in terms of finally thinking about from a classroom perspective, the approach is great for all the reasons sort of touched upon the recognition of diversity and it's very inclusive in that sense. It's, you know, this sort of six questions give a really good structure to teaching and learning. That's sequenced all the way through from early years up to key stage five, which is I gather is not something that's done in any other locally agreed syllabus. So, you know, that kind of continuity and sequencing is only going to benefit students in Barnet, which is great, of course. Yeah, I think that's that's it. And just to add as well, you know, with key stage four and key stage five in particular sixth form, the approach really does lend itself very well to being adopted within that kind of context. So, you know, one thing that came out of some of our research was that sometimes key stage five in particular students might not get not might not be given their statutory re as it should be done. And I you know, I'm confident that this approach is one that head teachers and heads of re in schools and students get behind a big part of it, as I say, is its inclusiveness, but it also allows for a personal expression of personal beliefs and that sort of recognition of complexity and so on. So that's my bit. I'll leave it there. And perhaps if there's any questions, I might be able to answer some of those as well. Thank you. Thanks, Jack. And just to finish to say that what we've been doing in Barnet has got national interest and international interest. And what we would want to do if you're if you agree the syllabus today and then it goes to the Department of Education for formal agreement and then it becomes statute in in Barnet. What we hope to then do is see if we can market that across the country, because there's been an awful lot of work that we put in. And it would be good that we can actually bring some income into Barnet by and by by selling the syllabus. Thank you. I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone for their work on this as well, both in the council, but also very much residents, teachers, et cetera. I think it's a really welcome approach, echoing what the leader was saying before that you're talking about communities, which is something that we try and do a lot, recognizing the difference rather than just talking about the community. So I think that's really welcome, too. I think it dovetails really nicely with the work that we're starting to do across the council on community cohesion and the approach to that. And which I know you've been involved with and different departments. And I think that reflection of the way in which it's possible to have these conversations and develop something and learning together as well is really, really important. And lastly, just as a side point, the work that the Sacre Choir have done, sort of at various events through the past couple of years, it's been aware. It is exactly where you should start. And I think actually bizarrely, I think Richard Dawkins and somebody like John Lennox, who's a leading Christian professor of mass. I shall echo that, but with a particular twist on it, as mayor, I presided at the Sacre meeting where you started the discussions. And I'm really pleased to see how they've panned out what the outputs are and the fact that you've come out with something that is getting such full recognition. That's really heartwarming. Really commend that co-production with particularly with faith leaders. You're bringing together something that's innovative, but also really meets the needs of all of those faiths across the borough and that it's that it's Barnett tailored. But the point I would particularly make is, I think, and it gets to the point that Councillor Houston was making. I think what it is doing is feeding into the inquiry minds at a time when you're shaping them, scoped around those key questions to help develop their knowledge and their skills to engage with those. It's constructive discussion to navigate what is an increasingly complex world. We're a really diverse borough and I think equipping our young people vital to equip them with both the understanding about the breadth of faith and belief, but actually also giving them the skills to have constructive, engaged discussions. And that, as Councillor Conway says, really does support cohesion across the borough. Not being afraid to discuss because they've developed those skills and taking it right on to sixth film at the point when those young people are really engaging independent discussion is. Are we happy to move on to the recommendation? The recommendation, really, that cabinet approved the Barnet Greed Syllabus for religious education. I come from a suggestion more exciting than that. I just a couple of points. I suppose the Councillor Houston's point about the induced nature of what's happening. There's a variety of blocks coming, which are designed to incorporate that. I suppose the other comment just to add, which isn't really picked up in the report, it's just worth noting is what we're seeing an increasing number of was just about the status of the heating system in 54. So this is an area at the moment, just to remind as a temporary arrangements in place. Sorry. Thank you, Luke. I was just going to ask a quick question regarding the. It says the contractor is continuing to undertake those works and expected to be completed in December, but not not transferred over to after Christmas. Are we are we sure that that work is on track and that fairly early in the new year, they'll be able to be switched over to the to the news in terms of how we kind of keep close to people's energy. What throughout that process is very regular meetings now between our various teams to make sure that that is the case. It's any further delay at this point. And just a question on different subject, just in case any residents on the Golden Green Estate are watching tonight. I wondered if you could just say a quick word about the plans for the control parking zone in those areas and when when we might expect engagement to start. Yes, of course. So one of the planning requirements in Section 73 to the big, the big outline planning commission to bring this town talks about parking zone. It's not just called Green Estate. So the emerging messages from that analysis is underway. Actually, there's been quite a significant increase in. And that does suggest actually there's a stronger case for it to interrupt the later in terms of the actual program. What we're expecting next is outlined and. Completion of the analysis. And sorry, just at the risk of doing case work in a cabinet meeting. The informal engagement would start before the new would start at the end of this year. Yeah, thank you. So in terms of there is, of course, a pre consultation period, which has actually just been. Coming in the future. Yes, absolutely. So, yeah, thank you. So originally said that the way the phasing that the timing, the way the. Sequencing that thoughts are on breakfast town and the demolition. Thank you, Lita. The report is fairly straightforward in what it's asking us to do and what it what the outcome of the increase of fees and charges would be. Residents minded to accept the methodology and determination that we've come to. But naturally, I'm not indifferent and neither I'm certain are my cabinet colleagues, no officers as to the additional financial pressure it puts on the residents that need to make use of chargeable services. So I thought I'd comment on that point in light of one slightly unreasonable allegation that Councillor Zinkin made in his questioning relating to reasons recommendation one point two, which suggested that there was a determination of a sort that the the proposals are the ones that are going to emerge from any consultatory process we might have. Naturally, when you put reasons for recommendations together, it's a summary of one's thoughts. And we've come to a judgment based on our determination of the various factors and and assessments that we have made. It's entirely reasonable for officers to express an opinion as to which one of a multiplicity of of various options they consider most reasonable and appropriate. That's all recommendation one point two alludes to, that this is in our best judgment, a mechanism by which to meet the financial pressures we face as a local authority. The other point to note is that we are in historically unprecedented times of high inflation interest rates. And it's unfortunate, but the chargeable services that we offer need to reflect the current financial climate of the country and the pressures that local authority faces. It's not something that we do lightly, but it is something that is realistically meeting current demands and pressures. And that's all I have to say on that. Thank you. But because there are some changes, they will need to be seconded before they're on proposing and they need to be seconded and then voted on. Finally, the cabinet authorized officers to adopt the consultation, responsibility and the equality of impact assessment. And this time I have remembered that there is also an exempt report, which will be for noting, but if anybody wants to ask questions on the exempt report, please let us know before. Oh, sorry. You want to introduce Councillor Hinchliffe? Thank you, Councillor. Yeah, I think you get most of the points because I was going to just touch on the. Not question, but comment, just reinforcing and drawing to the committee's attention on the comments in one point one six, which deals specifically with the GP surgery, referring to the fact that the current GP surgery is old, not for. I think we'd all appreciate that if we wish to have the the 21st century NHS and particularly GP provision, we want to actually it needs to happen in fit for purpose and modern premises where that's possible. This is an opportunity to do that. And it it makes it clear that with these changes, they could accommodate more than 9000 patients with the amount of building that's going on in the area. They will need to do that. So I'm really pleased to see a creative in which that surgery building can be replaced. So thank you. As we agree that we also want to note the exempt report at the same time. Okay, because we've already noted that to accept reports and therefore the meeting finished. Thank you, everybody.

Transcript

speakers and myself to please turn on the microphone by pressing the speaker icon when speaking and often finished please speak directly into the microphone so that the audio can be picked up for those joining the meeting in the gallery and remotely. The first item are the minutes of the previous meeting of the 17th of September. Are they agreed as a correct record? An absence of the only member absent here is Councillor Bakes, because of care and responsibility. Do members have any declaration to make in relation to the agenda items? Okay, thank you. The Constitution states that Councillors may ask the cabinet member a question on any matter which is on the cabinet agenda. The first four questions will be opposition group members, who I can see lined up. So, if you want to come forward, we have 15 minutes for this section, as you know, and the 15 minutes will start when you ask the first question. Over to you. I thought we might start somewhere different than you probably were expecting on the agreed syllabus for religious education, which I read with a great deal of interest and there are five, six key questions which is the basis of this syllabus and they were very interesting questions and I do understand that 22% of the borough is not religious and therefore you've reflected that in the way the syllabus has been drawn up, but it just struck me as a person who is involved in religion as slightly strange that the religious syllabus for the London Borough of Barnet, which has probably got the most diverse religious set of groups in the land, probably is a more religious borough than many, that those six questions which are the core of the syllabus neither mention the word religion or God or a supreme being. I'm not saying that it's not there because when you read further into the syllabus you see that in when you look at the sub questions around the first of the items that those questions then appear, but it did strike me that for a religious syllabus, even though it's based on the works that I'm sure a very respected academic, like the syllabus and therefore whether it really is what Barnet needs, and I just leave that thought with you when you come to that later in the evening. To initiate discussions. They are the core and if you read the syllabus, which I did, that is the core of which the whole of the education of children in non-religious schools is going to be based, and it just struck me as odd and it's maybe something which you might want to reflect on, but you agree this, as the legal requirement for schools to teach. Moving on to what you probably did expect us to want to talk about. You have a line in section 1.4. You say the indexation of fees and charges to the level of inflation at 4.5%. When you analyze the 4.5%, what you discover is that you've made a difference around 1% per annum higher, and randomly you've then added 1% of that to the RPI, and 1% because you've just added it on, and therefore to me it is just completely disingenuous to say that that is inflation. It isn't. Half of it is things that you've done using a discredited measure for inflation, which is no longer a national statistic. All statisticians as being a poor and imperfect measure, and it's misleading to the residents of the borough, and it's just absolutely wrong. Well, one of the parts of what you said is also playing it wrong about adding 1%, because this is based on the bigger -- I think it's from June. It's not the present day. No, I understand that, Barry. But that was 4.5. The June CPI, it wasn't. The June CPI, as it says in the paper, was -- well, it was the RPI number, but I've looked up the June CPI number, and the June CPI number was around 2.5%. The RPI number is roughly 1% bigger than the CPI number, and you've then added another percent to that. So it is just wrong to say that it relates to adults, one of which relates to parking. Now, there's a number of aspects that I don't understand in relation to this. The first is that in paragraph 1.2, you say these proposals are the best way of doing that by meeting financial requirements and delivering outcomes and ambitions for Barnet. You haven't said these proposals are being consulted as the best way, but you've stated in 1.2 that they are the best way, which means the consultation is completely pointless, because you've already decided clearly that this is the best way, and there is no ambiguity in 1.2. Troy, there's also no ambiguity in the recommendations, which are the important things, the things we vote on, so you'll go out to consultation, and there's no presumption in the recommendations. But the reason for the recommendations in 1.2 is extremely clear. I'm very happy to be corrected if I got it wrong, but there is no indication in Appendix A as to which lines you're supposed to know what they're supposed to be consulting. In many ways, you've said on quite a few occasions you don't understand, so hopefully we'll be able to educate you on these. Thank you very much, Lita. I was wondering if Councillor Zinkin wanted an answer to questions or whether this was soliloquial. Councillor, I'll take your queries in order. In relation to the methodology we've employed and whether or not the retail price index is discredited, I suppose that's an argument for you to take up with your conservative colleagues in Harrow, because the methodology that we've adopted is precisely the one that Harrow Council has and arrived at precisely the same figure. Now, perhaps I can give you a bit of assurance that the retail price index is an unreasonable measure to use currently as opposed to CPI. So the main difference between the two is that RPI takes into account housing-related costs and pressures, mortgage costs, council tax, so things that are actually relevant to the current financial climate of the local authority and costs that residents actually are experiencing skyrocketing as a result of decades of conservative mismanagement. So we thought it was a fair reflection of the reasons why they're currently seeing increased costs. The other thing that it uses is the arithmetic mean rather than geometric mean. I won't necessarily deal with the difference between the two, but basically it's more sensitive to immediate pressures that are more current, whereas we thought that using a longer-term measure wasn't going to be reasonably reflective of the current financial climate we face. The RPI is an arithmetic index, and CPI is a geometric index. The geometric index, correct, yes. And the arithmetic index has been discredited by statisticians, and it's been removed from being a national statistic. And the fact is that we use CPI when we talked about inflation, and you moved to RPI. I suppose we can talk about macroeconomics at a different juncture. I've given you an answer as to why we've adopted the one measure rather than the other. In relation to consultation, we wouldn't consult necessarily on individual lines of increased fees in each particular area. It's the general principles that you would consult on. So I think that that's the basis upon which officers would go out and explain to residents why an increase has been adjusted at the level that it has in the methodology that we've-- Thank you. I was looking at the cost of checking the CCTV, and amazingly enough it's gone up 150 percent. So you talk about methodology, you talk about RPI. No, no, it's 150 percent for checking on the CCTV, and for downloading it's a whopping great 650 percent increase. And all in the commentary it says, well, we did a bit of benchmarking, and we just thought we'd charge more. So could somebody explain why you're charging such enormous great increases on our hard-pressed residents? Thank you. Partly it's full cost recovery, but I don't know if the officer has any comment. Yeah, sorry. Yes, so in terms of we've done the benchmarking exercise and the charges haven't been put up for a number of years. So obviously with the increase in the system we've done it against cost recovery. Most of the applications that come into the CCTV for CCTV requests of this kind are not from residents. They're from insurance companies for insurance claims. But in the end we all still pay the money. So in the end insurance companies get their money from the residents. But it's far more complicated than that. All you've done is you say it's cost recovery, but the officers who are sitting there monitoring the CCTV and do the downloads already do them for 10 pound, which is what was originally stated in the Data Protection Act. And what you've done is added on 650 percent to that. But the officers haven't done any extra work. I find it extraordinary that you're raising CCTV, but we've made huge improvements, as you know. And that is reflected in the quality of the images and the range of use of CCTV as well. So I thought I'd just add that. And the officers are very busy because they're doing a huge amount of work as well. And they're there 24 hours, which I don't think was the case under the last administration. Yeah, but that's not I think to do with this question because the CCTV has already been paid for by the residents in case you hadn't noticed. It's not paid for by the council. It comes from the residents' money. And if officers are working 24 hours a day, surveying 24 hours a day, and it's the officers who are going to do the downloading, which can't cost 75 pound, why can't they do it at 3 a.m. when there's very little going on? I don't understand why you're doing so. And you can sit there, but if you look up on the data sets, go and look on the data sets and see how many cameras we've got. And you'll find out, according to the latest May 2024 data set on cameras, we've only got 134. So perhaps you really ought to check the data that you'll keep telling everybody that we've got hundreds of cameras. Thank you. I think Claire Green might have something to add on that, but there's really no need to shout about it either. I can actually hear you. I think I can shout if I want to. It's up to me. Thank you. Well, all right, let's take the obvious thing. You've got a number of cameras places, if you like, where the camera is. But a lot of these are the catch-all cameras that can take many images, 360 degrees. So the CCTV covers a far wider area than the number of cameras. It is important, I do not feel any guilt for asking for insurance companies for more money as they're getting it on the tree. And the other thing, I suppose, is to say that you will have the ability to try the kit. They can't go past without pressing something that says press. We all do it. The other thing, you will have the opportunity in an alternate budget to put these things down. And we'd be interested to see what you come up with. Thank you. Thank you very much, leader. One final question in relation to adults, which is, I don't understand from the borough. Mr. Chairman, yeah, this is quite simple. Basically, this is a service that this council has been providing over the years to people who are self-funders at a cost to the council and not a cost to the self-under. We're bringing these prices in line with what the actual cost to the council is to arrange somebody's care. And that's all we're doing. And that's why it looks bigger than it sounds. But the fact is, it's not fair that the council taxpayers should be funding people who already fund their own care, but funding, in addition to that, the arrangements for that care package with a particular provider. So we're only asking people to pay what's officer's time, and that's what it costs. That's adults, so that will be part of the consultation. The 15 minutes are one up. I've given you a bit of allowance because you take so long to get to the questions. So we do have to move on with the agenda. The consideration of reports from the overview and scrutiny committee, or the two task and finish groups. The first one we're looking at is elective home education. And that was created by --

Thank you. I won't take up too much of your time, as hopefully you've all read the report. But, yeah, we began on this back in June last year and spent a long time looking into home elective education. The elective -- the education landscape for home elective families has changed quite drastically in recent years, both in Barnet and across the country. You'll see that throughout the report. In the five years prior to the pandemic, the population was growing EHE families by 20% each year. And then during the pandemic, it raised by 38%. It has reduced a bit, but it's still not gone down to pre-pandemic levels. And I want to start this by acknowledging the work that the team has been doing in Barnet for EHE families to really build up a positive relationship that wasn't there initially. You can see that through the work they've done on the website. On the main Barnet council website, which we made some recommendations about, and also building up those relationships. What we found throughout doing this work is a lot of families are quite skeptical of working with local government and working with councils and government in general. And the work the team is doing in Barnet is really positive to try and build up those relationships further. So the recommendations we've made are really to try and develop that a bit further and to support the work the team is doing. So the task and finish group we met with 10 different experts, including people from the Barnet and Parent Carers Forum, with university lecturers, with the chair of the Association of Elective Home Education Professionals, head teachers in Barnet, officers within the council as well. So we've spoken to a lot of experts and had a lot of conversations. And then from that, and we also did a survey to families in Barnet that are EHE, and we got 49 responses, which is quite positive actually, I think that's good engagement. And we've got our nine recommendations. I won't talk through all our recommendations because I'm sure you've all read the report. But yeah, I'm hoping cabinet will take this forward and look into some of our recommendations. We took a long time. Thanks for the report. I can see that an awful lot of work's gone into it. If I sort of take you back to when we were originally concerned about home education, obviously it increased during the pandemic. A lot of those have gone back into mainstream, which is good. And you will have discovered, same as me, is that there's an awful lot of different reasons why people choose to home educate. Some it's just a lifestyle, that's exactly what they want to do. And I know that when over at UNITAS, one of the mornings there were these groups of parents got that cohesion to mix with other children and with other families. So I think what we'll probably be able to do is actually look. I mean, I would say that we need to look at the recommendations and then to come back to see where, if any, we can go from there. But certainly very comprehensive. I can see that an awful lot of work has gone into it. And it was certainly an important thing. We originally looked at this. And when it first came up as an issue, one of my first concerns is that if any young people were actually falling through the gap that we didn't know about, especially in terms of safeguarding. So regardless of the education aspect of it, it was the safeguarding, the communication between them in all directions all the time. But thank you for the report. Yeah, I would completely agree. And safeguarding was obviously a big part of the report. I think the reason there were so many issues or concerns about safeguarding is a lot of these families didn't want to engage at all initially before the work the officers had done in the last few years. And I think that's why some of the offers we've had are there. So like the library cards, like potentially the exams, I know there's issues about costs with that. As you speak to the council, I think will help families feel more comfortable. They'll get to know the officers. And then if they are concerned about safeguarding issue, they'll already know the officers to come and speak to. And I think that's something that came up a lot of the experts that you sort of sometimes have to offer the families some benefit. Like different areas have done lots of different things like days out and trips and a lot have done the library cards. Doing that helps build those relationships. But hopefully the cabinet will consider those. I think the library cards would be really good in particular. I know our recommendation on the exams is a cost. If I was looking at it, I would want to do it so that it's not a blank check. Do a fund where parents could apply. They did need help with the cost of exams. Some of the families spoke about the difficulty accessing exams as well. Thank you for your positive comments on our report and I look forward to hearing what cabinet reports back. If not, we can go on to the recommendations. Okay, the recommendations are one cabinet is asked to note the referral from the children education overview and scrutiny subcommittee and elective home education officers to prepare a report on the task and finish group recommendations with full legal, financial and other comments so that cabinet may fully consider the recommendations. Thank you, Lucy. The next one is the youth homeless task and finish group and Councillor Grohkopf will be introducing and it's the same thing that you have three minutes and it will start when you start speaking. Thank you very much. This was the first task and finish group for youth homelessness and can I acknowledge a huge thanks, especially Scarlett Wright, one of the officers. All the partners are involved, and also all the amazing young people that we met. I hope everybody has had opportunity to read the document. It was a very interesting item to look at what might have been helpful, perhaps something for a future task and finish is actually engaging with the parent carers of those young people might have given a different perspective. There's seven recommendations. One is possibly with a financial item that would obviously need to be looked at, but we did think it would be something to consider, which would be helpful to those young people. The other recommendations are obviously could be absorbed quite easily and is not beyond the remit of those particular items. Now, what we did want our committee, although they are recommendations, we would very much welcome if the cabinet was minded to perhaps make and yes, get things a little bit better for them. The one thing I would like, if that is possible, although it is an objective procedure. Anybody else got any comments or questions? We can move to the recommendations, but I won't say that. This includes all of us, but all can return. The cabinet is asked to note the referral from the overview and scrutiny committee and the youth home. This task report and the task and finish group recommendations with all legal, financial and other comments so that cabinet may fully consider the recommendation. The next item on the agenda is item 10, which is the corporate parenting annual report. There is so much in these reports, but it is really good. We do a corporate parenting annual report every year. We have a corporate parenting panel. We are all corporate parents. Then you've got the fostering report, you've got the IRO report and you've got the BOP report, which I don't know if any of you would have been at the scrutiny when they did a short film. We know Manchester and fingers crossed they will come back with an award, but I am just so proud as to what the young people do. It is probably still going on at the youth assembly this evening. The amount of co-production we have done with young people over the past few years and how they appreciate what we do in consulting them on things that affect their lives. I would just say that if you have not had a chance to read through all of this, please do because it is all my point of view. Really good news to show how the staff and the department really care and actually, the only thing in their life is to make sure that we do the best for all the young people that we care for. Whether it is for fostering, whether it is for children in care, whether it is for their education, whether it is for the virtual school. Right across the board, everyone has one thing in mind and that is to make sure that all those young people get the absolute best what they deserve in life. Any questions, please ask Mr. Munday or ask myself. Thank you. All the reports are interesting. I did have to look up what BOP stood for. I don't know if the officers want to add anything and then we can open it up for questions. If I can just say a couple of words later. I am old enough to remember when Frank Dobson, as the relevant Secretary of State, wrote to councils to express his concern that local authorities were not undertaking their responsibilities as corporate parents seriously enough and set out a whole range of changes that needed to be undertaken. And that included ensuring that we all work together to ensure that children and young people that we were responsible for and care leavers were cared for effectively. I was just looking at the guidance that is set out and it talks about our unique responsibility as councils to care for children and that a strong ethos of corporate parenting means that a sense of vision and responsibility towards children and care leavers is a priority for everyone. But I think what we can see in the work that we do, in the reports that you've received, the mighty tone that they are, sets out a range of whole council approaches to responding to children and young people's needs. We're happy to take any questions. I appreciate you're done. The relevant director is also on the call to answer anything that you may have to ask us. Just add one thing that people might or might not know, but the whole cost of care, especially for vulnerable young people, has been one of the things that's really stretching budgets. I'm pleased that we've now managed to purchase another property which will then be able to take two vulnerable -- A brief comment to what is a really excessive report and those two comments would be it's really, really good to see within all of this the sense of children and young people's voices being heard and compliment you on the work that's gone on particularly over the last several years in that. And actually also just noting that real sense of supporting mental and physical health for young people who often have come from difficult circumstances. And right at the top of your list of pledges to young people in the corporate parenting strategy, there are two things that ring out because of some of the horror stories we've heard historically about children in care, not in Barnet, but elsewhere. One is we will support you to fulfill your dreams because we aspire for these young people as we would for our own children. And I think that's really important that whatever their starting point, we support them to be the best people they can be and that we will be there for you when you need us. And I think that is something that comes through in former generations, children in care haven't always felt that that was the case across the piece, not necessarily in Barnet, but actually how really important that is for us. So those ring out through this report, but there is huge amounts of detail and hugely heartened as a corporate parent to know the depth of work that we're putting in. And I know it is backed up by enormous amounts of work by a whole range of staff across the service. So congratulations. I'm sorry, but I mean, has there been any work to look at areas that are more successful? Are there other birds that are more successful in fostering this level of difficulty in attracting families to foster? Thanks, Councillor Clark. I might bring in Ms. Jordan in a minute, but I think just to say our fostering data is better than a lot of authorities. We've done better than a number. We have looked at best practice elsewhere. I'm interested in the fact that there are real challenges in London across the whole of London to recruit foster carers. And we were, you know, we've been the best in terms of offering homes for Ukraine in Barnet. Yeah, we can't get people to be foster carers, which I think is a really interesting challenge. And I think we need to reflect on what does that mean about us as a society? We're clearly very welcoming. We've welcomed thousands of people from the Ukraine, from Hong Kong, from Afghanistan, from Syria. We've been hugely welcoming. Yet we can't find enough foster carers for our own children here in Barnet. I wonder what we need to do to think about that as a as a place. And I suppose that's a challenge that I would throw to all of you as members as well to think about what what is it about Barnet that makes it so welcoming to everybody, apart from our own children? Just on that, I mean, one of the barriers I hear to fostering is, oh, I'd love to do that, but I don't have a spare room in my home. But the people who were sponsoring those programs would have had to have had that space. Have you gone back to those? I mean, I don't even know if you have the data available to you, but we have spoken with those families. If that's all I can move to the recommendation, which I want a cabinet note, the content of the corporate parenting annual report, and that the report be referred to council for noting to ensure understanding of their statutory role as corporate parents and to be aware of progress and challenges for services to children in care and care experience young adults. We have those recommendations and move on to item 11, which is the agreed syllabus for religious education. I'll introduce this item and Neil and there's some colleagues on on the call who Neil will introduce who've been involved in this. I think it would be really helpful to just speak firstly to the question from the opposition members. The reason that we have used the approach that we've used is because of our absolute focus on religious education and the importance of religious education and the religious diversity of Barnet. We I think the census and shows that Barnet is one of the most religious boroughs in the country. And the syllabus that's been developed by faith leaders across Barnet is a testament to the importance of that. And so I think it's it's not fair to say that those questions are not questions that everybody should be answering and everybody should be asking. You do it through the just framing that you grow up with, and that's what the approach is about. But I'll hand over to Neil and colleagues on the call who will be involved in developing the syllabus to to really reinforce the really important work that we've been doing in this space. Just to comment on that, I think the question counts as thinking all the comments, it's education, but sorry. To back up what Chris said, I think it's important to remember that in every local authority has to have a sacre by law legally being required. Every local authority has to have a standing advisory council on religious education. So every council in the country has got one. A lot of those sacres across the country are dormant or nonexistent. You have a really thriving sacre in Barnet and the sacre represents and reflects the religious makeup of the borough. So I'm just going to read a list of the different faith groups that make up that sacre. We have Baha'i, Buddhist, free churches, Greek Orthodox, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Sikh, Salvation Army, Methodist, Muslim, Humanist, Church of England and Catholic. All of those religions are represented on sacre. By the way, we do have a vacancy for for a Sikh and Salvation Army at the moment. So if you do know anyone who would like to be on our sacre who's from one of those areas, please, please get in touch. So all of those people come together three times a year in a sacre meeting and perform the statutory duties that every sacre has to perform. And the most important statutory duty is to create an RE agreed syllabus. So a syllabus that all community schools in Barnet are going to follow and a syllabus that academies may decide to follow. And a syllabus that some faith schools may decide to dip into and take some elements from it as well. So when when sacre decide, I should also mention that sacre has seven councilors on it as well, and those councilors are Labour, Conservative and Independent as well. So the whole makeup of the political side of the council is also represented on sacre too. So sacre decided back in twenty twenty one that they would ask schools what they were looking for from a new syllabus, because the syllabus that we had in place was originally originally designed in written in twenty twelve with a minor revision in twenty nineteen. So it was it was it was due a refresh and it was a due a complete rewrite. And so we first of all went out to schools and said, we're looking for from your syllabus and from that survey, then sacre then decided to meet some other sacres who have produced syllabuses, syllabi, syllabi, syllabuses, syllabi, who produced. If only there was a head teacher in the room, a syllabi to to see whether it was appropriate for for Barnet. We met with a number and we didn't. The sacre all agreed that it wasn't appropriate and we didn't just want to take one of someone else's shelf. We wanted something that was right for the community of Barnet. And as as Chris said, the recent the last census was showing the diverse makeup of the Barnet community, but also the increasing number of those in Barnet who have no religion. Twenty percent identified at the census that they had no religion. So we needed to have an Ari syllabus that was appropriate for all. So when we decided to write our own, a writing group was formed, and that writing group involved two primary teachers, two secondary teachers. And you're going to hear from one of those secondary teachers in a minute. The primaries were head were re leaders in primary schools. And we had head of Ari in Ashmore secondary and Queen Elizabeth Boys School secondary. We had Ari advisors, we had writers, we had members of the local authority on it. We had other members of Sacre and we had academics who all sat in a darkened room for a number of months. And then following the when we made the decision to use the work of Antaves, Professor Antaves from America, decided to then use that and then create a syllabus that was right for us. So I'm just going to hand over to Jack Robertson, who's on the call here. He's the head of religious education in Queen Elizabeth Boys School. And he was one of the writing group. And I thought it'd be useful for him to talk about the process of coming up with this syllabus. Over to you, Jack. Thank you. Thank you, Neil. Hopefully you can all hear me OK. Do just let me know if not. I do have a headset and a microphone, which might help if needs be. Yeah, my name's Jack Robertson, head of Ari at Queen Elizabeth School, and I've been on the Sacre for a number of years. So I was just going to spend three or four minutes just going over a little bit of the process in a touch more detail. So, well, Neil's already covered quite a bit of the process anyway and the collaborative effort and the role that the Sacre played at various stages of it. I'll just add very briefly that, you know, that was additional funding as well from St. Gabriel's Trust, which is very much the kind of authority and key funder of different religious education projects. And they were huge fans of the project itself and the ideas behind it. And the council as well have expressed similar say, you know, it's quite a lot of excitement about the work that's been done, which is obviously obviously great and great for Barnet as well. So in terms of the kind of academic side of it, so I'll touch upon that slightly and why we decided to go down the ANTAVS route and then go into a little bit about the teacher's perspective, I suppose, and why it's a good fit and why we're looking forward to seeing this locally grid syllabus work in the classroom. So first of all, with ANTAVS work, yeah, as Neil kind of touched upon, it kind of fitted perfectly with Barnet. The reason she's kind of come up with these six big questions, and I should say she's not an isolated individual, it's very much grown out and evolved from work in religious studies around the world, effectively, she came up with these to try and solve a few issues within religious studies, which are around the complexity of religious belief, essentially. So how do we compare different religions? How do we make sense of the diversity and complexity within a religion? So, you know, it's easy to talk about Christian belief or Christians, but actually within that there's great diversity of belief and opinion. And the same applies for any religion. And of course, the same will apply for religious communities within Barnet. On top of that, there is the sort of growing non-religious groups of people within the UK and Barnet is no exception there. Although perhaps Barnet has lower numbers of people saying they're non-religious than other parts of the country. But what's good about the approach is it does allow for comparison between different religious groups, but also non-religious worldviews as well. And I'll just add briefly as well, this is very much part of the direction of travel within the religious education community in schools as well. When I trained to be a teacher about 15 years ago now, I remember in my training being told, you know, in 10 years time, it might not be called RE anymore. It'll be called maybe religion and worldviews or something to this effect. So, you know, it's kind of been evolving over time and we're very much a part of that direction of travel. It's not it's not like a kind of radical idea or anything like that, but it is a forward looking idea. And I think that's only a good thing. But in terms of finally thinking about from a classroom perspective, the approach is great for all the reasons sort of touched upon the recognition of diversity and it's very inclusive in that sense. It's, you know, this sort of six questions give a really good structure to teaching and learning. That's sequenced all the way through from early years up to key stage five, which is I gather is not something that's done in any other locally agreed syllabus. So, you know, that kind of continuity and sequencing is only going to benefit students in Barnet, which is great, of course. Yeah, I think that's that's it. And just to add as well, you know, with key stage four and key stage five in particular sixth form, the approach really does lend itself very well to being adopted within that kind of context. So, you know, one thing that came out of some of our research was that sometimes key stage five in particular students might not get not might not be given their statutory re as it should be done. And I you know, I'm confident that this approach is one that head teachers and heads of re in schools and students get behind a big part of it, as I say, is its inclusiveness, but it also allows for a personal expression of personal beliefs and that sort of recognition of complexity and so on. So that's my bit. I'll leave it there. And perhaps if there's any questions, I might be able to answer some of those as well. Thank you. Thanks, Jack. And just to finish to say that what we've been doing in Barnet has got national interest and international interest. And what we would want to do if you're if you agree the syllabus today and then it goes to the Department of Education for formal agreement and then it becomes statute in in Barnet. What we hope to then do is see if we can market that across the country, because there's been an awful lot of work that we put in. And it would be good that we can actually bring some income into Barnet by and by by selling the syllabus. Thank you. I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone for their work on this as well, both in the council, but also very much residents, teachers, et cetera. I think it's a really welcome approach, echoing what the leader was saying before that you're talking about communities, which is something that we try and do a lot, recognizing the difference rather than just talking about the community. So I think that's really welcome, too. I think it dovetails really nicely with the work that we're starting to do across the council on community cohesion and the approach to that. And which I know you've been involved with and different departments. And I think that reflection of the way in which it's possible to have these conversations and develop something and learning together as well is really, really important. And lastly, just as a side point, the work that the Sacre Choir have done, sort of at various events through the past couple of years, it's been aware. It is exactly where you should start. And I think actually bizarrely, I think Richard Dawkins and somebody like John Lennox, who's a leading Christian professor of mass. I shall echo that, but with a particular twist on it, as mayor, I presided at the Sacre meeting where you started the discussions. And I'm really pleased to see how they've panned out what the outputs are and the fact that you've come out with something that is getting such full recognition. That's really heartwarming. Really commend that co-production with particularly with faith leaders. You're bringing together something that's innovative, but also really meets the needs of all of those faiths across the borough and that it's that it's Barnett tailored. But the point I would particularly make is, I think, and it gets to the point that Councillor Houston was making. I think what it is doing is feeding into the inquiry minds at a time when you're shaping them, scoped around those key questions to help develop their knowledge and their skills to engage with those. It's constructive discussion to navigate what is an increasingly complex world. We're a really diverse borough and I think equipping our young people vital to equip them with both the understanding about the breadth of faith and belief, but actually also giving them the skills to have constructive, engaged discussions. And that, as Councillor Conway says, really does support cohesion across the borough. Not being afraid to discuss because they've developed those skills and taking it right on to sixth film at the point when those young people are really engaging independent discussion is. Are we happy to move on to the recommendation? The recommendation, really, that cabinet approved the Barnet Greed Syllabus for religious education. I come from a suggestion more exciting than that. I just a couple of points. I suppose the Councillor Houston's point about the induced nature of what's happening. There's a variety of blocks coming, which are designed to incorporate that. I suppose the other comment just to add, which isn't really picked up in the report, it's just worth noting is what we're seeing an increasing number of was just about the status of the heating system in 54. So this is an area at the moment, just to remind as a temporary arrangements in place. Sorry. Thank you, Luke. I was just going to ask a quick question regarding the. It says the contractor is continuing to undertake those works and expected to be completed in December, but not not transferred over to after Christmas. Are we are we sure that that work is on track and that fairly early in the new year, they'll be able to be switched over to the to the news in terms of how we kind of keep close to people's energy. What throughout that process is very regular meetings now between our various teams to make sure that that is the case. It's any further delay at this point. And just a question on different subject, just in case any residents on the Golden Green Estate are watching tonight. I wondered if you could just say a quick word about the plans for the control parking zone in those areas and when when we might expect engagement to start. Yes, of course. So one of the planning requirements in Section 73 to the big, the big outline planning commission to bring this town talks about parking zone. It's not just called Green Estate. So the emerging messages from that analysis is underway. Actually, there's been quite a significant increase in. And that does suggest actually there's a stronger case for it to interrupt the later in terms of the actual program. What we're expecting next is outlined and. Completion of the analysis. And sorry, just at the risk of doing case work in a cabinet meeting. The informal engagement would start before the new would start at the end of this year. Yeah, thank you. So in terms of there is, of course, a pre consultation period, which has actually just been. Coming in the future. Yes, absolutely. So, yeah, thank you. So originally said that the way the phasing that the timing, the way the. Sequencing that thoughts are on breakfast town and the demolition. Thank you, Lita. The report is fairly straightforward in what it's asking us to do and what it what the outcome of the increase of fees and charges would be. Residents minded to accept the methodology and determination that we've come to. But naturally, I'm not indifferent and neither I'm certain are my cabinet colleagues, no officers as to the additional financial pressure it puts on the residents that need to make use of chargeable services. So I thought I'd comment on that point in light of one slightly unreasonable allegation that Councillor Zinkin made in his questioning relating to reasons recommendation one point two, which suggested that there was a determination of a sort that the the proposals are the ones that are going to emerge from any consultatory process we might have. Naturally, when you put reasons for recommendations together, it's a summary of one's thoughts. And we've come to a judgment based on our determination of the various factors and and assessments that we have made. It's entirely reasonable for officers to express an opinion as to which one of a multiplicity of of various options they consider most reasonable and appropriate. That's all recommendation one point two alludes to, that this is in our best judgment, a mechanism by which to meet the financial pressures we face as a local authority. The other point to note is that we are in historically unprecedented times of high inflation interest rates. And it's unfortunate, but the chargeable services that we offer need to reflect the current financial climate of the country and the pressures that local authority faces. It's not something that we do lightly, but it is something that is realistically meeting current demands and pressures. And that's all I have to say on that. Thank you. But because there are some changes, they will need to be seconded before they're on proposing and they need to be seconded and then voted on. Finally, the cabinet authorized officers to adopt the consultation, responsibility and the equality of impact assessment. And this time I have remembered that there is also an exempt report, which will be for noting, but if anybody wants to ask questions on the exempt report, please let us know before. Oh, sorry. You want to introduce Councillor Hinchliffe? Thank you, Councillor. Yeah, I think you get most of the points because I was going to just touch on the. Not question, but comment, just reinforcing and drawing to the committee's attention on the comments in one point one six, which deals specifically with the GP surgery, referring to the fact that the current GP surgery is old, not for. I think we'd all appreciate that if we wish to have the the 21st century NHS and particularly GP provision, we want to actually it needs to happen in fit for purpose and modern premises where that's possible. This is an opportunity to do that. And it it makes it clear that with these changes, they could accommodate more than 9000 patients with the amount of building that's going on in the area. They will need to do that. So I'm really pleased to see a creative in which that surgery building can be replaced. So thank you. As we agree that we also want to note the exempt report at the same time. Okay, because we've already noted that to accept reports and therefore the meeting finished. Thank you, everybody.

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