Transcript

President Person to follow the proceedings. Please could I ask all attendees to turn on your microphones when you're invited to speak, and remember to turn them off when you finish speaking. Please note that this is a council meeting held in public, not a public meeting. All remarks should be addressed through me as chair. Please note that we're not expecting a fire alarm test this evening. If the alarm is sounded, please follow my instructions and evacuate. As usual, each item will be introduced by an exec member, followed by an opportunity for members to ask questions, and then an opportunity for members of the public to ask questions. Questions must relate to the agenda item being deliberated. When the questions on each item are completed, I will move the agenda item to a vote. Once the vote has been taken, there will be no further discussion of that item. I would like to reassure everyone that the executive members have read all papers, reports and appendices supplied to them for this meeting. Thank you. There are a few formal matters on the agenda to consider first. Item 1, apologies for absent, received from Councillors Bradford Bell, Chapman and Williamson. Are there any other apologies? Declarations of interest. Do any members have an interest to declare? Item 3, non-exempt minutes of the previous meeting held on the 24th October 2024, pages 1 to 8 of the agenda pack. Can we agree the non-exempt minutes of the last meeting as they correct the record, please? Agreed? Our first item is Item 4, Budget Monitoring 2425, quarter 2. Councillor Ward, please can you introduce this first report? Thank you, Chair. This first item is about our in-year budget. Although we have seen light at the end of the tunnel, it continues to be very difficult for local authorities. We are currently forecasting an overspend of just over £4 million, but that does not include the £5 million contingency, which is always baked into the budget, which we do as a responsible council. The most significant pressure of late, Chair, is temporary accommodation costs, which continue to spiral across London. Any questions from members? Councillor Benali? Hello. Well, first of all, I just want to say congratulations, Una, on your appointment to the role. I wasn't ever able to make the UGM, but I just want to say I know we've got Borough's best interests at heart, and so good luck with the new role. So, just a couple of questions, and do forgive me if they're a bit too into the weeds. We can always explore them here or out of the other room. So, I was struck by the N4 library service charges, so a point of detail where five years' worth of service charges seem to have accrued without us knowing about them. And I was just wondering if there was any more detail about how that had happened or how that was not accounted for. Again, if it's something that we need to address outside the meeting, it might be. Could you direct me to the relevant page, Benali? Oh, do you know what? I need to get better at writing that down. If you give me two seconds, I can look it up. It's a very long report, so I'd have to go to the paragraph first. We can have a talk about it now, or I can send you an answer, whatever you want. I'll send you the details, but I was just struck by that one point. More broader point that I think maybe we don't need to do page details is on the future work savings. I'm conscious this is one of the major savings that we've not hit, and I'd like to get your opinion on how viable those delivery projects look for the next year, or whether that's something that we should be rethinking in the next financial year. It's very ambitious, and it's very ambitious for a number of reasons. Firstly, we do have to make savings. Secondly, it's a good way of doing things for all kinds of reasons. If you look at the buildings we have, I mean, Town Hall, 222, Cottage Road, there are very few local authorities of our size that have managed to rationalise their estate down to that very, very small number of buildings. It has hit some snags, but it has already made some savings, and although we're a little bit behind, I'm very, very confident that we can make this saving, but I think we do need to monitor this very, very closely now and in the future, and I welcome the question. Thank you, Chair. If I can move us to the housing revenue account, and probably about 60% of the overspend there is due to the cost links to responding to damp and mould issues, as well as disrepair claims. Is there anything that we do proactively to make sure that we reduce that overspend? I know that we had an absolutely wonderful housing lead, who is now leader of the council, and who worked incredibly hard on this, along with our senior officers, the corporate directors also in the room this evening. I know that a huge amount of work was done to improve customer service in relation to damp and mould. Councillor Hallowin or Jed, may you want to say something more? Yeah, I don't make any apologies for what it's cost and continue to. Damp and mould I take very seriously and repairs, and I owe it to the residents of this borough. So I don't know if Jed wants to come in. I think we were one of the first councils, even when we went out, to go back three years to our damp and mould and map everything out. And I know London councils are coming to us, asking us for advice. Yeah, so thank you for the question, if it's helpful. If you look at last year's housing business plan, that was kind of acknowledged as a pressure that we're experiencing. And again, it's in common with most other social landlords, responding to kind of increased demand. Some of that comes through, as we know, from a very long period of underinvestment, in terms of levels of capital investment available to maintain the fabric of buildings. So while it shows up technically as an overspend, we've effectively been making a provisional increase in budget, but without seeking to permanently establish it, because we're hopeful that some of the work that we're undertaking will start to reduce the level of unmet demand. And happy to share more details with you on the improvement plan that's been implemented. Yeah. So just on N4 Library, I'll cover that for you. So N4 Library is in a sort of shared space, and it has come to light that actually the main provider of the building had not been recharging the cost of some of the service charges to N4 Library there for us as a local authority. That has come to light, and that's why we have a five-year payment to make. I think it's fair to say the corporate landlord services have looked at why that had happened, to make sure that that's not repeated in any more of our buildings, and have taken the lessons from that forward. I would also say, and it's sort of mentioned in there, that whilst we've had to pay a larger bill now, in previous years we've accounted for the fact that perhaps we hadn't paid that service charge and it would have sat as an underspend. So that's where it's come from. It's to do with it being in a shared building. Did you want to come back? Well, I was just going to add, because I'm very conscious, right, we're a council with a long history that predates the digital era, but I think with my observation in two years of being a councillor, there's perhaps a bit of a systematic theme here about record-keeping and about being on top of charges. I've met community centres who don't have clear agreements with us and aren't aware on the arrangements, that they're somewhere in a folder on a paper file somewhere. Is there something about a systemic programme of improving our understanding of our footprint in the borough? It'd be good to see those lessons learned, because certainly as a local councillor, I'm butting up against some of those frustrations on record-keeping, clarity and costs. Well, I'm not going to comment on the community centres, because we're doing a community centre review. As you know, this council has been behind the times because of the way things are logged. We're doing a huge investment with the resident experience on digital, for repairs and everything else, and I think you'll find in the next few years, it's not to say people wasn't keeping records and doing it, it's just the way we're doing it now. So we're coming, like I say, into the real world and have people just do things differently. But it comes at a cost. So when we do it, we're going to be still challenged, why are you spending so much money on digital, the experience? But we will get there. No, absolutely, just to echo what Councillor Halloran said, I mean, if you look at the themes of this year, future works, consolidating our buildings, resident experience, getting a digital up-to-date, all of the themes of all of our projects are all about that modernisation, Benali, and looking at this year's in-year budget, despite everything, despite all of the challenges that have been identified, when you take into account our five-minute contingency, we're actually predicting a small surplus this year, despite everything. I'm going to go, can we agree the recommendations? Agreed. It's from 1.1 to 1.11 on page 9 of the Agenda Pack. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now we move to item B5, medium-term financial strategy 25 to 26. Councillor WARD. Thank you, Chair. So the previous report looked at our in-year budget. This takes a much broader view of our five-year budget. And again, there are significant changes and additional costs to the Council. And again, I have to highlight the most significant one there is the rising costs of temporary accommodation. As I've said, that's not just something that we're facing, it's what's being faced right across London. It's a significant challenge for local government. The Tories left this in an absolute mess. I'm really proud that we still have a Council home-building programme and all of the work that Council Hallowin and team did on buying back Council properties. But this is a significant medium-term challenge. Are there any questions from members of the Executive? Any questions from any other members? Can we agree recommendations 1.1 to 1.4 on page 67 of the Agenda Pack? Agreed. The next item is item B6, General Fund Fees and Charges. Councillor Ward, it's the Council Award night tonight. Over to you. Not me again, Chair. So every year we do a General Fund Fees and Charges paper because as a prudent Council, it's important that we keep an eye on every single charge. And the point has been made tonight about record keeping. So it's very, very important that we know exactly what we're charging for every single item. Most things have just gone up by CPI, by inflation. Where there is a more significant increase, it's often to do with rising costs of the service itself. Thanks, Chair. Any questions from members of the Committee? Councillor Banali? Great, thank you. A few questions for me. First of all, I think this is the second, or if not, I think second year, that we've decoupled setting fees from the budget process. And I was wondering, are we confident of the benefits of that? Certainly, as an opposition member, I think it's sometimes hard to look at these in separation from the budget. So I'd ask, you know, what's your opinion about the benefit of doing it separately from the budget process later on? I'm not aware of any local authority that does couple this with the budget process. It's not a question I was expecting. If you put it in with the budget, firstly, there'd be less time to discuss this at a meeting because the budget's good. There's so much to it. And secondly, the Council would lose hundreds of thousands of pounds because this would come in May next year rather than on the 1st of January this year. So given that most things are rising by CPI and inflation is a thing right now, I don't see any reason why we would hold this off to the budget. But it was a different time period. It's not always been this month that says Exitiv, has it? As long as I've been the executive member for finance, I have always brought a fees and charges paper this time of year. Thank you. That's helpful. So a few more detailed things around the fees. So I just wanted to check something on... Mr. Bernardo, can we just check? It is a question you're asking. Yeah. Yeah. So a question about the parking fees. So in most of the parking bands, you're raising them by inflation. But with the electric band three and the universal ice band one, you're not... You've frozen just those two bands by themselves. It would be just good to explain why. It might be a question more for Councillor Champion. All right. Jed's in the room as well. If you want to comment on this, Jed. Yeah, I'm going to answer very briefly that... So the parking fees and charges and permit charges generally follow the CPI and inflationary uplift. On occasions, we're also looking at benchmarking for other London boroughs and thinking about the different vehicle uses in relation to our policy objectives. So trying to influence behaviour. But I don't have any more kind of specific information. But again, happy to follow on with correspondence if that's helpful. Then just for another question. So on HMO licensing, there's a substantial increase in the charges, which I think is very welcome. Selective licence fees have frozen. Is there any reason for that discrepancy? I think this is all about benchmarking and HMO licenses have gone up because due to benchmarking with other local authorities. Jed, do you want to come in there? Because we've done a lot of work on this. Yeah, I mean, there is a paper further in the agenda just talking in more detail about licensing. But absolutely, so Councillor Ward's correct. So both for all of the kind of licensing fees, we undertook a comparison of other London boroughs and wanted to make sure the council's fees were in line with and consistent too. So the up rating is about bringing us into that kind of reasonable upper quartile level for London effectively. Any more questions? Thanks, Reta. Ernestis? Thank you, Chair. Back in the day, I used to potentially get some tickets to go to gigs and I was always aghast by the charge that you get for the administration of that service. I have noticed that we've got a new fees and charge coming in for parking permits. So the administrative charge for refunds of permits, vouchers and e-vouchers, is now at £31.60. That seems to be quite a high number. It would be great to know, does that cover the administration in a bit more detail about what that involves? I mean, this is about both rising costs and benchmarking and it doesn't strike me as much different to any other local authority. I don't know if anyone wants to comment any more on that. Sorry, there isn't really any more detail that I can provide, but effectively it is that, effectively it's a cost recovery process and the charges are, you know, checked to be in line with other kind of equivalent, equivalent powers. And many of whom use very similar kind of operating systems that have similar overheads to us. So it is a kind of reasonable level in that context. Are we finished now, yeah? No, I'm just checking. I don't want to leave anyone out. Right. Can we agree recommendations 1.2 to 1.6 on page 89 of the agenda pack, please? Agreed. Next item, item B7, and Treasury Management mid-term report, pages 233 to 250. Councillor Ward, can you introduce, please? Thanks, Chair. For anyone watching at home, Treasury Management is about managing the Council's borrowing to ensure the funding of the future capital programme at an optimal cost and investing surplus cash balances arising from day-to-day operations. This report reviews the activities of the Council's Treasury Management function over the half-year period ended September 30th, 2024. Over the reporting period, all Treasury Management activities have been carried out in accordance with the approved limits and the prudential indicators set out in the Council's Treasury Management strategy. It's not the report that gets an awful lot of questions or there may be something out, and it's not a report I often get asked about, but it's incredibly important that we are managing our borrowing and investing cash surpluses to provide an optimal return for the Council in these very, very difficult financial times. I want to thank the entire team involved in this. Thank you. Any questions from anybody? No? Can we agree the recommendations? Oh, can we... Can the recommendations to note this report, please? Agree. Next, it's item B8, contract extension for the supply of temporary agency workers. Councillor Wald, over to you. Thank you, Chair. Obviously, we want to always try and minimise the number of agency workers that we have and make sure that as many staff as possible are on permanent contracts. However, in a Council like ours that runs over 1,000 services, there will always be some need for agency workers, although we have taken steps to minimise that. So we do need this contract and I would also draw attention to the appendix where it talks about the social value aspects of this contract and there's some really good social value stuff here. Thanks. Any questions? Councillor Bernani. Yeah, I know I've brought this up before, but looking to the examples of Kemp Council and Luton Council who've looked to bring in some of this in agency recruitment processes where instead of bringing in an external company, we're recruiting our own banks of agency staff. Luton and Kent's kind of savings that they've demonstrated have been really impressive and I've mentioned it before at what was P&P. I wanted to know, I understand that you might be extending this contract for a year, but I wondered if this was a review or you've done any work looking at this as an alternative to working with Maxim. It's a 12-month extension and outside that period we'd be very happy to consider all options. Councillor Anistis. Thank you. So you've mentioned about the social value that Matrix SCM provides. One of my concerns is that we've been promised that we would ask more than occasional visits to schools, which they do seem to do quite a lot of and which is really useful, but that we would get something more in depth. And I think for almost a 50 million extension contract, I think we should be asking more for social value. and especially not just from getting potential jobs, but also from an environmental point of view. So Matrix SCM are aiming to be net zero by 2040, which obviously is not in line with what we have as a council. So I would urge you to going forward... Can you tell me the question? Yeah, so I would urge you going forward to... And would you consider reviewing what companies would work for and what we're actually asking from social value with them? You described the social value in Appendix 1 as occasional visit to a school. Now, there's a long list of things in this that has been done as part of this social value contract. There's not one page, not two pages, but there's like three pages of things that have been done as a result of this contract. Occasional visit to a school does not accurately represent the social value aspect of this contract. That's the first point. Secondly, we can always do more on social value and we are always up for talking more and talking about more on social value. So we are... We have a great record on environmental concerns around social value. It's probably... It's actually more the qualitative part of the procurement rather than the social value side. But we're very, very happy to talk about that as we have been doing as part of our banking procurement workshop. And I would just like to add to that we always go out for the best social value and we keep going even when we're in a contract we're always pushing for more. Can we agree... Oh. Can we agree recommendations 2.1 to 2.2 on page 251 of the agenda pack, please? Agreed. Next item is item C9 the homeless and rough sleeping strategy and action plan. And before I ask Councillor Wolfe to give this I want to just put on record my thanks for him for taking on this role. He's really hit the ground running and I feel the homes and neighbourhoods is in excellent hands. That's very kind. Thank you. I was going to thank you because it's my pleasure to bring this strategy to executive but it's thanks to your hard work and a broad range of stakeholders who've contributed to the production of this strategy including residents with lived experience of homelessness the housing scrutiny committee the homelessness prevention forum Islington Housing Association group and national advocates from Homeless Link and Housing Justice so just to put on record my thanks to them for this hard work. As you can see despite a backdrop of increased demand for our support due to the cost of living this strategy sets out four key priorities through which we seek to prevent homelessness Number one is preventing and relieving homelessness through early and tailored intervention Number two the elimination of rough sleeping by helping people into settled housing Number three improving housing options to meet the demands and number four in line with our providing accommodation and resettlement services to refugees and migrants so I'd ask the executives committee to approve this strategy Any questions from anybody? Thank you Can we please agree the recommendations to approve this strategy? Agreed Item C10 response to the scrutiny review of complex antisocial behaviour Council over to you Thank you chair at the risk of sounding a sycophant I also want to thank for this paper the policy and performance scrutiny committee for their hard work in reviewing the council and partner agency services to combat complex ASB we've put a significant amount of work into tackling ASB and improving our response to ASB and the recommendations from the committee highlighted key areas and our responses outlined in the paper I'd like in particular to draw attention to the work to tackle cuckooing some of our most vulnerable residents so I was very pleased to receive the report from the committee and I'm pleased that we'll be actioning all their recommendations do we have any questions can we agree the recommendations 2.1 to 2.3 on pages 357 to 3 and 358 of the agenda pack please agreed item c11 improving our private rented sector councillor Wolfe please introduce the report thank you chair this paper proposes the renewal of our borough wide additional licensing scheme for the next five years and consulting with residents and landlords to hear their views on proposals to extend selective licensing to nine more wards which would bring approximately 74% of all private rented homes in the borough into a regulated environment we know there are many excellent private landlords out there and I'm pleased that our proposal approach recognises that and provides a streamlined scheme for landlords who are members who are members of an existing accreditation body we do also know it's not always the case almost a fifth of private rented homes and not of a decent standard and there are lower standards of thermal efficiency with an estimated 200 homes not expected to meet minimum EPCE standards which has direct consequences on residents' ability to heat their homes affordably so as noted in the report we welcome the government's recognition of the importance of protecting private renters and the measures they are considering in legislation including the ending of section 21 no fault evictions so I'm really pleased to bring these proposals forward to consult on a significant expansion of our licensing scheme to extend our ability to stand up for private renters I also am really pleased with the work that's been going on and I want to put on record the thanks to all the staff because I think this is such an important thing because our private renters are just as important as our leaseholders and residents is there any questions from anybody? Councillor Onestas Thank you I've noticed that it is not all of Islington Wards that have been selected for this next phase three if I could get some clarification why some of them have been excluded I'm going to let Jade answer that because yeah I'm very happy again to arrange separate briefings to run through in more detail with the team if it would be helpful but effectively we are maxing out based on the evidence we've assembled over the last year on those which we feel have demonstratable kind of desktop evidence to support a selective licensing scheme it's not under current legislation in the council's gift to make a determination to extend licensing for the whole borough it's an application to a secretary of state and for that to be for the likelihood of success to be considered it has to be based on sort of specified evidence that meets a sort of statutory test and those further wards we feel are able to meet that test seven of them definitely do in our view and two of them there is a strong case that we can argue and put forward based on the evidence that we do have unfortunately for the residual wards we don't have sufficient evidence at this time we'll continue to explore that and if possible we will bring forward further schemes I'd also just note the council takes part in kind of seeking to influence government's approach to selective licensing and one of those asks is that it is not necessarily kept as a reserve decision to secretary of state and it's something that could be administered locally by local authorities and I happen to take you through it more detail if helpful do you have another question just to get a further understanding on that because I did look at a table which indicated whether it had new hazards whether deprivation rating and there did seem to be essentially some wards where they had met two of the criteria after three that are going forward and there were other wards that did meet two of the criteria but aren't going forward so is there any kind of priority in terms of which indicator really moves it forward again it's on that it's on the overall balance and the degree of variance away from like the national kind of medium levels that sort of influenced that so if we had a single ward that had very strong presentation even in one characteristic that might form sufficient evidence overall but yeah so there is a level of judgment involved as I say we've included those wards which we are confident kind of fully satisfy the test subject to consultation responses and any further representations and those which we believe there is a strong case and those which would not have a strong likelihood of a success effectively looking at the licensing decisions that have been taken up and down the country and it's a fairly a fairly well established system it's not quite scientific but it is sort of substantially kind of well trodden and it's very important to note that this is a proposal to consult and that you know we need to bring back the outcomes of that consultation and it will be I have no doubt sort of representations that we need to take on board both from kind of landlords and potentially resident bodies and others that might well inform inform the final proposals anything else no can we agree recommendations 1.1 to 1.6 on page 367 of the agenda please thank you item D12 Islington three year local implementation planned programs for transport for London funding I'm sure as everybody here knows that our transport strategy and the schemes that arise out of it are funded in a number of different ways but one of the one of the most significant funding schemes we have is from the transport in fact from transport from London we have to submit to them what we propose our program to be it's a three year program and it's essentially it has to fit into certain criteria this report sets out the requests we will be making and the reasons for it as I say what then happens we will submit it if we approve it tonight to get submitted to TFL who will look at it and raise any queries and then hopefully by March 2025 they will agree the funding which will then be paid to us there are a series of different criteria as you can see from the report and what we are claiming within those different categories is also set out in quite a lot of detail do we have any questions no can we agree recommendations 1.1 to 1.2 on page 517 of the agenda for the pack please agreed thank you now to the last item for this evening item G13 exempt minutes of the meeting held on the 24th October 24 pages 599 to 600 of the agenda pack can we agree those minutes as an accurate record please agreed thank you very much everybody there are no further items to consider that concludes our meeting this evening the next meeting of the executive will be on the 16th of January 2025 ooh do you you you you you