Transcript

Welcome to the opportunity panel to all our guests in our virtual meeting room and to everyone watching online. Just a few quick housekeeping points to go through, they should be familiar to most people here. This meeting is being recorded and live streamed now. Please, can you all keep your microphones on mute throughout the meeting as this will prevent audio feedback. If you're still getting feedback, please turn off nearby devices. If you'd like to speak, raise your actual virtual hand to get my attention and state your name and affiliation before you make a comment. For any virtual attendees, just a reminder that the chat function must not be used to have conversations with other participants or to provide personal information. All the chat's recorded as it's a formal meeting. Please only use the function to alert me if you wish to speak, raise points of order or report tech issues. This is a formal meeting of Hackney Council, so please note the press may be in attendance. The rights of the press and public to record and film the meeting will apply. Going on to item one, just before we start the formal business of the meeting, I'd like to acknowledge the significance of today's anniversary, the ongoing catastrophe in the Middle East. Following the mayor and chief executive statements made earlier, published earlier today, acknowledging the ongoing grief and trauma from these events, the impact on our communities, I'd like to ask everyone to join me in a minute's silence in honour of all those who've lost their lives. Thank you. So, going on to the substantive agenda, item one is apologies for absence. I potentially have apologies for absence from Bruce Duvall, the Assistant Director of Business Intelligence Selections and Mender Services. And Jackie Moyle and Simon Gray and possibly Bruce may be attending virtually. Are there any other apologies for absence or lateness? Not seeing anybody? Thank you. So, item two, urgent items order of business. So, there's been a change to the published agenda, as there's an urgent update in relation to the Council's budget. So we're now going to be taking item four first, sorry, what was item six now is item four, which is a quarterly finance update. So then we will be going on to the chief executive's question time, then Hackney Council complaints and inquiries annual report. That's going to be the order of business this evening. Item three, declarations of interest. Are there any declarations of interest from members? No, I'm not seeing anything. So, item four is a quarterly financial report. So, the quarterly financial finance update on the Council's budget is a fixed item on the agenda of scrutiny panel to retain oversight and scrutinise the Council's overall budget. The reports of the agenda packs were provided for members to review in advance. The reason we've changed this item is because the Council's forecast overspend has significantly increased from the position in May this year of $21,433 million after mitigations of $36,705 million. This will have an impact on our medium-term financial planning position. Indications from the government are that the unfavourable economic conditions inherited would appear to me as a low prospect of increased government funding. Many of these pressures relate to some of our most vulnerable residents. Adult social care, children's services and homelessness prevention, all of which are essential statutory services. The cost pressures are not unique to Hackney, but the Council must take measures to mitigate them. So, it's imperative we act quickly to mitigate the Council's worsening financial position. It will be harder to maintain the financial stability if the Council continues to overspend and draw down on reserves the rate it's currently doing. To support this discussion, budget reports are provided. In the main agenda, we have the overall financial position report, pages 145 to 178, the capital programme to page 347. Then we've got the supplementary agenda as a finance presentation on pages 9 to 38. So, I'd like to welcome to the meeting for this discussion, Councillor Rob Chapman, the cabinet member for finance, insourcing and customer service, and Jackie Moylan, the interim group director of finance and corporate resources, and Deirdre Worrall, the interim director of financial management. I'd also like to welcome the Mayor who is very welcome to contribute if she wishes to. So, Councillor Chapman, do you want to introduce the item? Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Just a little political context. It's been widely reported that local authorities face severe financial challenges. The finance update that we'll present tonight and was actually presented to the cabinet last Monday at the OFP shows the full extent of the crisis and its impact on acting. We are a secure, well managed council as equipped to deal with the situation as we can be. But despite already making 22 million pounds worth of savings this year, we are now expected to spend 36 million more than planned, an unprecedented overspend fuelled by ever expanding costs of caring for vulnerable adults and children. And in particular, nearly 20 million extra spending on providing accommodation for more than 3,000 homeless families. The new transformation strategy that we agree this size sets out how we can deliver on our mission to work together for a better happening in spite of the financial crisis. But we also join in with colleagues across local government in making the case for change. We need longer term more sustainable funding as well as targeted interventions in areas like social care and homelessness, which are decimating the council budgets. And not just our own. In the meantime, with our current outgoing set to exhaust our reserves within three years, we simply can't continue spending more than we have. We go through the current year's figures tonight. And in November, we intend to publish an updated medium term financial plan, setting out how we will manage our finances over the next three years to deliver the services our residents rely on, while maintaining a balanced budget. With it will come some very tough decisions. Our residents will need to be prepared to see reduced spending in some areas so that we can protect essential services in others, especially those for the most vulnerable in our community. Thank you, chair. I think Jackie will go through the presentation of the details of the current situation. Thank you, Councillor Chapman. I'd like now to invite Jackie Moylan to unmute her microphone and commence the presentation. You have ten minutes, Jackie. Thank you. Thank you, chair. I'm just going to share my screen. Can you see the screen? We can't, I'm afraid. Jackie, do you want me to share? I think it's -- that's it, I think. Is that -- Yeah, it's working now, thank you. Thank you. Okay. So good evening, everyone. So first of all, I'm going to run through the forecast for this financial year for both the general fund and the housing revenue account. Then I wanted to give scrutiny panel members the opportunity to see what the position is looking like across London, because obviously we're not on our own, as Councillor Chapman said in this. We're seeing significant pressures across London. Then a little bit more of a deep dive into the temporary accommodation issue, which is an increasing pressure in happening. It's much more significant than it has been in the past. So I'm going to go into a little bit more detail on that area in particular. And then finally, just a recap of the budget development timeline for next year. So the first for the current financial year, as Councillor Chapman mentioned, that we are looking at an overspend of over 36 million. And that's mainly driven by areas such as particularly around children's social care, adult social care, but also now in homelessness, which is coming through in the climate, homes and economy forecast at 22 million overspend. So really significant pressures. And as Councillor Chapman said, really unprecedented for the borough. So moving on, so the figure that was presented in the July OFP was a 48 million pound overspend, but we've got a series of mitigations, which is bringing that down to 36.7 million figure. And these tend to be one off items that we hold in our central budgets, which are able to utilise to bring that figure down and to protect our reserves as far as we can. It's worth mentioning that a significant amount of growth was allocated to the budgets in 24/25. 17.6 million, that excludes the power world. And we also saw 8 million increase in social care grants, but cost pressures are such that they're fast outstripping this additional money that went into the budget. And similarly, as I mentioned earlier on, we're seeing much more increase in pressure in homelessness prevention, and I'll talk a little bit more about that later. So there are a number of spend reduction initiatives in place. So that includes reviewing all agency assignments, a review of non-essential spends and recruitment controls of permanent and agency. So we have seen some impact of this. I think it was just under a million pound between May and July, but obviously the way the pressures are growing in the services is far outstripping those measures. It's something we really do need to double down on. We've also established a budget recovery board, which the chief executive is chairing, and we've got the first one of those tomorrow, and that really is to look at the current year OVIS spends to see what additional mitigation measures we might be able to put in place, but also to cross-fertilize ideas of how to meet the pressure across CLT. So as I mentioned, the primary diversities of the OVIS spend are children, adults, climate, homes and economies, particularly homeless prevention, but we're also seeing a shortfall of parking income, but also a pressure in strategic property services and ICT services. Consciousness of time. I'm not going to go through these management actions in detail because you had these in the pack, but there's a lot of action being taken with indirectors to try to contain some of these pressures, but what we're finding is the pressures are growing faster than we mitigate against at the moment. We've obviously got a real significant issue now in Hackney. What I thought it would be worth doing was we're setting out a reserve position because obviously we've only got a limited amount of reserves. This really just breaks down where we are. So our overall general fund reserves as at the 31st of March was $154 million. So that's the figure you can trace back to our accounts. That's the reserve we've got on our balance sheet. We hold a general fund balance reserve of $18 million and that's that reserve we don't tend to tuck, except that it's a position of last resort in relation to our reserves. Also, we take off with those reserve school balances because they're ring fenced to schools under local management schools and that brings us down to a reserve position of $126.4. Then there's a number of items which are ring fenced, which produces our reserves even further to the $72.8 million. It's worth noting that the capital commitments reserve that we've got in there, that is not ring fenced to capital. If we needed to, we could use that for revenue purposes. That gives us a little bit of an extra buffer against our position. We're also seeing pressures in the HRA. The forecast in July was pressures of $9.3 million, which is being mitigated by a number of different actions, which includes reducing our revenue contributes to capital and not making the budget contribution to reserves. We wanted to give us a little bit more resilience in the HRA and also a drawdown from our resilience reserves. We really need to keep an eye on the HRA because that is also under significant pressure. As I mentioned, I thought it was worth showing what the London picture looks like. We do a London-wide survey at the end of every quarter. This is a first-quarter survey. What's that showing is for the 28 boroughs which returned the survey, the forecast pressure was 526 million, so really significant. For the first time, temporary accommodation is the number one pressure across London. It's outstripped adults' social care. It's outstripped children's social care. It's the number one pressure across London. If you're grossed up for those boroughs that have not returned the survey, we're looking at a forecast overspend of 600 million across London, similar pressures on the HRA. This next slide shows where we are. This was at the end of the first quarter, which is why our forecast overspend looks lower than it is now. Of course, we don't know whether our other boroughs' forecast would have increased over the last month as well. We would be higher up the chart, but then the other boroughs' figures might change as well, because that's at the end of June. We're certainly above the average there. When we compare, what this chart does is try to put those overspending in the context of the net revenue budget. As you can see, Hackney's in the middle there, but well above the average in terms of the portion of our net budget which we're overspending by. What this next slide shows is what is driving those overspends across London. As I mentioned previously, the biggest area of overspend there is in TA. That's that green chunk in the first quarter. We're also seeing considerable pressures on adult social care and children's social care across London too. It's also worth noting that if you compare the first quarter's forecast last year to this year, it's gone up significantly year on year. During the period of last year's forecast as well, that tended to grow throughout the parent's year as well, so significant pressures across London. In terms of TA, just reminding that this was a position as at the end of May which we're showing here. Hackney's TA overspend wasn't as big as I was at that stage, but as you've seen, we've had a significant increase in the forecast as at the end of July. It would be much more towards the left-hand area of that chart, but recognising that other boroughs' forecasts may well have also increased over that period of time. I've just done a few slides just focused on the TA pressures really, because obviously it's significant for Hackney and more so than it has been in the past. It's mainly driven by an increase in numbers. There's been a 16% increase since August 2023. We're also relying more on nightly paid temporary accommodation, which is a more expensive type of accommodation, but also coupled with that, the actual rate of that temporary accommodation is much more expensive than it has been previously. We're seeing a double whammy really, an increase in numbers and an increase in the unit costs as we rely more and more on nightly paid accommodation. We're also noting a shortage of rental accommodation across London, which has both given us a supply-side issue, but it's also meaning that it's very difficult for some of our residents who are at risk of homelessness finding affordable accommodation outside of the private sector. I think it's worth pointing out that obviously it was quite a significant jump in the forecast between May and July. Just to give a little bit more background on that, when we was at the tail end of last financial year, we wasn't really seeing a significant overspending in temporary accommodation. We had a 300k overspend as at the January RFP for 23/24. We did see some significant increase towards the end of the financial year. We did set aside some growth, because we were aware of that risk, plus we had an additional 1.7 million homelessness prevention grant, so taking the total additional resource to quite a significant level. However, the increase in placement costs and unit costs has greatly exceeded the additional amounts that have gone in. What this chart shows you is that green line is the nightly paid accommodation. As you can see, towards the end of the last calendar year and over the first few months of 2024, there's been a significant increase in the numbers that we are housing in nightly paid accommodation, so that's what we have a big impact on, on our numbers. What this slide shows is that the unit cost position, which I mentioned previously, so a significant increase in terms of what we're paying per night for this accommodation. There's a whole suite of management action which are ongoing in relation to TA. If the scrutiny panel members may remember, at the Cabinet in the summer, we approve the purchase of two hostels and that will both reduce our unit costs, but also help us with our supply. With one of those hostels, we expect to complete over the next few weeks and the other one over the next six weeks or so, so that will have an impact on our forecast. Cabinet also approved the Chalk Hill lease deal to provide 300 new properties to start, and these properties will start to be delivered in this calendar year, probably in November actually, so that again both increases our supply but also reduces our unit costs. We're also looking at options around increasing the supply through the use of government grant funding, so what is called Local Authority Housing Fund, which gives us grants who subsidise the cost of buying accommodation in the London Borough of Hackney, and we're working on that at the moment. It's also worth highlighting that temporary accommodation is the preferred option for two of the four vacant school sites that the Cabinet was updated on last week. That will take time to implement because we have to get the necessary permissions in place, etc. It will take a number of years to develop, but those sites are ring-fenced at this time for temporary accommodation. The other thing that we're doing, we've commissioned Campbell to CAL to focus on reviewing our homelessness prevention services. They'll be looking at benchmarking with statistical neighbours to compare homelessness and service data. We're looking at demand modelling and to develop a model to help us forecast future demand for temporary accommodation, but also undertaking a service review, which is evaluating the effectiveness of services in preventing homelessness, so preventing those households from coming into the systems in the first place. We also continue to lobby government in partnership with the London Council over certain rule changes which would impact our bottom line in terms of TA. There's a real pressure which is driven by the fact that we can only claim housing benefits subsidy on temporary accommodation at the local housing allowance rate for 2011, even though we would pay benefits at 2024 rates. That gives us a gap in our funding and it gives us significant pressure in terms of spend on homelessness prevention. Moving on swiftly then to budget development 25/26 and the timeline. As the committee panel members will recall, we started this process with a budget gap of 52 million over the three-year period. We're currently reviewing that because of the significant increase in pressures in the year on some of our key services. As Councillor Chapman mentioned earlier, we will be updating our medium-term financial plan and taking that to including the OFP for cabinet in November. It's just worth underlying that more than ever we're facing acute financial challenges. As mentioned, those significant pressures in both children's, adults and TA means we're having to look at our growth again, what growth we're allocating our MTFP. Inevitably, that budget gap will increase. Similarly, pressures in HRA, we're seeing in-year pressures which will also increase the budget gap going forward. We also expect at the end of this month, the October budget on the 30th of October and that may have an impact on local government finances. We're not expecting huge announcements at that budget but we will be taking into account anything that comes through on that in our update on the MTFP. In terms of budget development timeline, we've got the private scrutiny sessions in the diary over the next few weeks. We're looking at fees and charges, can finish a group and then we're looking for cabinet approval of phase 1 savings which were considered in July scrutiny sessions at the end of October and then we'll be moving on to phase 2 savings which obviously will be stuff discussed at scrutiny beforehand. This is just the remaining budget timetable through to February which is a Council date for when we actually set the budget for the following year and agree Council tax levels. So happy to answer any questions, Chair. Thank you very much Jackie for that comprehensive introduction. So we are going to have a number of questions. I think members are going to be obviously focusing on the really significant areas of overspend. So this is one of the most difficult situations that I've certainly seen since I've been on the Council in 2010. So I know we are all extremely concerned to see these escalating costs and I think it's really also really important that we don't forget while we're doing our budget scrutiny that this overspend relates to the Council's statutory duties towards our most vulnerable residents, often people in really difficult times in their lives going through really difficult crises. So every single individual that we've got responsibilities for, we really need to remember what they're going through as well. So I'm going to start off as Chair with a couple of questions and then I'll bring in members. We're obviously going to be trying to be quite focused and succinct in our questions. So my first question is really what will happen to these finances if this demand, particularly across these three services, continues to increase at this rate? I notice it says on page 147, the main financial report, that the Hackney's reserves will potentially be finished within three years. So if you could just please address that and sort of the implications for ourselves as a Council. And if you could give us a little bit more detail really in relation to the application specified reserves and grants, and how this will impact the specified reserves and the overall reserves. I'll probably just ask you to, because I think these are quite significant questions, then I'll bring in members in twos or threes. Thanks, Jacqui. Thank you, Chair. So in relation to the first question around what would happen to the Council's finances, so what would happen is that we would, if we were in a position where it looked like we wouldn't be able to agree the budget for the following year, so I mentioned in the report and Councillor Chaplin mentioned in the beginning as well, at a current rate we would go through our reserves within three years. What would happen was we would have to approach the Government for exceptional financial support. But that doesn't come in the form of additional grants, it doesn't come in the form of additional revenue budget, it comes in the form of what is called a capitalisation directive, so what that means is we would be lent money, we would be able to take out more borrowing to pay for our revenue costs. But that obviously does increase our debt, which also increases the revenue impact of that debt on our general fund. So it's not a sustainable position. It is a position some authorities are already in. There's a number of authorities that have already got capitalisation directions to balance their budget for this year, like 24/25, but that would be the route we would need to take. So you wouldn't automatically issue a section 114 notice, you'd go for government to government support before we did that, and that would be in the form of a capitalisation directive. In terms of the specific, the question around specific reserves, could you repeat that question, sorry, Chair? Apologies, I just wondered whether you could just provide us with a little bit more detail. You did provide us with some of it in your presentation, in relation to the different categories of reserves, just so that ourselves, the public, can have an understanding of how your, yeah, thank you. I'll just scroll back to the slides. So 154 million is basically the reserves which are on our balance sheet, the usual reserves which are on our balance sheet, but what we do is, I've taken off the general fund balance, because that's sort of that last result. We would need to use that if we were in a position where we didn't have any cash left, but we really wouldn't want to be in that position, because that is our sort of last line of defence reserves. I've taken off the schools' balances, because that is usable only by the schools. It's their balances at year end, so where schools have surpluses, they're able to retain those to use in future years. We have, of course, got a lot more schools with deficits now, with the pressures that are on those schools through falling rolls and other inflationary issues as well. So that takes us down to the 126 million there, which is really our reserves. I've included in there the 6.4 million, because that is very specific reserves and grant funding which we're utilising this year. So that's not a risk reserve or a commissioning reserve, that is very specific grants. So, for example, we get money for supporting families, we get money for very specific workforce grants in adult social care, etc. And they're very specific, and we're using 6.4 million is what we're using in this year. We also have a number of reserves which are sort of ring-fenced for very specific purposes, like we have an elections reserve, because as you may recall, we do have to pay for some of our own elections. We don't if it's general elections, but in certain by-election and council elections we have to pay. We have an insurance fund as well, which we set aside to mitigate against future risks, and the PFI reserve, and that's mainly to do with the fact that we don't get enough grants to cover the PFI. So they're sort of very free, very specific reserves. Then we have some reserves, which we can only use with the agreement of a third party. So the main one there is what's called section 256 agreements, and now with agreements with our health colleagues, and we can only draw down against those reserves with their agreements. So they're not really in our control, those reserves. We need to agree with the health sector around how we might utilise those reserves. And then the last line on that table is capital commitment reserves. So we have some reserves set aside for capital purposes, like for replacing our fleet, for further repairs, etc., to the town hall. But what I mentioned earlier is although they're capital reserves, we can push, come to shove, use them for revenue purposes. So that's what takes us down to that 72.8 million figure, which is on that slide. Hopefully that's helpful. Thank you very much, Jackie. That was really helpful. So I think I think Councillor Binney-Lubbock and then Councillor Potter, and then I'll do a second round. So I think Councillor Hayhurst and Councillor Lynch on line, yeah. Can I just say that my question was in relation to reserves? So I just wanted to clarify, because as a title, you put other earmarked reserves, 72.8. I'm presuming you mean non-earmarked. That didn't quite make sense to me. So we have 72.8 that aren't earmarked, basically. Is that correct, Jackie? I suppose it's what they are. They're general reserves which are not part of our general fund balances. So they might be earmarked against specific risks, but we could utilise them in terms of our revenue budgets. Probably not the best term, actually. I have to think of another term for that. But yeah, they're usable. They're usable reserves to manage our financial position. Yeah, so I was going to ask about the temporary accommodation pressures, and that's increasing and being a pan-London issue. And what's the council doing, working with London councils to find solutions? But from your presentation, it seems like some of this, I want to know how much of this is increasing demand and how much of it is basically price gouging by those providers who are providing nightly accommodation, because it seems like that has doubled. And is there anything that we can do to address price gouging, or are there other things that we can do to address people going homeless, for example, pushing for the end of section 21, no-fault evictions and rent caps, et cetera? Thank you. Maybe just one more question, actually, to keep things moving. Councillor Hayhans, did you have a question? Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Jackie. So at the moment, if we did nothing on the current projection, there would be a 36 million over-term variance. Would that mean, in poor terms, that the reserves at the end of the year would go down 36 million from 154? Or are there other inflows into the reserves, which means it wouldn't quite go down that much? So e.g., the fact that we set the estimated council tax collection rate slightly lower than we normally get, is what I was previously told by Ian, and then that sometimes brings extra money into the reserves, for example. So in crude numbers, if we don't do anything, are we looking at a 36 million reduction in the reserves, or is it not quite that bad? And I think the more general point is that, just leaving aside, I'm still struggling to understand how, in the difference between two different OFP reports, it's gone from what are virtually nothing on temporary accommodations to 19 million, but just leaving that aside, any other organisation in this situation not being able to meet its needs within three years, there would be immediately stop on all spending. There wouldn't be monthly meetings with the chief executive, there would be daily ones. I still don't fully get how we are just, it seems, I'm uncomfortable with the idea about sort of saying, oh look, in three years we'll do it. There needs to be an emergency break. And also, if it's gone up from 21 in last quarter overspent of 30 on this year, what's next quarter going to be? I mean, when are we going to hit stabilisation within this? And what emergency actions need to be taken this week, next month, to make sure that stabilisation is hit? Thank you. Jacqui, do you want to take those two, because two very substantial questions there. Yes, so in answer to Councillor Billy Lablitt's question, it is around 16% is being driven by the increase of around 16% of actually people presenting as homeless and being housed in temporary accommodations. That's a significant driver. In terms of the, and the unit costs, as you saw on the following slide, goes up, yes, so that's very significant. What we're doing about it, what we're trying to do about it is to take more control of our supply of temporary accommodation. So, all of those measures which are set out on this slide are seeking to take control of some of our supply of temporary accommodation. And that helps us, keeps us in control of those unit costs as well. And some of these actions can have seismic impacts. So, if you think about social care and the increasing pressure in that area, it will take a lot to turn around that juggernaut of social care and the increase in social care. What you can do in temporary accommodation is you can have some quite chunky impact through taking measures such as buying hostels, such as a chalk hill lease deal, such as buying more properties. So, there is stuff you can do which can have a seismic impact. To Councillor Hayhurst's point, yes, in crude terms, it would reduce the reserves by 36 million. We do sometimes have some betterments at year ends. Some of our corporate provisions which we set aside don't materialise, so that can have an impact at year end. And we found that out last year, actually, we saw that at the end of the year. We didn't draw down quite as much in reserves as we expected to do. What was the other question? So, in terms of the big increase, so the increase at the end of May was a 7.8 million overspend. What we found was that the increase we'd seen from the beginning of the financial year and the beginning of the calendar year was becoming sustained. So, what we've done in the forecast at the end of July is we're forecasting for an increase in demand throughout the financial year for TA, because that's what we've seen coming through. So, that's why it came up suddenly. We are not expecting at this stage that to increase significantly throughout the financial year, because we are forecasting that increase in demand. In terms of the management action, so all CLT colleagues have got oversight over their spend and non-essential spend. What is difficult, though, is that a lot of what we spend is on statutory services. So, it's demand-led. So, our main spend in children is children in care. Our main spend in adults is care packages. Our main spend in TA is obviously housing and homeless residents. So, it's really difficult to turn those figures around. What we have to do is try and drill down on other areas of spend. But the problem is those other areas of spend are not very large, because we spend most of our budgets on social care. So, that's why it's quite difficult to turn this around. Obviously, we're doing all that we can, and we sort of take your, obviously, your point around urgency, and it is urgent. So, and we will be taking action. And we've got the first of the emergency budget boards tomorrow morning, actually, and we're doing what we're chairing us and taking us through, making sure that we're obviously drilling down on spend as much as we can. Thank you very much, Jacqui, for those comprehensive answers. We've got Councillor Lynch chair of audit here, but if you don't mind, Councillor Lynch, I was just going to bring in Councillor Ettie, who's the cabinet lead for homelessness prevention, in case she wants just to add anything to what's already been said. And then I'll bring you in, Councillor Lynch. Councillor Ettie? Yeah, thank you, chair. I just wanted to add to what Jacqui and everyone have said, and in response to Councillor's question, because when we are looking at our nightly rate, just to give you an idea, in terms of the increase of numbers that we're looking at, and the reason why the graph is actually increasing. In April 2023, we had 969 in nightly accommodation. And I can tell you that as of August this year, we are actually moving towards 1,500, almost 1,500, which is about 1,400 and something. So those are the reasons where we are seeing, in terms of the sharp increase, and based on what we had actually budgeted for. And when we look at this from May this year, it has continued to increase. But at the same time, we're putting in all the measures, I mean, that has been suggested in the next six weeks. I mean, two of those hostels, I mean, I'm very, very optimistic that one of the hostels should be finalised in the next two, three weeks. By the time we take that, we reduce that and take some of the families from nightly accommodation to that hostel, definitely that will reduce it. And we hope to complete another completion in terms of purchase of another hostel within the next six weeks. So we're doing all we can to make sure to reduce this cost, because we also know that it is not sustainable at this rate. And what I can tell you is there are other measures that we're looking at internally, where we're beginning to where we have actually looked at some of other measures that are being taken in other boroughs, but which we are looking at internally, also in terms of to cushion all this in some language with resident. And that's one of the reasons why we have, I mean, at least the Campbell Think Health in terms of the consultant so that they can look into this to look at what we are doing. And also in terms of benchmarking to look at the model that will be sustainable for Hackney as we move forward. The detailed report will be presented in October. So there's a lot of measures that are being put in place with Chuck Hill. And I just hope that in the next six months, by the time we begin to see all this, we will start seeing the reduction. It won't be immediate, no doubt about that. But the rest assured that we continue to meet continually. And we're working with the London Council, the mayor has signed the leaders letter, we continue to meet with London Council, with counterpart as well, to continue to have this conversation. So it's not just us, it is London wide, and we are definitely working on it. I just wanted to give the reassurance to colleagues. Thanks very much, Councillor Bette. We're running out of time for this item, but I'd now like to bring in Councillor Lynch and then Councillor Potter. Thank you, Chair. Obviously, I'm here as my capacity's chair of audit. And there's a couple of things I just wanted to bring into this around sort of addressing those concerns around sort of, you know, emergencies and what it's actually actively been doing. So definitely for the last two years, myself as chair of audit and chair of the strategy panel have been meeting six weekly with Jackie Moylan and her team, as well as Councillor Chapman as the cabinet lead. And so we did that last year, and we're doing it again this year. So we've got that sort of, again, another level of sort of awareness of how we're looking at looking at where the finances go. The other thing that we've done as well within the audit committee is that back in April, we published a report around a deep dive that we did in terms of the council's position regarding public interest reports. So for those who aren't familiar, obviously, there's been a lot of councils that have unfortunately been a section 114 notice, which then means that you have a group of sort of people will come in and support and then there has to be a legal sort of auditors sort of public interest report. And what we did is back in last year is that we actually did a sort of mini self-assessment of where the council sat with that. So obviously that's in context to the snapshot then, but I just thought it was really worthwhile to sort of put that across in terms of all the sort of levers that we can within this sort of constitution in terms of the audit committee and other sort of scrutiny panels, we are doing that. My big question really before I go was just, obviously we're aware that there's been the announcements around winter fuel, and there's obviously going to be, you know, the fact that we may have, which I hope we will have is more of an uptake of some of our pensioners in an uptake in pension credit, because we know that that's actually one of those benefits that's not always claimed when people are eligible, but obviously that might then put people into a situation where they could claim housing benefit and other supports. I just wondered if it would be worthwhile to explain how that may impact us and whether or not that's been accounted for in terms of there might be some additional claims for housing benefit and such like due to the sort of promotion of wanting people to uptake pension credit. Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much, Councillor Lynch, and it would be good to know, I mean, obviously we do welcome the extension of the Household Support Fund, which if I've understood the papers correctly will be hopefully, you know, at least on a temporary basis making some of those mitigations. I'll just bring Councillor Potter and then Councillor Binney-Lubbock, and then we're going to have to move on to conclude this item, thank you. It's good to really, it's good to hear about the mitigations in temporary accommodation, both that Councillor Etté set out and also in the report, but given we did have this significant rise in increasing overspend simply in this last quarter, which wasn't anticipated, certainly not in the way that it was presented to us in July, how confident are you that the revised assumptions and modelling will actually make accurate predictions of demand going forward? Thank you. If you don't mind, I'll also bring in Councillor Binney-Lubbock, and then, yeah. Thank you, Chair. In the capital update, there's the approved savings plan, and I was just wondering where the climate spend sits. There's currently an underspend on regeneration, I assume that includes retrofit, green initiatives, budget is only 300K, and only 100K of that has been spent, and there's a £10 million underspend on the social housing decarbonisation fund. So I'm just wondering how big a risk is it that we won't meet our climate action plan targets, and is the climate and the climate action plan considered non-essential spends that might also not be retained? Thank you. So the HB, what happens with HBs if more people claim HB and more HBs is paid out, we actually claim that back from government, for most tenants. We can't claim it all back from government for TA, because we're capped at that LHA rate 2011, but for the most part, if more of our residents were taking up the HB that they're due, then we'll be able to claim that back from government. In terms of the increase in the last call, the thing with the TA cost pressure in particular, because it's quite a new one in terms of how it's escalated, we haven't got many months of data to undertake that forecasting on, but we have tried to be prudent in what we set out for the rest of the year now, which is why we saw that sudden move from 7.8 million to 19.5 million in July, because we are forecasting that we're going to have more presentations of homelessness throughout the rest of the financial year. So we're maintaining quite a prudent forecasting relation to that, but obviously there can always be changes. Those changes might be positive or they might be negative and the actions we're taking, that Councillor Essay set out, are actions that could have a positive impact on that forecast as well. So I think we just need to keep monitoring on a close basis and making sure that we're taking it into account when we update our forecast month on month. In terms of Councillor Biddy-Lovett's question, I think you're referring to the capital update report. When we have underspends in the capital programme, we're not saying that's money we're not going to spend. It tends to be where there's been some delay to schemes or they've been quite optimistic in terms of how that spend has been profiled. So it's not money that doesn't get spent. It tends to get moved into the following year and utilised in the following year when that money actually goes out the door. So as you know, with some of our capital programmes in particular, we face viability challenges as a result of increasing inflation in the construction industry. What that means is the project sometimes gets delayed where we're trying to undertake value engineering or trying to identify additional funds, maybe that grant funding or other fund to meet those viability gaps. So it's not budget that's lost and not spent. It tends to be rolled forward into the following year. I know this is something that the Order Committee have also looked at in the past, actually, and we often have to make this explanation at Order Committee because it tends to be slippage in programme as opposed to underspends. Thanks very much, Jackie. Yes, so just some final questions/remarks from me as the chair. So it would be good to know a little bit more about the Budget Recovery Board. It's obviously reassuring that that's been put in place in relation to its membership and terms of reference. We'll obviously be keeping a really close eye on this unfolding situation in scrutiny. We will be wanting to hear updates as regularly as possible in relation to the continuing measures being put in place. It's obviously really good to hear, both from yourself and from Councillor Ettie, about the new provision for temporary accommodation. We have been scrutiny previously worked on the standards of our temporary accommodation, which is again really important because people do live in properties for significant amounts of time. It's obviously really important that these are refurbished to appropriate standards so that people can continue their lives. I think I can just see Councillor Bramble wants to come in and then I'll maybe go over to Jackie. Then I don't know whether the Mayor or Chief Executive wants to have a last word on this. Thank you, thank you, chair. I think tonight's been quite helpful to set out the challenges that the Council have, but on the caveat of that is that we're still aspirational and very ambitious for our borough. Just the two things that I wanted to highlight, I know we touched on it a little bit, is that obviously with the vacant school properties we are looking at temporary accommodation as part of that offer, but obviously we do have to go to the Secretary of State for change of use. Early on in the conversation, chair, we mentioned schools with a deficit. I think it's just important to highlight that our finance team within Hackney Education are looking and working with head teachers to think about how they repay that deficit and it is an ongoing piece of work that our financial team and the Council are doing. I just didn't want anyone to think that schools are having a heavy deficit and we've left it at that. There was a lot of work going on with head teachers and officers of the Council to reduce that deficit irrespective of the ongoing pooling roles. Thank you, chair. Thank you. Jackie? I'm just going to answer the question about the Budget Recovery Board and the terms of reference. It really is looking wide and deep into some of those real entrenched issues in social care and children's social care, but also in TA. That's looking at a comparative spectrum of other boroughs, looking at trends, what management actions are being taken, where those can be stepped up at all. The membership is chaired by Doulton and the Chief Exec. The entire CLT sits on that board, but also we've got some of my finance team will also be on the board, so senior finance colleagues as well are on that board. It's the first time we've done this. It's a really important piece of work. I think taking on board things that have been said tonight, it might be that that needs to be more often. We need to see what impact it's having, I think. It's a really important piece of work. Also, I just wanted to follow on from what Deputy Mayor Brown was saying, because Councillor Lynch would recall the school balances and schools in deficit was also a deep dive that we undertook for the Audit Committee. In that paper, which I think might have gone to the Audit Committee before last, we set out that work which the school's finance teams do to support those schools that are in deficit, and that included supporting them to establish a deficit recovery plan, et cetera. Yeah, I don't know whether you saw Councillor Patrick's question in the chat, which she's just saying are there any more opportunities for us to buy refurbished our own temporary accommodation? Yes, yes, indeed. So one of the things that we've – one of the ways we're trying to address this at the moment, we've got some additional grant funding, local property housing fund monies, and that is helping us buy properties in Hackney. Obviously, you've got to identify those properties to buy them, but yes, we certainly are doing that, as well as, obviously, purchasing the hostels, which Councillor Essie mentioned earlier. Thank you very much. So I don't know, I'll now invite the Mayor to – Thanks very much. A lot of the work goes into these papers and to trying to make these situations transparent. I just want to acknowledge that and thank Jackie and her team. I guess as we're looking at stabilisation, we're also looking at transformation, what areas that we can, where can we make significant changes, and investors say even part of that, as has been set out, is through bringing more assets on stream and converting them to temporary accommodation. But part of that is also working with other boroughs and really value the workers' scrutiny and audit in terms of doing that benchmarking comparison to how other boroughs are tackling some of these same challenges, and we absolutely are trying to take an overview of that through London Councils. But I just want to make a point, I think Councillor Finney-Lubbock brought up ending unfair evictions. I think there is wider work that we hope to see through national government to end what has been quite a precarious standard of living for so many for so long. And certainly the Renters' Rights Bill is coming through to the second meeting, I think, in two days' time in terms of ending unfair evictions. It may well be that we have been seeing the outcome recently of really what happened with trusts and quasi-carting and their mini-budget, because when those mortgages went up a year ago, when we were knocking on doors for the mayoral campaign, we were hearing from people saying that they couldn't afford their rents, and knowing that that might mean that next time we knocked, it wouldn't be there, I think we're now getting to the point that not only has that manifested, but also some renters are leaving, landlords are leaving the rental business, and that may spike indeed with the Renters' Bill coming through as well. However, on the other side of that, I hope to see a more stable, responsible landscape of landlords across Hackney, as well as a better offer in terms of our temporary accommodation, also our support in terms of our most vulnerable through adult social care and children's social care, where it could be that we could do a similar invest to save approach in terms of bringing support in the way that we've attempted to do with SEND and are still doing with SEND. And again, as you've heard me say many times, not only are we tackling some of these things with urgency through changes that we can make on an individual borough basis, but there is also a wider push for reform, and there is a lot of people looking very closely at how we can reform particularly adult social care, children's social care and SEND, and that will take time. So we've got to deal with that budget recovery board with a matter of urgency, but the ambition is to find ourselves a more stable place over the next few years. Thank you very much, Mayor Woodley, and thank you very much to Jacqui, Deirdre and your team for the really helpful and transparent presentation this evening, which I think gave us far better understanding of this very challenging situation. So I'm now going to move on to, unless the Chief Executive wants to say anything in relation to the budget, because you are going on to your question time, is up to you. Yes, we're now going to go on to item 5, which is the Chief Executive's question time. So very pleased to welcome our permanent Chief Executive, Dawn Carter-McDonald, for this item. We've sent Dawn some pre-prepared questions, and I think you're going to be -- if it's okay, I'd like you to maybe just answer them all in one go, and then we can go on to questions, follow-up questions. So I think you're going to be answering questions on your personal goals, workforce challenges, public engagement and trust and the new government and opportunities. Obviously, you're very welcome to comment as well on the budgetary situation, which I'm sure is at the top of your mind. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I just would like to start by acknowledging the question that was asked by Councillor Hayhurst around what are the immediate actions that were taken as a Council to address the really dire situation that we are in. And it's a really important point that you have raised, because there are a number of spending controls that, as officers, we do need to think about implementing as soon as possible so that we can give confidence to yourselves as members around what we're doing as officers to address the current problems that we're in. The Budget Recovery Board meeting, the first one which will take place tomorrow, will be an opportunity for us, as officers, to decide on what are the decisions, the heavy decisions that we need to make. For example, around a freeze on recruitment. It's not a discussion that we've had, but it's something that we need to think about. There are a number of really difficult decisions that, as officers, we have to make. So I'm confident that the Budget Recovery Board process, we will be able to respond more directly to that question for you in a very short time scale as well. Q. Have you given thought to bringing an external person who is used to stabilising these situations? In the NHS situation, it then goes up to essentially double lock NHS England, but they then have to approve all spending above a certain amount, over 10,000, have to go through a double lock of someone higher. Bringing an external expert who is used to stabilisation, have you given thoughts to that? So I wouldn't want to step on Jackie's toes as the 151 at this stage and say that we're at the stage where we need to bring in an external person, but you're absolutely right. We do need to think about spending and how we make decisions around everything that we do spend on. As you know, we've just come through a peer review. It's really important to think about the conversations that we've had with colleagues who are in a similar position to ourselves and who have given us a number of different examples of the way in which they are introducing spending controls within their own local authorities. So it's a conversation that myself, the corporate leadership team, together with the 151, the monitoring officer, do need to have. And then bring that conversation into the corporate leadership and cabinet meeting that we do have coming up very shortly to discuss the further, as I said, controls that need to be put in place. But it's a very important point that you have raised and I wanted to acknowledge that before I spoke more generally. Thank you, Dawn. I think, yeah, I mean, Councillor Lynch has, I think this will be an ongoing conversation, as Councillor Lynch has said in the chat, that there isn't an exact comparison. I hope that's paraphrasing Councillor Lynch between local authority and the NHS. But I mean, it is a really important point. It will be an ongoing conversation. We're now going to move on to your question time. Thank you very much for those contributions. Thank you. So I've been asked today to speak with regards to four questions. The first one being my personal goals as chief executive. The second one around key workforce challenges. The third around the council, how we're building trust with our residents. And the final question is around how the council, what are the new opportunities for the council with a new government. And I think the first, it's really important for me as chief executive to be able to speak about my personal goals. Having worked in the council for a number of years, I'm very passionate about this authority and what we do and the goals that we have set for ourselves. And as I reflect on my commitments with staff, there are a number of core areas that I consider as my priorities as chief executive, within my first year as permanent chief executive. And they all underpin what I want us to achieve and the change that I want to see. The first being around our values and culture. The second being around equality. The third being wellbeing. Fourthly, listening and finally strategy and transformation. So when I think about our values and culture, we have a very defined and clear set of values which staff wear on a daily basis on lanyards around the council. But I really do want Hackney to be a place where every member of staff feels proud to work here. I want to build a culture where all staff feel that they belong in Hackney, a culture where everyone feels protected and valued and a one council organisation that is working together for a better Hackney. That's the theme that goes, or the golden thread, I would say, that goes through our transformation programme, as staff are all working together for a better Hackney, for a better Hackney for our residents. I'm clear that culture, a change in culture, it starts from the top. And so one of my key achievements in my time as chief executive will be to build a leadership culture whereby leaders together, we work collaboratively across the organisation, breaking down boundaries and silo working, that's there, and where we have honest and open communication. I know that there has been a lot of change in leadership over the past few years, we have to acknowledge that, but I'm really confident that with the forthcoming appointments to the section 151, monitor an officer and director of corporate strategy and transformation roles, that this will help to bring the stability that is needed and surety to the organisation from an officer perspective, as well as ensuring that we can and we will deliver on the mayor's priorities. With regards to equality, I'm really proud to say that following on from our incredible anti-racist summit last year and the introduction of our new equality plan in March, we have equality and anti-racism embedded throughout the organisation. There is still work to do, but from the strategic plan to our transformation programme, service plans and also personal objectives for our staff, we believe that if these are reflected, if equality equity is reflected in all of these key documents, key policies and strategies, that our residents will see and not only our organisation will be an anti-racist organisation, but it will flow into our local authority as well. I'm pleased that we now have a dedicated cross council role in HR and OD to lead on developing the infrastructure that's needed to do this, and that's in the person of Deborah Barnett and myself. I'm personally committed to leading this work as the senior responsible officer. Well-being is also really key. It's important that for staff, we prioritise their well-being. We are asking staff to make a number of - to work in really difficult situations. We have a reducing financial picture, as we see, and staff will feel the pressure of this because they are the ones who are delivering on a day-to-day basis. So well-being is key to ensuring that we build a resilient workforce. And then listening. In the most recent staff survey that came through last year, staff said that they did feel that they were listened to, but they didn't feel that we followed through in terms of actions. So not only do I want us to be a listening organisation, but an organisation that makes sure that we listen, we hear well, but we follow through on the changes that staff would like to see. It's important to myself that our staff feel a sense of belonging, and they do feel that they have a voice in how we work together, and also in creating the change that we want to see. So I'm really pleased to be bringing forward a more structured and supported approach to our staff networks. This new consistent approach will mean that each defined group will have a dedicated senior responsible officer from the corporate leadership team to support and champion staff needs and experiences in the workplace. It's also important that we listen to our residents, our partners, and be humble in taking any learning that we need in order to move forward positively. For example, as I referred to earlier, we received feedback from the corporate peer challenge. We will be receiving a final report, which myself together with the mayor, with the corporate leadership team, and Kevin will need to take the time to go through and understand what the concerns that were raised or what the issues that were raised and how we can address them together with drafting an action plan, which will really show that we've taken the feedback seriously and we're making positive steps in addressing any of the issues that were raised with us. We've also had the recent ADAS peer review as well, which was held last month, and also for yourselves a scrutiny was the Centre for Governance Scrutiny review, which took place as well. So there are a number of reviews and it's how can we as an organisation listen, understand and take forward the recommendations that are made where they fit for us as an organisation. And finally, I'd just like to quickly speak about strategy and transformation. It is my goal to deliver on the objectives of the strategic plan, working together for a fairer, safer, greener, healthier and for every child. This is the golden thread through our ambitious four-year cross-cutting transformation programme. We have received the challenge as officers as to how we can increase the ambition that we have within our transformation programme and I'm really confident that with the appointment permanently to a director of strategy and transformation, together with the corporate leadership team, that we can deliver on this. Sharing Hackney's future is really important. It's key to everything that we do. And in light of the latest budget position, it's vital that we address our financial challenges head on. I'm confident that it is my priority to continue working with the Section 151 officer, our senior leaders and also the corporate transformation team to continue to work on identifying what the immediate solutions are to reduce costs, to increase our income and then also to deliver on the savings that we need to deliver on. I have to say that none of this is easy and there are no quick fixes, but I'm really confident that we have a team that's dedicated and wants to see the best for this organisation as well as for our residents and I'm sure that having heard the budget discussion or having just had the budget discussion that we have had, it will raise a number of concerns for everyone in this room and for those watching online. However, we are committed, I am committed and I believe that we will be able to address the challenges as they have presented themselves to us. Moving very quickly on, I was asked to also speak about key workforce challenges and one of the key things I wanted to speak about was morale in Hackney. I have just spoken about wellbeing, but morale in Hackney has made significant improvements in our staff group in the past two years, but there's still a lot of work to be done. Flexible and I'm pleased to say that flexible and hybrid working is working well overall and staff are broadly confident with how they are expected to work. I spoke about the wellbeing framework being in place, which I believe will support a more targeted approach to engaging and supporting staff and also I spoke about the staff network groups because we want staff to feel that they are heard, they work in a psychologically safe space where they can raise their concerns, they can also come forward with new ideas and new initiatives and we're a management and leadership team that really listen and take on board everything that they say. However, I'm conscious that there are workload pressures which are increasing and what we need to think about and we really need to increase more within the transformation programme are the options that we can have to see how we can alleviate some of those workload pressures for our staff. The approach cannot be sustained alongside business as usual over the long term, so we do need to be targeted around what we are prioritising and what can be paused or where timelines need to be shifted. Staff are also talking about career progression. It's really important that staff feel that we are an organisation that characterises their careers and for myself I have a number of people, members of staff speaking to me and asking me about my own journey. I would love to be able to continue to demonstrate that as an organisation we want to see staff do well within Hackney but also where they leave Hackney they are able to go on to great roles as well across local government. We are actively working on equality, diversity, inclusion and a sense of belonging for all of our staff but there is still more that needs to be done in terms of disproportionality and so increasingly we need to develop more targeted plans to address inequality, unfair practices where they are identified and also discrimination as well. This is being led on by our director of HR and OD by reviewing our workforce policies and also trying our best to remove the identified barriers where they are brought to our attention and we become aware of them. Our head of equality, diversity, inclusion and belonging as I said before now sits within the HR service and I really believe that this move will ensure that there is a corporate and a centralised lens on all of the EDI work that we have as an organisation. Staff networks will also assist with this as well. So I'm just conscious of time so I'll move on in terms of speaking about the council building trust with our residents. I'm really pleased today to have in the room with me Florence Abena who is a really hard working and dedicated colleague in leading on this area of work and it's really important that as a council we do talk about our residents' level of trust in the council. In the most recent resident survey which was published September 2024, trust in HACNY, 73% of our residents said they trust the council a great deal or a fair amount which is up a fair amount from 67% in 2022. I'm also pleased to say that the latest LGA benchmark showed that residents across the survey that was completed by the LGA was just at 53%. So HACNY having 73% I think is very positive and something we should be extremely proud of. However, we can't take for granted that we have 24% who don't trust the council very much at all. And this has gone down since 2022 where we had 28% of our residents who didn't trust the council very much or at all. But we're still outperforming the LGA benchmark of 45%. So although trust in HACNY council is high and much higher than the national LGA benchmark, I would like to see this improve much further. And also we need to understand why is it that we have residents who are in a particular group of disabled residents, 39%, those who are struggling financially, 39%, those aged between 55 to 64, 33%, have children, social renters, those living in the borough for 10 years and also global majority ethnicities who fall in that group of those residents who don't trust the borough. We really need to understand that and we really need to work very hard at trying, at tackling that and to improve that figure, to eradicate that figure. However, I'm really proud of the work that's being led on by the council around consultation and engagement. There's a great deal of work that's being done in that area. And we can speak a bit more about that maybe in questions. But we ensure that insights from all consultation and engagement activity is fed into the council's decision-making processes with full reports written summarising the feedback that we've received from our consultation engagement and they're included in everything that we do in public engagement from our engagement hub, public engagement hub to our citizen space is really important work. Our council consultation and engagement activity is promoted in the council's magazine Love Hackney, which as we're all aware is a print publication which is delivered 10 times a year and has a wide reaching number of households and businesses in the borough. So we're a local authority where consultation and engagement listening to what our residents are saying is a key focus for us and I really believe that this is something that we can continue to develop and become much more stronger on over the coming years. And then finally, just to speak about the council opportunities for a new government, I think we were all very much welcome a new government. That's something that this council has made very clear and it's something in terms of priorities thinking what can we do to shape policy, to shape what the discussions and conversations that are taking place in central government which will directly impact upon local authorities. On July 17, the first King's speech of the new Labour government was delivered and it included 40 bills as part of the government's legislative programme. A lot of work for local individual local authorities and collectively through London councils through the LGA for us to work through and to see how can we impact on those bills as they progress through parliament, through our MPs, through as I said through London councils through the LGA. I'm really very much I believe that as a council we are in a position, a prime position to be able to tap into a lot of those conversations that are happening. Myself and Ricardo who is also in attendance today attended a meeting with the GLA with Tom Copley a couple of weeks ago where we were talking in respect of housing and grants which the local authority can benefit from. We are around the table. You will hear the Mayor speaking very much about her own position within London councils as myself as the chief executive attending our chief executives for London councils on a regular basis as well. So I think it's important that we tap into and we're at the table where those discussions are taking place. Last year, even whilst I was in my interim role, I attended a number of meetings at the then NHLCLG. Now it's really important that we continue to have those conversations with key government officials who want to discuss what's happening in Hackney. We have a number of really good relationships with key government bodies and government officials which I believe that we can tap into. A few bits of, we spoke about the household support fund earlier. We know what's happening with regards to that. As a council we welcome the additional funding because it will help us to meet the immediate needs of residents who are facing financial hardship this winter. There's the National Wealth Fund Bill which is capitalised with 7.3 billion, but it will make investments across every part of the country and will aim to source billions of pounds worth of additional investment from the private sector. We've got to be aware of it. We've got to do the research. We've got to understand what the legislation promises are by government and see where we can, as a local authority, tap into and receive the benefit from it for ourselves as Hackney Council, but ultimately for our residents who we serve. I'll stop there and take questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dawn. You came in slightly under time, so that's very welcome. I'm sure members will have questions. I can see some hands. I'll just start kicking off. Thank you very much for your really wide-ranging presentation. It's really good to hear about your priorities, particularly in terms of equality and wellbeing in the council and beyond in our communities. Also, I'm encouraged to hear about your conversations with the government. We've obviously had our very challenging financial report this evening of which we are all extremely concerned. I think everyone will agree that there is very compelling research to show that local authorities are, in fact, best placed to spend money wisely and to deliver targeted services to the communities that we live among and that we understand. I really hope that there's going to be some ongoing fruitful discussions with the government. Just a couple of comments on the substance of your presentation. I think it's really interesting to hear about the latest survey results. This is an ongoing interest in the scrutiny panel where we will be doing further work in relation to consultation and engagement. I suppose really what the statistics show, I think, is that it's more likely to be residents that are very dependent on council services for their basic day-to-day needs who are less likely to trust the council, and that is obviously quite concerning just as a broad generalisation. I don't know whether you've got any further comments on that. I think you have covered it. I suppose my other substantive question really is that we are very dependent in relation to transformation, and are you confident as chief executive that we have the right level and mix of skills within the council or sort of buying it in outside to deliver this really challenging programme, and what sort of challenges do you see on the road ahead? So then I'll bring in other members of the panel in a minute. Thank you. Thank you. I do agree. I think you're absolutely right where you identify that it is those residents who are more dependent on the council for services from a range of health through to education, whatever the dependency is. What's important, however, is that we have to think much wider. There's been a great deal of work that's been led on by Councillor Susan Fajana-Thomas around trust and confidence in the police. These things go to the key hearts of what residents are also thinking about. Child care, although we know that that was now a few years ago, did have a significant impact with regards to trust in the council, although it was an incident, a very sad unfortunate incident that happened within a school. So there are a number of key things that happen across the piece that I believe it's really important that, as the council, we have to be aware of. So we have to be aware of wider political policy, which where those residents who are dependent on the council will feel that it's the council, why they're not getting pension, the fuel, the winter fuel payment, a number of concerns have been raised. I've had a number of emails which have come into myself as the chief exec to say, oh, what's the council doing about addressing this because we are concerned. So I really think we have a great opportunity, having had the most recent survey, to be able to unpick the detail and to look at the groups behind those who don't trust the council. As I said, it's a piece of work that we do really need to do to understand why and to see what more we can do, but with a limiting financial envelope that we do have, how are we going to be working with the voluntary community sector, for example, with those groups who are closer to our residents, more closer than we could ever be to be able to address those concerns as well. I think that's important to say. With regards to transformation, I really do believe that our transformation programme, having been pulled together in the space of a year with a very limited budget and set out a clear timeline as to what can be achieved. As I said before, I do know we have received the challenge that our transformation programme could be more ambitious and that's a challenge that we've taken. However, I'm confident that we will be able to utilise the benefit of a sound transformation strategy to ensure that this council can recover and can address the concerns that we see before ourselves. Culture being one of the main points that we do need to raise and address within the transformation programme is really key. Staff, morale and wellbeing is another key element of our transformation programme, but ultimately, looking at the budgetary challenges that we face, we do need to make that commitment to ensure that the transformation programme can help us to close the gap that's needed. Thank you, Dawn. There's obviously a lot riding on transformation. Yes, there is, yes. It's really important that we do manage to get this right. I'll now bring in some other questions. I think, Councillor Ogunjimora, you haven't spoken before and then Councillor Potter and then we'll move to the ground. Thank you. Thank you, Chair, and thanks, Dawn, for your report. I just wanted to get clarity on your terminology of staff networks. So, I'm aware at ACNI we have recognised trade unions, but when you're using the terminology staff network, I'm not sure whether you mean informal networks that have been set up based on protected characteristics or its worker group set up to see how we kind of work as a local authority, because in some organisations, staff networks seem to be separate from the recognised trade union, and trade unions can perceive it as union busting. So, it's just trying to get clarity regarding your terminology of staff networks. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your presentation, Dawn. It was really great to hear the way you set everything out. My comment was just on kind of residents' trust and recognising that there is a really good figure, you know, for Trust for Hackney residents in council services, but you do hear comments about consultation sometimes and the expectation that residents have in terms of the impact of their feedback. Bearing in mind that consultations are not referenda, what do you think we can do to explain, reassure to Hackney residents the value of them feeding into consultations and the impact that it can have in helping to inform the way that we kind of proceed with decisions and services. Thank you. Thank you, thank you so much. So, with regards to staff networks, they are specific dedicated staff networks that will be chaired by members of staff. So, for example, there is an already established LGBTQIA+ staff network, which goes under the banner of Proud Hackney. That's an established staff network. There will be a faith network staff network that we've been asked to establish, and there's also an established long-term disability staff network as well. So, there are a number of networks which will be, in terms of references, will be approved. They will be chaired by members of staff and, as I said, each of the group directors and members of the corporate leadership team will be the SRO responsible for ensuring that those staff networks have the consistency in terms of a budget, in terms of management, in terms of staff ability to use them consistently across the board. So, you're absolutely right to draw reference to the unions, and the point that you've made with regards to the unions may be feeling that they take away from. We have had, I have personally had that conversation with union colleagues, reassuring them that this is not the purpose of staff networks at all. It's about enabling all of our staff who feel that they want to, that they identify to a certain group, they want to feel that they can come to work and feel that they can express themselves safely within a space that's dedicated for them to be able to do so. So, that's the rationale behind us being able to develop the staff networks. Thank you. With regards to resident trust and impact, I think that's a really important question that you have asked, Councillor Potter. And so, for example, we had the climate change, I can't remember the full title of it, but there was a climate change resident, yeah, that's it, the citizen jury, thank you colleagues, which is a really great example of how residents can come into the town hall, you know, and work with members of staff who help them to have those conversations about an issue that affects them, affects their family, affects their, affects us all. And I think what's really important is that, is the opportunity, that we don't miss the opportunity to express and to allow our residents to see that we do want to hear from them. So, you know, inviting, we don't always get the biggest take-up in terms of our, you know, resident surveys always consistently, but it's how do we identify the issues that go to the heart of how residents are feeling, then how do we ensure that we ask the right questions in the right format. You know, we have to acknowledge that not all of our residents are digital savvy and have access to the internet. So, how do we ensure that through use of paper or whatever it is, you know, actually going and knocking on doors, which our last resident survey did, knocked on individuals' doors and took the, went through the questions with them individually to make sure that residents believe that we're hearing and then publishing those results as well and saying this is what you've told us, this is what we've heard and this is what we now want to do. And then going back and test taking that as well. I think it's really important that we make sure that as part of our building our residents trust, we give them the confidence that we're an authority that has officers that are listening, because I know that as members you're out knocking the doors on a regular basis, but as officers are we listening and are the changes happening within the organisation that will make them feel that the concerns that they have raised are being addressed. Thank you. A quick follow-up from the Council Officer Morin. Thanks Dawn for the clarity on that. But the follow-up I have is, just to be crystal clear, will the staff networks be operating independently from the trade union or will they be working in collaboration with the trade union? Because like we've got joint, like collective bargaining with the trade union, but with stock networks they don't have the certain competencies, especially like skills in regards to the employment relations act, and some staff can actually make a mistake and the local authority can become unstuck if network groups are providing inaccurate advice. Okay, that's a very good point, but I can confirm that they will operate independently of the trade unions. They will not be linked to or formed part of. There is a great deal of work that is being undertaken within the organisational development service, so those points that you have raised there will be taken forward and I will make sure that we provide that clarity can be brought to the table. But I think it's really important that staff know that they can have an independent space that's free of trade unions, free of senior managers. It's a space where they build, that they can identify and express, they can put through demands to ourselves as senior leaders. It's a space for openness, transparency and also where that psychological safety is really important. We spoke a lot last year after we had the anti-racist summit about you said we've heard, we've done. It's important and one of the things that staff said, they thought they needed safe spaces and a staff network is one of those tools that we've come together to think can really help staff to feel connected in that way. Thank you. I'm just wondering if you can give a little bit more detail about any sort of channels you have with central government to make sure that HACMI is really being heard. I mean some of the issues that I think, you know, it would be interesting to hear what your sort of personal goals are and how your sort of values relate to them around, you know, zero fatalities on our own, zero fatalities to serious youth violence, so serious violence impacting young people. You know, are we going to be able to get heard by central government on really big issues like this that oftentimes require a longer view? Can I get to bring in, sorry, but just over time, so Councillor Lynch, you wanted to come in and then Councillor Hayhurst. Yeah, thanks chair. I just wanted to, I'm sure Dawn as the chief exec, I know you've had a really difficult day today and I think many of us acknowledge that. I just want to start a quick question. We're going to be doing a deep dive into the transformation. My question Dawn is have you as a council done a benchmark to how much other councils actually fund their transformation projects? Because I know my understanding is that some of our other sort of peer councils have actually done that massive invest to save because obviously doing that sort of put that money into a big transformation is just because it doesn't take, it doesn't happen instantly, it does take a number of years to do that cultural change. But I guess the return on that invest to save and also that model of making sure that a programme is adequately financed that you can actually sustain some of the transformation that happens. So I just wanted to ask that question really about where we stand really in terms of how we're funding our transformation programme compared to like our colleagues in Camden or other boroughs really, because my understanding is that if you do this, it does have a massive impact on residents, which is the main thing, staff retention and ultimately it will contribute to the biggest item that we've talked about this afternoon, this evening, sorry, around our financial and what we do in the long term. Thank you, Chair. Sorry, John, I'm just going to bring in a third question, we do need to move on. I suppose on a matter of leadership style, Dawn, how are you going to focus yourself and your leadership team and the council to really achieve your core objectives? And clearly transformation is going to be one of them, but I mean, I think, you know, repairs is clearly something that's been going on and, you know, for every, we've all got to have particular areas we're concerned about, but if you finish your tenure, having made a real difference on repairs, I think that'd be a great achievement, even if a lot of these other things that are influenced that much. How are you as a leader going to really focus down on a few people and drive that through the organisation? So Dawn, advocating with the government, investing in transformation and focus. Okay, thank you so much, thank you. So, Councillor Binney-Lubbock, that's your question goes to the heart of what all local authorities currently are thinking at the moment. It's not just a hackney, you know, discussion that's being held, and that's why I think for local authorities across London, we very much do all think and work together closely through London councils to look at the big issues. Last year we spoke a lot about retrofit, this year we were speaking a lot about climate change, we're speaking as chief executive in London leaders about homelessness and housing. So the issues that we face in hackney, yes, we will have issues that are particular to us because of our demography, as it were. However, the general bigger picture is one which we cannot do on our own, my personal opinion, is we do need to work closely with our colleagues across London to ensure that there's one voice. So, for example, 100 local authorities signed a housing pledge which was led by Southern Council raising the issue of the lack of housing, house building and all of those things around social housing, and it's together united across London, because we are in London, that we'll be able to create and make that change, I believe. Thank you. But there is definitely a voice that individual local authorities have, and we do that through the motions that we raise that you bring to full council that's brought across everyone in this chamber and the letters that are written personally from this local authority through the mayor and through cabinet leads to government ministers raising the particular issues for this borough as well. That's important also. Thank you. And then with regards to transformation, thank you very much, Councillor Lynch, you are correct in saying that it's important for us to benchmark and we have, as a corporate leadership team, been looking at the budgets that other local authorities have spent. One of the things that have come on their transformation programme, because in order to ensure that transformation has that long-term impact, you can't put in a small amount in order to be able to realise the returns that we need to see and that we want to see, not just to close our budget gap, but also to make a real difference for our residents and also for our staff who both work and also a number of who live in the borough as well. So it's important that we have an honest look and we are taking the opportunity, in fact, one of the agenda items on the corporate leadership team meeting tomorrow is to look at the transformation budget and what investment would be needed to be able to really meet the challenge head on. So thank you very much for raising that. And then finally, that's a fantastic question, Councillor Hayhurst, and a challenge to me that was given to me from the very first day I stepped into the role, both in an interim and now in a permanent position, is what are the key things that in terms of my leadership, which flows into the leadership that I have with my corporate leadership team, it's really important that we're able to work across the issues that we face as one council. So the issues that are faced by adult social care, the issues that are faced by my colleague Jackie Burke and children, whatever the subject area is, it's not their individual issues, it's a joint, there has to be a joint collective response. And that's the message that I am giving consistently to colleagues across the corporate leadership team. We have to approach the difficulties that we face both from a budgetary perspective and across the whole housing issues that we have collectively as one corporate leadership team under the leadership of myself. So it's been consistent. It's ensuring that there's a level of, a layer of managers that we have, the senior managers network, so that directors, assistant directors have a consistent message. Let's move away from the silo working. Let's work together collaboratively. Let's address what, have those open and transparent conversations about what the real issues are and let's collectively agree what needs to happen. Where we can't have that agreement then very much I have to step into that space, you know, together with my colleagues and sometimes on my own and be very directive as well. But I'm committed to doing to ensure that we succeed. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dawn. No, that was really, really helpful session and it's really, really good to hear about your priorities and then give you a comprehensive answer to our questions. So we're now going to move on to our final substantive item of the evening, which is Catholic complaints and members inquiries annual reports. So one of our functions of scrutiny panel is to contribute to the continuous improvements in service delivery through the consideration of complaints information. This report is in accordance with the scrutiny panel's remit to monitor the council's complaints and members inquiries process. So we've got quite a substantial bundle of reading for this. So it's the annual report and appendices covering the year 2023-24, which defines analysis and following the complaints received and progress being made to make improvements to ensure there's learning for these complaints to improve service performance and learnings adequately shared. So this year obviously because widespread concern and elsewhere in relation to the situation with housing repairs, we've asked more detailed reports about housing complaints. So the purpose of this review is to see how the council is responding to complaints because they're being dealt with successfully at the early stages, thus reducing the numbers that proceed to the later stages. So we've got three reports, complaint reports, pages 11 to 42, members inquiries, pages 43 to 65, and the housing pages 60, pages 67 to 135. So I'd like to welcome again, Councillor Robert Chapman, cabinet member for finance, et cetera. Councillor Cleo McKenzie, thank you, the cabinet member for housing services and resident participation. Louise Humphries, the interim director of legal democratic electoral services and our monitoring officer. Steve Waddington, director of housing. Ben Bradley, the head of the mayor's office and cabinet and civic support. Member casework and Simon Gray for corporate complaints, casework and performance management. And we were hoping, yes, and he is here, Bruce De Waal, the assistant director for business intelligence elections and member services would be able to join us online. So I'd now like to invite Simon Gray and Ben Bradley to unmute their microphones and highlight the key points in your report. You have eight minutes between the two of you, and then followed by Steve Waddington with seven minutes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Simon Gray, corporate complaints manager in the chief executives department presenting the annual report for complaints and casework tonight. So there's a brief report at the beginning and then seven quite substantial, some of them quite substantial appendices to that report. They include as well the letters from both the local government and the housing ombudsman. On the housing ombudsman one, there is a requirement on the council to respond to that. But I'm joined, as you say, by colleagues from housing this evening who will be picking those up under appendices four to seven. And following me, Ben Bradley will introduce the members and mayor and cabinet casework report as well. So I'm going to concentrate just with some brief headlines on appendix one, and not dive too deeply into housing issues, as you say, because there are housing colleagues here. So I don't have you kind of focusing on other council services primarily. I suppose the headline really is around the volume of complaints made to the council at stage one in 2023/24, which just over 5,300 is a sort of sustaining level compared to the last few years. But in terms of pre-COVID levels, we're probably still double the figures that we were receiving there. So a quite high level of complaints are being made to the organisation across all services. The first six months of this year are showing that that figure is likely to sustain at that level. It's not increasing, but it's certainly not reducing. Despite those continuing high levels of stage one complaints, the average time taken to respond to those at 20.2 days is probably the best performance since 2019. So we are keeping on top of getting those responses and outcomes of investigations out to residents and service users and complainants. Of the 5,300 or so complaints, the biggest area, of course, was housing services, which have accounted for 46% of all complaints made to the council. Other key services in relation to complaints are benefits, with 11% of the total complaints figures, council tax, 9%, environmental services, 8%, and parking at 7%. So quite a range of services there. More detail on those and the numbers and the drivers behind some of those complaints or what the real causes of those complaints are set out in the report on pages 23 to 28. Across those 5,300 stage one investigations, 43% found fault, so officers investigating those complaints, found fault against the council. That's a slight improvement on last year where it was 49%. By fault, we addressed those by way of apology or taking some sort of corrective or remedial action, or in some cases, making an award or an offer of compensation. If residents are unhappy following the stage one investigation, they're entitled to escalate their complaint to stage two. In 2023/24, we had 518 stage two complaints to investigate. That's our highest number ever, up from the 344 in the previous year, so quite a substantial increase, particularly compared to, again, pre-COVID levels of about 150 stage two investigations a year. So a real sense for customers that they're taking cases much further through the complaints process. The overall escalation rate for the council is that 9.7% of complaints that come in at stage one do escalate to stage two. That does increase when looking at housing services cases where the escalation rate is a little higher at 14.5%. Housing services are equated for 69% of stage two investigations, so again, quite heavily focused on housing and particularly the repairs function. The increase in stage twos is likely to continue this year. We've done some figures, again, based on the first six months, and those figures are likely to rise to an even higher level, although stage one levels may remain the same. It's looking like more and more complaints are coming through investigation at stage two. Obviously, when customers remain satisfied following the stage two investigation, they're entitled to approach one of the two ombudsman, the housing ombudsman of the local government and social care ombudsman. On the housing ombudsman side, there were 71 investigations, formal investigations, in 23/24, which was up from 24 in the previous year, so again, some quite significant increase there in the number of complainants that are taking their issues all the way through to the final stages of the process. Of all those stage two investigations, 72% found fault, so again, apologies or remedial action or compensation. That's in excess of what may have been found at stage one. There has been a significant additional compensation awarded at stage two this year, last year, with levels of about £170,000 in compensation being paid out, which compares to £35,000 in the year previous. Of course, one of the big reasons for having an effective complaints process in place is to get that learning from complaints and what the intelligence that brings into the organisation to prevent issues repeating, and the report presents some examples from services of learning opportunities have taken from complaints and things that we've done to move things on, the kind of you said and we did approach. On the housing side, they've helpfully produced their own lessons learned report, which again, is one of those further appendices in the report. At that point, I'll stop. Thank you very much, Simon. I'll now hand over to Ben Bradley. He's going to talk about members inquiries. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. This is the first member inquiries annual report that Council has produced following an increase in member inquiry volumes in recent years, and I created a new member casework team last November, so it includes a lot more granular data than we previously collated and shared with members, including data on overall casework volumes, response times, type and topic of inquiry, and casework volumes by ward, as well as an overview of the member casework team engagement on Council services and the service improvements we've seen in place. So in terms of highlights, the Council members responded to over 5,000 members inquiries in 23/24. This included an increase of 5% of casework volumes in the mayor and cabinet to 1,670, and a forward 90% of ward council inquiries, while they remain higher than the historic average. The team has made significant improvements in average response times, with member inquiry response times down from 29.5 days in 22/23 and 22.5 days in 23/24. The further drop to 15.6 days in Q1, 24/25, so two weeks faster than the average in 22/23. The mayor and cabinet inquiries, while response times increased in 23/24, they've significantly improved in order one of 24/25 to 17.1 days. So as the teams become established, we've been clearing the back blocks, we start to see the significant improvements in times. 77% of casework is from three areas, housing needs, housing and environment, sorry, housing and climate change. This is a slight different profile for complaints, where as Simon said, about half of complaints relate to housing services. The member casework team has been working particularly closely with housing services in the high volume areas to review processes and improve the quality and time of response since the team's been set up. We've also introduced clear escalation routes for members, and taken ownership of cross-cutting member inquiries to help resolve and unblock some of the more challenging cases. In the next six to 12 months, the team will be focused on developing a member casework policy, developing our training offer, taking further steps to improve the quality of responses, and also introducing sales action surveys as another means of assessing the quality and effectiveness of looking for responses we provide. I'll be happy to answer any questions the members have for the report. Thank you very much Ben. So now finally, I'd like to invite Steve Waddington to unmute his microphone and highlight the key points in your report. Thank you chair, good evening everyone. Simon and Ben have picked up on a number of the information related bits through their numbers. I think obviously what we've seen in housing services, particularly within building maintenance, is an increase in complaints, particularly towards the back end of 2023-24, and that increase has carried on at a sustained level into the first quarter of 24-25, although we are seeing a slight reduction in the second quarter of 24-25. I think it wasn't surprising that we saw an increase in the number of complaints. We've been a lot more proactive in relation to responding to a number of inquiries, particularly around dampen mould and the national focus that there's been on dampen mould following the tragic death of our Bishak. As a result of that, we changed some of the ways we dealt and approached with dampen mould. We implemented a five-day target for inspection of dampen mould. The national target that appears to be likely in our law, which we're expected to come forward shortly, is looking at a ten-day target. We're well in advance of what is expected to be nationally. Whilst we have had some challenges in the quarter four last year, we are now hitting that five-day target and just under that five-day target for an inspection. I think when you look at the ombudsman inquiries, we have seen an increase, as Simon said, I think to 71 in 23-24. That is mirrored across the sector in a higher level of findings by the ombudsman and a higher level of severity of the findings by the ombudsman nationally as well. I think one of the things that's important to place in context there is the ombudsman brought forward a new code of guidance, in essence, about how they would assess claims that came to them. They applied that code of guidance over complaints that they had with them for a number of months. Actually, there was a higher standard on complaints assessment by the ombudsman being considered than actually social landlords were considering that. That's based around the fact that there's approximately a nine-month period from a complaint being submitted to the ombudsman, to it being investigated and completed and a finding based on that. The annual housing ombudsman report is in the report at page 67 to 71. I'll not go through the detail of that. The ombudsman have also issued a complaint handling code and all social landlords were required to do a self-assessment against that. Our self-assessment is set out in the report in pages 73 to 92. I think it's not surprising to myself as a strategic director when you look at the quantum of complaints we get, particularly in relation to building maintenance. It is far too high than I would like, but I suppose the context is we do just over 90,000 repairs last year. When you look at the level of complaints we've had in relation to building maintenance, that's about 1.5, 1.6%, which is too high, but I think it's important to place that in context against the 90,000 repairs. I think the lessons learned report, we did a review of how we responded to complaints and that's set out in the report as well. I think what we've done as a result of that has changed the way we handle complaints when they first come in. Our average turnaround time for stage one complaints last year in 23/24, it was 19.88 days. We've improved on that month by month throughout the first six months of 24/25. September was the first month that we had actually achieved the ombudsman turnaround time of an average of 10 days, so our average was 9.8 days in September. I think a key element of that is the communication and contact with residents and tenants when they complain. We're seeing now approximately 30% of complaints, particularly for building maintenance, that are actually resolved upon receipt. I'll stop there, and happy to take any questions. Thank you, Chair. I know you've only got a very short time for the introductions, so I'll be brief as possible. Basically to say thanks to all the staff and all those teams that presented today. All areas are showing unprecedented increase in demand and demands for systems as well, which are shoving, I think. There's always more to do, but I think we're very pleased with the progress that we have made. We look forward to feedback from members generally and scrutiny, which obviously we'll take on board and try to continue to improve the services and overcome some of those problems that we all know we have. Just the last thing to say is obviously these teams are at the front door of the complaints of the chorus process, and obviously for the whole thing to work, the whole council's got to put in as well, and it largely does. But not all of the problems are at the front doors of these teams, and there are processes in place in the customer-facing elements, the user-facing elements of the transformation programme, which we hope will see improvements there as well. So thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Chapman. Members, have you got to go in a minute? Yeah. I mean, it is really good to see that quite a lot of thinking and reorganisation has been done in this space to improve the service, and the previous comments and recommendations by us as a panel have fed into that work. However, what I would say is that most people don't choose to spend their evenings writing complaints about essential council services, particularly the multi-stage approach that goes all the way to the Ombudsman. That obviously is, particularly in the housing services, quite concerning that it will only be the tip of an iceberg. A lot of people won't have the capacity to go that fast. There does need to be some serious thinking and learning, looking at what underlies that position, and particularly in relation to housing services. I mean, what I would really like to hear about, and I'll obviously bring in other members in a minute, is it's good to hear you touching on this, Councillor Chapman, is obviously how this quite rich body of data that we've got really in relation to the strengths and weaknesses of our services and resident experience is going to feed into transformation, because I think it's really important to assess the program that we do use, the information that we've got from the three reports we've had this evening. Also, it would be good really to know, just to know how ongoing resident improvement, the services that we give to residents, whether it's standards or technology or cultural change is going to be driven. I don't know who wants to take that, whether it's Councillor Chapman or Riccardo, and then I'll bring in other members. Yeah, so more general really about how complaints go to feed into transformation and then also about housing services, so maybe Riccardo wants to comment on the housing services. Yeah. Thank you, Cheryl. That's a very big question, isn't it? Yeah, so clearly there's a lot going on. These teams are effectively at the front door, aren't they? Not the front door, the secondary. So they obviously can't control the services that they are inquiring about. We've done much more, perhaps, recently in following up things that have clearly not answered well or where the particular complication is queries or complaints that run across departments which I think we've got better at dealing with over the last year or so. Yeah, I think we better pick up most of the rest of your comments when we look in more detail at transformation. Obviously, the way the teams relate to the customer services side of the organisation, sorry, I can say residents, but they are customers in some places and residents in others have been exactly what the service is, isn't it? That's the whole point of it. Well, that's a theme in itself, actually, that one. You pick up both that side and also I think when we're looking at performance reporting and how we use data in the organisation, we could make much better use of the data that we get or could get from all of these teams in terms of what people are concerned about in their services. It's the impact on the services role and the actual processing of the complaints or inquiries. Riccardo, I did have a question sort of hanging with you, but I think I'll maybe bring in Councillor Potter because maybe she's asking about counselling as well, I don't know, and then you can answer them both if that's okay. It might just be adding to your question, Councillor Gordon. Well, I was going to say, bearing in mind all of the repairs that are resolved, but there is a context we've talked about, you know, about repairs that kind of go on and go on and don't get resolved and communication is particularly bad and residents get many contractors, many of our own workforce going around seemingly doing the same thing, taking pictures and I know you've alluded to it in the report in terms of, you know, how we need to improve communication, the various reviews you've got and how you're kind of looking at stats, so, you know, particular jobs, I can see all of that detail there, but I suppose I just wanted to know, just to hear you talk about how you're bringing in the workforce, our own workforce, and also the contractors in this journey to kind of aid us in this process. Thank you. Did you want to come in on those two questions at once, Councillor Colle? Thank you, Chair. So, I'm conscious of time. I'll try and be as succinct as I can. So, in terms of the first question, I think Dawn didn't say in her presentation, but there's a big piece in our work around assurance, so as well as, you know, broader cross-cutting aspects of the corporate transformation program. The major work pieces of work that we're doing in terms of transforming services falls under the umbrella of transformation and it's a shared endeavour by the corporate leadership team, so we do have a housing improvement program that looks at housing transformation, a key element being, you know, how we place residents at the heart of what we're doing, including how we respond to complaints, how we ensure that we're following up and being as proactive as possible, but ultimately, you know, at the most senior level, you know, there is oversight on the work that we're doing. At a directorate level, we do try and zero in on performance, you know, quite a lot and certainly on a quarterly basis, there are specific performance conversations that happen with the directors and the assistant directors where we talk about, you know, trends and, you know, what bits of queries and complaints that we're receiving in order to identify wider issues, but most more importantly, think about where we need additional resource to help address them and then you've seen the detail in the learning lessons or housing lessons rather in the report and there is something further down the structure in terms of accountability and trying to ensure that we don't miss opportunities to address issues first and foremost, so linking on to Councillor Potter's question about, you know, communication, one of the bits of personal frustration of mine, when we look at the number of repairs that we do every year, one of the things that we, on a monthly basis rather, one of the things that we look at is the number of unique visits for repairs versus the number of overall, you know, repairs that we do and, you know, at last viewing, at the moment, there's about a third of all of the repairs that we do that are repeat visits and those are the ones that we're looking to focus on to ensure that, you know, we are able to deal with them, but it's an ongoing, you know, challenge that we're facing, but just to reassure you that we are looking at that, not just in terms of, you know, being proactive, but looking at the data and thinking about, you know, how it can help us to address the issue, so hopefully that answers your questions, but I think it is, the last thing I'd like to say is it is a joint effort and actually, you know, by the time things come up to my desk and the emails land in my inbox, you know, it's clear that there have been a number of missed opportunities to deal with things sometimes and, you know, that's the thing that we're trying to change. Hi, yeah, thank you for all this information, it's really helpful. I mean, I've sort of got a very short three in one, compensation's gone through the roof, so how the, you know, that's both in terms of numbers of payments and amount per payment, why is that? How are our housing complaints comparing to our statistical neighbours and how is the review going on quality control as recommended on page 199 from the ombudsman, because I know from my ward I've got multiple cases of guttering, for example, being mended and then still leaks coming down the front of the buildings after the works have been completed, therefore we're going to have to do all that work again. So, yeah, those are the three questions about the compensation, the statistical neighbours and quality control. One more from Councillor Conway. Thank you, it's a bit of a statement with a question woven in, but just remembering having been here sort of last year and previous years and that data analysis point is one that's come up quite a lot. I can vividly remember having this conversation last year as somebody who comes from a, lives in a block that has had sort of chronic issues, and so for me it's data analysis in so far as what I'm curious about is data analysis as far as how many times we come out for this same thing, but also how many people in this block suffer from the same thing, because, and, you know, my block has lots of, like, you know, it's always got, like, flooding and leaks issues. There's issues with pipes. When do we get to a point where we say, actually, we've spent a lot of money on this block alone, and I know we always talk about investments to save and it's easier said than done, but, yeah, I'm just curious about that point, and also linking it back to some extent to the point earlier on about that overspending temporary accommodation and the connection between the two. The reason why I say this is because I know that this is the case because of really serious issues we're having to avoid properties temporarily whilst we fix them. How many of the residents do we know? Are we joining up those dots? Do we know how many residents are having to leave because of chronic issues in their homes that we've been having to place in £100 a night temporary accommodation? Just connecting those two, because that's another area where we're spending lots of money that perhaps is not accounted for in, like, you know, in the same budget necessarily. So, sorry. Yeah. I think I'll bring Steve in, if that's okay, because I know that he wants to ask questions, so Steve may have some additional points to address those first, and then I'll bring you, Ricardo, at the end if you want to add anything. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Chair. I think compensation has increased. I think one of the things linked to that is the housing ombudsman have updated with their code of guidance for housing complaints, and that has changed the nature and level of compensation. I think, as I said earlier, with regards to the orders that the housing ombudsman have been making as well, is they have, like I said, placed a higher level, and I'm not saying that higher level of scrutiny is wrong, on set of circumstances and an approach to repairs within the sector that were set prior to the assessment. So we have seen that compensation go up, and it's in line with the changes that we've seen within the sector. I think there's no doubt, obviously, it's far too high, and that's down to the lack of investment over many, many years. We have an ageing housing stock, and we are reaping the consequences of that now, and that is both in responsive repairs and in capital improvements in the work that we're going to have to do within that. I think, in relation to some of the repairs, I think it was Councillor Potter that mentioned that, that go on and on and on, and how are we picking that up? I think some of that is into the lessons learned. So we've identified that, you know, obviously with leaks, at one point, until we changed it just over 18 months ago, if a tenant reported a leak and it was deemed as controllable, which you could put a bucket under it and empty it once a day, then it was a 20 day repair. We've changed all of those to emergency repairs. That's one of the key lessons, and that's meaning we're now responding to upwards of 90% of leaks within 36 hours by the end of the following working day, which is having a significant benefit. We also recognise with some of our contractor support, the way that has been procured historically has impacted as well, because, you know, if there's a leak to a roof, one of the council spares would go out, we'd then pass that to one of our major work contractors, they'd go out, but they'd then subcontract that, so they'd then send it to a roofing contractor and then the roofing contractor go back out. So you've got three, four visits there before you've even got a quote and a prize for the work. So we're in the process of procuring, particularly for roofs, especially roofing contractor, where we can develop that one to one relationship so that actually where we get a problem with the roof, actually, the council will meet the contractor surveyor, the roofing contractor, and we will agree the work that needs doing there and then. And I think I'm not sure which council asked the question about, you know, going back and back with roof leaks. That's one of the reasons. I think there's historically we've tried to repair and the more we build that relationship with the roofing contractor rather than a general contractor, we'll be in a better position to be able to make the judgment as to at what point in time we make the decision that we're not going to patch repair this roof. Actually, it needs a new roof and we will carry out that work. I think the link between damper mould and particularly the temporary accommodation. We do have those numbers. We are linking it up. I've not got the numbers at hand because we do have a decant policy around how we will provide and when we will provide properties to enable works to be carried out. I think one of the key challenges that we've just we've got there is just the volume or the lack of volume of properties that are available with the housing crisis and the demand for housing. So we've got that work where we're moving properties through as quickly as possible. But again, when it comes to decanting, we do have challenges which I understand because residents who may be overcrowded actually want that decant to be a permanent move. But we don't provide permanent decants where it's damper mould and we're carrying out repairs. Actually, we will carry out the repairs and then people need, residents need to deal with their overcrowding issue in accordance with the letters policy. Thank you, Steve. I think Councillor Beale-Levitt's got a quick follow-up. Just a very quick follow-up. You mentioned about the quality control and working with the contractor to make sure that it's a more streamlined process. If you can update me on whether the quality control review has started and if so, what kind of shake is that end of the minute? I'm not sure what quality control review you're referring to. It's on page 199 of the Ombudsman report saying that there should be a review of quality control. Let me try and find the 199 quickly. We are reviewing. Sorry, taking my time. There's too many pages. I may have that page number wrong. I think we've got the page number wrong. I'll pick it up, Councillor Winilabake, and come back to you individually if you want. As far as the quality control review and our contractors, that's linked to the replacement of the contractors and the process that we've put in place. I'll pick out the specific section in the report. It was page 119. I'll have a look at it and come back to you. Thank you. I think I'm just going to draw this item to a close. I don't know whether anyone else wants to add anything. Councillor McKenzie, do you want to have a last word? Yes, thank you, Chair. I'd just like to sign off by saying the current state of play is not where we want to be. I think I've repeated this in several different forums, but we are leaning in the right direction in terms of performance, turnarounds and also around resident satisfaction. There's still a long way to go, but I do believe that with the initiatives we're taking, one thing I would like to stress, this is an iterative process that we are learning as we go along. But I do think in the forthcoming year, if we hold steady and actually make good on the improvements we've made, together with a new IT system put into place, I do think the direction of travel is something which our residents are going to actually see real benefits from and to actually recognise that. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think we can all very much agree with that sentiment and hope that there'll be a very different picture when we come back to speak to the panel next year. Thank you. So I'll now draw that item to a close. Thank you, everyone, for coming along and contributing. To now go back to the main agenda, we're now going on to item 7, which is the minutes of the previous meeting. Do members agree the minutes? Great, thank you. Then agenda item 8 is a scrutiny panel work programme. The draft work programme appears on pages 261 to 265 of the agenda, so it's a working document and we will be regularly updating it for meetings. But just to note that we do have a number of different areas that we're keen to look at in the scrutiny panel, including the Council's use of AI and Council services, transformation programme and strategy, review of Hackney Council's public engagement consultation, the corporate peer challenge and action plan, and our ongoing work on poverty reduction and net zero in the climate action plan. So we do have a number of different pieces of cross-cutting work to look at the Council services. So are there any comments or questions on the work plan? Nope, not here. And item 9, any other business? I can't see any. I now declare the meeting closed. Thank you very much, everybody, for coming along. [BLANK_AUDIO]