Transcript

and others who have chosen to attend remotely have been advised by the committee officer that should technical difficulty prevent their full proceed in their absence if I feel it is necessary. Fire alarms. There are no fire alarms test planned to take place during this meeting. Should the fire alarm sound please calmly follow the signs to the nearest fire exit and please do not use the link. Fire alarms. Filming the meeting. Filming the meeting. This meeting is being filmed for the council's website for public viewing. Cameras are focused on those participating in the meeting but anyone in the room may be caught on camera in the background. I would remind members at the meeting to only speak on my direction and to speak clearly into their microphones to ensure that their contributions can be properly recorded. May I also take this opportunity to welcome the council's new director of legal and monitoring officer Supriya Iqbal to her first meeting of the committee. Thank you. Apologies for absence have been received. No? Is anyone joining remotely? Thank you, Marissa, for joining. And declarations. Do members have any declaration of disclosable pecuniary interest within this room? Okay. So the unrestricted minutes of the 4th June 2024 meeting are presented for agreement. Do members have any comments, any suggestion or recommendations? Yes. Thanks. Thanks. Number 4, work plan. Do members have any comments about the work plan? Can the work plan please be noted? Thank you. Thank you. So 4.1, local authority governor applications, governor December 2024. So we have Salma Siddiq, governor service, who is joining online with us today. And Lauren Faye Novi, governor service, and also joining online with us. And I will introduce the item. Members should note that details of individual applicants have been included in the restricted appendix for this report. Members should not discuss any of any details of these documents in open session. Do members have any questions? Yes. Maybe you should ask Salma to come in. Okay. I'm going to invite Salma if you can introduce and if you can, you know, give your report, please. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. So we've submitted applications to be nominated as the local authority governor from eight schools. So included in the report are two new appointments and six reappointments. We've also included two nominations from London East alternative provision, also known as LEAP, which is a pupil referral unit. So these two nominations for LEAP are shared only for your information. You're asked to note that pupil referral units do not have governing boards. Instead, they operate with management committees as their governance structure. So therefore, the manner in which their management committee members are appointed is slightly different. However, we've included that within the report for your information and for you to note. Okay. Do member have any question about the report? Thank you. We have a governing body of the school as well. So just want to declare that. Can you confirm which governing body is? Yeah. The reappointment of item member I. Any member have any comments or question? Thank you, Councillor Mark. Thank you, Chair. Congratulations on your election appointment as Chair. Thank you, Salma, for presenting the report. So I don't have any for those at the pupil referral unit, LEAP, LEAP than there are for other schools that are part of the local authority family. And so I just wondered if you were able to say a little bit more about what's the kind of the nature of the governance relationship between the referral unit and Tower Hamlets Council. Please. Thank you. So my understanding is that with pupil referral units, the way they are governed is slightly different to maintained schools. Because the nature of their set up is different to how local authority maintained schools are set up. Their governance structures are not referred to as governing bodies, but they are referred to as management structures. And the way they are constituted is also different. It is also by understanding that the way their management committee members are appointed is different to how governors are appointed normally to governing bodies. So the appointment of their members, the local authority has the opportunity to recommend members to be appointed. So they're just recommendations that the management committee will take into consideration. And when we recommend members, we take into account the needs of a pupil referral unit and their pupils. And in the two nominations or recommendations included in today's report, they are both recommended by local authority officers. One of them is an ex-teacher who has been a member of that committee for some years. And the other member that we are recommending today is a part of the virtual schools team and has some experience of working with pupils who receive their education from alternative settings. So these are the members that we are recommending for the LEAP management committee to appoint. Thank you, Salma. Yes, Councillor Mark, you can go ahead. Thank you very much. Thanks, Salma. That's really helpful explanation about the slightly different process. So coincidentally, entirely coincidentally, I actually walked in to the town hall past LEAP earlier on today and was thinking about a question about the process. I was thinking about a question that's been in my mind for a little while about it. And so it's really helpful to have seen especially about these appointments tonight. So I want to say just in general, it's great to see that people continue to put themselves forward for this sort of role. It's a really challenging role, I know, but it's brilliant that so many people are putting themselves forward for it. And I'm really happy to support. I wanted to say in particular, in relation to this, I know it's probably not the done thing to draw out individuals, but to have the former head teacher of a school which was renowned under his leadership, his secondary school which is renowned under his leadership for the progress that it made, Morpeth secondary school, in the role as chair of the management committee at LEAP is fantastic. And I hadn't realised that, which is obvious. Do members have any further questions? Okay, Councillor Talham. Thank you, Chair. And thanks, Salman, for the report. Just to cast your memory, a few meetings ago, I think we had a discussion around or a campaign around attracting more diverse candidates. And I know there was a video done, there was a whole host of activities done. I just wanted to understand, no issue with the people being recommended here. And in fact, in some cases, as Councillor Francis said, do welcome those appointments. But how has that sort of campaign been evaluated? And have we seen sort of interest from global majority backgrounds? Yep. So as you rightly noted, we had some campaigns and events, both in person and virtually earlier in the year. They were well attended, with over 70 participants attending, and we received approximately 22 applications from those. Of these, we've appointed around eight governors to schools so far, and we continue to match potential candidates up with schools as vacancies arise. In terms of the applications we received, we received applications from a wide range of people from all different backgrounds. In terms of global majority, I believe around approximately 40% of our applications were from the global majority. So when we match up or rather recommend potential governors to schools, we look at the skills that they are presenting and the needs of the school, and also look at the diversity within the board and try to find the best match considering all of these factors. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Good evening, everyone. Okay. Thank you. Okay. 109 to 122. 22. Government consultation on enabling remote attendance and proxy voting. Can Matthew Manion, Head of Democratic Service, will introduce item, please? Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Good evening, everyone. Okay. A short little report here about this government consultation on virtual committee meetings and proxy voting as well. So for those of you who were around during COVID times, you'll remember that we had fully virtual meetings at that time as we couldn't hold meetings in public. But the right to do that had a sunset clause, so that was knocked on the head at a particular moment in time. So at the moment, all formal committees such as this have to be in person, and you have to vote. If you're going to vote, you've got to be here. The government have launched this consultation to see whether hybrid meetings or virtual meetings is something that the local government would like to have the power to do. I think the general kind of impression is the government are keen to give this power to local authorities, but obviously we'll see what comes out the other end. That's just sort of mood music that we've been picking up. Now, there is this consultation that's been opened, and individuals are welcome to respond to it. Political groups are welcome to respond to it. The reason we're here tonight really is just to see whether general purposes committee, we don't have to, but we might think we want to try and steer it in one route or another. A couple of little bits of information which may be useful to you all. So I was at the associate meetings, and actually sometimes they're more difficult than virtual only or physical only. The conference also had just a general discussion, so ADSO are going to be putting in a submission, a response. Now ADSO has been generally pushing for local authorities to have this power, so at that point, the conference I think is in favour of that, ADSO as an organisation. But they thought that it should be for local authorities to choose. They didn't like the idea of it being manned authorities should have the right to decide this for themselves. Proxy voting, I think no one was quite sure where that came from. So the idea is that somebody who isn't in the room could vote on behalf of somebody, somebody who's in the room could vote for somebody who isn't. It's not a concept that we've particularly thought about before. I think it may be it links a little bit to how they do things in central government, in parliament. But yes, I don't think ADSO were keen on that. So hopefully get a feel there for where an industry body thinks, but you guys might have a different view. You might think the council should be putting in a different view. Thank you, Mr Gold. Councillor Shafi Ahmed. Thank you, Chair. And I just wanted to add on some of my comments on what Matthew has said. Yeah, I understand. And it is really important. And I just want to make a comment. And it is important to have understanding about when remote attendance should be permitted. But sometimes on occasion, when a person is unwell, should they be attending meetings at all, even remotely or hybrid? Mark? Thanks. Thanks, Matthew, for bringing this report forward. So I think my starting point for this would be that I think that meetings, that people should attend meetings. But I think it's really important, sorry, role for hybrid meetings. I do think that it's really necessary, if you're going to allow it, that you continue to have quite a high bar in terms of what coracy is. So down that route, we should still encourage people to attend wherever possible as well. And I would say that I think that in terms of proxy votes... Can we just see if there's any more questions? Okay. More questions. Is there any more questions? Okay. Very quickly. So in terms of the recommendations, though there may be sort of general consensus in the group about how they feel, I think it could be useful to have a discussion, a debate around this with other members. So in terms of having a formal position on behalf of the Council, my personal opinion is probably not. And opening up to members to contribute via the consultation link. So that would be my suggestion. Do you remember? Do you remember? Okay. More Councillor. I just wanted some clarity. If we were to propose this, would this be taken on? I mean... Report, please. I mean the comments. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So if I'm understanding, generally speaking, the mood is everyone's got views on this and you'd like to be able to submit individually rather than... Including proxy voting as well. I slightly misinterpreted it. I mean my interpretation was that the Council won't submit a response on anything and members will all... 4.3. Constitution update. Thank you, Matthew, if you can come to this report, please. Thank you, Chair. So this is the latest update on the Constitution Working Group and its activities. Members will recall it was set up last year and after initial discussion, the first big piece of business was setting off ADSO doing a couple of review reports on the Constitution, which we brought back earlier this year. And we've now been working through those recommendations as well as some things that the members of the Constitution Working Group have brought forward. In the main, like the bulk of the work that's presented in this report is to the order of things, most of which I hopefully everyone's half fine with. But there are one or two bits which I've highlighted both in the report and there's a couple I'll mention here as well, particularly that maybe are a little bit more than that. In terms of the overall look of the Constitution, I think the idea is that we will gradually try and move towards what I'm, in my head, I'm calling the West-Northamptonshire model, because that's the specific Constitution which was different parts. Same with execs, same with officer responsibilities, etc. But that's going to take time. So this is just a first stab at some of the work. But there are also particular things that came up which I just wanted to talk through with the committee and get some thoughts on. I put in some information about the state of the borough debate. This is something that was introduced a few years ago. The idea being at annual counts, we'd have about an hour to talk just generally about how things were in the borough. But since then, it's generally proved unpopular whenever I've raised it, because it seems a bit of a political thing for an annual. The previous speaker may remember some of the discussions. So there's options. We can obviously keep it as it is. We can move it to a... One of the suggestions that came up at the question to remember when we did do it was quite long. So maybe there's a better way of doing that. There's also a note about how we order the opposition motion for debate. If there are two opposition groups, you rotate one to the other. But that's... If there's one big group, one tiny group, that feels maybe a little bit unfair. And then there was also a discussion around requests for recorded votes. At the moment, it's a relatively high threshold. So should we reduce that? A little bit to just highlight there in the report on Deputy Mayor and some wording around that, in case we should ever end up without a mayor. Like Hackney did, and they discovered their constitution wasn't quite adequate. Some wording around the powers of the chair of a meeting and just highlighting how they... They can kind of usually improve democratic accessibility, except in certain circumstances. There was a discussion around electronic voting. And we're exploring with our microphone company whether constitution so that people can get into it more easily, make it more accessible. And one particular thing we lose by moving to the West Northamptonshire model is, at the moment, you've got Part A, which is a nice straightforward introduction to everything. Whereas if we go to West... So it's like we're looking at how to do that. Council Bustin drew my attention to a local organisation or possibly one-man band, OpenCouncil.network. They provide AI kind of newsletters to the public, read our webcasts and watch our webcasts and read our reports and produce summaries of events. Apparently, for example, the council meeting where we're electing chairs and everything it managed to leave. I'd take his word for it, but that's obviously quite impressive if we managed it. So they've been... He suggested some ideas of ways we can look at this involving kind of new platforms, new ways of structuring data, and then looking to see what we can do with it. Now, will this work? I have no idea, to be honest. It sounds intriguing, but then the danger is everything's badged AI these days and it sounds cool, so therefore it must be good. It would cost a few thousand, which obviously is within my budget. I can do that, but it would... Electronic voting. So the idea of the electronic voting, you may not have seen this as we had it for a while in the past, and you vote via... Thank you. Councillor Dunham. Thanks, Shea. Just a couple of things, Matthew. Thanks for the report. In terms of the State of the Borough meeting, can you just tell me when the last time that happened? In terms of 3.20 options, maybe keep it the way it is for now, until sort of further discussion. And we were talking about AI. Maybe if we were to understand the actual proposal and return on investment. So we spoke about making it more accessible. If those benefits far away the cost, then that's something we could explore. So if a proposal was brought to CWG, then we can probably look into it. I hope everyone... No question has been answered by Matthew. And can we please agree that... We're all aware we think we are. OK, so anything that's in the report that was just like, make this change and that change, I'm taking people happy with. And my proposal for those is that where it's factual or where it's simple, we'll just agree that, and we'll get that into the Constitution. Anything that's a bit more complicated, all that kind of stuff goes to Council, because it's Code of Conduct type of thing, so they should do. In terms of the little bits and pieces that I highlighted, so State of the Borough, maybe not the annual meeting, but come up with a proposal for putting it somewhere... I'll make no comment on American politics. Right, so that's... I'm not quite sure. We'll keep talking about the State of the Borough debate, and I'll talk to the Speaker about that as well then. Opposition motion ordering. I think the idea was we'd try and make it only five of them a year, so there's a limit to how much you can go, but we'll try something on that. Requests for recorded votes. Did... I... So this was something the Constitution Work Group thought we should probably discuss further. If you guys don't have an opinion, I would say I'll take it back to the group and ask them to come up with an actual number, and then you can come... The quickest way of doing it for me is the best way. So would we maybe bring it in along with recorded vote, the electronic voting at the same time, rather than make any changes... Yes, so there's two different recorded votes, I should have been clearer on that. So you can ask for your own vote to be recorded, and you can always do that at any time. But yes, there's the higher number if you want us to go through a full list recorded vote, where I read out every person's name and they say what they're going to do. And as Councillor Francis says, if a particular meeting gets so heated that that's done for every single item or similar, then you can be there all night. We can look at all that together. And then, so then the last one was the AI, and that sounded to me like the Constitution Working Group should have a proposal. I think that boys will have some kind of interest in this area, I guess, if not both of them. And one of the reasons, I guess, for not making any change to the Constitution, I know whether they will come in and want to say, actually, we think you should do it like this. So it may be that I have to report back on a different way of doing things. But I think the factual stuff, that should, I think we feel that should be okay, and we'll continue with that as is. All the comments have been noted, and we'll move on to the 4.5. GLA update 2024? 4.5, thank you. So, we have Robert. 4.4? No. Yeah, 4.4. 4.4. Thank you very much, Chair. I really appreciate it. I got away with one, actually, for a second then, but obviously not the case. I thought that might be the response from Councillor Cox. Okay, so we're going to start. I've got four reports to do. Three of those are information items, and one of them is the polling districts and polling places review a bit more detailed. But what I'll do is, there's a lot of detail in there, and I apologise, there is a bit of repetition as we go through the various polls. So, when I come to those, I'll just sort of refer to them and say, well, we've covered this already. So, the first report, Chair, is the update on the Elections Act 2022. This has been to GPC on a couple of occasions already, and everybody really understands the pressures that we are under to introduce this over a period of time. The changes were comprehensive. I think that's the only way of describing it. Not implemented in a single publication or implementation. It was an incremental change since 2022. And as we get to the end of January 2025, that's when all of these new procedures and processes will be in place, and we'll then apply infinitum until government decides to change some of the things that have already been put in place. So, if I go to the act itself and the details of the report, basically the summary highlights in detail that this act affected the first polls here in Tower Hamlets, which was the GLA and the general election on Thursday, the 4th of July, and the Bowie spy election that was held on the 12th of September. That was all implemented at that time. And the Electoral Commission have now reported on the Elections Act and the implications and how this was rolled out across the country, so the whole of the UK. And in the report, I've put the link, so if members want to go and have a look at that data report, it shows where it all sits. And if I may share, I'll just go through each element briefly in relation to what the act entailed. So, the first one was voter ID, as we all know. Arguably, that was the biggest change that we had to implement, and that's the showing of photographic ID in the polling stations before anybody could receive their ballot papers. So, from an administrative point of view, the training that was involved in that was huge. We had online training. We also had personal training for all staff to make sure that everybody understood what was needed. We also had a comprehensive comms plan in place, and with the general election pulled in almost immediately after the GLA, we also then had a secondary comms plan to supplement the GLA as well. And the voter identification inquiry form and a ballot paper refusal list were introduced so that we could record what the issues were in relation to the Elections Act and if there were going to be any problems, because there was concern that people would be going to the polling stations without ID. Now, the two reports that I'm going to come to in a minute, which is the general election and the GLA on their own, there are statistics in there which I'll refer to. So, this is just a generic, this is what we had to do to make sure this was in place. For voter ID, no exceptions. Absolutely no exceptions. Anybody who wanted to ballot paper had to show the ID, and it also applied to anonymous electors. We have nine anonymous electors in the borough. And also proxy voters, so those people who were acting on behalf of somebody else, they had to show ID, not the proxy themselves, obviously. Also, we had privacy screens. These were widely used, and in some cases people used separate rooms. There were no reports received in 2024 on any of the elections of an elector who was requesting that their voter ID be checked in private, being refused, or that the facilities were inadequate or not provided for. So, that was ticked and acknowledged by the Electoral Commission. In terms of the acceptable forms of identification, that's in part five. That was quite detailed and listed by the Electoral Commission and in legislation. And I will say that that was okay. But there were a couple of things where it didn't work particularly well. And there was a high profile issue of a gentleman who went in who was a member of the Armed Forces and had his Armed Forces ID and was refused. And so, I'm pleased to say that the Electoral Commission are now looking at that list and the amendments are taking place. So, the list is going to expand as we move into the elections in 2026 or any elections that we do get in 2025. We just don't know. So, that's where we are. So, the Voter Authority Certificate, that was the certificate where people said that they didn't have voter ID. So, they could apply for a Voter Authority Certificate. They could do that online. And then we would issue them with this certificate. And they could take that to the polling station. And that was, without going into it, but the application was a photograph, name, address, everything else to go with that. And then once that was approved, we posted those out to people. Or in some cases, people could come in and collect them, which I'll come to in a second. The online was a secure government portal, which was introduced for the first time. It was extremely difficult to administer. And some of the other portals as well, which I'll come to in a second. There was a degree of skepticism from the outset from the electoral services team that some people were asking for these VACs. Across the UK, there was a number of students who were getting the VACs and then using them to try and get into nightclubs and other things as a form of ID, which they weren't allowed to do. But when we asked people to come in to collect their VACs, we said, bring some ID with you. People were coming into the town hall with their passport. You've got to take your passport in. So that was the sort of thing. It was all new to everybody, but that's what happened. But in the main, it was pretty good. And we didn't have any real issues after that. We also had the changes to the absent voting. And that was online portals. So people could apply for poster votes, proxies and everything else. They were extremely difficult to manage. Government, by its own admission, said that these portals were rolled out and they were not ready. So the team had to work extremely hard. And I will say that considerable work is now being undertaken by government to rectify the issues. And there are working groups now that I've already sat on for two or three occasions already to discuss how we get these portals streamlined a lot better than they were. That takes us to postal voting. To postal voting, and it was these postal votes and the portals that caused all sorts of problems. But there was also restrictions that people could only have and hand in a certain number of postal votes, so six. And we went through all of that. It all went pretty well. There were no breaches of postal voting reported at all. And the political parties campaigners are now prevented from handling postal votes at all. And there were no breaches at all recorded in 2024 here in town, which was good. And the same applied to proxy voting, where there were restrictions where people could only have four actors proxy for four people. That's two domestically and two internationally. So essentially that all went very, very well. There was also additional requirements for the returning officers to make sure that accessibility was a lot better. There have been some issues in relation to that. One authority in London is facing legal action, an elector with impaired sight, who said that the facilities weren't good enough. And we have the RNIB coming into town, into the town hall in the next week to discuss that. So that's good. So that's all up and running. And the rights of the EU citizens for voting and candidacy is ongoing. That will finish in January 2025. And at that point, anybody who doesn't satisfy the criteria will be deleted from the electoral register. They will receive a letter, a notice of removal, an application form if they feel they can go back on again. Now, in the report, it says that there's about 11,000. As of today, there are 10,148 electors who have not responded to anything that we've sent them out of 16,854. And there's just under 8,000 who satisfy the criteria and will be retained on the register automatically. So that's an ongoing process. The big one was the overseas electors for the parliamentary election, which I'll skirt through, if I may, very quickly. But the votes for life, which was the removal of the 15-year, once you were away from this country for 15 years, you could no longer register to vote. That's been removed. And that caused all sorts of problems from day one. Now, I'll talk about that in the general election review, if I may. But that was pretty horrendous. And I'll talk about that. But it was difficult, challenging. And the electoral services team were really, really up against the wall to make sure that that all worked. We got there in the end. So I was pleased with that. There were changes to the voting systems for the first time at the GLA. The London mayor was a first-past-the-post. So there wasn't that two-tier first-preference and second-preference vote. And that, subject to opinion, of course, went pretty well. And, of course, that change will now apply to the elections in 2026. So the mayor election here in Tower Hamlets will be a first-past-the-post and not first-preference, second-preference. There were extensions to preventing undue influence, which is quite detailed. And they are detailed – I won't go into those in any great detail – but 14-1 onwards, right through. And, essentially, these are the offences that has now been expanded on. Following the polls in 2024, there have not been any substantiated offences or further action taken by the police following accusations that were made. And there is, though, concern – and I think that we need to raise this – that, across the UK, the Electoral Commission have acknowledged that offences or intimidation and threats have been prevalent towards candidates and political parties. And that is now subject to an extensive review across the country. And we are represented on the board that is looking at that. So that's good. And we've also got the – what is now the MHCLG, which is the ministry, of course, of which Rushinara Ali is now the minister. We have four representatives from government coming into the town hall on the 19th of December as part of the ongoing investigations and ongoing updates on the integrity processes. That's where we are. That's where we are with the Elections Act. Not an inconsiderable amount of work, but that's where we are. Do I have any questions on the Elections Act itself? Wasted. Thank you. The question was phoned us, and they weren't on the register, believing that they were – or they were. It's a difficult question to answer, and the reason for that is the application. So that when we have poll cards that go out or the Electoral Commission have an engagement programme, for example, all of a sudden – and it may be just a natural thing that people do – is they see this, they just apply again. So – and I have the figures in the office about duplications. The figures are quite astounding, actually, how many people make additional applications. In terms of phoning up and saying, am I on the electoral register, we don't get many phone calls anymore, to be honest, Council of Golds. It tends to be – The thing that they did during the course of three elections in Tower Hamlets this year, the most important one, of which was the last one, obviously. I just wanted to – just to comment, I think, in relation to a couple of things that have been flagged as potential issues. And one – and this is in the context of turnout of the general election in – 85% of the electorate was worn out, in fact, by September. But I think that turnout, just over 50% for a general election constituency is really, really what element plays a big part in that as well. And I think that this – I understand why people have argued for that this – why this should be necessary. Because I think there will be another elections act before too long. But I did also want to ask specifically about the certificates, and then trying to use them as a – to gain access to all sorts of places. But more importantly, I think people are just kind of like – like, if you haven't got a passport, a driving licence – Freedom Pass, was it? The likelihood that you're going to be pursuing an application for one of these certificates on – Thank you. Is any member have any more questions? Yeah, Councillor. Sorry, no questions. Just to share feelings that Councillor Gold and Councillor Francis shared with committee. And just want to thank your team, Rob. I appreciate that. And I'll pass it on to the team. They'll be very, very pleased. So the GLA itself, again, I'm sorry, there's a bit of repetition here in the general election because of the infrastructure the way it is. A different set-up for the GLA from our perspective. The Chief Executive Officer here, Stephen Halsey, was the Borough Returning Officer. And the GLA was essentially run by the Greater London Returning Officer, Mary Harpley, GLRO. And we were part of the City and East constituency, as you all know. And Abby Bago at Newham was the CRO, which was Constituency Returning Officer. So that's how it all was. And the GLA ordinarily would have been a – I wouldn't say a simple poll to run, but certainly a poll that – well, three polls that we could deal with relatively easy. But we had the Elections Act implications, but we also had the general election, and nobody knew when that was going to happen. I think there's a joke there somewhere, but I'm not going to go down that route. But the issue is, from October 2023, the GLRO's preparations – and this was covered in their reports to City Hall – was that everything had to be prepared in duplicate. So we were preparing for a GLA standalone election, but also, which was the nightmare scenario, which would have been a combined general election with the GLA. So that, in terms of the administrative preparations, was serious. And everything we were doing was done in triplicate and duplicate and whatever it was. So, again, the Electoral Commissioner have got a post-poll summary on that as well. And if we go into the details of the report, three onwards gives us a complete breakdown of how the setup was, and we were part of that City and East. Now, 3.3 is an interesting statistic. We had 650,000 ballot papers to sort and prepare, and that came in an Arctic glory to the PDC, and it took about 10 people all day to sort that out and get it into the polling station order and everything else. It was just horrendous. But to give an indication of scale, it was just huge. Then the manual first bus post, which I mentioned earlier, was to take place at the Excel Exhibition Centre. That, in itself, was a major issue because, initially, we were going to do the verification of the ballot boxes and everything else at the East Winter Garden. And then we would count our elements of the GLA at the East Winter Gardens, and then we would phone the results through or email the results through to the GLRO. That was challenged to bring everything on site into one venue. And the King's Council's advice was, absolutely right, it's all got to be under one roof, which is why when the DLA counts and verifications, as you know, we were all there together, and it was a massive exercise that we had to deal with. So, from, obviously, 3-5 onwards, that was the preparations that we put in place. We had all the external stakeholders, internal stakeholders, we had management boards all over London, the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, and then we had, which was very important, was our elections project group, which we convene on every election now in Tower Hamlets. It's standard practice. And each one of those, and the ones that have asterisks alongside, so electoral services, IT comms, facilities, all had their own project plans and risk assessments, which they roll out on every election now. And that was really, really important for the GLA. Then we had, obviously, the implications of the Elections Act, which I've detailed again, and I'm not going to go into that in any great detail, because I've obviously gone through that already, but it is there in the report. So, a couple of things in terms of observations from the, for the GLA. The first thing was the comprehensive engagement programs undertaken by the GLA, the Electoral Commission, and Tower Hamlets. Our comms team worked very hard to get the message out for the GLA, and that appeared to work. We had a nominal number of electors turned away because they attended the polling stations without voter ID, and those that came with the wrong ID, the majority of them came back. So, and it was all done nicely, and we didn't have any issues at all. So, across the 110 polling stations that we had in Tower Hamlets, we had 20 electors who refused ballot papers because they did not have ID at all. They just turned up. Now, I will say that I thought that might be a bit more, but some of these 20, I think, deliberately turned up with no ID just to test the system. And, you know, at the end of the day, our staff did very, very well to deal with those, the presiding officers in the polling stations. We had 68 use the voter authority certificate, and 201 electors requested that they show their ID in private. That worked very well. We had private booths and separate rooms in the polling places that people could use. 392 unable to produce acceptable ID in the first instance, and 323 then returned, and 69 electors just didn't come back at all. So, all of this, and I don't think that many people knew that we were recording these statistics in the polling station as people were coming in. So, those statistics were pretty good. There was no breaches of anyone handling poster votes or handing them more poster votes than they were allowed to. And we also had, I don't know if you saw him, but we had one member of staff sitting in the foyer of the town hall, and he was receiving poster votes and making sure that people were filling the forms out and doing things properly. We were the only authority in the UK to do that. So, I was very pleased that that worked so well. The government online portals, as I said earlier, were adequate, but they weren't ready. And, unfortunately, became a real issue at the general election, which I'll talk about in a second. All of our 76 polling places opened on time and closed on time, and there were no issues in relation to that. So, I was very, very pleased. Then we come to the best value inspection. Now, throughout all of this, because elections, electoral services were mentioned in the initial, intense scrutiny. Absolutely intense scrutiny. We had the electoral commission all over us. We had the best value inspectors all over us. The political parties, and I was very pleased with Councillor Gould, who said, were very good. We have an excellent working relationship with all of our political parties now, and very supportive. But it did put that pressure on to the team during the GLA. And, as a consequence of that, we made sure that everything was open, transparent, and that access was given to all of the protesters that we had. That was good. Staffing was extremely difficult. And I think that 6.2 in the report is a worrying statistic that 30% of the staff dropped out a week before polling day. And the reasoning was just, we just don't want to do it. And that was a reflection, I think, on maybe what was going out on the streets. The people felt a bit uncomfortable. And, as a consequence, they just dropped out, don't want to do it. So, that's not exclusive to Tower Hamlets. This was across the UK. It was being reported everywhere, and it was very difficult for us to get people in, train them, make sure they knew about the Elections Act, and we were working all the hours that God sends to get that staffing correct for polling day, for the count, and everything else. So, that's also something that we will be looking at, and that will be subject to review in 2025. Polling places, they changed. As we all know, there are a few that change that happens. And the verification of the count, that was booked centrally by the CRO, took place in the Excel. And I think that was pretty good. And we had a comprehensive count plan to deliver that. And to date, the feedback on the manual counts, because, of course, the last GLA was digital, has been pretty positive. But that is being reviewed again. So, we won't know the next time the GLA comes along whether or not that's going to be digital or not, because that's all being reviewed by City Hall. And I think a decision will be made when they find out how expensive the manual count was, and they'll marry up the difference between the digital and, at the end of the day, that is going to be a deciding factor. So, what I've done, Chair, if I may, is that I've got a, on the report is a summary from the Electoral Commission. And there's also some statistics in relation to what the turnouts were and everything else. So, that's attached to the report as well. So, for the GLA, I think, in the main, went very, very well, and that was delivered. So, can I take questions on the GLA, please, Chair, if there are any. For the, you know, the item to introduce, please. Okay. Thank you, Chair. I'm sure everybody will be tired of my voice in about half an hour. Okay. So, the general election. So, this, obviously, I think, took most of the people in the UK by surprise. We were all sort of geared up for an October general election. And the, of course, the snap general election, there's no such thing as a snap general election. An extraordinary general election was called for the July date, as we know, 4th of July. Now, the difference this time round was that we, following the parliamentary constituencies amendments, is that we had to give away, for the first time, three Tower Hamlets wards into a new Parliament, Bromley North. And I'll come to that in a second, if I may. Again, there's a comprehensive report from the Electoral Commission about how all of that went as well. So, if I go into the details of the report, on this occasion, Stephen Halsey, Chief Executive, had a different hat on. And that was Acting Returning Officer. And as Acting Returning Officer, he was personally responsible for the running of the poll. He's not answerable to the council, he's not answerable to his respect, but that's the way the legislation is. He's an independent statutory post holder. Now, so we were in a different position, where Bethnal Green and Stepney was the new description of one parliamentary constituency. Popper and Limehouse was the other. Those two wholly in Tower Hamlets. And then Stratford and Bow was the first time that we had to give away those three wards. And there were serious implications for Newham and the Electoral Registration Officer here, which again was Stephen Halsey with a different hat on. But the exchange of electoral registers and data and everything else was huge. Some of the data sets that we had to send to Newham were taking two to three hours systems. Because there were signatures and dates of birth for poster vote check-in, everything else. So, it was absolutely huge. Now, so, all called. And we went through exactly... Now, we put everybody on standby. So, that was good. And exactly the same teams, external stakeholders, internal stakeholders, the project board, all sat again. We were sick to death of each other, to be honest. But there we were, all sitting there, and away we went again to do exactly the same things. We were rewriting project planning, risk assessments, business continuity. I think there were 14 plans in total for the general election, which was huge. So, the next bit was the Elections Act. That was fine. All of that was done. And the changes applied again for the general election. So, I won't go through that. I think we've done that to death already. Now, in terms of the observations, which is 4.4 onwards, is the comprehensive engagement programs kicked in again. So, and I will say that I think that some of the electors who we spoke to were electioned out at this point. People were getting very tired. We were getting some heated emails and heated phone calls from the public saying, you already know I'm here. And we were saying again, you know, and it was difficult. But at the end of the day, it is what it is. Now, there was certainly a knock-on effect from the GLA, though. So, voter ID really helped having a, it wasn't a test run with the GLA, but it certainly helped with the general election, because people knew what they were doing. So, that was good. We had to train all of the staff all over again. So, the statistics in relation to the, the two parliamentary constituencies, not the bit that was taken on by Newham, because that's their statistics. And I put those in, in 4.4. I won't go through those, if that's okay, Chair. I won't go through those figures, because I appreciate time is in. Now, there were no recorded breaches of legislation in terms of the handing in of postal votes. That was good. But the government online portals really struggled. This was across the whole of the UK. We were having real surges of applications right up to the deadline days, which was minus 11 and minus 12. Polling day going backwards, minus 11, minus 12. And we were receiving applications to go onto the electoral register and determining them for overseas electors, when you can see that some of these people lived in Australia, six days before polling day. Now, there's no way we could get postal packs, or whatever, to people in that short space of time. That is now subject to serious review with government, and we are part of that review. So, we're sitting on those boards. So, that's really good. There was also issues relating to people applying for absent votes, and applying to go on the electoral register, and the two portals weren't talking to each other. So, we were contacting overseas electors saying, you're not on the electoral register, you've applied for a postal vote, applied to go on at the same time, but there was no compatibility. That, again, serious issues, and that's being dealt with as we stand at the moment. The other... Sorry, I'm going to do this as quickly as I can. The other issue was the overseas electors franchise, and I think it's really important that everybody picks up on this votes for life. People were applying to go on to the electoral register in Tower Hamlets who haven't lived here for 50 years. 50. And they were saying, I lived at, for example, One the High Street. Well, One the High Street didn't exist. They told us the parliamentary constituency. Now, the only person I know who has that encyclopedic knowledge was Councillor Galtz, and we couldn't come and sit with us to deal with our applications. But we couldn't find people. So, everything was being done on face value, and the system doesn't work. So, government are looking at this very carefully for the next general election. So, we go back to 2009 digitally, but some people were saying I was on an electoral register 50 years ago, and we couldn't find them. We can't find them. So, resource heavy. So, really interesting stuff. 2006, not 2009. Okay. So, I have the figures in relation to the number of applications that we've received, and that's in the appendix E, which was the statistics during the statutory timetable, and you can see that they are quite incredible. So, but not the highest in London, which is always good. I've already spoken about the best value inspectors. The difference, of course, was the general election was called, and because the general election was called, the best value inspection was extended to take the general election into account as well. So, whilst we thought that they were gone, a day later, they arrived back on our doorstep, knocked on the door and came walking in and said, hi, we're back. So, again, we were on that scrutiny step. So, that was where we were, but at the end of the day, again, that's where we were. So, again, massive staffing dropouts, and we had a few polling places that weren't available, and this time, we went to the Excel Exhibition Centre. That was the venue of choice from the ARO, Stephen Halsey, and we had a massive comprehensive count plan, as we know. The difference being is the general election had to be counted within, start within four hours of the close of poll. That's the difference compared to the GLA, where we had an overnight sleep and we turned up the next morning. This time, we had to go straight through, and that is a complex process and is under review as well, because we had some staff who hadn't been to sleep for 48 hours plus. So, that's where we were. To date, the feedback from the commission, the best value inspectors, candidates, political parties, to the count for the general election, and the verification has been pretty positive. So, I'm very pleased with that. So, recording of issues. On the polling day itself, we have a system in Tower Hamlets, where we have a senior officer who is dedicated to speak to the police only. And he sits in a separate room with myself, and he starts at six o'clock in the morning, and doesn't finish until half past ten that night. They have a dedicated phone line into the police, and the police vice versa. Every incident, every action and resolution was formally recorded and passed to the police, if the accusations or observations were beyond the remit of the returning officer. So, any criminality was reported straight away, and the police picked it up. Dedicated phone link. Now, that is well established. There's also the online portal for any fraud. That is also up and running. It's been going for five years. I introduced that in 2019. I think it's common knowledge that there were several accusations of intimidation and aggressive behaviour, and that there were leaflets without digital imprints circulated, and social media posts were received prior to and including polling day by the best value inspectors from political parties. Some of the political parties were going direct to the best value inspectors and not to the ARO. That caused a serious issue, because that was beyond the remit of the best value inspectors. And when we pointed that out to them, they gave us all the information that they'd been given, and we contacted the political parties to say, you cannot do that. So, that was one issue that really blew up on the day. Now, everything that was considered to be of criminal nature was passed to the police, and the commission have now acknowledged that that is not exclusive to Tower Hamlets. It was an emotional election, I think, and I think that that was acknowledged by everybody. The biggest issue of all was the display of the Palestinian flags outside the polling places. This was recorded from the very outset at six o'clock in the morning, and ran through until half past ten at night. On receipt of this information, we got a team together, and they went out and they started removing the flags from the council property, but were restricted that they could not remove them from private property. They have no authority to do. As a consequence, there were flags still out and about. And, unfortunately, we were removing them, and they were popping back up again half an hour later, or an hour later. So, basically, the action taken was agreed by the police, and they arrested a number of people, and they were released later on in the day. Now, this was not an issue at the Bowie's by-election, but the Electoral Commission have confirmed that this wasn't, again, exclusive to Tower Hamlets. Okay? This was across the UK, and we are now part of a group who are looking at this, and the Commission are looking at it, government are looking at it, to see if there's a way of addressing those particular issues. Finally, sorry, Chair, but finally, at the count venue, we had an issue with about 20, 25 people trying to get into the venue. They got into the Excel Centre, but they tried to get into the counting hall itself in support of a particular candidate. This was dealt with very quickly. We got the police and security involved, and it showed how the photographic authorisation that we have in place now at the count venues works. But this highlights to all candidates and agents for future polls that access into any of the formal venues or processes must have the appropriate authorisation, and that will be very, very strongly put to all political parties and candidates for future elections. And that's where we are. We also allowed, just incidentally, was people were turning up with their tickets on their phones, and we used that, and that worked very well as well. That was the first time in the UK that anybody has put that in place. So we were very pleased that that worked so well. Sorry, I waffled on a bit there. Sorry, Chair, I apologise. But any questions on the general election? I think you've gone through that, because I think it is really important to understand all of the mechanics, as well as for us to understand the context as well. So I mentioned earlier about intimidation, and there was a general purposes committee. So, and I welcome that, that's the right way of doing it. I've somehow or other had an opportunity to express all of the report, including the appendices. And I noticed that there was an objection by Tower Hamlets Council. It surprised me, really. And Mr. Curtis mentioned about the kind of the role of the, of the returning officer, and the political parties team at the time, and said that's not the right approach. But I think this is important to bear in mind the context within which, very unfortunately. So I just wondered, like, how, how did we end up in a position where we were questioning the appropriateness of the best value and be observers at the general election? Okay. Very good question. The issue was, when I was first interviewed by the best value inspectors, one of the inspectors told me that they were going into all the polling stations, they were going to the count, and they were also going into the poster vote to observe the poster vote. My answer to that was, whilst I appreciate that you have authority from the Secretary of State, the poster vote, as scrutineers. That came as a shock to them, and they, the, the next up, because they had to go away and find out if that was the case. A couple of days later, they came to me and asked me how they could get access into the polling stations, into the count. And because it's not a council function, they were best value inspectors for the council. They had to get accreditation from the electoral commission, in the box correctly. They then got their authorisation, and they were given badges, of which I've got one as well, just in case I need to go anywhere. And they were given their accreditation as accredited observers, and as a consequence of that, that they could then come in, and they could observe as best value inspectors. It was making sure that we didn't allow them into places in contradiction to the legislation. I believe that the legislation goes back to 1983 and beyond. So, not the best value inspectors, it was just a process ticking the box. Mr. Curtis didn't write that letter, but I just, I was very struck by that. Thank you, Councillor Shafi, if you can go in. Thank you, Chair. On record, I just wanted to clarify that it's a really, I call it in Robert's words, as we, that proper accreditation was sought, and it was taken, and I think that's the best way. Yes, Robert, if you can come to your... Thank you very much. So, just to clarify, the letter I think that Councillor Francis is referring to was a letter from the Acting Returning Officer directly. That's not the answer. Okay. Thanks for that response. That's really helpful to understand. I agree with Councillor Shafi Ahmed here in what he said. All of the extra things that were put in place meant that, in practical terms, this, I think people can be very assured. Thank you. It's a marathon, not a sprint, isn't it, tonight? So, I apologize. Okay. So, polling places and polling districts review, for members I'm sure are aware that these come around quite regularly, and here at Tower Hamlets we do tend to review our polling places and polling stations immediately after every major poll, either formally or not formally. Now, following the conclusion of the two general elections, we needed to recommence the review of our polling places and polling stations and polling districts, having suspended that particular process because of the issues relating to the general election and the GLA and the implications that had on the service. So, I think an important point in the executive summary is that the review conclusion, it's the end of the review which will go to Council in January. It doesn't mean that it stops and that that will be a definitive decision at Council. That's not the case. We have a legal responsibility to review everything every five years, and we can go to Council and say, this is still something that we need to determine. This is something we still need to determine. We have technically a fallow year next year. So, some of the observations and some of the officers' observations and recommendations relate to that, and I'll come to that in a second. An extension of where we are. So, we had the first process that started in the first phase, and we only got four responses. And that was a huge exercise. We had a lot of consultation go out. It's only a review. It's not a consultation. And we've had 37 responses from the second one. And these have been merged together in the appendix. Concerns, recommendations that people have made. And consider our recommendations, and then where considered appropriate, we'll present this to full Council in January. And then, so that we can then have a proper polling places and polling districts review signed and done before the elections in 2026. It's important to note that all these reviews relate to parliamentary elections. That's what the legislation is. And then the local elections follow on from whatever is put in place for the general elections. So, this is a parliamentary district and polling places. So, basically, three onwards, which is the details of the report, is basically a detailed breakdown of the legislation. I'm not going to go through that, if that's okay. It's very detailed, and it just says what we have to do when we undertake a review. So, that's important. And the fact that the timetable, which is in 3.9, tells us that we have to have our review 51st of January 2025. That's all fine. If we go to four, which is stage one, which is the very first consultation or review period that we undertook. And the bullet points in great detail show exactly what we did to try and inform the electorate, patients that have an interest. So, organisations that deal with those with disabilities, of which there were 80. We contacted the local parties, the political parties, with our comms team, with items going into the R East End. We had a specific email response box set up. And we also, as is required in legislation, got responses from the two acting returners. Also had to respond, and they all went onto the website. So, that was done as well. We set up a brand new website. And then what we had to do, of course, is that we then stopped it. And I remember the last time I was at the elections out of the way, the GLA, the potential of a general election. And then we'll start again. So, four responses. One was a legacy response from a previous election in 2022. And that was withdrawn during the review period. We then went into stage two, which was a six-week period that we had to fit in. To fit in the statutory requirements. And that had to start on the 11th of October. And we set up a six-week timetable. And each of those dates that's in 4.3 are all subject to a statutory requirement. So, it was something that we had to build in. It wasn't sort of arbitrary dates that we just picked. It was a statutory requirement that was done. And just, if necessary, on the 3rd of February, subject to any changes that took place. Immediately below that is a repetition of what we did on stage one. So, everything had to be amended. The notice of review was amended. The terms of reference was revised and published. The digital maps and everything. So, everything was re-vamped, if you like, to the stage two. So, we could get this done. If you look at the bottom of that, the addition was that we sent, and it's a mind-blowing figure, but we sent 156,929 emails to the elective and to our website. And it proved extremely popular. Now, just some statistics. 2,616 bounced, which I think is a low figure. And I think that reflects on our, I don't want any more correspondence from you. So, about 500 of those. Of the 75 polling places that we used in May 2022, in 4.4, there are a number of polling places that were no longer available. And then, following the announcement of the general election, we had two new ones. One was Virginia Keys Community Center. Again, I will thank Councillor Golds for his help and hefty roads that people had to cross. So, we got that in place. And then, studios 6 and 7 on Fish Island. We had to do that as a temporary provision. But all of the polling places were the same as the GLA. So, where did we go with that? So, everything went out and we received the responses. Now, there are two spreadsheets which we've sent to everybody. And one is a worded document, which is the responses from people. And then, a spreadsheet in relation to what the officer's recommendations are. If I may, Chair, if I just quickly go through these in terms of where we are. And then, if committee is approved, what I'll do then is I'll tidy this up so that when it goes to Council, it will have some specific recommendations. So, I think, without going through pretty quickly, Canary Wharf was one issue. Canary Wharf has historically been a subject of concern. The polling places there, there's a lot of representation in relation to that. It's proposed that we look at Canary Wharf very carefully to make the electorate so they don't have to travel so far. And that we don't have, for example, four and a half thousand electors potentially going into one polling place. So, we need to have a look at that in more detail. And it's proposed that we do that. There are a couple of polling places that are no longer available, Chapler and Exmouth Hall. We'll have a look at that. And then, the other issue, the big issue, is schools. We received 13 recommendations from the electorate, which is a relatively very small number when you take into consideration the size of the electorate. And people are saying that they don't want schools to use. Schools get at least 12 months notice. And they have a duty in law to provide the facilities. And government at the moment are encouraging us to use public buildings, schools. Some of our polling places that are private locations are charging us in excess of four thousand pounds a day. Show that we're trying to be cautious with our finances. So, 13, there's a number of, there were four supporting the use of schools. So, nine, essentially, if you take into consideration. Of the 13, five for schools. Five were specific about the locations. And four were generic. They just don't want to see schools at all. So, I think very, very low numbers. The office of recommendation is that we continue to use schools and we comply with the requirement in the legislation. Again, I'll pass that one over to the committee. And there are some other bits and pieces in relation to maps on polling places and some additional stuff in relation to the new polling places. But they are, can all be addressed, extra signage and things like that. So, that's where we are, Chair, if that's okay. Without going into any, to go through any of this detail in the office. If anybody wants to come up and we'll go through it, it's not a problem. Any questions on that? Thank you. When we are trying to find alternative provision. It's really difficult. But I agree with the, I think the Monia Road, the Port Cabinet. There is no more business to discuss. I, therefore, close this meeting. Before I close, I would like to many thanks to Robert for your long narrative and valuable report. and also I would like to many thanks to Matthew for presenting your report and Joel obviously Democratic Service who was observing today and thank you all the members for contributing tonight and we'll see you next meeting on 17 March General Purpose Committee.