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Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Monday 28th October, 2024 7.00 pm
October 28, 2024 View on council website Watch video of meetingTranscript
Transcript
Transcript
Transcript
Good evening. Welcome to the overview and scrutiny committee meeting. As both the chair and vice chair have given apologies in advance, the first item on the agenda will be the election of a chair for the meeting. Are there any nominations? >> Silently, I would like to nominate Councillor Mitra. >> Thank you. Are there any other nominations? Is everybody happy to vote in Councillor Mitra to chair the meeting? Say aye. Everyone agreed? Perfect. So Councillor Mitchell will chair. Thank you. >> Thank you very much, everybody. Welcome to this meeting of the overview and scrutiny committee. Please note that there is a supplementary agenda for this meeting. This is an updated appendix of the charges report. The charges are on page 8 and pages 87 to 90 under section 100B of the local government act 1972. The chair is of the opinion that the report should be considered as a matter of urgency as a result of special circumstances which are that there have been minor amendments to the appendix and that the committee would like to consider the updated fees and charges during the consultation period. Please also note that meetings in fact are recorded and broadcast and may be included in the broadcast by attending either in person or online. Councillor recordings are covered by a privacy policy which can be found at www.barnet.gov.uk. Please can I remind members and speakers to introduce themselves when speaking for the first time and for those in the room to use the microphones by pressing the speaker image in the middle of the microphone device. I turn to agenda item one, minutes of the previous meeting which are on pages 5 to 16. Can I take that that's an accurate record of previous meeting. Is that agreed? I think that's agreed unanimously. I will sign those minutes. Now it gets tricky. Item number two, absence of members. We have apologies for absence from Councillors Rose, Rich and Zinkin. We welcome our substitutes, Councillors Calick and Lemmon. And I think we are also offering our congratulations to Councillor Zinkin on becoming sorry on Councillor Cornelius on becoming a grandfather. Congratulations. I'm about to become an uncle and I'm filling me with dread. But congratulations. Right. We've moved on to item number three which are declarations of interest. Do members have any declarations of interest in relation to the agenda items tonight. I'm not seeing any item number four dispensations granted by the monitoring officer. There are none rattling away through the agenda. Public comments and questions item number five. There are none item number six members items. There haven't been any members items received and there's always entitled to submit them if there are matters of interest to you. I do encourage you to do so. That takes us to the main substantive item, which is item number seven. Review of capita contracts on our papers from pages 17 to 52. Councillor Naqvi, welcome to the stage. I think it's Barry May. Right. Okay. Councillor Naqvi I think you've allegedly got three minutes but I might not be paying attention to the clock if you've got more to say. I suspect I'll be very brief chair. Thank you very much. I'll allow Barry to explain precisely the methodology laid out for returning some of the services in house as stated in the report. Just a broad summary for the benefit of committee. It was our administration's desire to bring back in house certain services that were outsourced to capita and over the period of time that we were observing how capital is delivering those services, it became clear and quite frighteningly transparent how poor the service delivery on part of capita was and how bad the value for money that ratepayers in Barnet were getting as a result of those contracts being outsourced. Now, naturally, because of the complexity of some of the service areas and the intertwined nature in which capita delivers them, we want to make sure that the in house process is managed effectively and not done in a way that will cause disruption to the organisation and to service users in Barnet and that's what this report is detailing, a mechanism by which we can restore in house those services without any sort of disruption to Barnet residents. I hand over to Barry if I may chair. Thank you. Apologies. We have the leader of the council, Councillor Rawlings, as well. Barry. I'm just here to answer the easy questions. Remarkably prescient introduction. Well done. Very well timed. Right. I'm going to head straight into questions. Very certain members. Can I get an indication of who would like to ask questions? I write them down and decide on an order so I can see Councillor Cornelius, Councillor Lemon, Weisel. OK, we'll go with then Councillor Inocente. We'll go in that order. Thank you. Well, not surprisingly, I do have a few questions and I'll sort of pitch them in with some comments as well, if I may. It's a very broad band of services that are coming in and it's disappointingly slow. And if I was making a comment about this report, it looks like it could have been written a year ago, really. And there hasn't been that much moving on. And I note that. The other thing I noticed that with the IT and the change, I'm very concerned that Councillor Rawlings will remember when we ran the IT service ourselves in the past, it was not great. And, you know, I accept council IT is always a step behind the rest of the world. But you do have to make capital investment in it. And when the capital is being queried in this report, and if you don't buy the computer kit or get it, then this isn't going to happen. And the short range renewal of the IT contract, I mean, it's a mere blink in local authority terms. Months can just disappear very quickly. And I wonder whether you might, when you're considering this at cabinet, go for a longer extension to give yourself half a chance of doing it. I mean, that is a concern for me. You know, I accept we can't go back into the past and you have the majority, so you're going to do this and I understand this and I understand that it's important to you. But it's also going to be extremely costly. But I am very concerned that if you've reduced the, I think it's, I can't read my writing so you'll be very pleased about that. But if you've reduced the capital from 4.8 million to 2.7 million at a time when IT inflation is quite tremendous, I mean, that doesn't sound terribly intellectually savvy, if I can put it like that. I mean, it's more likely to be the other way round and end up with six and a half, I would have thought. It doesn't go down ever. So I really appreciate your comments on that. And I think this is very, very complex, this capital contract. I remember when we signed it in the first place, and I know you were involved in that Barry, and we had filing cabinets full of documents to look through. And certainly from our side, we split the reading of them because it was so tremendous, such a tremendous task, and I'm sure you did the same. But I think we will be asking that there is a greater degree of scrutiny on this, so that there can be, even if it's an informal working group, as the transition from capita to barnet or new scheme will happen very infelicitously close to an election. And naturally, of course, I expect that we'll be returned to office at that election. So we don't want to have to deal with a mess not knowing about it. And I'm sure that given we all have an interest in things being smooth in Barnet, we would want to support you, were you to win the next election, by having actually talked about some of the problems in advance. Thank you. As I recall, Councillor Cornelius, every Labour member of the then-scrutiny committee read the whole contract from front to back. It's physically impossible. Physically impossible. You couldn't have done that. The background document was documentation filled of rooms. Yes, that's why it took so long. I can answer something. First of all, at the time, I think it was just me that read, it was the range history. 15 Labour arch files on one contract and 11 on the other. There were 26 Labour arch files altogether. There's a couple of points I can answer. One is the extension. You're saying six months is the blink of an eye. What it actually means is that the extension of the contract is going from two years, seven months, to three years, one month. Remember, it's already on an extension. So we're extending the extension, partly, as you say, because there's the local elections. We may differ as to what the expected result is, but we do not want any IT issues during a local election. The other one, which I hadn't occurred on, is simply that apparently it's the worst time to change a contract at the beginning of the financial year. Because of the changes in the benefits, you have to feed those in. What the problem with the IT contract is that it was signed for 10 years with no break laws. As you say, IT changes a lot, which means every time things were bolted on, it added to the cost. What we've got here is a negotiated cost for the investment in new IT. It's the agreement with CAPTA. That's what's needed. If you're saying, well, if you're in power, you'd give CAPTA more money, well, you're not very good negotiators. This is what we've negotiated, the amount and the amount that they're happy with. I think there is still a scrutiny wrong in the thought of this, but this report is just about agreeing those brief extensions on already an extension, so that it doesn't interfere with the local election. So there's time for the Revs and Benj to take account of any changes that have to be done at the beginning of the financial year. So they're very pragmatic. This is a very pragmatic report. This is what needs to be done just to ease the way to moving away from CAPTA. That's sort of the way I read it. I don't know if opposite have a slightly different view, but that's the way I read it. I thought you cut me off deliberately, Chairman, but if the role of scrutiny, I mean, yes, okay, this is going to go to cabinet and the decision will be made. Okay, that's fine. I accept that. We perhaps have a few points that were put through to that. But I'm asking for a greater scrutiny role on this as it goes forward, because it is going to run through the election. And we would, as current opposition members, we would like value greater information and the thought processes it's going through. And who knows, we might actually come up with something that's helpful. I look forward to that day. I mean, I've only been a Councillor 26 years, but I do look forward to that day when you come up with something useful. Well, let me give you a compliment. I was always very pleased to steal your good ideas. Thanks for that. I just think the way of looking at it is what this report is about a temporary, a short increase on to what then existed. If you're talking about the longer run about moving away from capital or doing a procurement exercise or whatever, yes, there is an increased role for scrutiny for that period. And I know I'd welcome all party involvement. Were you just wanting to add to the list? I'm not following up. Great. I'll add you to my list. I see Councillor David wants to speak, but I'll come back to you later. Councillor Nackley wants to come in first. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I thought I'd just supplement what the leader has to say with the other aspect of this report, perhaps to benefit or rather to give some comfort to Councillor Cornelius with respect to the future involvement of scrutiny in respect of how this is going to develop in times to come. So, yes, the extension of the existing contract over the period of the election is an effort on our part to ensure there's minimal disruption to the election IT processes. But the paper also contains an options appraisal for the forward approach to how the services can be brought back in-house. And for the same reason as we thought the extension was necessary, we do not want this issue to be mired in ideological entrenchment. It needs to be done for reasons of pragmatism and cost benefit to residents, which is why if a fully insourced or a fully outsourced model is not of benefit to us in a particular service space, it is something that we will disregard in favour of some sort of hybrid approach, which is what the options appraisal does detail quite extensively. And I'm sure officers would be able to enlighten you as to some of the particulars of that, should you be interested. Mr Lemann, then Weisel, then Incenty, Kaluk and David. Yeah, thanks, Chair. Yes, quite a detailed report, which primarily covers the areas of the capital contract that haven't been brought in-house yet. But in terms of those areas that have been brought in-house, whether that's highways, facilities, finance, you've got these sort of decent examples that you'd like to share about what benefits that has brought for those services that have been brought in-house. I'll start. The main benefit to me, and it always has been, is accountability. But we've now got services that are accountable to us as councillors, and we're accountable and accountable to all the services already brought in. Some of them are very big, like planning and so on, that I don't think should have been keeping the risk. We're seeing a bit short-sighted. It's enabled us to look at those services and reorganise them and restructure them. And from the point of view of staff, it's enabled them to have a better pension and better pay. My view is always, and I think it's been consistent from the start, this is not about whether it saves money or doesn't save money. It's whose services are accountable to the public, to the public in some way. So I think there's been a lot of benefit. But to me, the main benefit is that we have more control over things like planning, because before, share some control over our services. If I may add, I couldn't agree with that description more. Accountability and transparency are the single most important things that we've been able to gain back. The inefficiencies that we're able now to detect within the running of the organisation, and our ability therefore to remedy them, is greatly enhanced. Being able to meet challenges such as failure demand or putting together a holistic delivery model to deal with complex cases, those sorts of things simply wouldn't have been tenable or feasible within an outsource model in the same way. So it's given us an ability to meet the challenges of the borough in a way that I think is far more reflective of our ambition as a local authority. Do you have anything you want to follow up on? Yes, just a quick follow up. You talk about accountability and you also touched on control there as services. Does that pave the way to look at initiatives involving other boroughs for shared services, for example, or other things of that ilk? I will say that that is always the holy grail, whether we can get the other authorities to work with us. But in a lot of respects I do think that we can be path leaders in service delivery, and hopefully if other local authorities see it work in Barnet and they can see the benefits and the merits of it, then they can adopt it also. We're not entirely in charge of whether or not other local authorities want to partner with us in a lot of spaces we've tried and been rebuffed. So it's not necessarily entirely within our gift to achieve that. The only other thing I would say is it is easier to look at shared services. Other councils weren't going to share their services with Capita because it led to what could be said, what's commercially confident. I would say that it's increased the opportunity to work with other councils, but it's not as easy as it says because often contracts are at different times and are open up and so on. But it is something we are looking at, and obviously with things like the Harrow Barnet law, there are really some shared services. And the other thing, just quickly, because IT's been mentioned, do remember that there's a lot of IT services that are happening within the council as it is. It's not that all IT is with Capita. And with the increasing look at digitalisation, AI and so on, more is coming from within the council and not from within Capita anyway. Okay, Councillor Weiser. Thank you, Chair. From the report, a lot of the reason why this decision to extend is having to be made is because of the timing of March 2026. Now obviously that was known at the time that Policy and Resources made their decision that both Councillor Mitchell and I and Councillor Rawlings were at that meeting to bring this in house. And I do wonder in terms of learning lessons for future decision making, why this was not raised when we had that meeting in 2022. The financial year end never changes. And the local elections are a set date every four years that unlike general elections are not a moveable feast. So why were these problems not identified back in 2022 when the decision was made to end the contract in March? And I think it's something we need to look at so that we know the future decision making if we are looking at entering new contracts and having these discussions in the future, where what went wrong, basically in 2022. And this wasn't brought to Councillors attention when we were making our decision then. I'll take the Councillors first, and then I'll go to Declan. You're right, it should have been considered at the time I signed it off. So I have to take responsibility near Culper on that one. You want something added to that? It did go to the committee and none of the opposition mentioned a problem with it either. Let's let's I think I did Barry. Let's, let's not get into a back and forth about this right now. Is that the end of your questions? I've got Councillor Inocenti next. I think Councillor Knack, you sort of answered my question. It was just it was about how do we avoid this becoming a political football and how do we protect the because it's going over the local elections? How do we protect this work project? Because it's such a vast project, which is going to cost a lot of money. How do we protect it moving forward? Should the administration change as well? Is there is there other things in place for that? Absolutely. Thank you, Councillor. I'll try to answer as many questions prior to them being asked as possible. I think I might speak things up. Well, the entire intention behind the the current options appraisal and the way in which we're currently discussing it in a public forum with with scrutiny, having quite an active role in in overseeing how the development is moving forward is an effort to make it as bipartisan and cross party as possible so that there's there's maximum ability for both sides of the of the chamber to input into how this contract will evolve, because naturally, no one really knows what's going to happen in twenty twenty six. So it's in everyone's interest to make sure that the organisation is as stable throughout that period, both sides of the election as it can possibly be. Do you have any follow ups? The other part, the question was, is it is it protected after the election? So should the administration change? Is this work program protected? Will it move forward as planned or could it all be changed again? So very technical question that I may need to request officer assistance on. I would suspect that there are obviously risks, costs and and contractual obligations that would be breached if a if an about turn were done effectively in twenty twenty six. At that point, we will have been well progressed on on any particular option we choose to to go ahead with. So I couldn't say it's impossible, but I would say it's it's highly unlikely and probably very inadvisable. OK, see, if you're in agreement with that side. This will come back as part of any forward work that we do as well. So the detail is required when finding of contracts or changing them. But something for us to monitor the forward work programme. Can I go to Councillor Callick next and then Councillor David? Thank you. I'd like to. Broadly, the performances have been good. Improvement initiatives are being delivered. Areas of underperformance have been addressed in robust contract management controls. And I'd like to commend the administration for doing this. And also note that had the previous administration wanted to them correctly, there wouldn't have been room for this improvement. Are there any particular areas improvement that you can enlighten us on? Thank you. You know, there's a couple of things there. One is it does need improving and the test will be how well that is done. It's obviously the capital have got a bit. Thank you, Chair. I note that the collection rates cancelled time of which will reduce the debt that we're currently carrying has a capital giving suggestions of how they hold. Thank you, Chair. On the subject of council tax collection, do we have an idea how many of those council tax that are unpaid council tax? How many of those people can't pay? Therefore, we won't we won't be able to collect that money, even if we tried on how many are just not paying for whatever reason. Is there is there a statistic for how many people can't pay? I think one thing is if obviously there are people can have difficulty paying for businesses. Some things you have to write off and I think makes up what I think is working well and it provided we can merge these things is things like the benefit app that Barnet have produced 8 million pounds more benefits into Barnet. Being able to offer advice and another route for people rather than just saying pay up or the bail is not on your door. You're behind. Do you need to get advice? Have you tried the benefit app? But eventually we have to have that sanction of saying you've got to pay in the end. So there are debts that we do write off. People who are in hospital a long time had one where the person had dementia. That is difficult to collect. But we also I think the collection rate also depends on giving people proper debt advice, suggesting ways, checking that they're getting everything they're entitled to. Because a lot of people don't see this with pension credits for example. So people can get into debt they don't have to. If we can offer a way out not only do we have a better collection rate but people have a better quality of life by getting what they're due. So I think it's a two handed approach. It's not necessarily threatening. It's offering a helping hand as well. So that people can pay their bills. We need bills paid. But if we can help people. Just to add, were it to have been the case that CAPTA were proactive in chasing errant debt and finding out whether or not people were not paying for reasons other than their inability to pay, then a reasonable assumption could have been made that the residual bad debt is because of people who are in dire financial straits. Unfortunately, frustratingly, that hasn't been the case. CAPTA has been very, very poor in chasing owed council tax. As the current chair when he moonlights as the chair of audit will know, they've been very poor at fulfilling that contractual obligation. In more recent times that was because the termination of the contract was within eyesight so they didn't have an incentive. But the extension now should hopefully give us a degree of latitude I suppose to request that they actually observe their contractual requirement to chase up council tax owed to us. Thank you. I like to think I sunlight rather than moonlight as the chair of audit. I think that's a very interesting exchange because one of the problems with the current system when you fall behind with your council tax payment and fall behind and fall behind and fall behind, the only point at which the council knows that we're in need of some form of support is when there's a court summons and you go through a bailiff system, we have to present something at court. So having an app is a great way for that residents get on it. I think one of my concerns would be, are the residents who fall behind on their council tax rings before things get to court? I think what we have to make sure and it may happen already that that first letter that says you're falling behind makes comment about the app generally not having the money. You know, they don't generally get to the stage where it requires debt collectors or court action unless problems is very, very, very large so I don't know whether David wants to come back on that. But I think correct me if I'm wrong, but I think on council tax collection, we're at 96% in the national average. I don't know where we are with this rate. Sorry, which is unusual because we were above the average before the pandemic. Business rates are slightly different in that some authorities have a lot of different individuals, to be honest. So it is more difficult, but we are comparing ourselves with others and there's no reason we should be behind the others in both. I'll give you the answer, but I wonder whether it is something to do with the fact, I wonder whether the stats are actually reliable because since there's been an awful lot of business tax relief for the small retailers anyway, so I wonder whether they've actually come out of the equation. I mean, we've got some huge business rate payers. I think, you know, Frank Cross and Pentland and people like that. So I'm surprised that the stat rather than worried about it, I think. Do you want to request that information? Can we request that before we come to a recommendation? I just want to check. Does anybody else have any further questions? So can we can we request that? There is further investigation of that stat before it goes to cabinet. I mean, I'm sure officers were looking cross at me that they've already done it, but we'd love to see the results of that and the. Well, I'm sure officers have been very thorough in what they've done, but I think it it does merit a further look at the business rate collection to check that it's accurate and since everyone's slagging off capita, we can blame them entirely. I assume we're interested in both business rates and council rates. Well, yeah, but I mean, the council, I'm slightly reluctant to support the idea of setting the dogs of capita on our barnet residence to try and squeeze another one percent out. I think I think they're not they've not been gentle people in the past. And whilst we want that, I think we need to be quite careful about that. But the business rating does concern me. And if we're making another request, could we formally request a further involvement of scrutiny? Perhaps. Perhaps. I don't know whether the chair and vice chair were more interested in a new formal approach rather than a proper sort of set piece scrutiny meeting. So I think you're proposing an informal. Yeah, if you want to oppose it and. Yeah, excellent. OK, I'm quite happy to second that council wise or. Right. Yes, I think the proposal for an informal formal scrutiny session, can I take that? That's unanimously agreed. From the enthusiasm, I'm going to suggest it is agreed. Sorry. I'll check with governments the right word and it might be easy to call it a reference group or something. Yeah, I'm less official, but it doesn't need to go to the whole government. I don't think we've got an eagle with us today. So happy with guidance, governance want to give us. What they like, they can call it as a joint briefing meeting or discussion meeting or something, whatever. OK, fine. Well, I think that's agreed. OK, I think we've dealt with recommendations. More formally than. Can I move on to item number eight, please, the review of the get this right. I think we just did. We agreed. We agreed the reference. If officers do wish to leave, then they're welcome to. Right. Moving on to item number eight, the review of the charges, which are. Very large one pages, 53 to one hundred and seventy four. And as I mentioned earlier on, there's the part of the supplementary agenda say again, this is being introduced by Councillor and Councillor Schneider. Thank you to proceed with the introduction to. So this is the third time this particular report has been discussed and scrutinized in a public forum in as many weeks. And I think that's important to note up front for reason of the fact that it is something that affects all residents in Barnet, given that these are chargeable services that the local authority provides. This paper represents a proposal for how to amend those fees and charges for the upcoming year. We do so on an annual basis, partially to ensure that the provision of service is maintained at a high enough quality as befitting what service users expect, but also so they remain good value for buying at rate payers on an annual basis. We can also therefore take into account any economic fluctuations that may have occurred in the previous financial year. And this this particular proposal takes a methodology by which we can achieve that under the current climate. I don't know if Councillor Schneider wants to add anything open to questions. No, don't think so, but happy to answer any questions. OK. Don't all shout at me at once. Does anybody have any questions that they'd like to raise to members? I can see Councillors Prager, then Cohen, anyone, Cornelius, Lemon. We'll take them in that order. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. So our requirement, just scrolling up a little bit, is to consider the contents of the cabinet report. I'm finding a little bit is some of it a little bit misleading on page fifty nine and sixty. The summary of the parking charges is going to read out a couple of sentences. So it says currently parking in Barnet managed space can cost as little as thirty nine p on street or seventy seven p off street, while a bus offer fare costs one seventy five or three fifty if they're not taken with it. If the journeys aren't taken within an hour, the current charges can provide a financial incentive to make journeys by car rather than public transport, which is inconsistent with these objectives. As I just said, I find that quite misleading because. Those two sentences just completely ignore so many other costs surrounding car journey. So buying a car, the petrol, the road tax, the insurance and everything else that comes along with it. Secondly, in the next thirty six hours, the Labour government is due to increase bus fares and buy by 50 percent, which again is obviously is not mentioned here at all. And most of the costs of parking are so much more than what's being referred to here. So I just looked earlier today at the cost of parking just outside and in town hall. So on the boroughs. And again, that the the agenda item refers to thirty nine p seventy seven p. Actually, the minimum charge is one pound fifty six to park outside this building. And it's exactly the same in most of the area here. An hour is three pounds twelve, two hours is six pounds twenty three. So to really equate it with a one pound seventy five bus fare is actually very reasonable. I just personally I think that that line there is really misleading. I'd like to see whether that can be updated. Yeah, I mean, there are other costs to running a car other than parking, but what we're just trying to do there is what we want to do is have a consultation on whether we can set parking charges more consistently across the borough. You quoted the cost of parking outside the town hall, but there is a wide variation of charges across the borough. So we just want to look at whether that can be consulted and whether that can be done more consistently and also with a nudge towards active travel. Whereas we recognise there are people who need and people are still going to continue to use their cars. But whether we can start to nudge people to use active travel where possible in line with the strategy that your administration actually. So thank you, Councillor. I understand where you're coming from and ignored a little bit of what I was asking, but the active travel push is great, but it's ignoring. It's a bit already a little bit outdated. It's ignoring any electric vehicle transport. So, for example, in this in this agenda item here, we're increasing on a half percent on all street charging. And then we're seeing things. So besides for two items, which are after I look through the thousands and thousands of charges. There was HMO pre licenses, a CCTV request, which were which which went up a huge amount, but almost every item went up within 10 percent, except for those two items I mentioned and visitor parking permits, which have gone up 88 percent and 94 percent respectively. So this consultation really sits alongside the increases that are already taking place and are being implemented in this item here. So what I'm saying is bus fares are increasing cost costs are increasing. And and what what we're just seeing is is is a above inflationary and we'll come back to inflationary. I'm sure a few minutes time. What exactly that means. A so all these charges are increasing exponentially higher for these specific charges. The only thing I'd add to my colleagues comments in response to Council Prager is that the auxiliary costs of the ancillary costs related to managing a car are those borne by car users for the choice of being car users. Whereas the cost involved in using the bus is also contributing to maintenance of the public infrastructure required to run the bus service, which isn't taken into account when you're when you're parking in a local authority maintained car park. So I don't think it's an unreasonable comparison to make between one and the other. This is an additional choice that car users are making to use a local authority maintained car park. There is no equivalent choice by a bus user not to pay for the bus infrastructure. It is all involved in the single unit cost of a bus ticket. Just to say sorry on bus charges, obviously there are the changes that you were talking about Council Prager of the outside of London rather than rather than in London where there are no charges to the good value bus fares that the mayor of London already has in place. So Councillor Steinman that's not correct for the whole of the borough of Barnet. I think it's worth mentioning and Councillor Nacchio. That's exactly what road taxes paid for. That's exactly the point. That's what it covers. But Councillor Nacchio, just a question I haven't asked you yet but I've been pondering on it for a while but your title of cabinet member for financial sustainability and reducing poverty. Do you find that those two items clash with one another often because what I'm seeing here is a lot of a lot of attempts to increase the borough's financial sustainability by increasing the prices across the board. How does that help with reducing poverty when all we're seeing is more and more charges to Barnet's residents. I think it's a slightly puzzling comment to suggest that the financial sustainability isn't integrally responsible for reducing people's dependence and falling into cycles of poverty. But setting that aside and focusing more on the contents of this particular report. This is entirely about the organisation and managing our finances in a responsible and effective way and meeting our statutory obligation to set a balanced budget each financial year. I don't see that as in any way antithetical or inconsistent with our desire to reduce poverty across the borough or assist residents that may be approaching cycles of poverty. I don't have a further question but just to clarify that we're talking about reducing poverty across the board, but we are seeing above inflationary increases on a huge amount of the borough's charges now some of those are easy to consider things like building permits and a lot of the highways charges which will many of them are 10% or plus increases. But a lot of these charges are the day to day charges that affect Barnet's residents. I'm going to come in on that very slightly, which is to say that, you know, I've been here long enough that I remember the easy council model that the council was run by under the capita contract which was very much to charge for the kind of certain that work that very much was about charging residents to use the services, many of which previously were free. So, it's a sign. Yeah, but that was that was the that that was a regime that was brought in, and you know those charges have risen over time as well, including times of high levels of inflation as well. I don't know when the cabinet members want to come back on any. Chair, are there other plans to scrap any of those charges. I'm sorry, are there plans to scrap any of the charges that you've referred to. These, these are for consultation and subject to an equalities assessment at this point at this moment so we're still consulting with the public, these are still to be determined, there is no decision made counselor. Okay, Councilor Weiser wants to follow up. Thank you, Chair. I just want to be clear, because I'm a member of having Councillor Seidman and I were consulted on fees and charges last year as Chair of Licensing and General Purposes that for a number of years, fees were not increased in line with inflation which left us charging less than the service cost the council to offer. Isn't part of this actually catching up on years of bad financial management by previous administrations, not increasing in line with inflation, and therefore leaving it for a problem down the road. It does apply to some charges, doesn't apply to the parking charges that we've been talking about, but there were several charges where previously were not being fully cost recovered, and we have been working towards that. Okay, can we go to Councillor Cohen and then Councillor Cornelius. I have a number of points on this item, you can bear with me. Let's take them all in one go. I'll try and give you all in one go. So I just want to pick up on the point, Councillor Schlinemann made before to Councillor Frager, before the pricing cost parking is that what you said? Yeah, so it was talking about having a more consistent approach. So if that is the case, then why are the prices all 4.5% increase? They're just moving, they're still going to be inconsistent with each other. As mentioned in the report, there's going to be a separate consultation on those changes to the parking charges. The 4.5% increases to charges as they are, so as you say, that's maintaining those inconsistencies. There'll be a separate consultation as set out in that cabinet report with regards to the parking part of the charges. Within the Appendix A, it sets out charges in terms of the on-street parking and in car parks and that are all pretty much around the 5, apart from the list of vouchers. What do you mean by it's going to be a different consultation on a different report? As set out in the report that went to cabinet, that's also here for scrutiny, recommendation 5, which was agreed at cabinet, was about authorising a separate consultation on policy changes with regard to setting future parking charges. That will come out shortly and that will be subject of a separate consultation to the main consultation on the fees and charges as set out in the Appendix. Looking at more consistency at a future date, not in relation to this report? Yeah, not in relation to the as set out in the Appendix, because as you say, that will apply 4.5% across the board. Okay, now there's four points I want to discuss in terms of the clarification on that one. One is in regards to refuse the bins fees, one is in regards to P96 dispensation to park one day per day and the other is in regard to bulk weight and visitor vouchers. So in terms of the SS3, for example, wheelie bin charges, here it says a 10% change. What is the difference between the 10% charges increased and the 4.5% in other bin charges? What's the rationale behind that? I see if Mr Miller wants to correct me, but that's as set out in the column on detail, that is part of for certain elements moving towards cost recovery, which is why certain charges, the increase, as you identify, is 10% rather than inflation, which is lower. But some of them are the same things, so for example, firstly under SS3, it says a bin, a 240 litre bin of recycling waste, which is a residential bin, I assume, is discretionary. Now I would have thought that is a statutory. Well, collecting bins is a statutory service, but it's discretionary what the council charges for a bin. There are no regulations about how much the council can charge for a bin or a replacement bin or a new one. It's strange because SS1 says statutory discretionary and SS2 says discretionary. I'm very confused regarding that and the cost recovery. For the residential, it's different to the commercial. That's because of a different size of bin, isn't it? No, the percentage difference is the same. I'll let Mr Miller come in on this. I've done my best so far. Do you want me to say them all first? Sorry, Mr Chairman, do you want me to go through the issues first? Okay, so the next one is P96 under dispensation. Let me read the other line. Dispensation, P96, parking, permission to park one vehicle per one day. It's a new product, 50 pounds. Can you tell me what that is for? Come in on this. I'll do that. Okay, that's it. I'll set the other ones. Visitor vouchers. You've proposed a huge increase in visitor vouchers this year. And I just wanted to know what are you anticipating to achieve? Are you participating to sell less, make more money? What are you looking to achieve in that? It must be in a calculation because otherwise it would be in the budget. What are you anticipating in terms of to sell? What's the drop off rate based on the increase in price? Both in terms of both sets of visitor vouchers. And in terms of bulky waste, again, massive increase in the charge there. I think it is right to say, I don't think it's any secret, that there's been a massive increase in fly tipping. The original intention when you put in the neighborhood skip collection to reduce fly tipping. It doesn't seem to have done that. And yet, you're more than doubling the bulky waste. What do you believe that will do to fly tipping? Bulky waste is not -- there isn't a doubling of the charge for bulky waste. There's an increase that's going up to 45 pounds. I think what you might be looking at when it says 45 to 115 is based on the number of items that you want to be collected. There is the increase -- I think it's 35 to 45 pounds for the first three items. It's 115 pounds if you want more items collected. And that is a cost recovery issue to reflect the cost of that to the council. But because of the issue of fly tipping, that's why we did bring back the free community skips. And there is also the option to have large electrical items collected free of charge from the house, which is a service provided through the North London Waste Authority. So we have provided lots of options there in order to try and reduce the amount of fly tipping alongside extra enforcement. That didn't answer my question, but -- It did. It didn't, because I asked what do you believe that the bulky waste increase in the price, whether it's doubled or not doubled, is going up, will do to fly tipping? Not anticipating that that will have the modest increase there to reflect the cost to the council while operating that service, will have any effect on fly tipping. As I've said, there are other initiatives which were not there previously, such as community skips that we have introduced alongside the bulky waste collection. And as I say, if you've got a big fridge freezer, you can have that collected from your door free of charge. Mr. Miller will now answer the question. Yes, thank you, Chair. So the prices for containers that you've noted, the differentials there, we have a number of lines in that particular part of the service where Boston, that might be because there's volatility in that particular part of the market. It might be influenced by oil prices, things like that. So we look to replicate that in the charges that we then ourselves on the privilege, Councillor Sniderman has set out. You had an answer on the bulky waste range of increases just a moment ago. I'm going to bring in Rebecca Eden, Head of Parking Enforcement, who's online at the moment, around the parking dispensation product, because that is a new product that is being proposed. Chair, if that's OK, if I can bring Rebecca in. I think that's fine. But I think we're going to try and wrap it up a bit and move on because we've got other members waiting to speak. Yeah, but I can understand. I would like the answer to those two questions. I think there are some elements of this that we might be able to get for you in writing for specific information that you're of. I think we are going to need to make a bit of progress. Yes, go ahead. Hi there. Good evening. Hopefully you can hear me. The dispensation product is a new product that we're seeking to offer. What this does is allows parking on a restriction such as a yellow line during controlled hours. We don't anticipate a huge volume or demand for this particular product, but it is meeting a need which we don't currently have a product for, which is for specialist deliveries or installations, such as the delivery and installation of glazing, scaffolding, things like that, which have to be done at a specific location where there is no suitable parking bay available that can be suspended. So it's very similar to a suspension, but it applies in locations where there isn't a parking bay that's available. OK, I'm going to take Councillor Mackay and then we're going to move on. Just so that Councillor Cohen doesn't think we're chirping any of his questions. The matter of visitor's permits, which hasn't had an answer given to it yet. I would like to remind him that there is a medium term financial strategy commitment that we inherited to increase the number of controlled parking zones in the borough. The enforcement of which obviously therefore represents a cost in order to ensure that the visitor permits are being used both effectively and properly. The cost of that enforcement needs to be reflected some way in fees and charges, and that is partially what this increase represents. I'm certain that any other detail you may need on your questions can be given in writing after the meeting. Councillor Cornelius. I'll be very quick because I'm asking for something rather than making a political point, which is uncharacteristic. But there's a huge increase in one of the adult social care charges from £300 to £2,000 for arranging a package. And I understand that that comes in when the person's capital and savings are at a certain point and the council then charges them to assist them getting into a home. I get that. But it is a huge sum of money for a lot of people, £2,000. And I wonder whether the cabinet member and the cabinet would actually consider tapering it so that someone who is just a squeak over the capital limit doesn't get hammered by the whole charge. If you could consider that, please. I appreciate Councillor's tact in dealing with what is a very sensitive issue in a requisite manner. So the adult social care market has been very acutely affected by the increase in both inflation and interest rates. And the costs that we have seen as local authority in maintaining that service are historically high. Naturally, this entire document is still subject to an equality impact assessment, part of which will reflect, therefore, the types of residents that you are talking about and recipients of social care. So I don't want to preempt the consultation and the outcome of the equalities impact assessment prior to making any decisions. But I very heavily suspect that precisely your concern will be reflected in that level of scrutiny. Well, I might not take you if that's the case. I've got Councillor Lemon next. Yeah, go ahead. Oops. Yeah, sorry about that. So in the report for cabinet on section 1.5, in terms of the methodology for inflation, what is that? Because it just says uplift in line with inflation. Is that CPR, RPI or something else? I've got a follow up as well. Thank you, Councillor. So the methodology we have used, which has also been used by the London Borough of Harrow is for retail price index, which is 4.5% is the methodology that we've used in the document. And given that it was an issue that Councillor Zinkin raised at cabinet and the conservative speaker, I think it was Councillor Mirren Smith raised that for council, it is worth perhaps noting why we chose to adopt that methodology rather than the consumer price index. So the RPI takes into account certain costs that are more reflective of costs that local residents actually experience in their day to day lives, such as housing costs, and it's much more sensitive to interest rates than the consumer price index. The Office of National Statistics, in fact, does recognise that individual personal inflation differs very heavily from the national rates of inflation that we measure, therefore they have individual personal inflation calculators that take into account your own shopping basket, therefore representing the increase in cost of living on an individual basis. So in a sense, that's what we are doing as a local authority. This is the true representation of the increase in costs that we bear as a local authority in relation to providing a lot of services that are detailed in this document. So the short answer to your question, is this the RPI index? Just a follow up as well. In terms of the fees that we charge in Barnet, I think Councillor Schneiderman earlier mentioned about with some fees and charges, we haven't raised it for years for whatever reason. In that context, how do we compare with say adjacent boroughs in North London in terms of the fees or perhaps some of the areas that generate the bulk of the income? Generally, we benchmark comparatively, particularly with neighbouring boroughs, but there is quite a wide variation depending on what particular charge you're looking at. But in setting the charges, part of what officers do is looking at what other authorities are charging. But the key thing is to make sure that we are ensuring full cost recovery because in a challenging financial climate we can't afford to not be recovering, providing those services or the materials such as bins. Chair, may I interject because this is the topic that I wanted to bring up as well. I don't want to go off topic. On the RPI and CPI, so Councillor Knacke quoted the ONS saying that RPI is an acceptable form. But the OBL Office of Budgetary Responsibility is very clear, I should say, that CPI is a much better formula to calculate the services and goods. And that is what we as a council provide. I'm sure it's coincidental that CPI was 2.2% at the time that in July 24 when RPI was 3.6 and has no correlation. But do you truly believe that RPI is a better indicator for us as a local borough to be tagging alongside when we're calculating our price increases? Councillor, I'm not sure better or worse are reasonable or adequate representations. It is a measure that is an industry standard within the public sector. In fact, the Conservative government over the past 14 years has used RPI when calculating taxable intake, duties on alcohol, on road tax, on cigarettes. And when it's calculating money that it's liable to pay out in terms of benefits or job seekers allowance, it uses CPI. So it seems to be that the Conservative government decides to use whichever measure it found more reasonable for income versus outcome. I don't think it's unreasonable to use the measure set by your government over the past 14 years to determine money that it is owed, which is what fees and charges are, money that the local authority is owed. Okay. Unless Councillor Levin has anything else he wants to add? Councillor Weiser, I think your question has been answered. Councillor David, I think was the next on my list. Just a general question. As we make increases, how does it compare with E-Year budget? How is it looking? How is the return? How is the income comparing to the projections with E-Year budget? Especially with parking, because I thought we had previously that we're not meeting targets. And if we're increasing, how does that look going forward in comparison to the actual? I mean, overall, the parking income is coming in below what is in the budget, but it's a mixed picture within different factors. So some contraventions are below what was put into the forecast. Some on-street parking charges are above what was in the forecast. So overall, though, the special parking account is coming in below the forecast. Is there any detail? Yes, Chair, through you. Just to be clear on parking, we don't have targets around income. Do we forecast our position? And behaviours have changed in terms of the impact of the pandemic, as we saw, and also positive behaviours as well in terms of compliance. So that does change our out-turn against forecasts. What would be the impact of an increase to a cost that we're not meeting the target? How would the future look so that we're not carrying unnecessary, we're not expecting more and getting less, and then carrying a cost against it that is not attainable? Yes, Chair, thank you. So we don't set a target for the income as such. The important thing with setting tariffs and charges for parking is that the tariffs we set are reasonable and compassionate. When we look at them, they're in line with other authorities. And where we are moving to with the proposals that you're seeing here are that they encourage use of more sustainable travel services. So to factor that into our forecasts, and it may be that we see a change in those forecasts over the period of time as people move to those different forms of testing and doing. One additional point that I should mention to Councillor David is that we are under a statutory responsibility to have a rational methodology for increasing fees and charges in any case, for which reason we cannot set. Okay, I take Councillor Ambe. In terms of these EV charging points, one understands that the cost tends to vary if there is advertisement on those charging points. How accurate is that? And if that's correct, is that something which could be looked into? And the second question I have for Mark is about charging the town hall for events. What's the rate? How is our current rate based on the market rate? Is the revenue stream from renting the town hall increasing or falling? Thank you. I'll answer on the visa. There's not a direct connection. So the new junk charges that are going in in town centres that do have advertising on them are actually a bit cheaper than some of the other charges. And also bring income to the council, and we're able to advertise local businesses on them as well, and they're exceedingly well used. The charges does depend. So there are different providers that provide the different charge points. So there are slightly different charges for each of those. But the arrangement we've jolt is they are actually they are a bit cheaper. And like I say, yeah, actually it's used 90% of the time, so we're quite proud of the fact that we've put in more risk. I'm not sure about the event incoming. Neither am I, Councillor. I'll have to write to you separately. Over the past financial year, would you like, or over a longer period? Let's see the last 24 months to finance shares. Chair, just one follow up question. One other complaint from residents is the environmental impact of these charging points. I don't know. I didn't know about pollution. Are you aware of that? Well, people have some raised issues about, well, about the environmental impact of having an advert on the panel. Well, obviously they do use, the advert itself does use electricity, but it is sourced through green energy. And the actual technical specification of the screens means a lot. It's using a lot less than, you know, that typical screen of that type does. But obviously, yes, an advert on it. But we say we're using them to promote council services as well as local businesses, as well as advertising. And that all helps to pay for users being able to get 15 minutes free every day. They'll be in there'll be a planning application for them. There'll be an environmental impact because of the advertising. There's a separate approval for the advertising of it as well. But that that. The information he's interested in, he can he can check the relevant planning. Yeah, I mean, we've got the detail, we've got all the details on that we can. Right. I don't think there are any further contributions. We we've got one comment that we wanted to make, which was a request to look at tapering the charges from that. Charge. It will be slung out the one charge. And chair, I should mention to the councilor, I've just been informed by officers that there is a separate consultation with respect to the adults charges in any case. Taken with respect to that rather than this fees and charges package. And members can feed into public consultations as well. So you've got that additional route, which is the task and finish group updates. Take it away. Thank you. Fiona Rayo, your screen manager. So provided for the committee's information is the updates on the task and finish groups and where they're at. We happy to take questions if there are any. But otherwise, it's just a position statement. Thank you. Note the updates. I see that we know the updates. Thank you very much. Item number 10 cabinet forward plan. He decisions schedule page hundred and eighty seven to do one. Thank you very much. So this just presents the current cabinet forward plan. If the committee has any items they'd like to request for pre decision scrutiny, please do let them be known. And just to note, really, that a couple of items we do have on our forward plan, but some of them have been delayed. So particularly the food waste service item will now be considering our January agenda rather than December. But any other requests, please do let us know. I assume if we're reviewing any previous cabinet decisions, that's not the cabinet backwards plan. No. Okay. I got that one in very proud. Right. We're only asked to note that item. So I'm going to assume we're noting that item. I'm moving on to the owner again. The agenda for the next meeting, I understand, is very, very crowded. We've got local plan, which is gigantic. It's a forest in and of itself full of papers. And I think we have screwed. Richard, you probably tell me. I think we've been through this four times. We've got the food waste strategy, the transport strategy and school's tree. There is a suggestion to reschedule the barn at home items to the meeting after and possibly cyber security. Now, this is not the only committee that considers cyber security. Councilor Prager will agree it's something that's part of the GAMS. It's part of the GAMS remit. So I have already asked officers to just check that we're not covering each other's work. So we'll probably come back to that. Councilor Weiser. So I'm just trying to understand if we're looking at the next committee meeting, because you said the next meeting is quite crowded or the meeting after the items you're listing on January. And I was getting very confused. The January meeting is getting a bit busy, so I think we're moving. We're looking at moving to come here and whether it's any different to what GAMS considered a couple of meetings ago. Fabulous. So no specifically new points to add to what the chair said, mainly just really to ask permission or the committee's agreement that for the next meeting, we've got our agenda set. That's not changing for the January meeting. It's suggested that we prioritize the transport strategy, school street implementation, the food waste service and Barnet's local plan adoption, as these are either time sensitive or already in progress. And then we would be moving cyber security later pending consideration of whether it's different to what's considered our GAMS committee. And the two Barnet Homes items would also be added to the agenda after that space pending, if that's agreed with the committee. I'm very willing to bet that it's no different. I understand the reality, but can I express why it's difficult? I very much agree with you. I think the quality of scrutiny that we can offer get limited if there are too many items on an agenda, whereas the 25th of January marches. So apologies for that, but there is a lot for us to get through. Right. We're only asked to note the updates, so I presume we're happy to note the updates. Item number 12. Any items the chair decides are urgent. Many items, I think, are urgent, but none relevant for this committee. Thank you very much, everybody. Good night. [BLANK_AUDIO]
Transcript
Good evening. Welcome to the overview and scrutiny committee meeting. As both the chair and vice chair have given apologies in advance, the first item on the agenda will be the election of a chair for the meeting. Are there any nominations? >> Silently, I would like to nominate Councillor Mitra. >> Thank you. Are there any other nominations? Is everybody happy to vote in Councillor Mitra to chair the meeting? Say aye. Everyone agreed? Perfect. So Councillor Mitchell will chair. Thank you. >> Thank you very much, everybody. Welcome to this meeting of the overview and scrutiny committee. Please note that there is a supplementary agenda for this meeting. This is an updated appendix of the charges report. The charges are on page 8 and pages 87 to 90 under section 100B of the local government act 1972. The chair is of the opinion that the report should be considered as a matter of urgency as a result of special circumstances which are that there have been minor amendments to the appendix and that the committee would like to consider the updated fees and charges during the consultation period. Please also note that meetings in fact are recorded and broadcast and may be included in the broadcast by attending either in person or online. Councillor recordings are covered by a privacy policy which can be found at www.barnet.gov.uk. Please can I remind members and speakers to introduce themselves when speaking for the first time and for those in the room to use the microphones by pressing the speaker image in the middle of the microphone device. I turn to agenda item one, minutes of the previous meeting which are on pages 5 to 16. Can I take that that's an accurate record of previous meeting. Is that agreed? I think that's agreed unanimously. I will sign those minutes. Now it gets tricky. Item number two, absence of members. We have apologies for absence from Councillors Rose, Rich and Zinkin. We welcome our substitutes, Councillors Calick and Lemon. I think we are also offering our congratulations to Councillor Zinkin on becoming, sorry, on Councillor Cornelius on becoming a grandfather. Well done. Congratulations. I'm about to become an uncle and I'm filling me with dread. But congratulations. Right. We've moved on to item number three which are declarations of interest. Do members have any declarations of interest in relation to the agenda items tonight? I'm not seeing any. Item number four, dispensations granted by the monitoring officer. There are none. Rattling away through the agenda. Public comments and questions. Item number five. There are none. Item number six, members items. There haven't been any members items received. Members are always entitled to submit them if there are matters of interest to you. I do encourage you to do so. That takes us to the main substantive item which is item number seven, review of capita contracts on our papers from pages 17 to 52. Councillor Knacke, welcome to the stage. I think it's Barry May. Okay. Councillor Knacke, I think you've allegedly got three minutes but I might not be paying attention to the clock if you've got more to say. I suspect I'll be very brief, Chair. Thank you very much. I'll allow Barry to explain precisely the methodology laid out for returning some of the services in-house as stated in the report. Just a broad summary for the benefit of committee. It was our administration's desire to bring back in-house certain services that were outsourced to capita and over the period of time that we were observing how capital was delivering those services, it became clear and quite frighteningly transparent how poor the service delivery on part of capita was and how bad the value for money that ratepayers in Barnet were getting as a result of those contracts being outsourced. Now, naturally, because of the complexity of some of the service areas and the intertwined nature in which capita delivers them, we want to make sure that the in-house process is managed effectively and not done in a way that will cause disruption to the organisation and to service users in Barnet and that's what this report is detailing, a mechanism by which we can restore in-house those services without any sort of disruption to Barnet residents. I hand over to Barry if I may chair. Thank you. Apologies. We have the leader of the council, Councillor Morley as well. Barry, if you may. Sure. I'm just here to answer the easy questions. It's a remarkably prescient introduction. Well done. Very well timed. Right. I'm going to head straight into questions if very certain members have. Can I get an indication of who would like to ask questions? I'll write them down and then decide on an order so I can see Councillor Cornelius, Councillor Lemmon, Weisel. Okay. We'll go with Councillor Inocente. We'll go in that order. Thank you. Well, not surprisingly, I do have a few questions and I'll sort of pitch them in with some comments as well, if I may. It's a very broad band of services that are coming in and it's disappointingly slow and if I was making a comment about this report, it looks like it could have been written a year ago really and there hasn't been that much moving on and I note that. The other thing I notice that with the IT and the change, I'm very concerned that Councillor Rawlings will remember when we ran the IT service ourselves in the past, it was not great and I accept council IT is always a step behind the rest of the world, but you do have to make capital investment in it and when the capital is being queried in this report, and if you don't buy the computer kit or get it, then this isn't going to happen and the short range renewal of the IT contract, I mean, it's a mere blink in local authority terms, months can just disappear very quickly and I wonder whether you might, when you're considering this at cabinet, go for a longer extension to give yourselves half a chance of doing it. That is a concern for me. I accept we can't go back into the past and you have the majority, so you're going to do this and I understand this and I understand that it's important to you, but it's also going to be extremely costly, but I am very concerned that if you've reduced the, I can't read my writing so you'll be very pleased about that, but if you've reduced the capital from 4.8 million to 2.7 million at a time when IT inflation is quite tremendous, I mean, that doesn't sound terribly intellectually savvy, if I can put it like that. I mean, it's more likely to be the other way round and end up at about six and a half, I would have thought. It doesn't go down ever, so I really appreciate your comments on that and I think this is very, very complex, this capita contract. I remember when we signed it in the first place and I know you were involved in that, Barry, and we had filing cabinets full of documents to look through and certainly from our side we split the reading of them because it was such a tremendous task and I'm sure you did the same, but I think we will be asking that there is a greater degree of scrutiny on this so that there can be, even if it's an informal working group, because the transition from capita to Barnet or new scheme will happen very infelicitously close to an election and naturally, of course, I expect that we'll be returned to office at that election, so we don't want to have to deal with a mess not knowing about it and I'm sure that given we all have an interest in things being smooth in Barnet, we would want to support you, were you to win the next election, by having actually talked about some of the problems in advance. Thank you. As I recall, Councillor Cornelius, every Labour member of the then-scrutiny committee read the whole contract from front to back of all the things. It's physically impossible, physically impossible, you couldn't have done that, the background document was documentation filled a room. Yes, that's why it took so long. I can answer some. First of all, at the time, I think it was just me that read, it was the re-entry history, 15 Labour arch files on one contract and 11 on the other, there were 26 Labour arch files all together. There's a couple of points I can answer. One is the extension, you're saying six months is a blink of an eye, what it actually means is that the extension of the contract is going from two years seven months to three years one month. Remember, it's already on an extension, so we're extending the extension, partly, as you say, because there's the local elections. We may differ as to what the expected result is, but we do not want any IT issues during a local election. The other one, which I hadn't echoed on Rebs and Benj, is simply that apparently it's the worst time to change a contract at the beginning of the financial year. Because of the changes in the benefits, you have to feed those in. The problem with the IT contract is that it was signed for 10 years with no break laws. As you say, IT changes a lot. Every time things were bolted on, it added to the cost. What we've got here is a negotiated cost for the investment in new IT. It's the agreement with capital that's what's needed. If you're saying, well, if you're in power, you'd give capital more money, well, you're not very good negotiators. This is what we've negotiated, the amount and the amount that they're happy with. I think there is still a scrutiny role in a lot of this, but this report is just about agreeing those brief extensions on already an extension so that it doesn't interfere with the local election. So there's time for the Rebs and Benj to take account of any changes that have to be done at the beginning of the financial year. This is a very pragmatic report. This is what needs to be done just to ease the way to moving away from capital. That's all. I thought you'd cut me off deliberately, Chairman, but if the role of scrutiny, I mean, yes, okay, this is going to go to cabinet and the decision will be made, okay, that's fine. I accept that. We perhaps have a few points that we'll put through to that, but I'm asking for a greater scrutiny role on this as it goes forward, because it is going to run through the election and we would, as current opposition members, we would like value greater information and the thought processes it's gained through. And who knows, we might actually come up with something that's helpful. I look forward to that day happening. I've only been a Councillor 26 years, but I do look forward to that day when you come up with something useful. Well, let me give you a compliment. I was always very pleased to steal your good ideas. Thanks for that. I just think the way of looking at it is what this report is about a temporary, a short increase onto what then exists in something to get it done. If you're talking about the longer run about moving away from capital or doing a procurement exercise or whatever, yes, there is an increased role for scrutiny for that period and I'd welcome an all party involvement. Are you just wanting to add to the list? I'm not following up. Great. I'll add you to my list. I see Councillor David wants to speak, but I'll come back to you later. Councillor Knackely wants to come in first. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I thought I'd just supplement what the leader has to say with the other aspect of this report, perhaps to benefit or rather to give some comfort to Councillor Cornelius with respect to the future involvement of scrutiny in respect of how this is going to develop in times to come. So, yes, the extension of the existing contract over the period of the election is an effort on our part to ensure there's minimal disruption to the election IT processes, but the paper also contains an options appraisal for the forward approach to how these services can be brought back in house. And for the same reason as we thought the extension was necessary, we do not want this issue to be mired in ideological entrenchment. It needs to be done for reasons of pragmatism and cost benefit to residents, which is why if a fully insourced or a fully outsourced model is not of benefit to us in a particular service space, it is something that we will disregard in favour of some sort of hybrid approach, which is what the options appraisal does detail quite extensively, and I'm sure officers would be able to enlighten you as to some of the particulars of that, should you be interested. Yeah, thanks, Chair. Yes, quite a detailed report, which primarily covers the areas of the CAFTA contract that haven't been brought in house yet. But in terms of those areas that have been brought in house, whether that's highways, facilities, finance, you've got these sort of decent examples that you'd like to share about what benefits that has brought for those services that have been brought in. Right, I'll start. The main benefit to me, and it always has been, is accountability. We've now got services that are accountable to us as counsellors, and we're accountable and accountable to all the services already brought in. Something very big that like planning and so on that I don't think should have been keeping the risk. We're seeing a bit short-sighted. It's enabled us to look at those services and reorganise them and restructure them. And from the point of view of the staff, it's enabled them to have a better pension and better pay. I've always, my view is always, and I think it's been consistent from the start, this is not about whether it saves money or doesn't save money. It's who's the services are accountable to the public and somewhat. So I think there's been a lot of benefits, but to me the main benefit is that we have more control over things like plan, because before we'll share some control over our services. If I may add, I couldn't agree with that description more. Accountability and transparency are the single most important things that we've been able to gain back. The inefficiencies that we're able now to detect within the running of the commission and our ability therefore to remedy them is greatly enhanced. Being able to meet challenges such as failure demand or putting together a holistic delivery model to deal with complex cases, those sorts of things simply wouldn't have been tenable or feasible within an outsource model in the same way. So it's given us an ability to meet the challenges of the borough in a way that I think is far more reflective of our ambition as a local authority. Do you have anything you want to follow up on? Yeah, just a quick follow up. You talk about accountability and you also touched on control there as services. Does that sort of pave the way to look at initiatives involving other boroughs for shared services, for example, or other sort of things of that ilk? I will say that that is always the holy grail, whether we can get the other authorities to work with us. But in a lot of respects, I do think that we can be path leaders in service delivery and hopefully if other local authorities see it work in Barnet and they can see the benefits and the merits of it, then they can adopt it also. We're not entirely in charge of whether or not other local authorities want to partner with us in a lot of spaces. We've tried and been rebuffed, so it's not necessarily entirely within our gift to achieve that. The other thing I would say is it is easier to look at shared services. Other councils weren't going to share their services with Capita because it led to what could be said, what's commercially confident. I would say that it increases the opportunity to work with other councils, but it's not as easy as it says, because often contracts are at different times and are overlapping and so on. It is something we are looking at, and obviously with things like the Harrow Barnet Law, there are really some shared services. The other thing, just quickly, because IT has been mentioned, do remember that there's a lot of IT services that are happening within the council as it is. It's not that all IT is with Capita. With the increasing look at digitisation, AI and so on, more is coming from within the council and not from within Capita anyway. OK, Councillor Weisel. Thank you, Chair. From the report, a lot of the reason why this decision to extend is having to be made is because of the timing of March 2026. Now, obviously that was known at the time that Policy and Resources made their decision that both Councillor Mitra and I and Councillor Rawlings were at that meeting to bring this in house. And I do wonder, in terms of learning lessons for future decision making, why this was not raised when we had that meeting in 2022. The financial year end never changes. And the local elections are a set date every four years that, unlike general elections, are not a moveable feast. So why were these problems not identified back in 2022 when the decision was made to end the contract in March? And I think it's something we need to look at so that we know future decision making if we are looking at entering new contracts and having these discussions in the future, what went wrong basically in 2022. And this wasn't brought to Councillors attention when we were making our decision then. You're right, it should have been considered at the time I signed it off, so I have to take responsibility on that one. It did go to the committee. None of the opposition mentioned a problem with it either. Let's not get into the back and forth about this right now. Is that the end of your questions? I've got Councillor Inosenti next. I think Councillor Knack we sort of answered my question. It was just it was about how do we avoid this becoming a political football and how do we protect the, because it's going over the local elections, how do we protect this work project? Because it's such a vast project which is going to cost a lot of money, how do we protect it moving forward should the administration change as well? Is there any other things in place for that? Absolutely. Thank you, Councillor. I'll try to answer as many questions prior to them being asked as possible. I think I might speak things up. Well, the entire intention behind the current options appraisal and the way in which we're currently discussing it in a public forum with scrutiny having quite an active role in overseeing how the development is moving forward is an effort to make it as bipartisan and cross party as possible so that there's maximum ability for both sides of the chamber to input into how this contract will evolve. Because naturally no one really knows what's going to happen in 2026, so it's in everyone's interest to make sure that the organisation is as stable throughout that period, both sides of the election as it can possibly be. Do you have any follow-ups? The other part of the question was is it protected after the election? So, should the administration change, is this work programme protected? Will it move forward as planned or could it all be changed again? It's a very technical question that I may need to request officer assistance on. I would suspect that there are obviously risks, costs and contractual obligations that would be breached if an about turn were done effectively in 2026. At that point we will have been well progressed on any particular option we choose to go ahead with, so I couldn't say it's impossible but I would say it's highly unlikely and probably very inadvisable. This will come back as part of any forward work that we do as well, so the detail is important. Can I go to Councillor Caleck next and then Councillor David? Thank you. I'd like to note that broadly the performances have been good, improvement initiatives are being delivered. Areas of underperformance have been addressed with robust contract management controls and I'd like to commend the administration for doing this and also note that had the previous administration monitored them correctly there wouldn't have been room for this improvement. Are there any particular areas of improvement that you can enlighten us on? Can I just add a couple of things here. One is it does need improving and the test will be how well that is done. I think it's important to note that the other areas of improvement that we have been working on are the ones that are not being developed. I think it's important to note that the other areas of improvement that we have been working on are the ones that are not being developed. The other areas of improvement that are not being developed are the ones that are not being developed. Some things you have to write off and I think makes up. What I think is working well and combining we can merge these things, is things like the benefit app that Barnet have produced. If you have the benefit app or the bailiffs knock on your door you are behind, do you need to get advice, have you tried the benefit app. Eventually we have to have that sanction of saying you have to pay in the end. There are debts that we do write off, people in hospital a long time had one where the person had dementia. I think the collection rate also depends on giving people proper debt advice, suggesting ways, checking that they are getting everything they are entitled to, because a lot of people don't see this with pension credits for example, so people can get into debt they don't have to. If we can offer a way out, not only do we have a better collection rate, but people have a better quality of life by getting what they have used. I think it's a two-handed approach, it's not necessarily threatening, it's offering a helping hand as well, so that people can pay their bills, we need bills paid, but if we can help people Just to add, were it to have been the case that capital were proactive in chasing errant debt and finding out whether or not people were not paying for reasons other than their inability to pay, then a reasonable assumption could have been made that the residual bad debt is because of people who are in dire financial straits. Unfortunately, frustratingly, that hasn't been the case, capital has been very, very poor in chasing owed council taxes, as the current chair when he moonlights as the chair of audit will know, they've been very poor at fulfilling that contractual obligation. In more recent times, that was because the termination of the contract was within eyesight, so they didn't have an incentive, but the extension now should hopefully give us a degree of latitude, I suppose, to request that they actually observe their contractual requirement to chase up council tax owes owed to us, thank you. I like to think I sunlight moonlight chair, but I think that's a very interesting exchange because one of the problems with the current system, when you fall behind with your council tax payment, and fall behind and fall behind and fall behind, the only point at which the council knows that we're in need of some form of support is when there's a court summons and you go through a bailiff system, we have to present something at court, so I think having an app is a great way forward, that residents get on it. I think one of my concerns would be, are the residents who fall behind on their council tax arrears before things get to court? I think what we have to make sure, and it may happen already, that that first letter that says you're falling behind makes comment about the app, generally not having the money, and you know, they don't generally get to the stage where it requires debt collectors or court action, unless the problem is very, very, very large. I don't know whether anyone else, Councillor David wants to come back on that. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think on council tax collection, we're at 96% in the national average, I don't know where we are with business rates. Sorry? Which is unusual, because we were above the averages before the pandemic. Business rates are slightly different in that some authorities have a lot of different individuals, to be honest, so it is more difficult, but we are comparing ourselves with others, and there's no reason we should be behind the others in both. I have to give you the answer, but I wonder whether it is something to do with the fact, I wonder whether the stats are actually reliable, because there's been an awful lot of business tax relief for the small retailers anyway, so I wonder whether they've actually come out of the equation. I mean, we've got some huge business rate payers, I think, you know, Frank Cross and some people like that, so I am surprised that the stat rather than worried about it, I think. Something in writing about the collection rates of business? I don't know off the top of my head, to be honest, Richard. Do we want to request that information to be circulated? We're doing recommendations now, yes, please. Can we request that? Before we come to recommendation, I just want to check, does anybody else have any further questions? Great, we'll go to your recommendation. So can we request that there is further investigation of that stat before it goes to cabinet? I mean, I'm sure officers are looking cross at me that they've already done it, but we'd love to see the results of that, and the... I didn't hear that. Well, I'm sure officers have been very thorough in what they've done, but I think it does merit a further look at the business rate collection to check that it's accurate. And, you know, since everyone's slagging off capita, we can blame them entirely. I assume we're interested in both business rates and council. Well, yeah, but I mean, the council, I'm slightly reluctant to support the idea of setting the dogs of capita on our barnet residence to try and squeeze another 1% out. I think they've not been gentle people in the past, and whilst we want that, I think we need to be quite careful about that. But the business rate thing does concern me, and if we're making another request, could we formally request a further involvement of scrutiny? Perhaps I don't know whether the chair and vice-chair were more interested in an informal approach rather than a proper sort of set piece scrutiny meeting. So I think you're proposing an informal follow-up approach. Yeah, I think if you want to propose it, then yeah, excellent, okay. I'm quite happy to second that. Council Weisel. Great. Yes, I can do the proposal for an informal scrutiny session. Can I take that that's unanimously agreed? From the enthusiasm, I'm going to suggest that it's agreed. Sorry, can I just say, I'll check with governance the right word, and it might be easier to call it a reference group or something. Yeah. The less official doesn't need the whole governance. I don't think we've got legal with us today, so I'm happy with whatever guidance governance want to give us. What they like, they can call it as a joint briefing meeting or discussion meeting or something, whatever. Use your microphone. No, okay, fine. Right, well, I think that's agreed. Right, okay. So I think we've dealt with recommendations more formally than we've done. Can I move on to item number eight, please, which is the review of, I'm going to get this right. I think we just did, we agreed the reference group. If officers do wish to leave, then they're welcome to. Right, moving on to item number eight, the review of the charges, which are very large one pages, 53 to 174. And as I mentioned earlier on, there's the part on the supplementary agenda. So again, this is being introduced by Councillors Knapfinn and Councillor Schneider-Millis. Thank you. Go ahead. Should I proceed with the introduction chair? So this is the third time this particular report has been discussed and scrutinized in a public forum in as many weeks. And I think that's important to note up front for reason of the fact that it is something that affects all residents in Barnet, given that these are chargeable services that the local authority provides. This paper represents a proposal for how to amend those fees and charges for the upcoming year. We do so on an annual basis, partially to ensure that the provision of service is maintained at a high enough quality as befitting what service users expect, but also so they remain good value for Barnet ratepayers on an annual basis. We can also therefore take into account any economic fluctuations that may have occurred in the previous financial year. And this particular proposal takes a methodology by which we can achieve that under the current climate. I don't know if Councillor Schneider-Millis wants to add anything. Open to questions. No, I don't think so, but happy to answer any questions. OK. Don't all shout at me at once. Does anybody have any questions that they'd like to raise to members? I see Councillors Prager, then Cohen, Cornelius, Lemon. We'll take them in that order. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. So our requirement, just scrolling up a little bit, is to consider the contents of the cabinet report. I'm finding a little bit, some of it a little bit misleading on page fifty nine and sixty, the summary of the parking charges. I'm just going to read out a couple of sentences. So it says,
Currently, parking in Barnet managed space can cost as little as thirty nine p on street or seventy seven p off street, while a bus offer fare costs one seventy five or three fifty if the journeys aren't taken within an hour. The current charges can provide a financial incentive to make journeys by car rather than public transport, which is inconsistent with these objectives.As I just said, I find that quite misleading because those two sentences just completely ignore so many other costs surrounding car journey. So buying a car, the petrol, the road tax, the insurance and everything else that comes along with it. Secondly, in the next thirty six hours, the Labour government is due to increase bus fares and by by fifty percent, which again is obviously is not mentioned here at all. And most of the costs of parking are so much more than what's being referred to here. So I just looked earlier today at the cost of parking just outside Hendon Town Hall. So on the boroughs and again that the the agenda item refers to thirty nine p seventy seven p. Actually, the minimum charge is one pound fifty six to park outside this building. And it's exactly the same in most of the area here. Seven hours, three pounds twelve, two hours at six pound twenty three. So to really equate it with a one pound seventy five bus fare is actually very reasonable. I just personally I think that that line there is really misleading. I'd like to see whether that can be updated. Yeah, I mean, there are other costs to running a car other than parking. But what we're just trying to do there is what we want to do is have a consultation whether we can set parking charges more consistently across the borough. You quoted the cost of parking outside the town hall. But there is a wide variation of charges across the borough. So we just want to look at whether that can be consulted, whether that can be done more consistently and also with a nudge towards active travel. Whereas we recognize there are people need and people are still going to continue to use their cars. But whether we can start to nudge people to use active travel where possible in line with the transport strategy that your administration actually introduced. So thank you, Councillor. I understand where you're coming from. Ignored a little bit of what I was asking. But the active travel push is great. But it's ignoring. It's a bit already a little bit outdated. It's ignoring any electric vehicle transport. So, for example, in this in this agenda item here, we're increasing on a half percent on all street char charging. And then we're seeing things. So besides for two items, which are after I looked through the thousands and thousands of charges, there was HMO pre licenses, a CCTV request, which were huge, which went up a huge amount. But almost every item went up within 10 percent, except for those two items I mentioned and visitor parking permits, which have gone up 88 percent and 94 percent respectively. So this consultation really sits alongside the increases that are already taking place and are being implemented in this item here. So what I'm saying is bus fares are increasing. Costs are increasing. And what we're just seeing is a above inflationary and we'll come back to inflationary in a few minutes time. What exactly that means. So all these charges are increasing exponentially higher for these specific charges. The only thing I'd add to my colleagues comments in response to Council Prager is that the auxiliary costs or the ancillary costs related to managing a car are those borne by car users for the choice of being car users. Whereas the cost involved in using the bus is also contributing to the maintenance of the public infrastructure required to run the bus service, which isn't taken into account when you're parking in a local authority maintained car park. So I don't think it's an unreasonable comparison to make between one and the other. This is an additional choice that car users are making to use a local authority maintained car park. There is no equivalent choice by a bus user not to pay for the bus infrastructure. It is all involved in the single unit cost of a bus ticket. Thank you, Councillor. Just to say, sorry, on bus charges, obviously there are the changes that you were talking about, Councillor Prager, obviously outside of London rather than in London where there are no charges to the good value bus fares that the Mayor of London already has in place. So Councillor Steinmann, that's not correct for the whole of the Borough of Barnet. I think it's worth mentioning and Councillor Knacke. That's exactly what road tax is paid for. That's exactly the point. That's what it covers. But Councillor Knacke, just a question I haven't asked you yet, but I've been pondering on it for a while, but your title of cabinet member for financial sustainability and reducing poverty. Do you find that those two items clash with one another often? Because what I'm seeing here is a lot of attempts to increase the borough's financial sustainability by increasing the prices across the board. How does that help with reducing poverty when all we're seeing is more and more charges to Barnet's residents? I think it's a slightly puzzling comment to suggest that financial sustainability isn't integrally responsible for reducing people's dependence and falling into cycles of poverty. But setting that aside and focusing more on the contents of this particular report, this is entirely about the organisation and managing our finances in a responsible and effective way and meeting our statutory obligation to set a balanced budget each financial year. I don't see that as in any way antithetical or inconsistent with our desire to reduce poverty across the borough or assist residents that may be approaching cycles of poverty. I don't have a further question, but just to clarify, we're talking about reducing poverty across the board, but we are seeing above inflationary increases on a huge amount of the borough's charges. Now, some of those are easy to consider things like building permits and a lot of the highways charges, which will many of them are 10% or plus increases. But a lot of these charges are the day to day charges that affect Barnet's residents. Yeah, I'm going to come in on that very slightly, which is to say that, you know, I've been here long enough that I remember the easy council model that the council was run by under the capita contract, which was very much to charge for the kind of certain that were that very much was about charging residents to use the services, many of which previously were free. Yeah, but that was a regime that was brought in and, you know, those charges have risen over time as well, including times of high levels of inflation as well. I don't know when the cabinet members want to come back on any of that. Chair, are there plans to scrap any of those charges? I'm sorry? Are there plans to scrap any of the charges that you've referred to? These these are for consultation and subject to an equalities assessment at this point at this moment. So we're still consulting with the public. These are still to be determined. There is no decision being made. Councillor. OK, Councillor Weiser wants to follow up. Thank you, chair. I just want to be clear because I'm a member of having Councillor Simon and I were consulted on fees and charges last year as chair of licensing and general purposes that for a number of years, these were not increased in line with inflation, which left us charging less than the service cost the council to offer. And isn't part of this actually catching up on years of bad financial management by previous administrations not increasing in line with inflation and therefore leaving it for a problem down the road? That does apply to some charges. It doesn't apply to the parking charges that we that we've been talking about. But there were a lot. There were several charges where previously were not being fully cost recovered. And we have been working towards that. OK, can we go to Councillor Cohen and then Councillor Cornelius? Chairman, I have a number of points on this item. You can bear with me. Let's take them all in one go. I'll try and give you all in one go. So I just want to pick up on the point Councillor Schneider made before to Councillor Prager. Before that, I think pricing. Parking. Is that what you said? Yes, I was talking about having a more consistent approach. So if that is the case, then why are the prices all 4.5% increase? They're just moving. They're still going to be inconsistent with each other. As mentioned in the report, there's going to be a separate consultation on those changes to the parking charges. The 4.5% increases to charges as they are. So as you say, that's maintaining those inconsistencies. There'll be a separate consultation as set out in that cabinet report with regards to the parking part of the charges. I understand that within the parking report, within the, I may have missed it, but within the Appendix A, it sets out charges in terms of the on-street parking and in car parks now. So we're pretty much around the 5, apart from the visitor vouchers. What do you mean by it's going to be a different consultation on a different report? As set out in the report that went to cabinet, that's also here for scrutiny. Recommendation 5, which was agreed at cabinet, was about authorizing a separate consultation on policy changes with regard to setting future parking charges. And that will come out shortly, and that will be subject of a separate consultation to the A consultation on the fees and charges as set out in the Appendix. So you're looking at more consistency as a future date, not in relation to this? Yeah, not in relation to the, as set out in the Appendix, because as you say, that will apply 4.5% across the board. Okay. Now, there's four points I want to discuss in terms of the clarification on that one. One is in regards to refuse the bins, fees. One is in regards to P96, the dispensation to park one day per day. And the other is in regards to bulky weight. And visitor vouchers, sorry. And visitor vouchers. So in terms of the SS3, for example, wheelie bin charges, here it says a 10% change. What is the difference between the 10% charges increased and the 4.5% in other bin charges? What's the rationale behind that? See if Mr. Miller wants to correct me, but that's as set out in the column on detail. That is part of, for certain elements moving towards cost recovery, which is why certain charges, the increase, as you identify, is 10% rather than inflation, which is lower. But some of them are the same things. So, for example, firstly, under SS3, it says a bin, a 240, that can lead to a bin of recycling of waste, which is a residential bin, I assume. Also is discretionary. Now, I would have thought that is a statutory. Well, collecting bins is a statutory service, but it's discretionary what the council charges for a bin. There are no regulations about how much the council can charge for a bin or a replacement bin or a new one. Okay, it's strange because SS1 says statutory discretion, the SS2 says discretionary. I'm very confused regarding that and the cost recovery. For the residential, it's different for the commercial. That's because of a different size of bin, isn't it? No, the percentage difference is the same. I'll let Mr. Minner come in on this. Thank you. I've done my best so far. Do you want me to say them all first? Sorry, Mr. Chairman, do you want me to go through the issues first? Okay. I think you've got a few. So the next one is P96. Under dispensation, I'll read the other line, dispensation P96, parking, permission to park one vehicle per one day. It's a new product, 50 pounds. Can you tell me what that is for? Okay, so I'll let the other ones. Visitor vouchers. You've proposed a huge increase in visitor vouchers this year. And I just wanted to know, what are you anticipating to achieve? Are you participating to sell less, make more money? What are you looking to achieve in that? It must be in a calculation because otherwise it would be in the budget. What are you anticipating in terms of to sell? What's the drop-off rate based on the increase in price? Both in terms of both sets of visitor vouchers. And in terms of bulky waste, again, massive increase in the charge there. I think it is right to say, I don't think there's any secret, that there's been a massive increase in flight. The original intention when you put in skip to reduce flight. It doesn't seem to have done that. And yet, you're more than doubling the bulky waste. What do you believe that will do to flight, I think? Bulky waste is not, there isn't a doubling of the charge for bulky waste. There's an increase, so it's going up to £45. I think what you might be looking at when it says £45 to £115 is based on the number of items that you want to be collected. There is the increase, I think it's £35 to £45 for the first three items. £115 if you want more items collected. And that is a cost recovery issue to reflect the cost of that to the Council. But because of the issue of fly tipping, that's why we did bring back the free community skips. There is also the option to have large electrical items collected free of charge from the House, which is a service provided through the North London Waste Authority. So we have provided lots of options there in order to try and reduce the amount of fly tipping alongside extra enforcement. That didn't answer my question. It didn't because I asked what do you believe that the bulky waste increase in the price, whether it's doubled or not doubled, is going up? It will do to fly tipping. I'm not anticipating that the modest increase there to reflect the cost to the Council while operating that service will have any effect on fly tipping. As I've said, there are other initiatives which were not there previously, such as community skips, that we have introduced alongside the bulky waste collection. And as I say, if you've got a big fridge freezer, you can have that collected from your door free of charge. Mr Miller will now answer the question. Yes, thank you, Chair. So the prices for containers that you've noted, the differentials there, we have a number of lines in that particular part of the service where Boston, that might be, because there's volatility in that particular part of the market, it might be influenced by oil prices, things like that. So we look to replicate that in the charges that we then have set out. I've had an answer on the bulky waste range of increases just a moment ago. I'm going to bring in Rebecca Eden, Head of Parking Enforcement, who's online at the moment, around the parking dispensation product, because that is a new product that is being proposed. Rebecca, Chair, if that's okay, if I can bring Rebecca in. I think that's fine, but I think we're going to try and wrap it up a bit and move on, because we've got other members waiting to speak. Yeah, but like I understand, I would like the answer to those two questions. I think there are some elements of this that we might be able to get for you in writing, for specific information that you're offering, but I think we are going to need to make a bit of progress. But yes, go ahead. Hi there. Good evening. Hopefully you can hear me. The dispensation product is a new product that we're seeking to offer. What this does is allows parking on a restriction such as a yellow line during controlled hours. We don't anticipate a huge volume or demand for this particular product, but it is meeting a need which we don't currently have a product for, which is for specialist deliveries or installations such as the delivery and installation of glazing, scaffolding, things like that, which have to be done at a specific location where there is no suitable parking bay available that can be suspended. So it's very similar to a suspension, but it applies in locations where there isn't a parking bay that's available. OK, I'm going to take Councillor Mackay and then we're going to move on. Just so that Councillor Cohen doesn't think we're chirping any of his questions. The matter of visitor's permits, which hasn't had an answer given to it yet. I would like to remind him that there is a medium term financial strategy commitment that we inherited to increase the number of controlled parking zones in the borough. The enforcement of which obviously therefore represents a cost in order to ensure that the visitor permits are being used both effectively and properly. The cost of that enforcement needs to be reflected some way in fees and charges, and that is partially what this increase represents. I'm certain that any other detail you may need on your questions can be given in writing after the meeting. Councillor Cornelius. I'll be very quick because I'm asking for something rather than making a political point, which is uncharacteristic. But there's a huge increase in one of the adult social care charges from £300 to £2,000 for arranging a package. And I understand that that comes in when the person's capital and savings are at a certain point and the council then charges them to assist them getting into a home. I get that. But it is a huge sum of money for a lot of people, £2,000. And I wonder whether the cabinet member and the cabinet would actually consider tapering it so that someone who is just a squeak over the capital limit doesn't get hammered by the whole charge. If you could consider that, please. I appreciate Councillor's tact in dealing with what is a very sensitive issue in a requisite manner. So the adult social care market has been very acutely affected by the increase in both inflation and interest rates. And the costs that we have seen as local authority in maintaining that service are historically high. Naturally, this entire document is still subject to an equality impact assessment, part of which will reflect, therefore, the types of residents that you are talking about and recipients of social care. So I don't want to preempt the consultation and the outcome of the equality's impact assessment prior to making any decisions, but I very heavily suspect that precisely your concern will be reflected in that level of scrutiny. I think let's minute that. I've got a whole row of people who want to. Well, I might not take you if that's the case. I've got Councillor Lemmon next. Oops. Sorry about that. So in the report from cabinet. On Section one point five, terms of the methodology for inflation. What is that, because it just says uplift in line with inflation, is that a CPR, RPR or something else? I've got a follow up as well. Thank you, Councillor. So the methodology we have used, which has also been used by the London Borough of Harrow, is for retail price index, which is 4.5% is the methodology that we've used in the document. And given that it was an issue that Councillor Zinkin raised at Cabinet and the Conservative Speaker, I think it was Councillor Miran Smith raised at full council. It is worth perhaps noting why we chose to adopt that methodology rather than the consumer price index. So the RPI takes into account certain costs that are more reflective of costs that local residents actually experience in their day to day lives, such as housing costs. And it's much more sensitive to interest rates than the consumer price index. The Office of National Statistics, in fact, does recognise that individual personal inflation differs very heavily from the national rates of inflation that we measure. Therefore, they have individual personal inflation calculators that take into account your own shopping basket, therefore representing the increase in cost of living on an individual basis. In a sense, that's what we are doing as a local authority. This is the true representation of the increase in costs that we bear as a local authority in relation to providing a lot of services that are detailed in this document. So the short answer to your question is this, the RPI index. Just a follow up as well. In terms of the fees that we charge in Barnet, I know that Councillor Schneiderman earlier mentioned about with some fees and charges, we haven't raised it for years for whatever reason. In that context, how do we compare with adjacent boroughs in North London in terms of the fees or perhaps some of the areas that generate the bulk of the income? Generally, we benchmark comparatively, particularly with neighbouring boroughs, but there is quite a wide variation depending on what particular charge you are looking at. But in setting the charges, part of what officers do is looking at what other authorities are charging. But the key thing is to make sure that we are ensuring full cost recovery because in a challenging financial climate we can't afford to not be recovering or providing those services or the materials such as bins. Chair, may I interject because this is the topic that I wanted to bring up as well. I don't want to go off topic. On the RPI and CPI, so Councillor Knacke quoted the ONS saying that RPI is an acceptable form. But the OBL Office of Budgetary Responsibility is very clear that CPI is a much better formula to calculate the services. And that is what we as a council provide. I'm sure it's coincidental that CPI was 2.2% at the time that in July 24 when RPI was 3.6 and has no correlation. But do you truly believe that RPI is a better indicator for us as a local borough to be tagging alongside when we're calculating our price increases? Councillor, I'm not sure better or worse are reasonable or adequate representations. It is a measure that is an industry standard within the public sector. In fact, the Conservative government over the past 14 years has used RPI when calculating taxable intake, duties on alcohol, on road tax, on cigarettes. And when it's calculating money that it's liable to pay out in terms of benefits or job seekers allowance, it uses CPI. So it seems to be that the Conservative government decides to use whichever measure it found more reasonable for income versus outcome. I don't think it's unreasonable to use the measure set by your government over the past 14 years to determine money that it is owed, which is what fees and charges are, money that the local authority is owed. Okay, unless Councillor Levin has anything else he wants to add. Councillor Wise, I think your question has been answered. Councillor David, I think was the next on my list. Just a general question. As we make increases, how does it compare with EEA budgets? How is it looking? How is the return? How is the income comparing to the projections with EEA budgets, especially with packing? Because I thought we had previously that we're not meeting targets. And if we're increasing, how does that look going forward in comparison to the actual? I mean, overall, the parking income is coming in below what is in the budget, but it's a mixed picture within different factors. So some contraventions are below what's put into the forecast. Some on-street parking charges are above what was in the forecast. So overall, though, the special parking account is coming in below the forecast. Any detail? Yes, Chair, through you. Yeah, just to be clear on parking, we don't have targets around income. Do we forecast our position? And behaviours have changed in terms of the impact of the pandemic, as we saw, and also positive behaviours as well in terms of compliance. So that does change our out-turn against forecasts. What would be the impact of an increase to what already we are not – to a cost that we are not meeting the target? What would the future look like? So that we're not carrying unnecessary – we're not expecting more and getting less, and then carrying a cost against it that is not attainable. Yeah, Chair, thank you. So we don't set a target for the income as such. The important thing with setting tariffs and charges for parking is that the tariffs we set are reasonable and compassionate. When we look at them, they're in line with other authorities. And where we are moving to with the proposals that you're seeing here are that they encourage use of more sustainable travel services. So to factor that into our forecasts, and it may be that we see a change in those proposals over the period of time as people move to those different forms of testing and doing. One additional point that I should mention to Councillor David is that we are under a statute of responsibility to have a rational methodology for increasing fees and charges in any case, for which reason we cannot set. Okay. I take Councillor Ambe. Thanks, Chair. My question was already asked by Councillor Cohen, so thank you for that. That was around the parking item and increasing charges. But I just have two observations or remarks, which I would obviously be grateful if it's clarified. In terms of these EV charging points, one understands that the cost tends to vary if there is advertisement on those charging points. How accurate is that? And if that's correct, is that something which could be looked into? And the second question I have for Mark is about charging the town hall for events. What's the rate? How is our current rate based on the market rate? Is the revenue stream from renting the town hall increasing or falling? Thank you. I mean, I'll answer on the visa. There's not a direct connection. So the new junk charges that are going in in town centres that do have advertising on them are actually a bit cheaper than some of the other charges and also bring income to the council. And we're able to advertise local businesses on them as well. And they're exceedingly well used. The charges does depend. So there are different providers that provide different charge points. So there are slightly different charges for each of those. But the arrangement we've jolt is they are actually they are a bit cheaper. And like I say, yeah, actually it's used 90% of the time. So I'm quite proud of the fact that we've put in more risk, significantly more PV charges. I'm not sure about the event incoming. And neither am I, Councillor. I'll have to write to you separately. Over the past financial year, would you like or over a longer period? Let's say the last 24 months to finance shares. Chair, just one follow up question. One other complaint from residents is the environmental impact of these charging points. I don't know. I didn't know about pollution. Are you aware of that? Well, people have some raised issues about the environmental impact of having an advert on the panel. Well, obviously they do use, the advert itself does use electricity, but it is sourced through green energy. And the actual technical specification of the screens means a lot. It's using a lot less than, you know, that typical screen of that type does. But obviously, yes, an advert on it is used in some lectures. But as I say, we're using them to promote council services as well as local businesses, as well as advertising. And that all helps to pay for users being able to get 15 minutes free every day. There'll be a planning application for them. There'll be an environmental impact. Because of the advertising, there's a separate approval for the advertising. Yeah, I mean, we've got the details. We've got all the details on that we can. Right. I don't think there are any further contributions. We've got one comment that we wanted to make, which was a request to look at tapering the charges from that charge. Otherwise it will be slung out. The one charge. Thank you. And chair, I should mention to the councillor, I've just been informed by officers that there is a separate consultation with respect to the adults charges in any case. Taken with respect to that rather than this fees and charges package. Okay. And members can feed into public consultations as well. So you've got that additional route, which is the task and finish group updates. Take it away, Fiona. Thank you for your screen manager. So provided for the committee's information is the updates on the task and finish groups and where they're at. We happy to take questions if there are any. But otherwise, it's just a position statement. Thank you. Thank you very much. So this just presents the current cabinet forward plan. If the committee has any items they'd like to request for pre decision scrutiny, please do let them be known. And just to note really that a couple of items we do have on our forward plan, but some of them have been delayed. So particularly the food waste service item will now be considering our January agenda rather than December. Any other requests, please do let us know. Okay, I assume if we're reviewing any previous cabinet decisions, that's not the cabinet backwards plan. Okay, I got that one in very proud. Right. We're only asked to note that item. So I'm going to assume we're noting that item and moving on to the owner again. The agenda for the next meeting, I understand is very, very crowded. We've got local plan, which is gigantic. It's a forest in and of itself full of papers. And I think we have screwed. Richard, you probably tell me. I think we've been through this four times. Yeah, political life, several times. We've got the food waste strategy, the transport strategy, and schools tree. Well, this will come to that. There is a suggestion to reschedule the barnet homes items to the meeting after and possibly cybersecurity. Now, this is not the only committee that considers cybersecurity. Councilor Prager will agree it's something that's part of the GOMS. It's part of the GOMS remit. So I have already asked officers to just check that we're not covering each other's work. But we'll probably come back to that council wise. So I'm just trying to understand if we're looking at the next committee meeting because you said the next meeting is quite crowded or the meeting after the items you're listing a January and I was getting very confused. The January meeting is getting a bit busy, so I think we're looking at moving to come here and whether it's any different to what GOMS considered a couple of meetings ago. Fabulous. So no specifically new points to add to what the chair said. Mainly just really to ask permission or the committee's agreement that for the next meeting, we've got our agenda set. That's not changing for the January meeting. It's suggested that we prioritize the transport strategy, school street implementation, the food waste service and Barnet's local plan adoption as these are either time sensitive or already in progress. And then we would be moving cybersecurity later pending consideration of whether it's different to what's considered our GOMS committee. And the two Barnet Homes items would also be added to the agenda after that space pending if that's agreed with the committee. I'm very willing to bet that it's no different. I understand the reality, but can I express my... No, I agree with you. It's difficult. I very much agree with you. I think the quality of scrutiny that we can offer get limited if there are too many items on an agenda, whereas the 25th of January marches. So apologies for that. But, you know, there is a lot for us to get through. Right. We're only asked to note the updates, so I presume we're happy to note the updates. Item number 12, any items the chair decides are urgent. Many items, I think, are urgent, but none relevant for this committee. Thank you very much, everybody. Good night.
- Bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]
Transcript
Good evening. Welcome to the overview and scrutiny committee meeting. And as both the chair and vice chair have given apologies in advance, the first item on the agenda will be the election of a chair for the meeting. Are there any nominations? Silently, I would like to nominate Councillor Mitra. Seconded. Thank you. Are there any other nominations? Is everybody happy to vote in Councillor Mitra to chair the meeting? Say aye. Everyone agreed? Yeah, perfect. So Councillor Mitchell will chair. Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody. Welcome to this meeting of the overview and scrutiny committee. Please note that there's a supplementary agenda for this meeting. This is an updated appendix the charges report. The charges are on page eight and pages eighty seven to ninety of the section one hundred B of the local government act. Nineteen seventy two. The chair is of the opinion must be that the report should be considered as a matter of urgency as a result of special circumstances, which are that there have been minor amendments to the appendix and that the committee would like to consider the updated fees and charges during the consultation period. Please also know that meetings are recorded and broadcast and you may be included in the broadcast by attending the in person or online council recordings are covered by our privacy policy, which can be found at www.barnett.gov.uk. Please can I remind members and speakers to introduce themselves when speaking first time for those in the room. Use the microphones by pressing the speaker image in the middle of the microphone device. I turn to agenda item one minutes of the previous meeting, which are on pages five to sixty. Can I take that's an accurate record of previous meeting. I agree. I think that's agreed unanimously. I will sign those minutes now. Now it gets tricky item number two absence of members. We have apologies for absence from councillors Rose, Rich and Zinkin. We welcome our substitutes Councillors Callick and Lemon. And I think we are also offering our congratulations to Councillors Zinkin on becoming. Sorry, on Councillor Cornelius on becoming a grandfather. Well done. Congratulations. I'm about to become an uncle and I'm filling me with dread. But yeah. Right. We've moved on to item number three, which are declarations of interest. Do members have any declarations of interest in relation to the agenda items tonight? I'm not seeing any. Item number four dispensations granted by the monitoring officer. There are a lot of them. Rattling away through the agenda. Public comments and questions item number five. There are none item number six members items. There haven't been any members items received and was always entitled to submit them if there are matters of interest to you. I do encourage you to do so. That takes us to the main substantive item, which is item number seven. Review of capita contracts on our papers from pages 17 to 52. Councillor McPhee. Welcome to the stage. I think it's Barry May. Right. OK. Councillor McPhee, I think you've allegedly got three minutes, but I might not be paying attention to the chair. Thank you very much. I'll allow Barry to explain precisely the methodology laid out for returning some of the services in-house, as stated in the report. Just a broad summary for the benefit of committee. It was our administration's desire to bring back in-house certain services that were that were outsourced to capita. And over the period of time that we were observing how capital is delivering those services, it became clear and quite frighteningly transparent how poor the service delivery on part of cap capital was and how bad the value for money that ratepayers and Barnett were getting as a result of those contracts being outsourced. Now, naturally, because of the complexity of some of the service areas and the intertwined nature in which capital delivers them, we want to make sure that the in-house process is managed effectively and not done in a way that will cause disruption to the organisation and to service users in Barnet. And that's what this report is detailing, a mechanism by which we can restore in-house those services without any sort of disruption to Barnet residents. I hand over to Barry. Thank you. Apologies. We have the leader of the Council, Councillor Rawlings as well. I'm just here to answer the easy questions. It's a remarkably prescient introduction. Well done. Very well timed. Right. I'm going to head straight into questions. If very certain numbers. Can I get an indication of who would like to ask questions? I write them down and then decide on the order so I can see Councillor Cornelius. Councillor Lemmon, Weisel. OK, we'll go with Councillor Inocente. We'll go in that order. Thank you. Well, not surprisingly, I do have a few questions and I'll sort of pitch them in with some comments as well, if I may. It's a very broad band of services that are coming in and it's disappointingly slow. And if I was making a comment about this report, it looks like it could have been written a year ago, really. And there hasn't been that much moving on. And I note that. The other thing I noticed that with the IT and the change, I'm very concerned that Councillor Rawlings will remember when we ran the IT service ourselves in the past, it was not great. And, you know, I accept council. IT is always a step behind the rest of the world. But you do have to make capital investment in it. And when the capital is being queried in this report and if you don't buy the computer kit or get it, then this isn't going to happen. And the short range renewal of the IT contract. I mean, it's a mere blink in local authority terms. Months can just disappear very quickly. And I wonder whether you might, when you're considering this at cabinet, go for a longer extension to give yourselves half a chance of doing it. That is a concern for me. You know, I accept we can't go back into the past and you have the majority. So you're going to do this and I understand this and I understand that it's important to you, but it's also going to be extremely costly. But I am very concerned that if you've reduced the, I think it's, I can't read my writing, so you'll be very pleased about that. But if you've reducing the capital from 4.8 million to 2.7 million at a time when IT inflation is quite tremendous. I mean, that doesn't sound terribly intellectually savvy, if I can put it like that. I mean, it's more likely to be the other way round and end up with about six and a half, I would have thought. It doesn't go down ever. So I really appreciate your comments on that. And I think this is very, very complex, this capital contract. I remember when we signed it in the first place, and I know you were involved in that Barry, and we had filing cabinets full of documents to look through. And certainly from our side, we split the reading of them because it was so tremendous, such a tremendous task, and I'm sure you did the same. But I think we will be asking that there is a greater degree of scrutiny on this so that there can be, even if it's an informal working group, as the transition from capita to Barnet or new scheme will happen very infelicitously close to an election. And naturally, of course, I expect that we'll be returned to office at that election. So we don't want to have to deal with a mess not knowing about it. And I'm sure that given we all have an interest in things being smooth in Barnet, we would want to support you, were you to win the next election, by having actually talked about some of the problems in advance. Thank you. As I recall, Councillor Cornelius, every Labour member of the then Scrutiny Committee read the whole contract from front to back of all the things. It's physically impossible. You couldn't have done that. The background documentation filled a room. Yes, that's why it took so long. I can answer some. First of all, at the time, I think it was just me that read, you know, it was the rearranged history, 15 Labour arch files on one contract and 11 on the other. There were 26 Labour arch files altogether. There's a couple of points I can answer. One is the extension. You're saying six months is a blink of an eye. What it actually means is that the extension of the contract is going from two years, seven months to three years, one month. Remember, it's already on an extension. So we're extending the extension, partly, as you say, because there's the local elections. We may differ as to what the expected result is, but we do not want any IT issues during a local election. The other one, which I hadn't occurred on, is simply that apparently it's the worst time to change a contract at the beginning of the financial year. Because of the changes in the benefits, you have to feed those in. The problem with the IT contract is that it was signed for 10 years with no break laws. As you say, IT changes a lot. It means every time things were bolted on, it added to the cost. What we've got here is a negotiated cost for the investment in new IT. It's the agreement with capita. That's what's needed. If you're saying, well, if you're in power, you'd give capita more money, well, you're not very good negotiators. This is what we've negotiated, the amount and the amount that they're happy with. I think there is still a scrutiny wrong in the thought of this, but this report is just about agreeing those brief extensions on already an extension so that it doesn't interfere with the local election. So there's time for the Revs and Benj to take account of any changes that have to be done at the beginning of the financial year. This is a very pragmatic report. This is what needs to be done just to ease the way to moving away from capita. That's the way I read it. I don't know if officers have a slightly different view, but that's the way I read it. You cut me off deliberately, Chairman, but if the role of scrutiny, I mean, yes, OK, this is going to go to cabinet and the decision will be made. OK, that's fine. I accept that. We perhaps have a few points that were put through to that. But I'm asking for a greater scrutiny role on this as it goes forward, because it is going to run through the election. And we would, as current opposition members, we would like value greater information. And the thought processes is gained through. And who knows, we might actually come up with something that's helpful. I look forward to that day happening. I've only been a Councillor 26 years, but I do look forward to that day when you come up with something useful. Well, that's well, let me give you a compliment. I was always very pleased to steal your good ideas. Thanks for that. I just think the way of looking at it is what this report is about a temporary, a short increase onto what then existed to get it done. If you talk about the longer run, about moving away from capital or doing a procurement exercise or whatever. Yes, there is an increased role for scrutiny for that period. And I welcome all party involvement. Were you just wanting to add to the list? I'm not following up. I'll add you to my list. I see Councillor David wants to speak, but I'll come back to you later. Councillor Nackley wants to come in first. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I thought I'd just supplement what the leader has to say with the other aspect of this report, perhaps to benefit or rather to give some comfort to Councillor Cornelius with respect to the future involvement of scrutiny in respect of how this is going to develop in times to come. So, yes, the extension of the existing contract over the period of the election is an effort on our part to ensure there's minimal disruption to the election IT processes. But the paper also contains an options appraisal for the forward approach to how these services can be brought back in house. And for the same reason as we thought the extension was necessary, we do not want this issue to be mired in ideological entrenchment. It needs to be done for reasons of pragmatism and cost benefit to residents, which is why if a fully insourced or fully outsourced model is not a benefit to us in a particular service space, it is something that we will disregard in favour of some sort of hybrid approach, which is what the options appraisal does detail quite extensively. And I'm sure officers would be able to enlighten you as to some of the particulars of that should you be interested. Mr Lemon, then Weisel, then Incenty, Caleck and David. Yeah, thanks, Chair. Yes, quite a detailed report, which primarily covers the areas of the capital contract that haven't been brought in house yet. But in terms of those areas that have been brought in house, whether that's highway facilities, finance, you've got these sort of decent examples that you'd like to share about what benefits that has brought for those services that have been brought in. The main benefit to me, and it always has been, is accountability. We've now got services that are accountable to us as counsellors and we're accountable and accountable to all the services already brought in. I'm very big like planning, so I don't think should be keeping the risk. We're seeing a bit short sighted. It's enabled us to look at those services and reorganise them and restructure them. And from the point of view of the staff, it's enabled them to have a better pension and better pay. I've always, my view is always, and I think it's been consistent from the start, this is not about whether it saves money or doesn't save money. It's who's the services are accountable to the public, to the public in some way. So I think there's been a lot of benefits, but to me, the main benefit is that we have more control over things like plan. Because before, we'll share some control over our services. If I may add that I couldn't agree with that description more. Accountability and transparency are the single most important things that we've been able to gain back. The inefficiencies that we're able now to detect within the running of the organisation and our ability, therefore, to remedy them is greatly enhanced. Being able to meet challenges such as failure demand or putting together a holistic delivery model to deal with complex cases, those sorts of things simply wouldn't have been tenable or feasible within an outsourced model in the same way. So it's given us an ability to meet the challenges of the borough in a way that I think is far more reflective of our ambition as a local authority. Do you have anything you want to follow-up on? Yeah, just a quick follow-up. You talk about accountability and you also touched on control there at services, does that sort of pave the way to look at initiatives involving other boroughs for shared services, for example, or other sort of things of that ilk? I will say that that is always the holy grail, whether we can get the other authorities to work with us. But in a lot of respects, I do think that we can be path leaders in service delivery and hopefully if other local authorities see it work in Barnet and they can see the benefits and the merits of it, then they can adopt it also. We're not entirely in charge of whether or not other local authorities want to partner with us in a lot of spaces. We've tried and been rebuffed, so it's not necessarily entirely within our gift to achieve that. The other thing I would say is it is easier to look at shared services. Other councils weren't going to share their services with Capita because it led to what could be said, what's commercially confident. I would say that there are, it's increased the opportunity to work with other councils, but it's not as easy as it says because often contracts are at different times and are over-knuck and so on. It is something we are looking at and obviously with things like the Harrow Barnet Law, there are already some shared services. And the other thing, just quickly, because IT's been mentioned, do remember that there's a lot of IT services that are happening within the council as it is. It's not that all IT is with Capita and with the increasing look at digitisation, AI and so on, more is coming from within the council and not from within Capita anyway. Okay, Councillor Weisel. Thank you, Chair. From the report, a lot of the reason why this decision to extend is having to be made is because of the timing of March 2026. Now, obviously, that was known at the time that policy and resources made their decision that both Councillor Mitchell and I and Councillor Rawlings were at that meeting to bring this in house. And I do wonder in terms of learning lessons for future decision making, why this was not raised when we had that meeting in 2022. The financial year end never changes and the local elections are a set date every four years that unlike general elections are not a moveable feast. So why were these problems not identified back in 2022 when the decision was made to end the contract in March? And I think it's something we need to look at so that we know future decision making if we are looking at entering new contracts and having these discussions in the future. What went wrong basically in 2022, and this wasn't brought to Councillors attention when we were making our decision then. You're right, it should have been considered at the time I signed it off, so I have to take responsibility near Culver on that one. You want something added to that, it did go to the committee and none of the opposition mentioned a problem with it either. I think I did, Barry. Let's not get into a back and forth about this right now, is that the end of your questions? I've got Councillor Inocente next. I think Councillor Knack will sort of answer my question. It was just it was about how do we avoid this becoming a political football and how do we protect the because it's going over the local elections? How do we protect this work project because it's such a vast project, which is going to cost a lot of money. How do we protect it moving forward should the administration change as well? Is there is there other things in place for that? Absolutely. Thank you, Councillor. I'll try to answer as many questions prior to them being asked as possible. I think I might speak things up. Well, the entire intention behind the current options appraisal and the way in which we're currently discussing it in a public forum with scrutiny, having quite an active role in overseeing how the development is moving forward is an effort to make it as bipartisan and cross party as possible so that there's maximum ability for both sides. Of the of the chamber to input into how this contract will evolve because naturally no one really knows what's going to happen in twenty twenty six. So it's in everyone's interest to make sure that the organisation is as stable throughout that period. Both sides of the election as it can possibly be. Do you have any follow ups? The other part of the question was, is it is it protected after the election? So should the administration change? Is this work programme protected? Will it move forward as planned or could it all be changed again? So very technical question that I may need to request officer assistance on, I would suspect that there are obviously risks, costs and and contractual obligations that would be breached if an about turn were done effectively in twenty twenty six. At that point, we will have been well progressed on on any particular option we choose to to go ahead with. So I couldn't say it's impossible, but I would say it's highly unlikely and probably very inadvisable. OK. This will come back as part of any forward work that we do as well. So the detail is required when finding of contracts or changing them, but something for us to monitor the forward work programme. Can I go to Councillor Caleck next and then Councillor David. Thank you. I'd like to. Broadly, the performances in good improvement initiatives are being delivered. Areas of underperformance have been addressed in robust contract management controls. And I'd like to commend the administration for doing this and also note that had the previous administration wanted to them correctly, there wouldn't have been room for this improvement. Are there any particular areas improvement that you can invite to us on a quantity data? Thank you. You know, just a couple of things there. One is. It does does need improving and the test will be how well that is done. It's obviously happy to have got a bit of. Thank you, Chair. I note that the collection rates council type of data about which will reduce the debt that we are currently carrying has capital. Giving suggestions of how they hold. OK, thank you, Chair. On the on the subject of council tax collection, do we have an idea how many of those council tax that are unpaid council tax? How many of those people can't pay? Therefore, we won't we won't be able to collect that money, even if we tried on how many are just not paid for whatever reason. Is there is a statistic for that? I think one thing is if obviously there are people who can have difficulty paying for businesses, some things you have to write off and I think they can. What I think is working well and providing we can merge these things, things like the benefit upon which you eight million pounds more benefits into barnet of being able to offer advice and another route for people, rather than just say pay up for the bail is not on your door. It's your your behind. Do you need to get advice? Have you tried to benefit? But eventually we have to have that sanction of saying. You know, you've got to pay in the end. So there are people, debts that we do write off, people who are in hospital a long time had one where the person had dementia. You know, that is difficult to collect. But we also I think as. The collection rate also depends on giving people proper debt advice, suggesting ways, checking that they're getting everything they're entitled to, because a lot of people don't see this with pension credits, for example. So people can get into debt. They don't have to. If we can offer a way out, not only do we have a better collection rate, but people have a better quality of life by getting more what they do. So I think it's a two handed approach. It's not necessarily threatening. It's how it's offering a helping hand as well. So that so that people can pay that we know we need bills paid. But if we can help people. Just to add word to have been the case, the capital proactive in chasing debt and finding out whether or not people were not paying for reasons other than their inability to pay them. The reasonable assumption could have been made that the residual bad debt is because of people who are in dire financial straits. Unfortunately, frustratingly, that hasn't been the case. Capita being very, very poor in in chasing owed council taxes as the current chair, when he moonlights as the chair of audit will know they've been very poor at fulfilling that contractual obligation. In more recent times, that was because the determination of the contract was within eyesight, so they didn't have an incentive. But the extension now should hopefully give us a degree of that of latitude, I suppose, to to request that they actually observe their contractual requirement to chase up council tax owes owed to us. Thank you. I like to think I sunlight well, the moonlight chair. I think that's a very interesting exchange because one of the problems with the current system, when you fall behind with your council tax payment and fall behind and fall behind and fall behind, the only point at which the council knows that we're in need of some form of support is when there's a court summons and you go through a bailiff system. We have to present something at court. So having a map is a great way for that residents get on it. I think one of my concerns would be all the residents who fall behind on their council tax before things get to court. I think what we have to make sure and it may happen already that that first letter that says you're falling behind. Makes comment about the generally not having the money, you know, they don't generally get to the stage where it requires debt collectors or court action. Unless the problems is very, very, very large. I don't know whether David wants to come back on that, but. I think correct me if I'm wrong, but I think on council tax collection, there are ninety six percent in the national bridge. I don't know where we are in business rates. Which is unusual because we were above the average is before the pandemic. Business rates are slightly different in that some authorities have a lot of different individuals. To be honest, it is more difficult, but we are comparing ourselves with others and there's no reason we should be behind the others in both. To give you the answer, but I wonder whether it is something to do with the fact I wonder whether the stats are actually reliable because since there's been an awful lot of business tax relief for the small retailers anyway. So I wonder whether they've actually come out of the equation. I mean, we've got some huge business rate payers. I think, you know, Frank Cross and Pentland and people like that. Oh, I am I'm surprised that I'm surprised that the stat rather than worried about it, I think. I mean, right. Writing about the collection rates of business, but I don't know off the top of my head, I'll be honest, Richard. Do you want to request that information? Doing recommendations now. Yes. Can we request that before we come to recommendation? I just want to check. Does anybody else have any further questions? So I can go to your recommendation. So so can we can we request that? There is further investigation of that stat before it goes to cabinet. I mean, I'm sure officers were looking cross at me that they've already done it, but we'd love to see the results of that. And the. I didn't hear that. Well, I'm sure officers have been very thorough in what they've done, but I think it it does merit a further look at the business rate collection to check that it's accurate. And, you know, since everyone's slagging off capita, we can blame them. We assume we're interested in both business rates and council. Well, yeah, but I mean, the council. I'm slightly reluctant to support the idea of setting the dogs of capital on our barnet residence to try and squeeze another one percent out. I think I think they're not they've not been gentle people in the past. And whilst we want that, I think we need to be quite careful about that. But the business rate thing does concern me. And if we're making another request, could we formally request a further involvement of scrutiny? Perhaps. Perhaps. I don't know whether the chair and vice chair were more interested in a new formal approach rather than a proper sort of set piece scrutiny meeting. So I think you're proposing an informal. But yeah, if you want to propose it and. Yeah, excellent. OK, I'm quite happy to second that council wise or. But yes, giving proposal for an informal, formal scrutiny session, can I take that? That's unanimously agreed. From the enthusiasm, I'm going to suggest it's agreed. Sorry, I'll check with governments the right word, and it might be easy to call it a reference group or something. Yeah, I'm not official, but it doesn't need to get the whole government. I don't think we've got legal with us today. So I'm happy with the guidance. Governance want to give us. What they like, they can call it as a joint briefing meeting or discussion meeting or something. Whatever. Well, I think that's agreed. OK, so I think we've dealt with recommendations. More formally than we can move on to item number eight, please, which is the review of get this right. I think we just did. We agreed. We agreed the reference group. If officers do wish to leave, then they're welcome to. Right. Moving on to item number eight, the review of the charges, which are. Very large, one page is fifty three to one hundred and seventy four, and as I mentioned earlier on, there's there's the part of the supplementary agenda. So again, this is being introduced by Councillors Knapp and Councillor Schneider. Thank you. Should I proceed with the introduction? So this is the third time this particular report has been discussed and scrutinized in a public forum in as many weeks. I think that's important to note up front for reason of the fact that it is something that affects all residents in Barnet, given that these are chargeable services that the local authority provides. This paper represents a proposal for how to amend those fees and charges for the upcoming year. We do so on an annual basis, partially to ensure that the provision of service is maintained at a high enough quality as befitting what service users expect, but also so they remain good value for Barnet rate payers on an annual basis. We can also, therefore, take into account any economic fluctuations that may have occurred in the previous financial year. And this this particular proposal takes a methodology by which we can achieve that under the current climate. I don't know if Councillor Schneider wants to add anything. Open to questions. No, don't think so, but happy to answer any questions. OK, don't all shout at me at once. Does anybody have any questions that they'd like to raise to members? I can see Councillors Prager, then Cohen, anyone, Cornelius, Lemon. We'll take them in that order. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. So our requirement, just scrolling up a little bit, is to, apologies, to consider the contents of the cabinet report. I'm finding a little bit, some of it a little bit misleading on page fifty nine and sixty, the summary of the parking charges. Just going to read out a couple of sentences. So says currently parking in Barnet managed space can cost as little as thirty nine p on street or seventy seven p off street, while a bus offer fare cost one seventy five or three fifty if they're not taken with it, if the journeys aren't taken within an hour. The current charges can provide a financial incentive to make journeys by car rather than public transport, which is inconsistent with these objectives. As I just said, I find that quite misleading because those two sentences just completely ignore so many other costs surrounding car journey. So buying a car, the petrol, the road tax, the insurance and everything else that comes along with it. Secondly, in the next thirty six hours, the Labour government is due to increase bus fares and buy by 50 percent, which again is obviously is not mentioned here at all. And most of the costs of parking are so much more than what's being referred to here. So I just looked earlier today at the cost of parking just outside and in town hall. So on the boroughs and again, that the the agenda item refers to thirty nine p seventy seven p. Actually, the minimum charge is one pound fifty six to park outside this building and it's exactly the same in most of the area here. An hour is three pounds twelve, two hours is six pound twenty three. So to really equate it with a one pound seventy five bus fare is actually very reasonable. I just personally I think that that line there is really misleading. I'd like to see whether that can be updated. Yeah, I mean, there are other costs to running a car other than parking. But what we're just trying to do there is what we want to do is have a consultation on whether we can set parking charges more consistently across the borough. You quoted the cost of parking outside the town hall, but there is a wide variation of charges across the borough. So we just want to look at whether that can be consulted and whether that can be done more consistently. And also with a nudge towards active travel, whereas we recognise there are people who need and people are still going to continue to use their cars. But whether we can start to nudge people to use active travel where possible, in line with the strategy that your administration actually. Thank you, Councillor. I understand where you're coming from and ignored a little bit of what I was asking. But the active travel push is great, but it's ignoring it's a bit already a little bit outdated. It's ignoring any electric vehicle transport. So, for example, in this agenda item here, we're increasing four and a half percent on all street charging. And then we're seeing things besides for two items, which after I looked through the thousands and thousands of charges, there was HMO pre-licences and CCTV requests, which were huge, which went up a huge amount. But almost every item went up within 10 percent, except for those two items I mentioned and visitor parking permits, which have gone up 88 percent and 94 percent respectively. So this consultation really sits alongside the increases that are already taking place and are being implemented in this item here. So what I'm saying is bus fares are increasing, costs are increasing. And what we're just seeing is a above inflationary and we'll come back to inflationary in a few minutes time. What exactly that means. So all these charges are increasing exponentially higher for these specific charges. The only thing I'd add to my colleague's comments in response to Councillor Prager is that the auxiliary costs or the ancillary costs related to managing a car are those borne by car users for the choice of being car users. Whereas the cost involved in using the bus is also contributing to the maintenance of the public infrastructure required to run the bus service, which isn't taken into account when you're when you're parking in a local authority maintained car park. So I don't think it's an unreasonable comparison to make between one and the other. This is an additional choice that car users are making to use a local authority maintained car park. There is no equivalent choice by a bus user not to pay for the bus infrastructure. It is all involved in the single unit cost of a bus ticket. Thank you, Councillor. Just to say sorry on bus charges, obviously there are the changes that you were talking about Councillor Prager, obviously outside of London rather than in London, where there are no charges to the good value bus fares that the Mayor of London already has in place. So Councillor Steinman, that's not correct for the whole of the Borough of Barnet. I think it's worth mentioning and Councillor Knacke, that's exactly what road tax is paid for. That's exactly the point. That's what it covers. And but Councillor Knacke, just the question I haven't asked you yet, but I've been pondering on it for a while. But your title of cabinet member for financial sustainability and reducing poverty, do you find that those two items clash with one another often? Because what I'm seeing here is a lot of a lot of attempts to increase the borough's financial sustainability by increasing the prices across the board. How does that help with reducing poverty when when all we're seeing is more and more charges to Barnet's residents? I think it's a slightly puzzling comment to suggest that the financial sustainability isn't integrally responsible for reducing people's dependence and falling into cycles of poverty. But setting that aside and focusing more on the contents of this particular report, this is entirely about the organisation and managing our finances in a responsible and effective way and meeting our statutory obligation to set a balanced budget each financial year. I don't see that as in any way antithetical or inconsistent with our desire to reduce poverty across the borough, assist residents that may be approaching cycles of poverty. I don't have a further question, but just to clarify that we're talking about reducing poverty across the board, but we are seeing above inflationary increases on a huge amount of the borough's charges. Now, some of those are easy to consider, things like building permits and a lot of the highway charges, which many of them are 10% or plus increases, but a lot of these charges are the day to day charges that affect Barnet's residents. I'm going to come in on that very slightly, which is to say that, you know, I've been here long enough that I remember the easy council model that the council was run by under the capita contract, which was very much to charge for the kind of certain that very much was about charging residents to use the services, many of which previously were free. But that was a regime that was brought in and, you know, those charges have risen over time as well, including times of high levels of inflation as well. I don't know whether the cabinet members want to come back on any of them. Chair, are there other plans to scrap any of those charges? I'm sorry? Are there plans to scrap any of the charges that you've referred to? These are for consultation and subject to an equalities assessment at this moment. So we're still consulting with the public. These are still to be determined. There is no decision being made, Councillor. OK, Councillor Weiser wants to follow up. Thank you, Chair. I just want to be clear because I remember having Councillor Seidman and I were consulted on fees and charges last year as chair of licensing and general purposes, that for a number of years, fees were not increased in line with inflation, which left us charging less than the service cost the council to offer. And isn't part of this actually catching up on years of bad financial management by previous administrations not increasing in line with inflation and therefore leaving it for a problem down the road? That does apply to some charges, doesn't apply to the parking charges that we've been talking about. But there were several charges where previously were not being fully cost recovered and we have been working towards that. OK, can we go to Councillor Cohen and then Councillor Cornelius? Chairman, I have a number of points on this item. You can bear with me. Let's take them all in one go. I'll try and give you all in one go. So I just want to pick up on the point Councillor Schneider made before to Councillor Prager. You said before that you [inaudible] pricing cost parking. Is that what you said? Yeah, I was talking about having a more consistent approach, because why... So if that is the case, then why are the prices all 4.5% increase? They're just moving, they're still going to be inconsistent with each other. As mentioned in the report, there's going to be a separate consultation on those changes to the parking charges. The 4.5% increases to charges as they are. So as you say, that's maintaining those inconsistencies. There'll be a separate consultation as set out in that cabinet report with regards to the parking part of the charges. I understand that within the parking report, within the - I may have missed it - but within the Appendix A, it sets out charges in terms of the on-street parking, planning car parts and everything. They're all pretty much around the 5, apart from the visitor vouchers. What do you mean by it's going to be a different consultation on a different report? As set out in the report that went to cabinet, that's also here for scrutiny. Recommendation finds, which was agreed at cabinet, was about authorising a separate consultation on policy changes with regard to setting future parking charges. That will come out shortly and that will be subject of a separate consultation to the main consultation on the fees and charges as set out in the Appendix. Looking at more consistency at a future date, not in relation to this? Yeah, not in relation to the as set out in the Appendix, because as you say, that will apply 4.5% across the board. There's four points I want to discuss in terms of clarification on that. One is in regards to refuse the fees. One is in regards to P96, the dispensation to park one day per day. And the other is in regard to bulk wages and visitor vouchers. So in terms of the SS3, for example, wheelie bin charges, here it says a 10% change. What is the difference between the 10% charges increased and the 4.5% in other bin charges? What's the rationale behind that? See if Mr Miller wants to correct me. But that's as set out in the column on detail, that is part of for certain elements moving towards cost recovery, which is why certain charges, the increase, as you identify, is 10% rather than inflation, which is lower. But some of them are the same things. So, for example, firstly, under SS3, it says a bin, a 240 litre bin, which is a residential bin, I assume, is discretionary. Now, I would have thought that is a statutory. Well, collecting bins is a statutory service, but it's discretionary what the council charges. There are no regulations about how much the council can charge for a bin or a replacement bin or a new bin. Okay. It's strange because SS1 says statutory discretion, the SS2 says discretionary. I'm very confused regarding that and the cost recovery. For the residential, it's different to the commercial. That's because of a different size of bin, isn't it? No, the percentage difference is the same. I'll let Mr Miller come in on this point. Thank you. I've done my best so far. Do you want me to say them all first? Sorry, Mr Chairman, do you want me to go through the issues first? Okay. I think you've got a few. So the next one is P96 under dispensation. I'll read the other line. Dispensation, P96, parking, permission to park one vehicle per one day. It's a new product, 50 pounds. Could you tell me what that is for? Come in on this. I'll do that. Okay. So I'll set the other ones. Visitor vouchers. You've proposed a huge increase in visitor vouchers this year. And I just wanted to know, what are you anticipating to achieve? Are you participating to sell less, make more money? What are you looking to achieve in that? It must be in a calculation because otherwise it would be in the budget. What are you anticipating in terms of to sell? What's the drop-off rate based on the increase in price? Both in terms of both sets of visitor vouchers. And in terms of bulky waste, again, massive increase in the charge there. I think it is right to say, I don't think there's any secret, that there's been a massive increase in flight in flight. The original intention when you put in skip, enabled skip to reduce flight, it doesn't seem to have done that. And yet, you're almost, you're more than doubling the bulky waste. What do you believe that will do to flight, I think? Bulky waste is not, there isn't a doubling of the charge for bulky waste. There's an increase, so it's going up to £45. I think what you might be looking at, when it says £45 to £115, is based on the number of items that you want to be collected. There is the increase, I think it's £35 to £45 for the first three items. £115 if you want more items, more items collected. And that is a cost recovery issue to reflect the cost of that to the council. But in order, because of the issue of fly tipping, that's why we did bring back the free community skips. There is also the option to have large electrical items collected free of charge from the house, which is a service provided through the North London Waste Authority. So we have provided lots of options there in order to try and reduce the amount of fly tipping alongside extra enforcement. That didn't answer my question. It did. It didn't, because I asked what do you believe that the bulky waste increase in the price, whether it's doubled or not doubled, is going up, will do to fly tipping. Not anticipating that that will have the modest increase there to reflect the cost to the council while operating that service, will have any effect on fly tipping. As I've said, there are other initiatives which were not there previously, such as community skips, that we have introduced alongside the bulky waste collection. And as I say, if you've got a big fridge freezer, you can have that collected from your door free of charge. Yes, thank you, Chair. So the prices for containers that you've noted, the differentials there, we have a number of lines in that particular part of the service where that might be, because there's volatility in that particular part of the market. It might be influenced by oil prices, things like that. So we look to replicate that in the charges that we then ourselves on the privilege that Councillor Sniderman has set out. I've had an answer on the bulky waste range of increases just a moment ago. I'm going to bring in Rebecca Eden, Head of Parking Enforcement, who's online at the moment, around the parking dispensation product, because that is a new product that is being proposed. Becca, Chair, if that's okay, if I can bring Rebecca in. I think that's fine, but I think we're going to try and wrap it up a bit and move on, because we've got other members waiting to speak. Yeah, but like I understand, I would like the answer to those two questions. I think there are some elements of this that we might be able to get for you in writing, the specific information that you're of. But I think we are going to need to make a bit of progress. Yes, go ahead. Hi there. Good evening, hopefully you can hear me. The dispensation product is a new product that we're seeking to offer. What this does is allows parking on a restriction such as a yellow line during controlled hours. We don't anticipate a huge volume or demand for this particular product, but it is meeting a need which we don't currently have a product for, which is for specialist deliveries or installations, such as the delivery and installation of glazing, scaffolding, things like that, which have to be done at a specific location where there is no suitable parking bay available that can be suspended. So it's very similar to a suspension, but it applies in locations where there isn't a parking bay that's available. Okay, I'm going to take Councillor Mackay and then we're going to move on. Chair, just so that Councillor Cohen doesn't think we're chirping any of his questions, the matter of visitor's permits, which hasn't had an answer given to it yet, I would like to remind him that there is a medium-term financial strategy commitment that we inherited to increase the number of controlled parking zones in the borough, the enforcement of which obviously therefore represents a cost in order to ensure that the visitor permits are being used both effectively and properly, the cost of that enforcement needs to be reflected some way in fees and charges, and that is partially what this increase represents. I'm certain that any other detail you may need on your questions can be given in writing after the meeting. Councillor Cornelius. I'll be very quick because I'm asking for something rather than making a political point which is uncharacteristic. There's a huge increase in one of the adult social care charges from £300 to £2,000 for arranging a package, and I understand that that comes in when the person's capital and savings are at a certain point and the council then charges them to assist them getting into a home. I get that, but it is a huge sum of money for a lot of people, £2,000, and I wonder whether the cabinet member and the cabinet would actually consider tapering it so that someone who is just a squeak over the capital limit doesn't get hammered by the whole charge. If you could consider that, please. I appreciate the Councillor's tact in dealing with what is a very sensitive issue in a requisite manner. So the adult social care market has been very acutely affected by the increase in both inflation and interest rates, and the costs that we have seen as local authority in maintaining that service are historically high. Naturally, this entire document is still subject to an equality impact assessment, part of which will reflect, therefore, the types of residents that you are talking about and recipients of social care. So I don't want to preempt the consultation and the outcome of the equalities impact assessment prior to making any decisions, but I very heavily suspect that precisely your concern will be reflected in that level of scrutiny. Yeah, I think let's let's minute back. I've got a whole row of people who want to. Well, I might not take you if that's the case. I've got Councillor Lemon next. Yeah, go ahead. Oops. Yeah, sorry about that. So in the report from cabinet on section 1.5, in terms of the methodology for inflation, what is that, because it just says uplift in line with inflation. Is that CPR, RPR, or something else? I've got a follow up as well. Thank you, Councillor. So the methodology we have used, which has also been used by the London Borough of Harrow, is for retail price index, which is four point five percent is the methodology that we've used in the document. And given that it is it was an issue that Councillor Zinkin raised at cabinet and the conservative speaker, I think it was Councillor Miran Smith raised that for council. It is worth perhaps noting why we chose to adopt that methodology rather than the consumer price index. So the RPI takes into account certain costs that are more reflective of costs that local residents actually experience in their day to day lives, such as housing costs. And it's much more it's much more sensitive to to interest rates than the consumer price index. The national the Office of National Statistics, in fact, does recognize that individual personal inflation differs very heavily from the national rates of inflation that we we measure. Therefore, they have individual personal inflation calculators that take into account your own shopping basket, therefore representing the increase in cost of living on an individual basis. In a sense, that's what we are doing as a local authority. This is the true representation of the increase in costs that we bear as a local authority in relation to providing a lot of services that are detailed in this in this document. So the short answer to your to your question, is this the RPI index? Yeah, just a follow up as well. In terms of the fees that we charge in Barnet. Alan, Councillor Schneiderman earlier mentioned about with some fees and charges, we haven't raised it for years. But for whatever reason, in that context, how do we compare with, say, adjacent boroughs in North London in terms of the fees or perhaps some of the areas that generate the bulk of the income? I mean, I mean, generally we sort of benchmark comparatively with particularly with neighbouring boroughs, but I mean, there is quite a wide variation depending on what particular charge, what particular charge you were looking at. But, you know, in setting the charges, part of what officers do is looking at, you know, it's looking at what other authorities are charging. But the key thing is to make sure that we are ensuring full cost recovery because in a challenging financial climate we can't afford to not be recovering or the materials such as bins. Chair, may I interject it because this is the topic that I wanted to bring up as well. I don't want to go off topic on the RPI and CPI. So Councillor Knacke quoted the, I can't remember who it was, the ONS? No, it wasn't. The ONS saying that RPI is an acceptable form, but the OBL Office of Budgetary Responsibility is very clear, is very clear, I should say, that CPI is a much better formula to calculate the services and goods, and that is what we as a council provide. I'm sure it's coincidental that CPI was 2.2% at the time that in July 24 when the RPI was 3.6 and has no correlation, but do you truly believe that RPI is a better indicator for us as a local borough to be tagging alongside when we're calculating our price increases? Councillor, I'm not sure better or worse are reasonable or adequate representations. It is a measure that is an industry standard within the public sector. In fact, the Conservative government over the past 14 years has used RPI when calculating taxable intake duties on alcohol, on road tax, on cigarettes, and when it's calculating money that it's liable to pay out in terms of benefits or job seekers allowance, it uses CPI. So it seems to be that the Conservative government decides to use whichever measure it found more reasonable for income versus outcome. I don't think it's unreasonable to use the measure set by your government over the past few years, over the past 14 years, to determine money that it is owed, which is what fees and charges are, money that the local authority is owed. Okay, unless Councillor Levin has anything else he wants to add. Councillor Wise, I think your question has been answered. Councillor David, I think was the next on my list. Just a general question. As we make increases, how does it compare with EEA budgets? How is it looking? How is the return? How is the income comparing to the projections with EEA budgets, especially with parking? Because we had previously that we're not meeting targets. And if we're increasing, how does that look going forward in comparison to the actual? I mean, overall, the parking income is coming in below what is in the budget, but it's a mixed picture within different factors. So some contraventions are below what was put into the forecast. Some on-street parking charges are above what was in the forecast. So overall, though, the special parking account is coming in below the forecast. Is there any detail? Yes, Chair, through you. Yeah, just to be clear on parking, we don't have targets around income. Do we forecast our position? And behaviours have changed in terms of the impact of the pandemic, as we saw, and also positive behaviours as well in terms of compliance. So that does change our out-turn against forecasts. What would be the impact of an increase to what already we are not – to a cost that we are not meeting the target? How would the future look so that we're not carrying unnecessary – we're not expecting more and getting less, and then carrying a cost against it that is not attainable? Yeah, Chair, thank you. So we don't set a target for the income as such. The important thing with setting tariffs and charges for parking is that the tariffs we set are reasonable and compassionate. When we look at them, they're in line with other authorities. And where we are moving to with the proposals that you're seeing here are that they encourage use of more sustainable travel services. So to factor that into our forecasts, and it may be that we see a change in those proposals over the period of time as people move to those different forms of testing and doing. One additional point that I should mention to Councillor David is that we are under a statute of responsibility to have a rational methodology for increasing fees and charges in any case, for which reason we cannot set. Okay, I take Councillor Ambe. Thanks, Chair. My question was already asked by Councillor Cohen, so thank you for that. That was around the parking item, increasing charges. But I just have two observations or remarks, which I would obviously be grateful if it's clarified. In terms of these EV charging points, one understands that the cost tends to vary if there is advertisement on those charging points. How accurate is that? And if that's correct, is that something which could be looked into? And the second question I have for Mark is about charging the town hall for events. What's the rate? How is our current rate visa-based, the market rate? Is the revenue stream from renting the town hall increasing or falling? Thank you. I'll answer on the visa. There's not a direct connection. So the new junk charges that are going in in town centres that do have advertising on them are actually a bit cheaper than some of the other charges and also bring income to the council, and we're able to advertise local businesses on them as well, and they're exceedingly well used. The charges does depend, so there are different providers that provide the different charge points, so there are slightly different charges for each of those. But the arrangement we've jolted, they are actually a bit cheaper. And like I say, actually it's used 90% of the time, so we're quite proud of the fact that we've put in more – significantly more EV charges. I'm not sure about the event incoming. Yeah, neither am I, Councillor. I'll have to write to you separately. Over the past financial year, would you like, or over a longer period? Let's say the last two to four months, two financial years. Wonderful, absolutely. And, Chair, just one follow-up question. One other complaint from residents is the environmental impact of these charging points. I don't know, I didn't copy some of the email about, I don't know, pollution. Could you – are you aware of that? Well, people have some raised issues about, well, about the environmental impact of having an advert on the panel. Well, obviously they do use, the advert itself does use electricity, but it is sourced through green energy, and the actual technical specification of the screens means a lot – it's using a lot less than, you know, that typical screen of that type does. But obviously, yes, an advert on it is used in some lectures. But we, you know, as I say, we're using them to promote council services as well as local businesses, as well as advertising, and that all helps to pay for users being able to get 15 minutes free every day. There'll be a planning application for them. There'll be an environmental impact. Because of the advertising, there's a separate approval for the advertising part of it as well. Yeah, but that information cuts land-based after about environmental impact he's interested in, he can check the relevant planning application. Yeah, I mean, we've got the detail, we've got all the details on that we can circulate. I don't think there are any further contributions. We've got one comment that we wanted to make, which was a request to look at tapering the charges, not from that charge. Otherwise it will be slung out, the one charge. And chair, I should mention to the Councillor, I've just been informed by officers that there is a separate consultation with respect to the adults charges in any case. So taken with respect to that rather than this fees and charges package. And members can feed into public consultations as well. So you've got that additional route, which is the task and finish group updates. Take it away, Fiona. So provided for the committee's information is the updates on the task and finish groups and where they're at. We'd be happy to take questions if there are any, but otherwise it's just a position statement. Thank you. Note the updates. I see that we note the updates. Thank you very much. Item number 10 cabinet forward plan. He decisions schedule page hundred eighty seven to do on a. Thank you very much. So this just presents the current cabinet forward plan. If the committee has any items they'd like to request for pre decision scrutiny, please do let them be known. And just to note, really, that a couple of items we do have on our forward plan, but some of them have been delayed. So particularly the food waste service item will now be considering our January agenda rather than December. But any other requests, please do let us know. I assume if we were reviewing any previous cabinet decisions, that's not the cabinet backwards plan. OK, I've got that one in. I'm very proud. Right. We're only asked to note that items. I'm going to see where noting that item. I'm moving on to the owner again. The agenda for the next meeting, I understand, is very, very crowded. We've got. Local plan, which is gigantic. It's a forest in and of itself full of papers. And I think we have screwed up, which you'd probably tell me. I think we've been through this four times. Political life, several times. We've got the food waste strategy, the transport strategy and schools three. Well, this will come to that. There is a suggestion to reschedule the barnet homes items to the meeting after and possibly cybersecurity. Now, this is not the only committee that considers cybersecurity. Counselor Prager will agree. It's something that's part of the G arms. It's part of the G arms remit. So I have already asked officers to just check that we're not covering each other's work. So we'll probably come back to that council wise. So I'm just trying to understand if we're looking at the next committee meeting because you said the next meeting is quite crowded or the meeting. After the items you're listing a January and I was getting very confused. The January meeting is getting a bit busy, so I think we're moving. We're looking at moving. Come here and whether it's any different to what G arms considered a couple of meetings ago. Fabulous. So no specifically new points to add to what the chair said, mainly just really to ask permission or the committee's agreement that for the next for the next meeting, we've got our agenda set. That's not changing for the January meeting. It's suggested that we prioritize the transport strategy, school street implementation, the food waste service and Barnet's local plan adoption, as these are either time sensitive or already in progress. And then we would be moving cyber security later pending consideration of whether it's different to what's considered our committee and the two barnet homes items would also be added to the agenda after that space pending if that's agreed with the committee. I'm very willing to bet that it's no different. I understand the reality, but can I express why it's difficult? I very much agree with you. I think the quality of scrutiny that we can offer get limited if there are too many items on an agenda, whereas the 25th of January marches. So apologies for that. But, you know, there is a lot for us to get through. Right. We're only asked to note the updates, so I presume we're happy to note the updates item number 12. Any items the chair decides are urgent. Many items, I think, are urgent, but none relevant for this committee. Thank you very much, everybody. Good night. [BLANK_AUDIO]
Transcript
Good evening. Welcome to the overview and scrutiny committee meeting. And as both the chair and vice chair have given apologies in advance, the first item on the agenda will be the election of a chair for the meeting. Are there any nominations? Silently, I would like to nominate Councillor Mitra. Seconded. Thank you. Are there any other nominations? Is everybody happy to vote in Councillor Mitra to chair the meeting? Say aye. Everyone agreed? Yeah, perfect. So Councillor Mitchell will chair. Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody. Welcome to this meeting of the overview and scrutiny committee. Please note that there's a supplementary agenda for this meeting. This is an updated appendix the charges report. The charges are on page eight and pages eighty seven to ninety of the section one hundred B of the local government act. Nineteen seventy two. The chair is of the opinion must be that the report should be considered as a matter of urgency as a result of special circumstances, which are that there have been minor amendments to the appendix and that the committee would like to consider the updated fees and charges during the consultation period. Please also know that meetings are recorded and broadcast and you may be included in the broadcast by attending the in person or online council recordings are covered by our privacy policy, which can be found at www.barnett.gov.uk. Please can I remind members and speakers to introduce themselves when speaking first time for those in the room. Use the microphones by pressing the speaker image in the middle of the microphone device. I turn to agenda item one minutes of the previous meeting, which are on pages five to sixty. Can I take that's an accurate record of previous meeting. I agree. I think that's agreed unanimously. I will sign those minutes now. Now it gets tricky item number two absence of members. We have apologies for absence from councillors Rose, Rich and Zinkin. We welcome our substitutes Councillors Callick and Lemon. And I think we are also offering our congratulations to Councillors Zinkin on becoming. Sorry, on Councillor Cornelius on becoming a grandfather. Well done. Congratulations. I'm about to become an uncle and I'm filling me with dread. But yeah. Right. We've moved on to item number three, which are declarations of interest. Do members have any declarations of interest in relation to the agenda items tonight? I'm not seeing any. Item number four dispensations granted by the monitoring officer. There are a lot of them. Rattling away through the agenda. Public comments and questions item number five. There are none item number six members items. There haven't been any members items received and was always entitled to submit them if there are matters of interest to you. I do encourage you to do so. That takes us to the main substantive item, which is item number seven. Review of capita contracts on our papers from pages 17 to 52. Councillor McPhee. Welcome to the stage. I think it's Barry May. Right. OK. Councillor McPhee, I think you've allegedly got three minutes, but I might not be paying attention to the chair. Thank you very much. I'll allow Barry to explain precisely the methodology laid out for returning some of the services in-house, as stated in the report. Just a broad summary for the benefit of committee. It was our administration's desire to bring back in-house certain services that were that were outsourced to capita. And over the period of time that we were observing how capital is delivering those services, it became clear and quite frighteningly transparent how poor the service delivery on part of cap capital was and how bad the value for money that ratepayers and Barnett were getting as a result of those contracts being outsourced. Now, naturally, because of the complexity of some of the service areas and the intertwined nature in which capital delivers them, we want to make sure that the in-house process is managed effectively and not done in a way that will cause disruption to the organisation and to service users in Barnet. And that's what this report is detailing, a mechanism by which we can restore in-house those services without any sort of disruption to Barnet residents. I hand over to Barry. Thank you. Apologies. We have the leader of the Council, Councillor Rawlings as well. I'm just here to answer the easy questions. It's a remarkably prescient introduction. Well done. Very well timed. Right. I'm going to head straight into questions. If very certain numbers. Can I get an indication of who would like to ask questions? I write them down and then decide on the order so I can see Councillor Cornelius. Councillor Lemmon, Weisel. OK, we'll go with Councillor Inocente. We'll go in that order. Thank you. Well, not surprisingly, I do have a few questions and I'll sort of pitch them in with some comments as well, if I may. It's a very broad band of services that are coming in and it's disappointingly slow. And if I was making a comment about this report, it looks like it could have been written a year ago, really. And there hasn't been that much moving on. And I note that. The other thing I noticed that with the IT and the change, I'm very concerned that Councillor Rawlings will remember when we ran the IT service ourselves in the past, it was not great. And, you know, I accept council. IT is always a step behind the rest of the world. But you do have to make capital investment in it. And when the capital is being queried in this report and if you don't buy the computer kit or get it, then this isn't going to happen. And the short range renewal of the IT contract. I mean, it's a mere blink in local authority terms. Months can just disappear very quickly. And I wonder whether you might, when you're considering this at cabinet, go for a longer extension to give yourselves half a chance of doing it. That is a concern for me. You know, I accept we can't go back into the past and you have the majority. So you're going to do this and I understand this and I understand that it's important to you, but it's also going to be extremely costly. But I am very concerned that if you've reduced the, I think it's, I can't read my writing, so you'll be very pleased about that. But if you've reducing the capital from 4.8 million to 2.7 million at a time when IT inflation is quite tremendous. I mean, that doesn't sound terribly intellectually savvy, if I can put it like that. I mean, it's more likely to be the other way round and end up with about six and a half, I would have thought. It doesn't go down ever. So I really appreciate your comments on that. And I think this is very, very complex, this capital contract. I remember when we signed it in the first place, and I know you were involved in that Barry, and we had filing cabinets full of documents to look through. And certainly from our side, we split the reading of them because it was so tremendous, such a tremendous task, and I'm sure you did the same. But I think we will be asking that there is a greater degree of scrutiny on this so that there can be, even if it's an informal working group, as the transition from capita to Barnet or new scheme will happen very infelicitously close to an election. And naturally, of course, I expect that we'll be returned to office at that election. So we don't want to have to deal with a mess not knowing about it. And I'm sure that given we all have an interest in things being smooth in Barnet, we would want to support you, were you to win the next election, by having actually talked about some of the problems in advance. Thank you. As I recall, Councillor Cornelius, every Labour member of the then Scrutiny Committee read the whole contract from front to back of all the things. It's physically impossible. You couldn't have done that. The background documentation filled a room. Yes, that's why it took so long. I can answer some. First of all, at the time, I think it was just me that read, you know, it was the rearranged history, 15 Labour arch files on one contract and 11 on the other. There were 26 Labour arch files altogether. There's a couple of points I can answer. One is the extension. You're saying six months is a blink of an eye. What it actually means is that the extension of the contract is going from two years, seven months to three years, one month. Remember, it's already on an extension. So we're extending the extension, partly, as you say, because there's the local elections. We may differ as to what the expected result is, but we do not want any IT issues during a local election. The other one, which I hadn't occurred on, is simply that apparently it's the worst time to change a contract at the beginning of the financial year. Because of the changes in the benefits, you have to feed those in. The problem with the IT contract is that it was signed for 10 years with no break laws. As you say, IT changes a lot. It means every time things were bolted on, it added to the cost. What we've got here is a negotiated cost for the investment in new IT. It's the agreement with capita. That's what's needed. If you're saying, well, if you're in power, you'd give capita more money, well, you're not very good negotiators. This is what we've negotiated, the amount and the amount that they're happy with. I think there is still a scrutiny wrong in the thought of this, but this report is just about agreeing those brief extensions on already an extension so that it doesn't interfere with the local election. So there's time for the Revs and Benj to take account of any changes that have to be done at the beginning of the financial year. This is a very pragmatic report. This is what needs to be done just to ease the way to moving away from capita. That's the way I read it. I don't know if officers have a slightly different view, but that's the way I read it. You cut me off deliberately, Chairman, but if the role of scrutiny, I mean, yes, OK, this is going to go to cabinet and the decision will be made. OK, that's fine. I accept that. We perhaps have a few points that were put through to that. But I'm asking for a greater scrutiny role on this as it goes forward, because it is going to run through the election. And we would, as current opposition members, we would like value greater information. And the thought processes is gained through. And who knows, we might actually come up with something that's helpful. I look forward to that day happening. I've only been a Councillor 26 years, but I do look forward to that day when you come up with something useful. Well, that's well, let me give you a compliment. I was always very pleased to steal your good ideas. Thanks for that. I just think the way of looking at it is what this report is about a temporary, a short increase onto what then existed to get it done. If you talk about the longer run, about moving away from capital or doing a procurement exercise or whatever. Yes, there is an increased role for scrutiny for that period. And I welcome all party involvement. Were you just wanting to add to the list? I'm not following up. I'll add you to my list. I see Councillor David wants to speak, but I'll come back to you later. Councillor Nackley wants to come in first. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I thought I'd just supplement what the leader has to say with the other aspect of this report, perhaps to benefit or rather to give some comfort to Councillor Cornelius with respect to the future involvement of scrutiny in respect of how this is going to develop in times to come. So, yes, the extension of the existing contract over the period of the election is an effort on our part to ensure there's minimal disruption to the election IT processes. But the paper also contains an options appraisal for the forward approach to how these services can be brought back in house. And for the same reason as we thought the extension was necessary, we do not want this issue to be mired in ideological entrenchment. It needs to be done for reasons of pragmatism and cost benefit to residents, which is why if a fully insourced or fully outsourced model is not a benefit to us in a particular service space, it is something that we will disregard in favour of some sort of hybrid approach, which is what the options appraisal does detail quite extensively. And I'm sure officers would be able to enlighten you as to some of the particulars of that should you be interested. Mr Lemon, then Weisel, then Incenty, Caleck and David. Yeah, thanks, Chair. Yes, quite a detailed report, which primarily covers the areas of the capital contract that haven't been brought in house yet. But in terms of those areas that have been brought in house, whether that's highway facilities, finance, you've got these sort of decent examples that you'd like to share about what benefits that has brought for those services that have been brought in. The main benefit to me, and it always has been, is accountability. We've now got services that are accountable to us as counsellors and we're accountable and accountable to all the services already brought in. I'm very big like planning, so I don't think should be keeping the risk. We're seeing a bit short sighted. It's enabled us to look at those services and reorganise them and restructure them. And from the point of view of the staff, it's enabled them to have a better pension and better pay. I've always, my view is always, and I think it's been consistent from the start, this is not about whether it saves money or doesn't save money. It's who's the services are accountable to the public, to the public in some way. So I think there's been a lot of benefits, but to me, the main benefit is that we have more control over things like plan. Because before, we'll share some control over our services. If I may add that I couldn't agree with that description more. Accountability and transparency are the single most important things that we've been able to gain back. The inefficiencies that we're able now to detect within the running of the organisation and our ability, therefore, to remedy them is greatly enhanced. Being able to meet challenges such as failure demand or putting together a holistic delivery model to deal with complex cases, those sorts of things simply wouldn't have been tenable or feasible within an outsourced model in the same way. So it's given us an ability to meet the challenges of the borough in a way that I think is far more reflective of our ambition as a local authority. Do you have anything you want to follow-up on? Yeah, just a quick follow-up. You talk about accountability and you also touched on control there at services, does that sort of pave the way to look at initiatives involving other boroughs for shared services, for example, or other sort of things of that ilk? I will say that that is always the holy grail, whether we can get the other authorities to work with us. But in a lot of respects, I do think that we can be path leaders in service delivery and hopefully if other local authorities see it work in Barnet and they can see the benefits and the merits of it, then they can adopt it also. We're not entirely in charge of whether or not other local authorities want to partner with us in a lot of spaces. We've tried and been rebuffed, so it's not necessarily entirely within our gift to achieve that. The other thing I would say is it is easier to look at shared services. Other councils weren't going to share their services with Capita because it led to what could be said, what's commercially confident. I would say that there are, it's increased the opportunity to work with other councils, but it's not as easy as it says because often contracts are at different times and are over-knuck and so on. It is something we are looking at and obviously with things like the Harrow Barnet Law, there are already some shared services. And the other thing, just quickly, because IT's been mentioned, do remember that there's a lot of IT services that are happening within the council as it is. It's not that all IT is with Capita and with the increasing look at digitisation, AI and so on, more is coming from within the council and not from within Capita anyway. Okay, Councillor Weisel. Thank you, Chair. From the report, a lot of the reason why this decision to extend is having to be made is because of the timing of March 2026. Now, obviously, that was known at the time that policy and resources made their decision that both Councillor Mitchell and I and Councillor Rawlings were at that meeting to bring this in house. And I do wonder in terms of learning lessons for future decision making, why this was not raised when we had that meeting in 2022. The financial year end never changes and the local elections are a set date every four years that unlike general elections are not a moveable feast. So why were these problems not identified back in 2022 when the decision was made to end the contract in March? And I think it's something we need to look at so that we know future decision making if we are looking at entering new contracts and having these discussions in the future. What went wrong basically in 2022, and this wasn't brought to Councillors attention when we were making our decision then. You're right, it should have been considered at the time I signed it off, so I have to take responsibility near Culver on that one. You want something added to that, it did go to the committee and none of the opposition mentioned a problem with it either. I think I did, Barry. Let's not get into a back and forth about this right now, is that the end of your questions? I've got Councillor Inocente next. I think Councillor Knack will sort of answer my question. It was just it was about how do we avoid this becoming a political football and how do we protect the because it's going over the local elections? How do we protect this work project because it's such a vast project, which is going to cost a lot of money. How do we protect it moving forward should the administration change as well? Is there is there other things in place for that? Absolutely. Thank you, Councillor. I'll try to answer as many questions prior to them being asked as possible. I think I might speak things up. Well, the entire intention behind the current options appraisal and the way in which we're currently discussing it in a public forum with scrutiny, having quite an active role in overseeing how the development is moving forward is an effort to make it as bipartisan and cross party as possible so that there's maximum ability for both sides. Of the of the chamber to input into how this contract will evolve because naturally no one really knows what's going to happen in twenty twenty six. So it's in everyone's interest to make sure that the organisation is as stable throughout that period. Both sides of the election as it can possibly be. Do you have any follow ups? The other part of the question was, is it is it protected after the election? So should the administration change? Is this work programme protected? Will it move forward as planned or could it all be changed again? So very technical question that I may need to request officer assistance on, I would suspect that there are obviously risks, costs and and contractual obligations that would be breached if an about turn were done effectively in twenty twenty six. At that point, we will have been well progressed on on any particular option we choose to to go ahead with. So I couldn't say it's impossible, but I would say it's highly unlikely and probably very inadvisable. OK. This will come back as part of any forward work that we do as well. So the detail is required when finding of contracts or changing them, but something for us to monitor the forward work programme. Can I go to Councillor Caleck next and then Councillor David. Thank you. I'd like to. Broadly, the performances in good improvement initiatives are being delivered. Areas of underperformance have been addressed in robust contract management controls. And I'd like to commend the administration for doing this and also note that had the previous administration wanted to them correctly, there wouldn't have been room for this improvement. Are there any particular areas improvement that you can invite to us on a quantity data? Thank you. You know, just a couple of things there. One is. It does does need improving and the test will be how well that is done. It's obviously happy to have got a bit of. Thank you, Chair. I note that the collection rates council type of data about which will reduce the debt that we are currently carrying has capital. Giving suggestions of how they hold. OK, thank you, Chair. On the on the subject of council tax collection, do we have an idea how many of those council tax that are unpaid council tax? How many of those people can't pay? Therefore, we won't we won't be able to collect that money, even if we tried on how many are just not paid for whatever reason. Is there is a statistic for that? I think one thing is if obviously there are people who can have difficulty paying for businesses, some things you have to write off and I think they can. What I think is working well and providing we can merge these things, things like the benefit upon which you eight million pounds more benefits into barnet of being able to offer advice and another route for people, rather than just say pay up for the bail is not on your door. It's your your behind. Do you need to get advice? Have you tried to benefit? But eventually we have to have that sanction of saying. You know, you've got to pay in the end. So there are people, debts that we do write off, people who are in hospital a long time had one where the person had dementia. You know, that is difficult to collect. But we also I think as. The collection rate also depends on giving people proper debt advice, suggesting ways, checking that they're getting everything they're entitled to, because a lot of people don't see this with pension credits, for example. So people can get into debt. They don't have to. If we can offer a way out, not only do we have a better collection rate, but people have a better quality of life by getting more what they do. So I think it's a two handed approach. It's not necessarily threatening. It's how it's offering a helping hand as well. So that so that people can pay that we know we need bills paid. But if we can help people. Just to add word to have been the case, the capital proactive in chasing debt and finding out whether or not people were not paying for reasons other than their inability to pay them. The reasonable assumption could have been made that the residual bad debt is because of people who are in dire financial straits. Unfortunately, frustratingly, that hasn't been the case. Capita being very, very poor in in chasing owed council taxes as the current chair, when he moonlights as the chair of audit will know they've been very poor at fulfilling that contractual obligation. In more recent times, that was because the determination of the contract was within eyesight, so they didn't have an incentive. But the extension now should hopefully give us a degree of that of latitude, I suppose, to to request that they actually observe their contractual requirement to chase up council tax owes owed to us. Thank you. I like to think I sunlight well, the moonlight chair. I think that's a very interesting exchange because one of the problems with the current system, when you fall behind with your council tax payment and fall behind and fall behind and fall behind, the only point at which the council knows that we're in need of some form of support is when there's a court summons and you go through a bailiff system. We have to present something at court. So having a map is a great way for that residents get on it. I think one of my concerns would be all the residents who fall behind on their council tax before things get to court. I think what we have to make sure and it may happen already that that first letter that says you're falling behind. Makes comment about the generally not having the money, you know, they don't generally get to the stage where it requires debt collectors or court action. Unless the problems is very, very, very large. I don't know whether David wants to come back on that, but. I think correct me if I'm wrong, but I think on council tax collection, there are ninety six percent in the national bridge. I don't know where we are in business rates. Which is unusual because we were above the average is before the pandemic. Business rates are slightly different in that some authorities have a lot of different individuals. To be honest, it is more difficult, but we are comparing ourselves with others and there's no reason we should be behind the others in both. To give you the answer, but I wonder whether it is something to do with the fact I wonder whether the stats are actually reliable because since there's been an awful lot of business tax relief for the small retailers anyway. So I wonder whether they've actually come out of the equation. I mean, we've got some huge business rate payers. I think, you know, Frank Cross and Pentland and people like that. Oh, I am I'm surprised that I'm surprised that the stat rather than worried about it, I think. I mean, right. Writing about the collection rates of business, but I don't know off the top of my head, I'll be honest, Richard. Do you want to request that information? Doing recommendations now. Yes. Can we request that before we come to recommendation? I just want to check. Does anybody else have any further questions? So I can go to your recommendation. So so can we can we request that? There is further investigation of that stat before it goes to cabinet. I mean, I'm sure officers were looking cross at me that they've already done it, but we'd love to see the results of that. And the. I didn't hear that. Well, I'm sure officers have been very thorough in what they've done, but I think it it does merit a further look at the business rate collection to check that it's accurate. And, you know, since everyone's slagging off capita, we can blame them. We assume we're interested in both business rates and council. Well, yeah, but I mean, the council. I'm slightly reluctant to support the idea of setting the dogs of capital on our barnet residence to try and squeeze another one percent out. I think I think they're not they've not been gentle people in the past. And whilst we want that, I think we need to be quite careful about that. But the business rate thing does concern me. And if we're making another request, could we formally request a further involvement of scrutiny? Perhaps. Perhaps. I don't know whether the chair and vice chair were more interested in a new formal approach rather than a proper sort of set piece scrutiny meeting. So I think you're proposing an informal. But yeah, if you want to propose it and. Yeah, excellent. OK, I'm quite happy to second that council wise or. But yes, giving proposal for an informal, formal scrutiny session, can I take that? That's unanimously agreed. From the enthusiasm, I'm going to suggest it's agreed. Sorry, I'll check with governments the right word, and it might be easy to call it a reference group or something. Yeah, I'm not official, but it doesn't need to get the whole government. I don't think we've got legal with us today. So I'm happy with the guidance. Governance want to give us. What they like, they can call it as a joint briefing meeting or discussion meeting or something. Whatever. Well, I think that's agreed. OK, so I think we've dealt with recommendations. More formally than we can move on to item number eight, please, which is the review of get this right. I think we just did. We agreed. We agreed the reference group. If officers do wish to leave, then they're welcome to. Right. Moving on to item number eight, the review of the charges, which are. Very large, one page is fifty three to one hundred and seventy four, and as I mentioned earlier on, there's there's the part of the supplementary agenda. So again, this is being introduced by Councillors Knapp and Councillor Schneider. Thank you. Should I proceed with the introduction? So this is the third time this particular report has been discussed and scrutinized in a public forum in as many weeks. I think that's important to note up front for reason of the fact that it is something that affects all residents in Barnet, given that these are chargeable services that the local authority provides. This paper represents a proposal for how to amend those fees and charges for the upcoming year. We do so on an annual basis, partially to ensure that the provision of service is maintained at a high enough quality as befitting what service users expect, but also so they remain good value for Barnet rate payers on an annual basis. We can also, therefore, take into account any economic fluctuations that may have occurred in the previous financial year. And this this particular proposal takes a methodology by which we can achieve that under the current climate. I don't know if Councillor Schneider wants to add anything. Open to questions. No, don't think so, but happy to answer any questions. OK, don't all shout at me at once. Does anybody have any questions that they'd like to raise to members? I can see Councillors Prager, then Cohen, anyone, Cornelius, Lemon. We'll take them in that order. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. So our requirement, just scrolling up a little bit, is to, apologies, to consider the contents of the cabinet report. I'm finding a little bit, some of it a little bit misleading on page fifty nine and sixty, the summary of the parking charges. Just going to read out a couple of sentences. So says currently parking in Barnet managed space can cost as little as thirty nine p on street or seventy seven p off street, while a bus offer fare cost one seventy five or three fifty if they're not taken with it, if the journeys aren't taken within an hour. The current charges can provide a financial incentive to make journeys by car rather than public transport, which is inconsistent with these objectives. As I just said, I find that quite misleading because those two sentences just completely ignore so many other costs surrounding car journey. So buying a car, the petrol, the road tax, the insurance and everything else that comes along with it. Secondly, in the next thirty six hours, the Labour government is due to increase bus fares and buy by 50 percent, which again is obviously is not mentioned here at all. And most of the costs of parking are so much more than what's being referred to here. So I just looked earlier today at the cost of parking just outside and in town hall. So on the boroughs and again, that the the agenda item refers to thirty nine p seventy seven p. Actually, the minimum charge is one pound fifty six to park outside this building and it's exactly the same in most of the area here. An hour is three pounds twelve, two hours is six pound twenty three. So to really equate it with a one pound seventy five bus fare is actually very reasonable. I just personally I think that that line there is really misleading. I'd like to see whether that can be updated. Yeah, I mean, there are other costs to running a car other than parking. But what we're just trying to do there is what we want to do is have a consultation on whether we can set parking charges more consistently across the borough. You quoted the cost of parking outside the town hall, but there is a wide variation of charges across the borough. So we just want to look at whether that can be consulted and whether that can be done more consistently. And also with a nudge towards active travel, whereas we recognise there are people who need and people are still going to continue to use their cars. But whether we can start to nudge people to use active travel where possible, in line with the strategy that your administration actually. Thank you, Councillor. I understand where you're coming from and ignored a little bit of what I was asking. But the active travel push is great, but it's ignoring it's a bit already a little bit outdated. It's ignoring any electric vehicle transport. So, for example, in this agenda item here, we're increasing four and a half percent on all street charging. And then we're seeing things besides for two items, which after I looked through the thousands and thousands of charges, there was HMO pre-licences and CCTV requests, which were huge, which went up a huge amount. But almost every item went up within 10 percent, except for those two items I mentioned and visitor parking permits, which have gone up 88 percent and 94 percent respectively. So this consultation really sits alongside the increases that are already taking place and are being implemented in this item here. So what I'm saying is bus fares are increasing, costs are increasing. And what we're just seeing is a above inflationary and we'll come back to inflationary in a few minutes time. What exactly that means. So all these charges are increasing exponentially higher for these specific charges. The only thing I'd add to my colleague's comments in response to Councillor Prager is that the auxiliary costs or the ancillary costs related to managing a car are those borne by car users for the choice of being car users. Whereas the cost involved in using the bus is also contributing to the maintenance of the public infrastructure required to run the bus service, which isn't taken into account when you're when you're parking in a local authority maintained car park. So I don't think it's an unreasonable comparison to make between one and the other. This is an additional choice that car users are making to use a local authority maintained car park. There is no equivalent choice by a bus user not to pay for the bus infrastructure. It is all involved in the single unit cost of a bus ticket. Thank you, Councillor. Just to say sorry on bus charges, obviously there are the changes that you were talking about Councillor Prager, obviously outside of London rather than in London, where there are no charges to the good value bus fares that the Mayor of London already has in place. So Councillor Steinman, that's not correct for the whole of the Borough of Barnet. I think it's worth mentioning and Councillor Knacke, that's exactly what road tax is paid for. That's exactly the point. That's what it covers. And but Councillor Knacke, just the question I haven't asked you yet, but I've been pondering on it for a while. But your title of cabinet member for financial sustainability and reducing poverty, do you find that those two items clash with one another often? Because what I'm seeing here is a lot of a lot of attempts to increase the borough's financial sustainability by increasing the prices across the board. How does that help with reducing poverty when when all we're seeing is more and more charges to Barnet's residents? I think it's a slightly puzzling comment to suggest that the financial sustainability isn't integrally responsible for reducing people's dependence and falling into cycles of poverty. But setting that aside and focusing more on the contents of this particular report, this is entirely about the organisation and managing our finances in a responsible and effective way and meeting our statutory obligation to set a balanced budget each financial year. I don't see that as in any way antithetical or inconsistent with our desire to reduce poverty across the borough, assist residents that may be approaching cycles of poverty. I don't have a further question, but just to clarify that we're talking about reducing poverty across the board, but we are seeing above inflationary increases on a huge amount of the borough's charges. Now, some of those are easy to consider, things like building permits and a lot of the highway charges, which many of them are 10% or plus increases, but a lot of these charges are the day to day charges that affect Barnet's residents. I'm going to come in on that very slightly, which is to say that, you know, I've been here long enough that I remember the easy council model that the council was run by under the capita contract, which was very much to charge for the kind of certain that very much was about charging residents to use the services, many of which previously were free. But that was a regime that was brought in and, you know, those charges have risen over time as well, including times of high levels of inflation as well. I don't know whether the cabinet members want to come back on any of them. Chair, are there other plans to scrap any of those charges? I'm sorry? Are there plans to scrap any of the charges that you've referred to? These are for consultation and subject to an equalities assessment at this moment. So we're still consulting with the public. These are still to be determined. There is no decision being made, Councillor. OK, Councillor Weiser wants to follow up. Thank you, Chair. I just want to be clear because I remember having Councillor Seidman and I were consulted on fees and charges last year as chair of licensing and general purposes, that for a number of years, fees were not increased in line with inflation, which left us charging less than the service cost the council to offer. And isn't part of this actually catching up on years of bad financial management by previous administrations not increasing in line with inflation and therefore leaving it for a problem down the road? That does apply to some charges, doesn't apply to the parking charges that we've been talking about. But there were several charges where previously were not being fully cost recovered and we have been working towards that. OK, can we go to Councillor Cohen and then Councillor Cornelius? Chairman, I have a number of points on this item. You can bear with me. Let's take them all in one go. I'll try and give you all in one go. So I just want to pick up on the point Councillor Schneider made before to Councillor Prager. You said before that you [inaudible] pricing cost parking. Is that what you said? Yeah, I was talking about having a more consistent approach, because why... So if that is the case, then why are the prices all 4.5% increase? They're just moving, they're still going to be inconsistent with each other. As mentioned in the report, there's going to be a separate consultation on those changes to the parking charges. The 4.5% increases to charges as they are. So as you say, that's maintaining those inconsistencies. There'll be a separate consultation as set out in that cabinet report with regards to the parking part of the charges. I understand that within the parking report, within the - I may have missed it - but within the Appendix A, it sets out charges in terms of the on-street parking, planning car parts and everything. They're all pretty much around the 5, apart from the visitor vouchers. What do you mean by it's going to be a different consultation on a different report? As set out in the report that went to cabinet, that's also here for scrutiny. Recommendation finds, which was agreed at cabinet, was about authorising a separate consultation on policy changes with regard to setting future parking charges. That will come out shortly and that will be subject of a separate consultation to the main consultation on the fees and charges as set out in the Appendix. Looking at more consistency at a future date, not in relation to this? Yeah, not in relation to the as set out in the Appendix, because as you say, that will apply 4.5% across the board. There's four points I want to discuss in terms of clarification on that. One is in regards to refuse the fees. One is in regards to P96, the dispensation to park one day per day. And the other is in regard to bulk wages and visitor vouchers. So in terms of the SS3, for example, wheelie bin charges, here it says a 10% change. What is the difference between the 10% charges increased and the 4.5% in other bin charges? What's the rationale behind that? See if Mr Miller wants to correct me. But that's as set out in the column on detail, that is part of for certain elements moving towards cost recovery, which is why certain charges, the increase, as you identify, is 10% rather than inflation, which is lower. But some of them are the same things. So, for example, firstly, under SS3, it says a bin, a 240 litre bin, which is a residential bin, I assume, is discretionary. Now, I would have thought that is a statutory. Well, collecting bins is a statutory service, but it's discretionary what the council charges. There are no regulations about how much the council can charge for a bin or a replacement bin or a new bin. Okay. It's strange because SS1 says statutory discretion, the SS2 says discretionary. I'm very confused regarding that and the cost recovery. For the residential, it's different to the commercial. That's because of a different size of bin, isn't it? No, the percentage difference is the same. I'll let Mr Miller come in on this point. Thank you. I've done my best so far. Do you want me to say them all first? Sorry, Mr Chairman, do you want me to go through the issues first? Okay. I think you've got a few. So the next one is P96 under dispensation. I'll read the other line. Dispensation, P96, parking, permission to park one vehicle per one day. It's a new product, 50 pounds. Could you tell me what that is for? Come in on this. I'll do that. Okay. So I'll set the other ones. Visitor vouchers. You've proposed a huge increase in visitor vouchers this year. And I just wanted to know, what are you anticipating to achieve? Are you participating to sell less, make more money? What are you looking to achieve in that? It must be in a calculation because otherwise it would be in the budget. What are you anticipating in terms of to sell? What's the drop-off rate based on the increase in price? Both in terms of both sets of visitor vouchers. And in terms of bulky waste, again, massive increase in the charge there. I think it is right to say, I don't think there's any secret, that there's been a massive increase in flight in flight. The original intention when you put in skip, enabled skip to reduce flight, it doesn't seem to have done that. And yet, you're almost, you're more than doubling the bulky waste. What do you believe that will do to flight, I think? Bulky waste is not, there isn't a doubling of the charge for bulky waste. There's an increase, so it's going up to £45. I think what you might be looking at, when it says £45 to £115, is based on the number of items that you want to be collected. There is the increase, I think it's £35 to £45 for the first three items. £115 if you want more items, more items collected. And that is a cost recovery issue to reflect the cost of that to the council. But in order, because of the issue of fly tipping, that's why we did bring back the free community skips. There is also the option to have large electrical items collected free of charge from the house, which is a service provided through the North London Waste Authority. So we have provided lots of options there in order to try and reduce the amount of fly tipping alongside extra enforcement. That didn't answer my question. It did. It didn't, because I asked what do you believe that the bulky waste increase in the price, whether it's doubled or not doubled, is going up, will do to fly tipping. Not anticipating that that will have the modest increase there to reflect the cost to the council while operating that service, will have any effect on fly tipping. As I've said, there are other initiatives which were not there previously, such as community skips, that we have introduced alongside the bulky waste collection. And as I say, if you've got a big fridge freezer, you can have that collected from your door free of charge. Yes, thank you, Chair. So the prices for containers that you've noted, the differentials there, we have a number of lines in that particular part of the service where that might be, because there's volatility in that particular part of the market. It might be influenced by oil prices, things like that. So we look to replicate that in the charges that we then ourselves on the privilege that Councillor Sniderman has set out. I've had an answer on the bulky waste range of increases just a moment ago. I'm going to bring in Rebecca Eden, Head of Parking Enforcement, who's online at the moment, around the parking dispensation product, because that is a new product that is being proposed. Becca, Chair, if that's okay, if I can bring Rebecca in. I think that's fine, but I think we're going to try and wrap it up a bit and move on, because we've got other members waiting to speak. Yeah, but like I understand, I would like the answer to those two questions. I think there are some elements of this that we might be able to get for you in writing, the specific information that you're of. But I think we are going to need to make a bit of progress. Yes, go ahead. Hi there. Good evening, hopefully you can hear me. The dispensation product is a new product that we're seeking to offer. What this does is allows parking on a restriction such as a yellow line during controlled hours. We don't anticipate a huge volume or demand for this particular product, but it is meeting a need which we don't currently have a product for, which is for specialist deliveries or installations, such as the delivery and installation of glazing, scaffolding, things like that, which have to be done at a specific location where there is no suitable parking bay available that can be suspended. So it's very similar to a suspension, but it applies in locations where there isn't a parking bay that's available. Okay, I'm going to take Councillor Mackay and then we're going to move on. Chair, just so that Councillor Cohen doesn't think we're chirping any of his questions, the matter of visitor's permits, which hasn't had an answer given to it yet, I would like to remind him that there is a medium-term financial strategy commitment that we inherited to increase the number of controlled parking zones in the borough, the enforcement of which obviously therefore represents a cost in order to ensure that the visitor permits are being used both effectively and properly, the cost of that enforcement needs to be reflected some way in fees and charges, and that is partially what this increase represents. I'm certain that any other detail you may need on your questions can be given in writing after the meeting. Councillor Cornelius. I'll be very quick because I'm asking for something rather than making a political point which is uncharacteristic. There's a huge increase in one of the adult social care charges from £300 to £2,000 for arranging a package, and I understand that that comes in when the person's capital and savings are at a certain point and the council then charges them to assist them getting into a home. I get that, but it is a huge sum of money for a lot of people, £2,000, and I wonder whether the cabinet member and the cabinet would actually consider tapering it so that someone who is just a squeak over the capital limit doesn't get hammered by the whole charge. If you could consider that, please. I appreciate the Councillor's tact in dealing with what is a very sensitive issue in a requisite manner. So the adult social care market has been very acutely affected by the increase in both inflation and interest rates, and the costs that we have seen as local authority in maintaining that service are historically high. Naturally, this entire document is still subject to an equality impact assessment, part of which will reflect, therefore, the types of residents that you are talking about and recipients of social care. So I don't want to preempt the consultation and the outcome of the equalities impact assessment prior to making any decisions, but I very heavily suspect that precisely your concern will be reflected in that level of scrutiny. Yeah, I think let's let's minute back. I've got a whole row of people who want to. Well, I might not take you if that's the case. I've got Councillor Lemon next. Yeah, go ahead. Oops. Yeah, sorry about that. So in the report from cabinet on section 1.5, in terms of the methodology for inflation, what is that, because it just says uplift in line with inflation. Is that CPR, RPR, or something else? I've got a follow up as well. Thank you, Councillor. So the methodology we have used, which has also been used by the London Borough of Harrow, is for retail price index, which is four point five percent is the methodology that we've used in the document. And given that it is it was an issue that Councillor Zinkin raised at cabinet and the conservative speaker, I think it was Councillor Miran Smith raised that for council. It is worth perhaps noting why we chose to adopt that methodology rather than the consumer price index. So the RPI takes into account certain costs that are more reflective of costs that local residents actually experience in their day to day lives, such as housing costs. And it's much more it's much more sensitive to to interest rates than the consumer price index. The national the Office of National Statistics, in fact, does recognize that individual personal inflation differs very heavily from the national rates of inflation that we we measure. Therefore, they have individual personal inflation calculators that take into account your own shopping basket, therefore representing the increase in cost of living on an individual basis. In a sense, that's what we are doing as a local authority. This is the true representation of the increase in costs that we bear as a local authority in relation to providing a lot of services that are detailed in this in this document. So the short answer to your to your question, is this the RPI index? Yeah, just a follow up as well. In terms of the fees that we charge in Barnet. Alan, Councillor Schneiderman earlier mentioned about with some fees and charges, we haven't raised it for years. But for whatever reason, in that context, how do we compare with, say, adjacent boroughs in North London in terms of the fees or perhaps some of the areas that generate the bulk of the income? I mean, I mean, generally we sort of benchmark comparatively with particularly with neighbouring boroughs, but I mean, there is quite a wide variation depending on what particular charge, what particular charge you were looking at. But, you know, in setting the charges, part of what officers do is looking at, you know, it's looking at what other authorities are charging. But the key thing is to make sure that we are ensuring full cost recovery because in a challenging financial climate we can't afford to not be recovering or the materials such as bins. Chair, may I interject it because this is the topic that I wanted to bring up as well. I don't want to go off topic on the RPI and CPI. So Councillor Knacke quoted the, I can't remember who it was, the ONS? No, it wasn't. The ONS saying that RPI is an acceptable form, but the OBL Office of Budgetary Responsibility is very clear, is very clear, I should say, that CPI is a much better formula to calculate the services and goods, and that is what we as a council provide. I'm sure it's coincidental that CPI was 2.2% at the time that in July 24 when the RPI was 3.6 and has no correlation, but do you truly believe that RPI is a better indicator for us as a local borough to be tagging alongside when we're calculating our price increases? Councillor, I'm not sure better or worse are reasonable or adequate representations. It is a measure that is an industry standard within the public sector. In fact, the Conservative government over the past 14 years has used RPI when calculating taxable intake duties on alcohol, on road tax, on cigarettes, and when it's calculating money that it's liable to pay out in terms of benefits or job seekers allowance, it uses CPI. So it seems to be that the Conservative government decides to use whichever measure it found more reasonable for income versus outcome. I don't think it's unreasonable to use the measure set by your government over the past few years, over the past 14 years, to determine money that it is owed, which is what fees and charges are, money that the local authority is owed. Okay, unless Councillor Levin has anything else he wants to add. Councillor Wise, I think your question has been answered. Councillor David, I think was the next on my list. Just a general question. As we make increases, how does it compare with EEA budgets? How is it looking? How is the return? How is the income comparing to the projections with EEA budgets, especially with parking? Because we had previously that we're not meeting targets. And if we're increasing, how does that look going forward in comparison to the actual? I mean, overall, the parking income is coming in below what is in the budget, but it's a mixed picture within different factors. So some contraventions are below what was put into the forecast. Some on-street parking charges are above what was in the forecast. So overall, though, the special parking account is coming in below the forecast. Is there any detail? Yes, Chair, through you. Yeah, just to be clear on parking, we don't have targets around income. Do we forecast our position? And behaviours have changed in terms of the impact of the pandemic, as we saw, and also positive behaviours as well in terms of compliance. So that does change our out-turn against forecasts. What would be the impact of an increase to what already we are not – to a cost that we are not meeting the target? How would the future look so that we're not carrying unnecessary – we're not expecting more and getting less, and then carrying a cost against it that is not attainable? Yeah, Chair, thank you. So we don't set a target for the income as such. The important thing with setting tariffs and charges for parking is that the tariffs we set are reasonable and compassionate. When we look at them, they're in line with other authorities. And where we are moving to with the proposals that you're seeing here are that they encourage use of more sustainable travel services. So to factor that into our forecasts, and it may be that we see a change in those proposals over the period of time as people move to those different forms of testing and doing. One additional point that I should mention to Councillor David is that we are under a statute of responsibility to have a rational methodology for increasing fees and charges in any case, for which reason we cannot set. Okay, I take Councillor Ambe. Thanks, Chair. My question was already asked by Councillor Cohen, so thank you for that. That was around the parking item, increasing charges. But I just have two observations or remarks, which I would obviously be grateful if it's clarified. In terms of these EV charging points, one understands that the cost tends to vary if there is advertisement on those charging points. How accurate is that? And if that's correct, is that something which could be looked into? And the second question I have for Mark is about charging the town hall for events. What's the rate? How is our current rate visa-based, the market rate? Is the revenue stream from renting the town hall increasing or falling? Thank you. I'll answer on the visa. There's not a direct connection. So the new junk charges that are going in in town centres that do have advertising on them are actually a bit cheaper than some of the other charges and also bring income to the council, and we're able to advertise local businesses on them as well, and they're exceedingly well used. The charges does depend, so there are different providers that provide the different charge points, so there are slightly different charges for each of those. But the arrangement we've jolted, they are actually a bit cheaper. And like I say, actually it's used 90% of the time, so we're quite proud of the fact that we've put in more – significantly more EV charges. I'm not sure about the event incoming. Yeah, neither am I, Councillor. I'll have to write to you separately. Over the past financial year, would you like, or over a longer period? Let's say the last two to four months, two financial years. Wonderful, absolutely. And, Chair, just one follow-up question. One other complaint from residents is the environmental impact of these charging points. I don't know, I didn't copy some of the email about, I don't know, pollution. Could you – are you aware of that? Well, people have some raised issues about, well, about the environmental impact of having an advert on the panel. Well, obviously they do use, the advert itself does use electricity, but it is sourced through green energy, and the actual technical specification of the screens means a lot – it's using a lot less than, you know, that typical screen of that type does. But obviously, yes, an advert on it is used in some lectures. But we, you know, as I say, we're using them to promote council services as well as local businesses, as well as advertising, and that all helps to pay for users being able to get 15 minutes free every day. There'll be a planning application for them. There'll be an environmental impact. Because of the advertising, there's a separate approval for the advertising part of it as well. Yeah, but that information cuts land-based after about environmental impact he's interested in, he can check the relevant planning application. Yeah, I mean, we've got the detail, we've got all the details on that we can circulate. I don't think there are any further contributions. We've got one comment that we wanted to make, which was a request to look at tapering the charges, not from that charge. Otherwise it will be slung out, the one charge. And chair, I should mention to the Councillor, I've just been informed by officers that there is a separate consultation with respect to the adults charges in any case. So taken with respect to that rather than this fees and charges package. And members can feed into public consultations as well. So you've got that additional route, which is the task and finish group updates. Take it away, Fiona. So provided for the committee's information is the updates on the task and finish groups and where they're at. We'd be happy to take questions if there are any, but otherwise it's just a position statement. Thank you. Note the updates. I see that we note the updates. Thank you very much. Item number 10 cabinet forward plan. He decisions schedule page hundred eighty seven to do on a. Thank you very much. So this just presents the current cabinet forward plan. If the committee has any items they'd like to request for pre decision scrutiny, please do let them be known. And just to note, really, that a couple of items we do have on our forward plan, but some of them have been delayed. So particularly the food waste service item will now be considering our January agenda rather than December. But any other requests, please do let us know. I assume if we were reviewing any previous cabinet decisions, that's not the cabinet backwards plan. OK, I've got that one in. I'm very proud. Right. We're only asked to note that items. I'm going to see where noting that item. I'm moving on to the owner again. The agenda for the next meeting, I understand, is very, very crowded. We've got. Local plan, which is gigantic. It's a forest in and of itself full of papers. And I think we have screwed up, which you'd probably tell me. I think we've been through this four times. Political life, several times. We've got the food waste strategy, the transport strategy and schools three. Well, this will come to that. There is a suggestion to reschedule the barnet homes items to the meeting after and possibly cybersecurity. Now, this is not the only committee that considers cybersecurity. Counselor Prager will agree. It's something that's part of the G arms. It's part of the G arms remit. So I have already asked officers to just check that we're not covering each other's work. So we'll probably come back to that council wise. So I'm just trying to understand if we're looking at the next committee meeting because you said the next meeting is quite crowded or the meeting. After the items you're listing a January and I was getting very confused. The January meeting is getting a bit busy, so I think we're moving. We're looking at moving. Come here and whether it's any different to what G arms considered a couple of meetings ago. Fabulous. So no specifically new points to add to what the chair said, mainly just really to ask permission or the committee's agreement that for the next for the next meeting, we've got our agenda set. That's not changing for the January meeting. It's suggested that we prioritize the transport strategy, school street implementation, the food waste service and Barnet's local plan adoption, as these are either time sensitive or already in progress. And then we would be moving cyber security later pending consideration of whether it's different to what's considered our committee and the two barnet homes items would also be added to the agenda after that space pending if that's agreed with the committee. I'm very willing to bet that it's no different. I understand the reality, but can I express why it's difficult? I very much agree with you. I think the quality of scrutiny that we can offer get limited if there are too many items on an agenda, whereas the 25th of January marches. So apologies for that. But, you know, there is a lot for us to get through. Right. We're only asked to note the updates, so I presume we're happy to note the updates item number 12. Any items the chair decides are urgent. Many items, I think, are urgent, but none relevant for this committee. Thank you very much, everybody. Good night. [BLANK_AUDIO]
Summary
The meeting considered a proposal for the extension of three contracts with Capita and the proposed new Fees and Charges for 2025/26. The committee requested further information from officers on business and Council tax collection rates and asked that an informal group be set up to look at the future of the Capita contracts. The committee also requested that officers investigate the possibility of tapering the proposed charge for arranging care for people above the capital and savings threshold.
Review of Capita Contracts
The committee discussed a report from Councillor Dean Knacke, the Cabinet Member for Resources, and Councillor Barry Rawlings, the Leader of the Council, about a proposal to extend the current contracts for IT, Customer Services, and Revenues & Benefits with Capita. The committee heard that the services provided by Capita were frighteningly transparent
in their poor quality and value for money, and that the council was committed to bringing them back in-house.
The committee were concerned that the proposed short extension to the IT contract, from two years and seven months to three years and one month, would not be sufficient to allow for a smooth transition. The Leader of the Council explained that the extension was necessary to avoid disruption to the 2026 local elections, and that the council would welcome all-party involvement in a longer-term move away from Capita.
The committee also asked whether the benefits of in-housing services could be extended to other boroughs through shared services. The Cabinet Member for Resources said that this was always the holy grail
, but that other councils had been reluctant to share services with Capita because of commercial confidentiality concerns. He added that the council was investigating the possibility of shared services with other boroughs.
The committee noted that the report referred to robust contract management controls
that had been used to improve the performance of Capita services, and asked for specific examples of how this had been achieved. The Leader of the Council said that the main benefit of in-housing services was accountability, and that the council now had more control over services like planning. He added that the council was now able to look at services in a more holistic way and restructure them to improve efficiency.
The committee were concerned about the low collection rates for business rates, and asked for further information on this before the report went to Cabinet. They also requested the formal establishment of an informal group to scrutinise the Capita contracts in more detail.
Review of Fees and Charges
The committee discussed a report from Councillor Knacke and Councillor Alan Schneiderman, the Cabinet Member for Environment, about the proposed increases for executive and non-executive fees and charges for implementation from 1 January 2025.
Councillor Knacke explained that fees and charges were reviewed on an annual basis to ensure that the costs of chargeable services are covered and that the Council is achieving value for money. He added that the council was under a statutory responsibility to have a rational methodology for increasing fees and charges, and could not simply set charges to meet income targets.
The committee heard that a number of charges had not been increased in line with inflation for a number of years and that this was part of the rationale for the proposed increases. In some cases, such as parking charges, the proposed increases were above the rate of inflation and the committee asked whether this was justified. Councillor Knacke explained that parking charges had been set on an ad hoc basis and that the council wanted to consult on a more consistent approach, nudging residents towards active travel in line with the Mayor's Transport Strategy. The committee questioned whether the comparison of parking charges with bus fares was reasonable, given that car ownership involved additional costs such as road tax and insurance. The Cabinet Member for Environment said that these were borne by car users for the choice of being car users
and that there was no equivalent choice by a bus user not to pay for the bus infrastructure
.
The committee were particularly concerned about the proposed increase in visitor parking permits, which had risen by 88% and 94% respectively. Councillor Knacke explained that this was partly to reflect the cost of enforcement, as the council was committed to increasing the number of controlled parking zones in the borough.
The committee also raised concerns about the proposed increase in the arrangement and management fee for new care packages, which had risen from £300 to £2,000. Councillor Cornelius asked the cabinet to consider tapering the charge so that someone who is only just above the capital limit does not have to pay the full amount. The Cabinet Member for Finance said that he appreciated Councillor Cornelius's tact in dealing with a sensitive issue and that the adult social care market had been very acutely affected by the increase in both inflation and interest rates
. He added that the document was still subject to an equality impact assessment, and that he expected this concern to be reflected in the assessment.
The committee raised the issue that the Retail Price Index (RPI) had been used to calculate the proposed increases, rather than the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Councillor Lemmon asked what the methodology for calculating inflation was, and Councillor Knacke confirmed that this was the RPI. Councillor Weiser commented that the Office for Budgetary Responsibility had stated that CPI was a more appropriate measure for calculating increases in the cost of goods and services, and asked why RPI had been used. Councillor Knacke responded that this was a measure that was used as an industry standard in the public sector and that the Conservative government had used RPI when calculating taxable intake, duties on alcohol, on road tax, on cigarettes. And when it's calculating money that it's liable to pay out in terms of benefits or job seekers allowance, it uses CPI
. He added that he did not think it's unreasonable to use the measure set by your government over the past 14 years to determine money that it is owed
. The committee questioned whether this was a fair and representative measure to use.
The committee requested further information from officers on how income bands in the Council Tax Support Scheme 2024-25 were calculated, and whether inflation and the living wage were taken into account.
Task and Finish Group Updates
The Overview and Scrutiny Manager updated the committee on the progress of ongoing Task and Finish Groups. The committee noted that reports from the Youth Homelessness Task and Finish Group and the Elective Home Education Task and Finish Group had been referred to Cabinet. The committee also noted that the Chair and Vice-Chair had agreed to amend the Task and Finish Group topics for 2024-25 to: Fostering (and Adoption), Sustainable Travel, Allotment Governance and Management, and Food Poverty.
Cabinet Forward Plan
The committee considered the Cabinet Forward Plan and noted that they had already requested that a pre-decision scrutiny item on the Food Waste Service be added to their work programme.
Overview and Scrutiny Committee Work Programme
The committee considered its Work Programme and noted that a pre-decision scrutiny item on the Food Waste Service would be added.
Attendees
- Alan Schneiderman
- Alex Prager
- Ammar Naqvi
- Arjun Mittra
- Barry Rawlings
- Danny Rich
- Dean Cohen BSc
- Edith David
- Ella Rose
- Emma Whysall
- Ernest Ambe Esq
- Giulia Innocenti
- Humayune Khalick
- Paul Lemon
- Peter Zinkin
- Richard Cornelius
- Andrew Charlwood
- Barry May
- Craig Miller
- Daniel Elton
- Dean Langsdon
- Deborah Hinde
- Fiona Rae
- Gaby Kagan
- Kevin Bartle
- Kofi Frimpong
- Rebecca Eden
- Stella Akintan
Documents
- Agenda frontsheet 28th-Oct-2024 19.00 Overview and Scrutiny Committee agenda
- Public reports pack 28th-Oct-2024 19.00 Overview and Scrutiny Committee reports pack
- Minutes of Previous Meeting other
- Review of the Capita Contracts
- Draft Cabinet Report Capita contract review
- Appendix A Draft Business Case Capita Contract Review
- 1 Review of Fees and Charges Cover Report
- 2 Annex 1 - Report to Cabinet for 8 October 2024 - Fees and Charges other
- 3 Appendix A - Cabinet Appendix for 8 October 2024 - Proposed Fees and Charges 2025 other
- Appendix A - Task and Finish Groups Progress Update
- Appendix B - Task and Finish Groups Narrative
- Cabinet Forward Plan Key Decision Schedule other
- Appendix A Cabinet Forward Plan
- Overview and Scrutiny Committee Work Programme
- Appendix A Overview and Scrutiny Work Programme 2024-25
- Supplementary Agenda 28th-Oct-2024 19.00 Overview and Scrutiny Committee agenda
- Review of Fees and Charges
- Annex 1 - Report to Cabinet for 8 October 2024 - Fees and Charges other
- Appendix A - Cabinet Appendix for 8 October 2024 - Proposed Fees and Charges 2025 other
- Appendix A - Proposed Fees and Charges 2025 Updated p8 and p87-90
- Task and Finish Group Updates