Transcript

Hello, everyone. Welcome to this meeting. My name is Councillor Critchard, and I am the Chair of the Finance Committee. Members of the Committee, I'm now going to ask you to introduce yourselves, please, for the benefit of anyone watching, starting on my left with my Deputy Chair. Hello, Councillor Sean Lawless. Hello, Councillor Warhol of Shaft Street, Queenstown. Councillor Jesse Lee from St. Mary's Ward. Councillor Claire Fraser, South Ballam. Councillor Jeremy Ambash from West Putney Ward. Councillor Aled Richards-Jones from Northcote Ward. Councillor Lindsay Hedges from Ballam Ward. Councillor Matt Corner from Nine Elms. Councillor Peter Graham, Wandsworth Common. Thank you very much, councillors. The first item on the agenda is the minutes of the previous meeting. Are these minutes from the 9th of October agreed? Would you like to say that slightly? Right, okay. They're all agreed, so I can sign the minutes. Excellent. The next item, item two, is any declarations of interest. I'm just going to say members are aware of their duty to declare pecuniary interests, i.e. interest of money, and keep their register for interest up to date, which I know we all do. And for the benefit of any members of the public viewing, any interest declared during this meeting should be directly related to the agenda items and the decisions being taken tonight. We have two sorts of declarations, pecuniary and non-pecuniary, and I think I would stress something that came up the last time is, if it is a pecuniary interest, it has to be directly related to financial gain, is that correct? For the member of the committee concerned. Are there any declarations of either pecuniary, other registrable, or non-registrable interests? I just want to point out that what is a pecuniary interest could still be a declarable interest, but non-pecuniary for the purposes of the meeting. Fine. Obviously, the monitoring officer says that too, but we're fine. Okay. And what I am going to say to you all is, I've sort of tried to operate a schedule, so I'll try and give you a bit of an idea on how long I hope things are going to take. I've also had a request from Councillor Osborne, who would like to say a very few words on item three. I think the committee has to agree that under Standing Order 66, and I'd just like to seek your agreement that when we come to that first item, that we're all agreed that he can say a few words. I've asked him to keep it down to three minutes, please. Agreed. Agreed. Excellent. Okay, so we're now going to move on to item three, which is the Wandsworth Heritage Collections Development Policy. Excuse me, Chair. Sorry. Sorry, before we start. Oh, sorry. I do. Two other things before we start. I've forgotten on the timings. I'm afraid Councillor Worrell has to leave us at 9.30. And also, Mrs. Sam Olsen has to leave by 8.30 at the very latest, so I'm aiming to spend a short time on the first part, about 10 minutes on the first, and then move on to the change, so she has plenty of time to meet her next appointment. Okay? Thank you. Right. Sorry about that. Thank you, Councillor Worrell. Okay, and I think we'll let – would you like to introduce yourself, please, and a couple of words, and then we'll hear from Councillor Osborne. Thank you. I'm Sarah O'Donnell, London Borough of Culture Programme Director and Head of Arts and Culture. Should I introduce the paper? Yeah, a couple of words. You know what I like, three key points, maximum. So this paper seeks the committee's approval to adopt a collections development policy, and this is something we've been keen to develop since the collections came back in-house in 2021. So alongside adopting the policy, we're seeking approval from this committee to deaccession, which is the legal format to withdraw items from the museum collection of a small number of items that have been identified either as a health hazard, or which we feel is no longer appropriate, or which we feel is no longer appropriate to be part of our collection. In particular, the human remains that have been found within the collection, but also we've received generous offers for a few collections or items to be housed in other collections where they have, where we feel it would be much more appropriate for them to be stored, because that will allow public access to those items, but also they are better able to effectively care for, conserve those items. So getting permission to remove them from our collection to their collection is another part of the request. Okay, thank you very much, and I think next let's hear from Councillor Osborne. If you could come up to the table, Councillor Osborne, introduce yourself, and maximum three minutes, sir. I'm going to have to be an officer again. Okay, I'm Councillor Rex Osborne. I represent, I'm one of the councillors representing Tooting Broadway Ward, and I'm the council's heritage and conservation champion. And I want to say it's a very good paper you've got in front of you this evening. I've got no disagreement with anything in it or anything of the kind. But I do want to make a plea for a slightly different approach and perhaps a different take on what's in the paper. The paper naturally has to deal historically with the turbulent period, as it says, period when the museum was closed at least once, arguably twice in relatively recent history. One of the things that that provoked was a problem with the museum collection, which is that there was no plan for what to do with it. And so now we're in a little bit of difficulty about what happens about the stuff that's left over. And there are all sorts of things you can do, but that turbulent history has made us, I think, as a council a bit downbeat about the museum collection. My plea to you all tonight and to the council in general is to be much more upbeat about what we've got. We do have to have a relatively ruthless deaccession policy because we've got stuff there that we shouldn't be hanging on to. But you can't just chuck it away. You've got to do it in a thoughtful way. For example, we are looking at much more effective access to the collection digitally. Some would call that a digital museum. We're also actively looking at getting bits of the collection out into mini museums. We already have one in the Wandsworth Town Library just across the road from here. We have another in the family hub in Roehampton. And there is the potential for many more mini museums with bits of the heritage collection dispersed. And one of the things I think we should do is we might use the terms interchangeably. But as well as talking about the heritage collection, we should also be talking about the museum collection. I mean, I think there's a concern somewhere that that might build up people's hopes about the possibility of the council creating a new museum, a new bricks and mortar museum. And hypothetically, one day, maybe we shall. I don't know. I wouldn't ever want to rule it out as a possibility. But the fact of the matter is we as a council believe in a society that has high hopes for itself. We want people in Wandsworth to be ambitious for their council. We want to be ambitious for them. So I think we should at least interchangeably be talking about the Wandsworth Heritage Collection and the Wandsworth Museum Collection. And that museum collection is going forward to be part of a dispersed arrangement of mini museums all across the borough where we can create them. That, I think, is the upbeat approach that this council needs to take to the collection. And I would urge it upon you this evening. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much, Councillor Osborne. OK, questions, please. OK, I've got Councillor Graham. I've got Councillor Rural. OK, off you go. So just to begin with, I can cover what Councillor Osborne said. And I think he's absolutely right about the attitude that we should take towards this collection. And the collection's policy in the appendix, I think, is very sensibly written. And from an opposition perspective, we'll be happy to support it. My question, a couple of questions. But the main one relates, actually, to Part D of the recommendation. Because disposals are set out very carefully in the policy in Section 16, the process of disposals. Part D of the recommendation actually seems to contradict that disposals policy. It seems to give approval to families to trump what's in that policy and potentially remove the agency of the council to assess whether it might want to keep an item for the public benefit. And given that we don't know what's in some of the collection because of the unfortunate loss of records around fires and putting them out with fire engines and the impact of water on computers, given we don't know what all these items are, I don't think we should just be saying that a family could take that decision without having any sense check on that from us and in contradiction to the policy we're about to approve. OK. Yes, Ms. McDonald. No, thank you very much for that question. I apologise, I think, in the editing, what was lost from the original paper is that the family have been speaking to other organisations to take it, and it's actually the Wandsworth Archive, so at Battersea Library, where the objects would be transferred to. But it's something that the family have been negotiating with them, and we've been negotiating with Emma as to how those items could be transferred over once they're deaccessioned from our collection into that collection there. So that's for the main part. Then there are a few other items that the conversation with that family is with the Wimbledon Museum and those items going there. Those pieces do need conservation and that budget, but it's actually also not linked with Wandsworth. It's linked with West London. So Wimbledon. Thank you. Well, very quickly. It says, and who have now identified another organisation. We're not saying, which is what it appears to say, that if a family finds an organisation that trumps the policy, what you're saying is if the policy has already said that we're going to get rid of it, that this then comes into play as an extension to the policy. I mean, I still think it'd be neater if it was in the policy, but if that's what the intention is there, I'm happy with that. Okay. Councillor Orell. Thank you. I just want to take your attention to paragraph four about the previous destruction of the archives, the electronic archives that we had. In this, you've actually said now we're going through a process of recataloguing the collection and doing it digitally. I suppose my query is, how can we ensure that this doesn't happen again? Digital is electronically stored in the cloud, for example. Technology changes things one day. Microsoft or whoever might decide actually they don't want, you know, they're going to introduce new restrictions. I suppose how do we ensure that there are backup mechanisms in place that should a system fail or get destroyed for whatever reason or wiped out, that we're not going to have to repeat this again at a cost? We are trying to work our way through that risk plan. At the moment, we've not worked our way through that because the collection itself does not have any budget attached to it. So that we're hoping as part of London Borough of Culture and as part of the legacy that we will be able to secure a budget line in order to both host, continue the cloud hosting, but also have an off-site backup version. What it has proven is the importance of having all those documents, those actual physical books. We have also scanned those physical books, so we do now have the PDF of all those pages, but we really don't want to go through having to type them up again. So, yeah, we're working through it, and this collections policy is sort of step one of getting that. Thank you. Okay, I've had a question from Councillor Lawless, another one from Councillor Richard Jones. I'm just going to – what I should have reminded you all is we have a very busy agenda, and I'm hoping we could be quite reasonably quick with this one. So I'll take those two questions, then we'll move to a vote. Councillor Lawless. Thank you. My question was about the London Borough of Culture, and I share Councillor Osborne's passion for the subject. What plans are we putting in place when we're developing our timetable next year to make sure that all Wandsworth residents are seeing sort of the rich diversity and heritage that we've got? Cheers. So the first phase has been the cataloguing of the collections. We've got the first iteration of an online collections database going on the new Welcome to Wandsworth website early in the new year. That's around 200 objects that we have so far managed to photograph and research. And then – I mean, it's 14,000-plus items, so it's going to be a number of years. But we've been working with volunteers and students at Roehampton to do that research, and that will be coming forward year on year in batches. We're also working on memory boxes, which is going to be a part of the programme, but is taking those collections out into different community settings. And as Councillor Osborne has already mentioned, you know, we've opened two mini-museums. We've got a number of other mini-museums in the pipeline. And again, that's working with partners, in particular a cohort of undergraduates at Roehampton University who, as part of their course, are using the collection as a learning collection and are researching and creating exhibitions. And those exhibitions each year are bringing more items out of storage, and they will then be going on to public display. Thank you very much. OK, Councillor Richard-Jones, last question before we move to a vote. Oh, sorry, sorry. I'm going to turn it back on in a moment. In page six, in recommendation D, is the term deaccession collection items defined anywhere in the paper? Yes, right at the beginning. No, sorry, deaccession is, that's defined, but is the term deaccession collection items defined anywhere in the paper? Sorry, Councillor Richard-Jones, I think you and I have a similar problem with this, is deaccession, of course, is not actually a verb, but it is used as a verb, it seems to me. Is that correct? No. Well, OK. No, no. That's why I asked it, right. My issue is, or rather my question is, is that recommendation D basically says there's a category of items called deaccession collection items, and it essentially authorises the custodians' items to then dispose them in the way described in recommendation D. But as I understand it, that's not a defined term, so we don't really know what we're talking about. We don't know what it is we're authorising for disposal here. OK. So, correct me, but you're talking about which items, so Dr. Sean Critcheton and Pamela Greenwood are asking to remove from the collections and transfer over to other institutions. Is that correct? Or are you asking about... That would be a subcategory, of course. Yeah. Yeah. So, those items, it's still... What we first... Step one, as it were, is to get... Is to have a collections policy so we know what can and cannot be removed from the collections. And then step two is having those conversations that, as I said, have already begun with the ones with the archive and with the Wimbledon Museum to see what could be transferred over to them. But that has not yet been fully agreed. We needed this step first. So, the question was wrapping this into this paper rather than bringing it back to another paper for those specific collections. But, you know, that is an alternative option. What we wanted was, and as the policy says, is that the decision is made by a body other than officers making that decision. So, this was a way to try and use committee's time most effectively. Okay, thank you. Right. I actually said the last question was coming from Councillor Richard-Jones. It's just a helpful point. Excuse me, Councillor Graham. I'm very happy to take helpful points. I'd just make everybody aware that we have a very tight agenda. Yep. And there are things that, obviously, we would like to get to. Absolutely. And I don't want to run into our time, which is what... I think you've already done, but we've already done so. To be fair, I think that both, in my own case and Councillor Richard-Jones, have both raised issues around the wording indeed. Now, I think what officers have told us verbally is absolutely fine. I've got no problem with what seems to be the intention. The trouble is that the wording and the intention aren't aligned. I'm not going to detain us now by proposing amendments on the fly. What I was going to suggest is that because there's goodwill and cross-party support for this, we approve this paper, but that some thought is given to maybe amending the wording of D at the executive to avoid these issues. So that the alliance... Okay, brilliant. Is that okay with everybody? Excellent. Okay, thank you. So all those in favour of our recommendations, A to C, which is to adopt the heritage collections policy, give approval for the deaccession and transfer to the appropriate organisations, approval for the deaccession and transfer, or if that is not possible, safe disposal of anything that's hazardous to public health, and D, which is the deaccession and collection items, which I think to allow those to be returned to individuals or families if they've now found somewhere else better for them to go. Well, the proof paper is a whole, and I understand. Yes. Okay, brilliant. That's agreed. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, officers. Thank you very much, Councillor Osborne. Okay. Before we continue, I forgot to say that Councillor Kemi Akinola, who is our voluntary sector business and engagement and culture cabinet member, is in attendance, as is Councillor Ireland, who's the cabinet member for finance, and they will speak when necessary, and the officers obviously will introduce themselves when necessary. All right, thank you. Item four is the change programme. Welcome again, Mrs Olsen. We spoke, we had an informal discussion last time. This time we've got the paper. So if you'd like to say, make a very short introduction, and off we go. Thank you very much. And as briefed, I will try and keep it to three points for you, and assume that you have read the papers. So I'm really pleased to be able to present to you the progress so far on the Council's change programme. It's an initiative that you approved in September 23, and has three very specific objectives that are about delivering on the Council's objectives, about us being a great employer, and about delivering financial sustainability. It's very focused on ensuring that first line that's about meeting the needs of local communities. The agreed spend to date and focus has very much been, as you set out at the outset, about building capacity and capability in order to create readiness for change. To ensure that we're ready to embrace and embed new technologies and service redesign, we have to have the right foundations in place. This is not a new and unusual approach that you're taking here. This is the approach that all good public sector organisations and private sector organisations do in terms of readiness for change. Most of the change we are looking at here longer term, of course, involves technology. But technology is only ever one element of it. Just delivering a piece of technology into an organisation will not realise the benefits if you've not done the service redesign, implemented the policies, and thought about what the customer journey is going to be. To do all that piece of the work, you have to have the skills and capabilities in the organisation in the first place. Service design has got to start with the user needs. If we don't know what those user needs are, we won't build the right thing. We must do our research, we must analyse the data, we must talk to users. We can't make assumptions along the way. We have to have empathy for our users, and we have to remember that it isn't always about delivering what people think they want. It's about understanding the needs. Good change and innovation is actually sometimes about doing less. It's not about running to create a new website. The answer is never an app. The answer is a better service design, isn't it? So I talk about it being human by design, but thinking digital first. In order to do that, you've got to put people first. Hence the focus on being the great employer. That said, we have delivered, the Council has delivered a huge amount over the nine original work streams, and those are outlined in the paper. I'm not proposing to go through them in order to keep this brief. As asked at the outset, when I joined you six months or so ago now, and I mentioned the last time we met, I've done a review of the programme. The area that we've focused on the most is about strengthening the link between benefits to be delivered. We've built capacity. We know that building capacity has been very much in the non-cashable savings, but there is also a cashable savings element of this programme as well. So in conclusion, I'd say that the change programme has progressed as planned so far to date. We have built capacity and are now focusing on building business cases for projects across the four portfolios to deliver those benefits. Those are completely aligned to where the service demands and service pressures are for the Council. And it was incredibly heartening for me as we've been going through the budget process, and of course for me it's my first year of going through this budget cycle, as we've been going through the process consistently seeing through budgetary meetings that interconnection between what service leaders are saying about where their demands are and where the possibilities of savings are to manage the demand, linking through to what we're saying in the digital change programmes. So it's been great to see that synergy start to come together. Specifically, we are now in a place where we're starting to investigate 14 individual business cases that we are looking at at the moment that are about delivering savings or about managing increased demand. And that's something that we'll need to look at as part of our benefits realisation strategy moving forwards. Not all these programmes will deliver immediate cashable savings, but what they'll be doing is about managing down that demand line that we've got in some of our most stretched services. So I will finish with saying that we are absolutely on a journey here. I can see the direction of travel. It feels that the portfolios are set up in the right space, but there's still a long way to go in order for us to ensure that, as we build the individual business cases for the individual programmes which we are looking at some of the cashable savings, we must remember that we need to do the service design work as well. Just putting an app on top of something does not deliver cashable savings. OK. Thank you very much, Mrs Olsen. And I'm just going to remind councillors, try not to make a speech, clearly make a point, but then ask the question. OK. I'm going to start with, let me just tell you, I've got Councillor Ambash, Councillor Hedges, Councillor, were there any other hands up, Councillor Worrell? Councillor Peter Graham, Councillor Fraser. Okey-doke. OK. Yes, Councillor Richard Jones. Sorry I put you down but didn't tell you that I put you down. Councillor Ambash, off you go. Thank you, Mrs Olsen, for the presentation and for the paper. Appendix 1 identifies projects started since last February with, I think, intended outcomes and benefits. As we're now in the second year of the change programme, it's been good to hear, it would be good to hear of the actual outcomes and benefits actually achieved from all projects from February but also any previous to that. So two questions. What are the outcomes and benefits achieved so far, or the most notable one, rather than all of them, because I gather there will be a really long list. And can we, in future, pay for six monthly reports to this committee, have a full documentation of outcomes and benefits actually achieved so that we can see progress as we get regular reports? Thank you. OK. Mrs Olsen. Thank you. So I've tried to summarise some of the key outcomes in the paper in the boxes further up. What I should also have said is, could you give us page number and paragraph as well, just so we can follow it where we are, if you've got them? If it's too complicated, we'll hopefully find it. Thank you. Page 27, Appendix 1, because I'm looking at it in an individual. So I have tried to pull out the key ones for you there. I would completely agree with you on the importance of us delivering a benefits tracking process, which was one of the things that came out of the deep dive. So the work has been ongoing for the last couple of months of going back, because a lot of this building capacity, effectively now what you've got to go back to is say, has that role now been actually recruited and started? Have they been onboarded? What's the impact and what is it that we're delivering differently? So we've started that work. We now have a benefits tracking process in place, which means that the next time I come to report to you, yes, absolutely, you'll have a benefits tracking in there. Is that... Come back. When I read it, I thought there were benefits that we were hoping to achieve. These are benefits achieved, are they, in the final column on the right? If so, I misunderstood it when I read it. Yeah, okay. Sorry, no, you're quite right. It's not that page. It's earlier up in at the... If I look at paragraph 10, under achievements and benefits, that's where you've got the... where I've tried to pull out the summaries for you. Okay, thank you. Councillor Hedges. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mrs Olsen. Really appreciate all the hard work you've done. Just a couple of questions. One is a follow-up one in regard to the question I asked you the other day about... It's on page 22, creating the 1,000 apprenticeship approach and keen to understand a bit more information on that. And then the other question is related to page 22, secure ongoing financial sustainability. And you talk about establishing a new external funding team. Just keen to understand more on that as well. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for the heads up on the question of apprenticeships because it does mean that you've got... I've got a better answer for you than I would have had otherwise. So there are two strands of this work, as you would expect. One is about apprenticeships that we are delivering within the council, where these are our staff who we are running apprenticeships programs with. That work is ongoing at the moment. And I, as somebody who's worked across multiple different public sector organizations, I've been particularly impressed with the work that the team have been doing to ensure that we are fully... We're not quite fully using our apprenticeship levy, but relative to most organizations that I've worked with, we are doing incredibly well. So part of this work has been about how we ensure that they are plugged into our organization and are aligned to the skills and capacity we are trying to deliver. The wider work that we are doing is the work that we're doing, as mentioned to you the other day, around working with the University of Roehampton and local businesses. So this is collaborative work. This is happening across the council and across the whole borough. And this is about working with businesses who are saying to the university that they don't have the capacity and capability to create apprenticeship roles inside their organizations. So whilst we have a fantastic university academic opportunities wanting to push forward with apprenticeships, what we weren't having was the connection with the actual roles in the borough. So what the work in this space is aimed at doing is effectively creating a bridge between those two and supporting the businesses with best practice and connecting them with organizations that are already doing it. So some of the work, as an example, is working with Accenture and Marks and Spencers who have really huge apprenticeship programs and how can we connect the smaller organizations, smaller businesses in the borough to some of those programs so that they can work collaboratively together. Thank you. Okay. Sorry, we have a question. Oh, sorry. Oh, yes. And on the financial funding team, the roles have been recruited to. They have now started in the organization and we'll have a fuller update for you at the next meeting. Thank you very much. Okay. Council Worrell. Great. Thank you. And thank you for the paper. I'm also really glad to hear of your viewpoint that change is just not another app that we introduce because I think that's often the response for many organizations around change. But I want to take you to page 23, paragraph 22, where you talk about the decision-making accountability pilot. I'd be really interested to hear more about this because if it is what I think it is, it sounds like quite a power shift in decision-making processes within the council and how we actually run our services and actually giving more responsibility at a lower level and in that way, obviously making the job more interesting for staff members as well, as well as around responsibilities. So I wonder if you could just explain that a bit more. If you don't have the details at hand, I'm very happy for you to send me something through as well. Sorry, Mrs Olsen, yep. So I'm happy to do both, actually. So the DMA tool is a tool that has been designed by the LGA in collaboration... Sorry, just for... Sorry, the Local Government Association... ...and decision management tool. Yes. So the Local Government Association have been working with, I think it's Birmingham University, and also CIPD, which is the Chartered Institute of... Thank you very much. So the Chartered Institute that is... People listening, that is responsible for human resources and organisational design. So the LGA have been rolling this out across a number of different organisations, and what it aims to do is to say that ideally any organisation does not have more than five layers in it and looks to roll out some really good practice across what spans are, so how many direct reports somebody has based on the complexity of the role and the repetitiveness of different roles. And they have a very lovely chart and explanation, which I'm happy to send out to you, that talks about at level one you would expect somebody to be spending 100% of their time in the more strategic space, and that at level five you're looking at people spending their time predominantly in the operational space, and there's a nice sort of diagonal line as you go through. What we've seen in our own organisation is we have got areas where we've got far more than the five or even a push six layers. You know, in my own, in change and innovation, we had a lot of one-to-one reporting lines, which we know are not good for retention, it's not good for customer satisfaction, and it's certainly not good for ensuring you've got the right decision-making at the right layer in the organisation. Now, it's only a tool, though, so it's a really good tool for assessing where your strengths and where your challenges are as an organisation. It then needs leaders to take it on board, think about what's the direction of travel of this service, and how do I bring these two together to create a revised organisation. We've rolled it out in children's services, and the director of children's services really led by example through it, and you can see some of the impact of that. It has been very positive. We have looked at it across adult services, where, interestingly, it's a more complex picture, and at the moment, we're in the middle of looking at, of rolling it out across change and innovation, which is the first time we'll have looked at it as a central team, as opposed to a frontline delivery team. Right, thank you very much. Okay. Councillor Peter Graham. Oh, and I'm just going to say to everyone, we need to remember that Mrs Olsen needs to go in about 15 minutes, and we've got one, two, three, four, five people asking questions, so off we go. If it is helpful, my questions are probably, are about this paper and recommendation, but not for Mrs Olsen to answer, so I'm happy to wait, provided I do get sufficient time later, and let others ask her the questions so she can depart. Okay. Right, Councillor Fraser then. Thank you very much, and thank you very much for this paper. It's really interesting to read. I guess for me, what I'm thinking about is, and I'm sure it's something that you're considering, is this kind of look into the future, how you then track kind of good work going on here, so thinking about the outcomes, KPIs, how you keep yourselves to account, and I think that'll be really interesting, I think, leading on from what Councillor Ambash was saying about kind of if this is to come back, it would be really interesting to see what good looks like for you and how, and us, and kind of how we're holding ourselves to account in that regard. So, and this may sound controversial, but ultimately, the good sign of a change programme is you no longer need a change programme, and actually, once, when, there's, what happens to the outcomes and tracking the outcomes moving forward, but actually embedding change into all areas of the organisation, so it becomes about continuous improvement, as opposed to feeling the need to have this, this thing called change is actually what good looks like for me. Thank you. Okay. Councillor Richard Jones. Thanks, Chair. Following on from Councillor Fraser's question, actually, so in terms of measuring, what will be vital for measuring is benchmarking, benchmarking where we begin from. I think it was two or three finance committees ago we were told that a residence survey had now been completed for the last year. That still hasn't been published, to my knowledge. It has been published. Is it on the, I'll just see Mr Evans, is it on the website, is it? It's on the website in July. Sorry, I'll just repeat that. Mr Evans said it went on the website in July as part of the NCIL report, is that correct? Because he's not up with the table. Okay. Okay. Excellent. Okay. Oh, excellent. Right. Thank you. So we'll go and look at that next. Councillor Cora. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the paper and the work that's going on here. It'll be really exciting to see how it all plays out and the benefits it can deliver. I have a question related to the project's funding on page 28, related in, sorry, 29, related to the asset strategy review and the funding of that of £47,000. It says that the purpose of that money is to fund updated conditions, surveys, valuations and resources to support delivery. As this committee will recall, there was an asset management strategy a year or so ago which was created by the council not without controversy. Could you just confirm if those resources that that money is paying for are doing a similar piece of work to identify possible, you know, future strategies for key assets in the borough and if that will supersede that previous work that was completed? So I'm unaware of the previous work that was completed. So can I come back to you with an answer on that? Yeah. Is that OK? Yeah, absolutely. OK, thank you. Right. Councillor Lawless. Thank you. I think attracting and entraining the right workforces is a really important one that we've got a crack and on staff volunteering days which is listed on page 23 and elsewhere, can you talk a bit about that and any maybe examples or anecdotes that we've got because I think fostering strong connections with our communities is like absolutely vital and I think it could be a really impressive piece of work. Cheers. So the policy was launched approximately three or four months ago now so all members of staff now have access to two volunteering days. They log it on our HR system. It's called iTrent, our HR system and when they log what they're doing they're encouraged to talk to their line manager about it but they also have to log which of the council priorities they see that it's most connected with and write some free text about what it is they are doing. Now there is a real balance here isn't there because this is a staff benefit this is not about us mandating that what people should be doing in their volunteering time but what's been really interesting is just how engaged staff have been in can I use my volunteering time for LBOC? Can I use my volunteering time to help with this faith group? All the conversations I've had with it so far with people so far have been around doing volunteering within the borough within our communities so I've had a few conversations with people who are involved in predominantly brass bands interestingly working with people who are street homeless we're giving them an opportunity to come into somewhere warm have a cup of tea listen to music and actually they see music as a way of bringing people in so that you can then start to side post people to other services etc. so what will be lovely about it being a very data-driven person is the fact that moving forward of course we can start tracking how people are using their time thank you very much before we move on has anyone else got any other questions about the work that Mrs Olsen's doing and the paper before we sorry if there's somebody waving their Councillor Ambash okay this is sort of the final pick up yep there are one or two points in this paper that indicate they'll need to extend staff contracts and indeed in a later paper medium term financial plan it says there'll be need to further investment in the change programme and savings identified to facilitate longer term change I wonder if you could indicate how many roles will need to be extended beyond the current time limits of employment contracts and the order of costs involved and explain why we should be thinking about extending the programme to extend the benefits but also some of the costs for us so obviously I'm writing the paper through the context of the skills that the change programme has brought in but I also have to work within the financial envelope that the change in the innovation function has so in doing in going through the DMA process and looking at what our HR function looks like our IT function looks like and our customer services function looks like what the team are doing at the moment with me is working through what are our what are the recommendations coming out of DMA and what's the what does the function need to look like in the future because we still have to be able to live within that envelope but we know from the peer review and from the change programme that we have needed to bring in new skills and what we've now got to do is rebalance that and look at what the totality of the function needs to look like because the funding moving forward that I need to be talking to you about is individual business cases for individual new projects not for the skills and core skills and capability which is what you've funded up until this point okay thank you now I have something that we did mention we would need to talk about one thing I'd like to do before you go is normally you would have stayed for the KPIs and the customer service one which I believe is in your area I just wondered if okay so not quite on the paper but if while you're here you could give us a quick update on how on that that's in advance of the KPI paper which is right at the end yep absolutely so you'll see the KPI on customer services is red it hasn't met its targets this is for a period of time which was also coincides with the change of the waste contract there was a huge increase in calls during that during that change over of the waste contract which you've had many a conversation about here I now have a live dashboard of calls thank you to the change programme of course which means that we have a much closer monitoring now on customer contact and our service delivery against that and I'm pleased to be able to say that we are back on track okay thank you very much okay right so Councillor Graham so now we've just to summarise we've dealt with all the questions we have on the paper and then Councillor Graham had some comments on the recommendations yes I'd like to get some clarity on what the delegated authority consists of and the mechanism for those decisions so the recommendation is to agree delegated authority to executive director which would make her the decision maker but the information we've had previously is that approvals for these schemes are being handled by the change programme board so is the programme board a decision making body or not so the change that is being proposed here when the paper and you first set up the fund the change you didn't have a me you didn't have a change in innovation director so it was the finance executive director who it was delegated to so we are not proposing to change in this anything other than it being delegated to myself as opposed to Fidela everything else stays the same as it was and for clarity all of the schemes in appendix one which have been approved were not approvals by the change programme board despite the fact we were told that was the body handling approvals everything goes through the change programme board perhaps it would be helpful if we just listed who I'm also conscious the chief exec has to go at the same time for the same meeting anybody able to help out with who's on the change board how often it meets it's not really a question of who's on it because it could be an advisory board but have no power and the same people be on it the question is its status so the status isn't changing the status is as it was at the outset the change programme board is the exec directors and we are not proposing that any of that changes through this paper it's as it was set up at the outset hold on it's changing I'm asking what the status is Councillor Graham what would help is I think we're getting more help coming over from Mr Riley well hopefully can you hear me yeah I think what we're saying here is that the change board is the governance structure that helps the executive director make those decisions effectively and that is the way that it worked previously but the executive director was then the executive director of finance right okay so it's an advisory for governance that's correct that's an acceptable answer but what I then want to know is given that this is being delegated to the executive director for a decision and it's a matter that were it not for that delegation would go to the executive why haven't there been and aren't there decision notices public decision notices for each of these decisions and the items in the appendix as required by the openness of local government bodies regulations right I think that might be a little bit too much of a detailed question for tonight but we will come back to you with a written response in connection with this and the similar status for the cost of living program board in emails with officers over the last few weeks which I assume the monitoring officer would have seen so I'm a bit surprised that there is still no answer to this because it does seem that we are failing to provide it and the problem is that not just is there no decision notice but then when I have requested access to copies of the documents given that they're not coming to committee and there is no decision notice I've been refused access I would like to ask the cabinet member does she have access to the documents going to these program boards yes so that means they are under the control of the executive which means that the legal right which has been denied when I've tried to exercise it and which this committee is supposed to have a written note of the reasons for refusal regarding and it has not that there is no basis for withholding it the cabinet members just confirmed that these items are under the possession of the executive and the legal rights of members of this committee have been violated right just very quickly I think this is the first time you've you've raised the issue in relation to the change board and in in relation to this paper you may have a number of wider issues that you are exploring I'm sure you do I just would reiterate that the specific point you've raised in relation to the change paper is something that we've noted and we will give you a written response to so that's the position regarding this item okay thank you very much the legal position regarding both is identical so if it applies to the one it applies to the other I think you've heard that you're going to get Councillor Graham you're going to get a detailed answer obviously we are expecting this to come back to us again within the next six months which I think is June is something we all wish to do and hopefully we can resolve that before but my thoughts would be that I don't think the situation has changed since the change board was first set up because it was set up in this way at the time and I don't recall what the discussion was then but we can always check back about what was said then as I placed in writing to officers some weeks ago now which is why it is very surprising that there is no answer on this there has been a systemic problem on both boards what it is relevant because we are voting now to delegate this power and yet we don't know if we'll have any access to the documents involved even though the law says we have a legal right to them and we don't know whether the key decisions regulations are being dealt with because none of these items have appeared on a forward plan and yet they're financially large enough to trigger that and it is I have battled now for several weeks to try and get answers I have not got answers I've chased for answers I still want answers the chief executive has been copied into all of these emails I was assuming that I would at least be able to get answers in person and now I'm being told we'll get back to you I have not been got back to I have tried time and time again to resolve this before this meeting where am I supposed to raise this if sending an email doesn't get the answer no councillor Graham I appreciate your frustration I think we've heard from the chief exec on this we're obviously it's going to be an action point for the meeting and I'm prepared to talk to the chief we can discuss how we handle this in future what I now want to do is move to the vote on this and I can get you and I appreciate what you say may mean that you don't feel you can fully well I don't know I can't anticipate what you're going to say sorry council all us I've finished the discussion on this now thank you okay so the recommendation in front of us is to agree standing on 20 councillor lawless actually I'd rather you didn't raise it unless it's what is it what is councillor okay you're entitled to be heard what is it thank you and the standing on 20 talks about how members should address their questions through the chair and should respect the position of the chair and I think what we've heard now has turned into a bit of a cross-examination of councillors in that case councillor lawless I I claim to be at fault but councillor graham will come through the chair in future right you're not in any way at fault because what's just happened is entirely consistent with the conventions of this council the way these committees have operated for decades the way that opposition members what were they now administration members when they're in opposition conducted themselves and the standing orders as councillor lawless should know apply mutatus mutandus to committees not directly and it is appropriate for that level of interchange to occur and that is compliant with this with these separate orders that apply to OSE right okay thank you both for that going down a rabbit hole both of you okay and enough I think mine was rather more serious when it's a law being broken we are now going to move to a vote please all those in favour the one thing we're being asked to even know we've heard everything is to agree the delegated authority for the director of change to approve and draw down the change programme delivery budget okay so all those in favour please raise their hands that's six okay all those against please raise their hands thank you and no abstentions okay thank you very much thank you very much mrs olsen thank you very much committee right okay right the next paper we have is 24377 which is the oh excuse me let me get the paper it's sorry I just look too many bits of script I wandered off it it's the infrastructure sorry excuse me it's the infrastructure funding statement and this is something that comes to us annually we'd like a very and hopefully there won't be too much on it because it's an annual thing that the council has to produce and I just like one of the officers to say three key points on that we need to know about this and then we can move to questions thank you my name is Fiona cross on the info I'm the information and planning obligations team manager the report presents the infrastructure funding statement for the financial year 2023-24 the IFS is a statement of income allocation allocations already approved and expenditure from that financial year it is a statutory requirement for the council to publish the report by the 31st of December for the preceding financial year and the recommendation is to approve publication of the infrastructure funding statement on the website okay thank you very much okay questions please oh there was councillor hedges that was a very swift hand and anyone else going to ask any questions oh sorry let's do it like that councillor ambash councillor corner okie doke off we go councillor hedges thank you for the paper paragraph eight the table I'm just keen to understand page please 41 yeah the table under paragraph eight total borough sill income just wondered why the figure is down this year on previous years because it looks like an outlier figure thank you so while there is a reduction on previous years for income of sill it's relative as Wandsworth is still the third highest collecting authority in the country sill is collected on commencement of development and any prevailing economic uncertainty impacts on starts of development possible reasons include cost of living interest rates inflation build costs which impact on buyer confidence which then impacts on developer confidence but it's worth mentioning that the pipeline of secured permissions is still healthy and the council has 8,000 new homes with planning permissions yet to start construction as at the first of April 2024 okay thank you miss cross and I'm just going to ask something I think this is probably the first time you is it one of the first times you're presenting to committee I present a committee once a year for this particular report okay so right okay so please everyone be gentle can't say is that okay your microphone isn't on can I just ask a quick follow-up directly related to that you said this year that Wandsworth was the third highest charging authority what was the rank of Wandsworth last year and the year before for come just so we can get a sense because that sounds like it's trying to explain away that the decrease in the volume of receipts let's go for the direct question so I only have a figure for last year when we were the top collecting authority in the country yes thank you right so we've fallen absolutely and relatively councillor Ambash thank you I've got one or two slightly detailed questions but I was wondering on the appendix should you include section 106 as well as still on the heading it's going to go on the website isn't it just could you give us page number please sorry was that yeah so what will go on the appendix itself will go on to the website that's true it will be published as presented to yourselves it's labeled the infrastructure funding statement and section 106 is dealt with on the final I believe it's three tables for considerably more so it's dealt with on page 52 the heading because it includes both doesn't it might be included in the heading that's all I'm just suggesting presentation point can I can I get on to my more substantive point and that is still was overspent if you add the two together by about 21 million last year also section 106 was 12 million under is is it is it prudent to be committed over expenditure of 21 million okay sorry officers could I have a view on who's going to oh sorry mrs mary I think it says that will come against future receipts so just asking how prudent that is you ably answered your own question and so as so mrs mary is our director of finance I am executive director of finance yes so as fiona said there is a pipeline of developments and the I think the estimates going forward are pretty prudent relative to the number of units that are on that list okay thank you cats corner thank you chair um paragraph nine on page 41 uh talks about the aftermath of the count of the council's decision in july uh 2023 to the new approach for and seal neighborhoods um could the officers please confirm roughly um how many how many of the how much of the total seal neighborhood income detailed on page 42 for north battersea uh came from the neighborhood that was previously uh known as nine elms sorry could if you could let me know which of you is going to answer that yeah um I will have to come back to you with that question with an answer to that question because I don't have the information with me okay thank you very much okay cancer fraser thank you excuse me um and thank you for for the presentations evening of the paper just thinking about I think some of the questions earlier we're kind of just trying to understand kind of the drop this year but in terms of that is is this kind of similarity in terms of what we're seeing elsewhere in terms of kind of development at this point in time thinking about comparability on a national level to Wandsworth hi christine cook head of spatial planning this certainly isn't a unique Wandsworth issue this is a an economic cycle issue it reflects where we are with interest rates with house by a confidence with developer confidence um we know that we've got a healthy pipeline of of sites um we're one of the in an unfortunate position in Wandsworth about a third of London boroughs can't even meet their five-year suppliers required by government um we've got more than a five-year supply so it's there um when the confidence returns there is a pipeline to deliver okay thank you very much uh council Graham and after that I'd quite like to uh wind up uh yes quick point and a substantive point the quick point uh is just in the recommendation um there's a delegation to both the executive director of finance and to you uh council critchard um to agree modifications to these statements when required I'm just wondering modifications could have very wide or very narrow scope uh what what what how much change are we licensing uh officers at with with with with you and I'm sure you would exercise your duties appropriately categorically but never how much license are we giving you by voting for this recommendation we have only had to republish the infrastructure funding statement on a very small number of occasions and it is purely to reflect um differences between what we have reported this evening and what the accounts are of the council because it is a factual report so it will always reflect uh what is being put through the council's accounts um for that year that that's helpful I think that that is satisfactory I'm happy with that my most substantive question uh is actually one for the cabinet member not for officers um obviously this administration was committed to introducing uh new levies on property developments to pay for a range of things but most specifically for uh law enforcement officers now there is no power to introduce new levies but you can divide up or collect produce new rules to section 106 and still those are the only levies permitted um I've looked through this I can't find any law enforcement officers being paid for in these schedules uh we've been promised papers like year after year now um there's only one financial term of this administration left can can the cabinet member tell us if there will ever be law enforcement officers paid for by levies and property developers sorry councillor andrea graham who's the cabinet member of finance happy to answer angela ireland what am i talking about sorry i do apologize i really apologize in fact you've got no idea how much i apologize it's one of the other councillor's names i'm sorry my understanding is that is the intention but i'm not actually the cabinet member responsible for this it's either law and order or this area okay i'm sorry but the councillor is the cabinet member responsible for levies that's why this paper is here the only levies we can have are section 106 or sill that is in her responsibility is why this paper is at this committee there is one financial year left the budget will be set you know in a few months and i'm sure that she's already got the papers preparing for that will there be law enforcement officers paid for by levies on property developers by may 2026 as she and all the other councillors on that side of the table promised yes that is my understanding and the budget will be published in due course okay thank you very much right and i councillor graham actually i have a question now i've discovered i've got powers which i didn't realize i had the one question i had was to do with the way sill was reported in audit because i think we had an issue in audit committee over it and i think my question would be is have we resolved the audit issue that came up about where the sill was reported before we publish and if you don't know the immediate answer for that very happy to take that later but i'd like to know that before i sign it off and as would councillor hayes she knows yeah okay thank you very much um is that okay you've you've got the question oh um i've seen mr cook yes um we're not familiar with the audit committee paper that was presented so we'd have to i'm sure that um catherine but that the team will tell you what it is and i suspect it's been resolved because it was around last year's but we i'd just like to be conferred for it to be confirmed thank you okay so we've now asked to agree the recommendation that we publish uh the report and that the director of finance the executive director of finance and i um republish anything look at it and make any necessary changes uh those in favor of that recommendation agreed right brilliant agreed by everybody excellent thank you very much councillors okay we now move on about 20 minutes later than i'd hoped to the medium term financial strategy paper uh and mrs mary would you like to say a few key words about what a few words about what we need to know about this one please and again for anybody watching it's something we see regularly yes thank you chair so um this paper would usually come to um the committee cycle before this one but if you remember we delayed the paper because we were waiting to hear uh the government's first budget which was published at the end of october where we know what that contained um the budget is reflected in the figures in this mtfs the headline for that budget was good news for local government um there was a significant increase in the level of funding specifically for local government a 3.2 percent real terms increase so that means um 3.2 percent above inflation and that was the highest percentage of all the um all the government departments so good news reflected in in um the paper where we know how that will be uh distributed we don't have the detail of the funding settlement and how the extra funding will be distributed so we've had to make some estimates so that is reflected in the paper throughout um what the paper shows across the council's four frameworks is it shows that we have got um pressures coming through in our general fund uh we've got pressures coming through in our housing revenue account and we've got pressures coming through in our dedicated schools grant and they're all the pressures we've spoken about um a number of times both at this committee and in the service committees that um consider those in detail we've got relatively high inflation coming through still we've got service demand pressures uh linked to a number of our statutory services um and we have got um pressures that we think are going to continue into the coming year um and we've tried to forecast those as best we can so overall um we have got some um significant pressures that are coming through but fortunately we're in a position where we've got um reserves behind us that will help us get through that we obviously need to take mitigating actions and we are doing that across a number of our services and they are summarized in the paper okay thank you very much mrs murray okay uh councillors i'm interested in anybody who has questions on this paper right uh let me see who i've got i'm going to let councillor lee go first because we haven't heard from her councillor that's graham uh councillor ambash councillor lawless and councillor warrell okay uh councillor lee would you like to uh yeah i think i think um my the point i wanted to make was was to draw attention to the page um 72 paragraph 63 where we uh we see the reduction in our turnover of agency staff and social workers and i just wanted the chance to draw everybody's attention to the fact that onesworth has been named supportive social work employer of the year at the social work awards 2024 um which is a really really good news story and shows the effort that we are putting into our our social work staff i don't think i really have a question presumably that has its benefits in terms of the finance as well mrs murray if you'd like to just add that yeah yeah sorry so thank thank you for the statement stroke question um yes and i know that the service um are particularly delighted that they won the award because they have put a significant amount of effort into this over the past few years um with the social worker um they've got a an academy they've got um extra support over and above the um the statutory level of support that's required for new newly qualified social workers and we have seen a significant drop in the amount that we are uh spending on agency as a result so the the figures do show the good news um coming through and and can i just ask something else is that also directly related to the work we've had on the change program or is that uh no i'd say that was um putting train a number of years ago uh particularly when um anna popovici joined us that was one of her key targets was to tackle what was at that point the highest level of agency um use that we'd had in the council so i think it would be fair to say that predates the change program okay thank you very much okay uh councillor graham um yes so paragraph 12 uh talks about page uh this page 61 thank you or seven of the report um paragraph 12 talks about the uh real terms increase in core spending power of 3.2 percent um can officers confirm that that assumes that the administration and the 3.2 percent we may not get but were we to get that 3.2 percent it would assume a council tax increase of three percent on the main rate and two percent on the social care precept yes that's right so actually if the um administration is going to stick to its policy of freezing the main rate then there would not be that increase increase so anything less than a full increase would reduce that percentage yes okay um can you also confirm that there was a real terms increase in core spending last year including in the council's individual core spending power following the settlement um yes there was yes okay can i just ask the cabinet member in that case um given that um we are now happy to say that a real terms increase in core spending power is a real terms increase why the real terms increase last year was described in the press releases that she oversaw as a real terms cut because it was sorry i can't see anything that's changed other than the government sorry makes a difference uh cancer island i don't understand the question yeah i think cancer graham i mean the press releases were ones that she saw although we've had other press releases now go out on other things where apparently they're sent in error so maybe this was another error but it was raised last year in this committee when she was here wasn't raised as much it was it was raised by me in this committee okay well thank you i'm not sure that we're going to given that a conservative real terms increase was described as a real terms cut i'm assuming it's a labor real terms increase will be consistently described and portrayed to residents as a real terms cut right thank you for your observation council ambash next so i wanted to say it's good news that the government has come up with core funding of real terms increase and it's good news that the government has uh sorry excuse me councillor graham can you just behave yourself please and not shout you've already been asked to go through the chair i know it's exciting and i know it's unfortunate that we now no longer have a conservative government but we just you know some of us you have to learn to live with it like the rest of us had to live with a tory government for ages enough enough as as i was saying it's really good that the government has committed to multi-year settlements for three years i think at least it makes it much more possible for the council to plan strategically financially um i've got a question for mrs mary when i look back at last year's paper on the medium financial strategy in year year one we had a 27 million projected overspend and larger figures for year two and year three when we compare it with this year we've got a 13 million projected overspend for the next financial year and smaller figures than last year i wonder why the gap is less i know i know that we're one cycle further on so last year we considered this report i think in the september committee but i'm just kind of wondering if the gap is smaller partly because we've got a labor government now but my serious question is how confident are we of the work we're doing to try and bridge the funding gap and balance the budget but by next april okay and that is directed to mrs mary and the cabinet member excellent thank you very much okay mrs mary choose which order you'd like okay so i'll take those in order so comparing the um the equivalent paper this time last year although as you say it was september actually the biggest difference is uh the last uh settlement so the previous government's finance settlement was as we spoke about and council graham rightly um highlighted was a real terms increase at that point um inflation was much higher and so real terms increase meant that we did get significantly more uh funding particularly for uh social care uh so that has moved the figures on the second question about how confident are we in balancing the budget as i said we are in a fortunate position that we have got reserves and so we will be able to balance the budget uh for next year uh what we need to make sure all we do though is take action to um to tackle the fact that there is effectively a structural funding gap which which will only um go away or get smaller if we either reduce our income or in reduce our expenditure or increase our income in some way and the savings program the change program efficiencies um additional government grant that you know there are many counts of tax uh income there's lots of things we can do and we are doing and we will continue to do in order to bridge that gap thank you councillor would you like to add to that thank you mrs mary just just to repeat we're working very hard to make sure we are required by law to publish a balanced budget and we will do so i mean we are dealing with um cuts from the previous government i think we've lost 100 million pounds per year in cash terms more in real terms 50 cut in government funding and increased demand so officers are working very hard to make sure we can balance the budget okay thank you very much cancer island uh i have councillor lawless next thank you councillor hedges i've got you off to councillor warrell i've got two questions uh if i may um the first one was around the point that the that council island just made around the cuts that we've seen across the country and the lga uh local government association um said that councils across the country were feeling over 24 billion pounds worth of spending reductions as a result of the last government um can the cabinet member list um some of the impact that that's had on frontline services and our borough over the last 14 years and my second question was uh to mrs mary there's references to the costs uh an increasing cost in temporary accommodation um what's the council doing around trying to reduce those costs if anything um and i know that the last administration failed to meet affordable home targets uh where we failed to build an extra 4 000 homes and that is actually the number of people that we do have currently in temporary accommodation okay thank you councilor lawless right councillor island uh thank you for your question i mean i i can tell you what's happened in my ward i mean the youth could you move your mic excuse me a youth club was closed in my ward which has had devastation effects locally on young people and across the borough youth facilities were closed i mean we are taking steps to repair um decades of uh neglect really we've got um a 10-year program to improve pavements and roads and repair all the potholes i mean we have increased the hours in libraries they were cut by the previous administration it's just the general neglect of the borough that we are our decade of renewal is seeking to um fix but i think um everybody can see the cuts the the devastating effects on social care that the cuts had and then the second part was around the accommodation yeah and homelessness so thank you for the question um the housing committee has um talked about this recently actually so there's lots of um information that they've looked at um we've had over the past couple of years a significant investment in homelessness prevention and homelessness uh temporary accommodation offices so the staffing has really made a big difference actually um and we've got fewer um fewer backlogs we've got quicker decisions and we're moving people through the system as quickly as we can we're also obviously working on increasing supply which is either our own supply as you say with building um building additional homes or procuring supply looking at the market and uh trying to reduce the cost of procuring temporary accommodation while still sticking to some of the principles that um we apply in terms of the location of temporary accommodation so keeping uh keeping households as close to the boroughs as possible and also avoiding the overuse um of bed and breakfast which is something i think that wandsworth is particularly proud of so you know there are definitely competing demands because the if you if you stick by those principles by definition you know you are going to have to incur an additional cost but um we're trying our best to mitigate as best we can okay thank you uh okay uh cancer warrell yeah thank you chair um i'd like to take you to page 60 paragraph seven um which is around charging um i think what worries me about papers like this and i understand they are financial strategy papers is that sometimes we have an over we have such an emphasis on numbers that we actually forget to see the impact of programs for example access to all might have on the on the well-being of our population or the health of our population um and programs like that actually reduce the demand my i suppose my question is and it's probably no answer to this and i recognize that is that how do we capture the value of those programs and actually reducing demand or is there any way to do it because actually they you know they there is a there's an indirect impact of things like that on on our expenditure in the council and i know the change program and other programs actually are moving towards that but i was just wondering in a case like this can we measure it or is it just one of those things we we look at before and and after mrs murray yeah it's actually a really good question and i think we need to do more actually about social benefit uh we look at financial benefit you're right but i think capturing social benefit which takes many different forms um and access for all is a really really good example of that um i think we need to work more on that because it's a really really good point made as a follow-up just for me then have we got any further plan yeah oh i might have taken it after council worrell's mouth are there any plans around the social i'm sure i've seen something somewhere so we tend we tend to do it on specific uh projects or programs where uh it's obvious but i think what we need to do is roll it out um just wider where we can where resource allows we capture social value really well as part of our procurement now um and that's been incredibly successful and you know is tangibly uh you know tangibly making a difference um so i think we just need to take that away and see what we can do within the resources that we've got because you're right it's absolutely um the rationale for doing some of the things that that we're doing it's beyond the finances okay thank you mrs mary and i think i maybe i'm just don't know for the mood of the committee whether one when we hear more about social value and social we probably be interested to hear more as a group i've got enough one nod from over there and several lots yeah okay uh councillor hedges thank you chair um one of the last paragraphs um power 81 um we talk about the uh the council will continue to lobby the government about structural underfunding of local government um have you done that in the last three to four months and will you be doing that and is that something that will be made public uh yeah so yeah yeah sorry okay so we um we do most of our lobbying via um the groups that we're we're members of so london councils is particularly good at getting across the london position and we're actively involved in some of the discussions there um we are also working with the lga and um other groups so definitely something that we continue to do and uh feeding into the spending review and the fair funding review and the business rates review that's all part of our kind of contribution in making sure that our particular position is is recognized and heard and i'm just going to say as cabinet members got any cut further comments on the that oh also um part political point i guess uh we um liaise and work with our three fabulous mps and our excellent assembly member to do the same thank you at every opportunity okay thank you very much uh cancer fraser thank you um i just wanted to touch on a on a subject that we that we've not referred to you already which is just debt levels and it's something that is as as a majority we now kind of face criticism on about kind of the debt that we are we are bringing or kind of increasing at the council but i just wondering if and i don't know if this is a question for cabinet member or mrs murray i'm happy for either of you whoever wants to go first um it's kind of what we're doing to tackle debt now and kind of moving forward into the future as well for any debts that we have as a council uh can i just clarify council phrases do you mean debts owed to us or debt that we may have debt that we have okay all right so our our current debt position is actually uh very good we've got one last tranche of debt that is due to be paid back this year for some housing revenue account borrowing um so uh at the end of this year we will have zero external debt completely non zero we do have plans as you know and we've we've seen that come through some of the indicators the prudential indicators that come to this uh committee we've got um plans to borrow uh particularly in the housing revenue account to um deliver the thousand homes and the regeneration programs um we are i've said this before we're doing that in a in a measured way we're doing that in a way that uh maximizes the use of our internal resources to minimize the impact of the cost of that borrowing but ultimately we are borrowing to invest and we will have long-term assets uh at the end of it and we will have the asset to use uh to tackle uh particularly in that case uh the housing need um that's costing us money so there are financial benefits of borrowing beyond just um you know having to repay the debt thank you all right last question council graham um yes council ireland referred to devastating cuts to social care um there's been a massive increase in both funding and spending on social care over the last 14 years massive huge increase i simply don't understand where she's got this idea that there have been cuts in wandsworth to what the council has done on social care when if she looked at any budget paper in the last decade or more she'd know that wasn't the case so have you got a question yes well what what we have got now is a situation in which the new government has just introduced a direct cost on this council of 3.4 million for employers contributions to national insurance we don't know whether there's actually going to be additional compensation to the council for its direct payment costs so there could be a 3.4 million cut hidden within the real terms increase that we're about to get what we do know is that all of the providers in this borough the providers of care contractors for the council and others hundreds of them are saying that the impact of that national insurance rise will have direct cuts for social care direct cuts for all sorts of things and i'm going to ask mrs mary and i've asked this before but with the council is doing ongoing work whether she has yet been able to quantify in terms of knowing for this mtfs uh what the financial impact of those employers increases are going to be both on this council and on social care and whether we could see the cuts that we haven't seen um which despite council are alleging it actually happening because of the tax increase from the labour government okay uh i'll take mrs mary first and i think we probably need to be very clear about the different oh yeah and i'll come to you yeah um also very clear about the the difference between um what will happen for the uh directly employed staff and what may happen and perhaps what i would say in this position is my understanding is we do not yet know the detail we do not yet know and there is a lot of mays and suppositions coming on with this mrs mary okay thank you um so cancer graham's right the um we've calculated because we can because we've got the data it's easier to calculate the direct cost potentially of the national insurance contribution changes to the council of 3.4 million we have had assurance during uh through the policy statement that came out last week that there will be um funding to cover direct costs quite whether the government will be able to match pound for pound i don't know we'd have to work out what we'd have to wait for the um for the formula to come out but those costs will be covered they've they've given given a public sector that assurance what they haven't done is they haven't um taken into account as you say the indirect costs and there will be indirect costs definitely on the council um care costs are a particular concern um we don't have the data uh from our contractors of exactly how much of our contract cost is spent on staff that isn't a data that we hold or are able to get access to but we can kind of make some rough estimates so this mtfs doesn't include that you're right it doesn't but when we come to set the budget in january february uh there will be a figure in there for inflation as there always is and that figure will have to take into account some assessment of what that additional cost uh will be because i think there will be an additional cost now whether or not that's a cost that feeds through to the figures straight away or whether that's something that we see coming through on the retender of contracts or where we um potentially extend a contract under revised terms and conditions that's the kind of analysis that we're still doing um but you're right social care is a particular issue it's not the only area where we think there'll be an impact and uh charities um and the vcs sector as well are potentially going to be impacted so we'll work that through for the next iteration when we come through for the budget okay councilor ireland just to clarify um we've experienced increased sorry increased demand for our services particularly in social care and with much more complex needs which is much more expensive we did have hyperinflation what do we have a decade's worth of inflation in two years and we have got additional statutory responsibilities imposed by the government so the funding we get is not enough to meet this demand and we are working hard to manage it thank you sorry council graham it's in cuts that's not devastating cuts at all is it council graham excuse me we've already had one comment about not going through the chair the way i operate i would normally let you say but i was actually going to bring excuse me somebody else in so please could you just wait if there's any further interruptions i will need to ask you to ask you to go away for five minutes and calm down i was going council graham sorry please do not go around muttering and what i was going to ask is council excuse me council acanola we've had some discussion about the voluntary sector as well i just wondered if you had anything extra to add from what mrs mary had said about what we're looking at yes sure we have had not just with um uh the community sector but also business as well we've had conversations with them about um the budget and their expectations um and none of them have come back to me and said that they are worried and we're just waiting to uh see what the detail is before we make any decisions or move forward okay thank you very much right now council graham now i've heard from both of them would you like to yes well make your comment that you were going to council acanola just said that none of the organizations just talked to are worried about the national insurance increase we have joint letters from the sector later in the pack which shows that where the signatories are all of the organizations that are working in our borough businesses that are based in our borough that is simply not true to say that the vcs and businesses are not worried about the impact of the national insurance rise they're talking about job losses layoffs and closures would you like sorry cats rock and i launch so happy to respond to someone that is a stickler for detail i'm surprised that you would suggest that i am lying when i said none of the organizations i have spoken to have said that they are worried okay thank you i can only point out that she clearly hasn't spoken to many organizations given the number that are listed here or any of the council's contractors councillor graham councillor graham that may be your opinion which we've heard thank you very much are there uh council fraser next please oh yes thank you and the question that i thought about actually and it might well be that it's something that you'll consider in that future budget round but is that will there be linkages or are there linkages with this to the the work on the change program that we talked about earlier and how is that factored into this or do we expect that to kind of see those figures more in the kind of next round of the budget figures thank you good question so uh the figures here don't assume anything uh particularly comes out of the change program until effectively until we deliver so we take quite a prudent approach at this stage but what we are able to do ahead of the budget is capture where there are um savings and efficiencies that have come out so the budget will include for instance the impact of uh the decision making accountability tool in children services which has delivered uh savings we haven't put them into these figures but we will definitely reflect those and anything else that comes out in the meantime in the budget that we present next time okay thank you very much okay um we seem to have exhausted questions so we now move on to the recommendation which is in para 2 to approve the medium term financial strategy for 24 25 as set out in appendix a those people who are in favor please raise their hands six uh those who are against please raise their hands and any abstentions for abstentions okay thank you very much councillors okay we now move on to paper 24 379 which is the budget monitoring and i think mrs mary is sitting there because it will be you again won't it they will and very very briefly so this is the quarter two position for uh this committee finance committee and also the overall position of the council and this is an estimate of what we think the year-end position will be um the table in paragraph three on page 92 is the summary i think that you're best looking at uh what we're showing at the um at the quarter two position is an overspend projected uh across a number of uh services of just under five million um which with some income we're going to get means a potential overspend overall of just over four million uh across the whole council um each of the service committees listed have had a very detailed quarter two reports uh to their committees so i don't suggest we go through the detail of that now the position has got worse since quarter one particularly around uh housing and um the adult social care position has also got um worse we as always are having some um additional good news on treasury which is helping the overall position um and i have many times mentioned that that will continue at some to some extent but will start to peter out i'm sure in the future so we need to be mindful of that when we look at the overall position um there are mitigating actions uh summarized in this report but as i said each service committee has got a more detailed report and of course this is a projection that is informing the figures that are going into the mtfs and will go into the budget um for the next round of committees okay uh thank you very much mrs murray and i just remind members that the other committees have seen their detailed budgets but of course we get the finance budget okay so who is after questions are you scratching your ear there miss okay thank you okay uh councillor peter graham first councillor ambash next okay off we go thank you thank you the paper is just for information so i appreciate that as well um i just want to remind the committee that members on our side were stressing this time last year and particularly around the budget setting that the overspends in adults did not seem to be under control and that they were likely to continue and that we felt that the level of budget allocated to adult social care was inadequate given the pressures that we were already seeing and that did not seem to be uh on a trend to come down now contrary to what councillor island was telling us under the last item she was the one and the administration were the ones telling us that a lower budget than what we're actually spending was adequate that she had enough resources not that she didn't have enough resources and what i'd like to know is whether the administration now accepts that it was wrong about the demand in adult social care and whether we we should now trust it when it's saying it's setting adequate provision in these numbers i think i'm gonna yeah mrs murray first and then so just so just to give some clarity i mean all the numbers that um we use to set uh the budget each year every year you know they are our best estimates at the time i i don't go into a budget round trying to set numbers that aren't what we think are going to happen i mean it's as simple as that what happened particularly uh this year is is the budget for this year was set before the end of last financial year as you know and at the last at the end of last financial year the position was worse so we started off in a worse position than we anticipated and you're right council grain the demand has continued ultimately the service user numbers um in client numbers are relatively close to forecast but it's actually the pressure on uh placement costs and market pressures that are driving um the overspend particularly in adults adult social care the same with housing it's it's the placement costs that are effectively uh pushing that overspend we'll go into this budget round again setting as realistic a budget as we can if you remember last year we put aside four million pains as a service pressures contingency we have used that and that hasn't um been enough so that's something that obviously i'll be reflecting on when i present uh figures uh for the committee to consider uh next time around thank you very much council island are you all right yeah very happy with that i don't have anything to add thank you hold on one minute um and i was just going to comment i actually saw um council warrell was in the meeting where this was discussed presumably because you're on um adults and you confirm that this i just thought yeah because i noticed you nodding sorry councillor graham i'm disappointed that councillor island doesn't want to go to answer that and or respond to that and we could only take silence as confirmation that she accepts that we were right and she was wrong otherwise she'd be saying so sorry i can't councillor graham you can assume what you wish you know what they say about she is here to be held to account we've got a point to her and she's refusing to respond that's not scrutiny is it right councillor ambash i think you have a question i've got two questions um to do with the health budget interestingly which the projected overspend and standards increased by about half a million to 2.7 million to the end of the year it's not political in the sense like councillor graham's asked it's more are we doing the best to manage it particularly in the way we work jointly with the health authority so page 93 paris six indicates that health are withdrawing continuing health care funding for care packages uh supporting learning disabled people but we it seems to be in contradiction to the fact that we're told that we're more people are coming with complex needs so the first question is why is continuing health care funding being withdrawn by the nhs now are we negotiating with them on that the second question it relates to this maybe or other things page 94 para 14 on the fourth dot tells us that we've had a successful pilot with health and care integration um so i'm wondering as this has been successful are we able to extend the pilot across the whole authority or how are we able to develop the pilot further and will this help reduce further pressures on care budgets including um clients that may need continuing health care funding so jointly funded by us and by by the health authority mrs mary thank you so on the um on the continuing health care i know that this has been a real um pressure area for adults and lots and lots of workers um has been going on ultimately the nhs is facing financial challenges that they are dealing with and part of their response to that is to have a a team of people that are charged effectively with um getting as efficient and effective use of their continuing health care budget and we are definitely seeing that particularly in relation to uh people with learning difficulties so um you know significant costs of um health care as opposed to social care ultimately we've got a duty to um to um support those uh clients with our so with social care and we can't we can't um withdraw services because of a funding issue between us and the nhs so ultimately we are left in a position where you know we just have to make sure we absolutely work as well as we can with the nhs the pilot that you reference in paragraph 14 is a really good example of where we can and where we are you know we are having some really good um some good outcomes that's specifically about hospital discharge and working really closely with the nhs on their hospital discharge program but we are continuing to work as best we can on the continuing health care because that is i think you're right to highlight that that is one of the significant financial challenges that we have because often these packages can be um you know hundreds of thousands of pounds on uh on one or two clients and if if the nhs share of that funding goes down it really does put a uh you know an additional financial cost on the council okay keep negotiating with them i have some experience in this area and um it's really important they take their share of the responsibility okay thank you uh katzel just to clarify and that when this was discussed in the health committee and one of the things that was shown was that um whilst the numbers coming through might not necessarily be increasing the range of complexity of support need of a small group of people that we are supporting has increased dramatically and we know that the market forces in terms of care needs are significant so i think we have to be really careful when we look at paragraphs like this that it seems that the system is being swamped by huge numbers of people it's not necessarily so it's actually acknowledging that as we see a changing population in terms of care needs both with learning disabilities and elderly people that their range of needs is significantly increasing and more complex and that will put a pressure on the system and i go back to what cancer graham was saying is that you go into a budget setting process on the best of information that's available but we cannot account for people that are coming through that for a sudden increase in in numbers of people who might um experiencing homelessness suddenly or have significant care needs that we cannot predict and i think that you know he's being actually unfair on on the offices in terms of some of the and some of the um budget planning because there are certain factors in the equation that are out of the control of anybody to predict okay thank you councillor worrell right councilor corner actually i'd quite like to hear from council corner i appreciate there's quite a lot been said let me hear council corner first and then you can come back um thank you chap um i i don't disagree with what councillor worrell's just said actually um you know that's clearly a trend in in healthcare generally in the children's directory as well there's a lot of advanced uh ways you can use healthcare analytics these days though to forecast uh potential increases in complexities um that we're undoubtedly seeing what plans do the council have to invest in those those assets and capabilities and to what extent do they feel that future capabilities we acquire might be able to help us forecast more effectively that's interesting that's almost sounds like a question for mrs olsen well so we do have um we do have i can't remember if it's in in uh phase one or phase two but there is definitely uh one of our lines of inquiry is exactly that it's using data analytics to predict in adult social care there are a few providers um on the market and uh we are definitely looking at that because you're right if there's something we can do particularly around falls and um hospital visits etc if you bring the data together you can you can um definitely get some wins on there so it's definitely in the program um i will get um an update of where that is and which tranche of uh potential business cases that that particular intervention is is in okay thank you councillor graham i accept councillor warrell's point that these things are difficult and they're being driven by stuff which makes it difficult to pin down what that demand is going to be partly because of uh court cases where there have been some extraordinary rulings on on entitlement to certain packages of care i'm not saying people aren't entitled to care but some of the demands that are now being uh put through as the as the council being legally obliged to deliver it um are are i think uh problematic because the funding isn't there to match it um like likewise i think what what we were saying was that there's sort of known unknowns that the pressures that we were seeing in the run-up didn't seem likely to abate that this was going on with if if we were consistently um overshooting on what we thought the place is going to be it looked likely that was going to continue unless something had changed and nothing had changed that that was our point um and i think there is definitely stuff we can look to do one one of the things i have raised partly here partly in private is actually the extent to which i think some of the um private providers are are ripping off the taxpayer frankly because they've got a you know a monopsony on provision of some of these specialist services um that the state got out of delivering that but now there's effectively no competition they can charge whatever price they like and i have argued that we should try to actually get back into providing care where we can maybe working with other authorities because when you're talking about some care packages being a million pounds for one person there's no way that we can't go and hire a load of staff even buy a facility and run it and not get the unit cost for an individual down on that uh and it's it's the regulatory barriers i think that are preventing that that the the work you have to do to satisfy all of the potential judicial review and legal challenge presents a really high barrier barrier to entry both for other provided providers to come in which is why there's not ordinarily somebody else would think well i can do this care and they set up a private company but the reason they're not doing it is the same reason the council hasn't been doing it because there's huge upfront regulatory barrier and potential to get um taken to court and i but i think that councils are big enough to take that on and i think we ought to be because this is only getting worse okay councillor graham thank you for that and i've noticed councillor i mean perhaps we should be thinking about how we handle that as again one of the things that we should look at okay so that's the um revenue budget monitoring um we've been asked to note the report for information so all happy to note it agreed okay um councillor warrell are you okay and we'll say goodbye to councillor warrell at this point before we move on to paper 24 380 mrs mary still in the hot seat for the treasury management thank you chair so i'll be very brief on this one um hopefully it's a paper that you're all getting familiar with um it shows the mid-year position on our treasury activity which is anything to do with our cash balances and investments um the good news is we have had a particularly healthy year so far in terms of the returns on our um investments with um an average rate of return so far this financial year of over five percent five point one six percent um last year we managed to achieve four point eight percent now i've sat in this committee a few times and had to justify why i was achieving below inflation uh returns on the treasury so i will obviously take the plaudits for um massively over uh overachieving inflation but i mean this this does make the point that i have uh tried to make a few times before you know we are to some extent out out of you know this is out of our hands we we have an absolutely proactive approach to treasury and we put so much um uh effort and uh resource into maximizing our returns but ultimately we are um going to be driven by bank rates and uh what we can do within the the realms of the risk profile that the council has the good news is we are uh benefiting from the high bank rates and you can see that in all the papers that i present at the moment i'm talking about high treasury uh income and uh that is helping to support um the services that are under pressure we have got um balances our cash balances are dropping we expected that to happen uh we are spending money we are uh you know building homes and investing in in services so our balances are going down but ultimately we have got um forecast uh additional income this year and uh we expect some of the good news what we've tended to do is try to bank um and hard code in the higher interest rates for as for as long as possible so we will get some of the good news continuing into the next year and the year after and we will again feature that in the budgets that we present in january thank you mrs mary before we do that is we've also we we're being asked two things one of which is note the other thing is that there's been a change to the treasury policy could you just give us a couple of words on the change please because that's what we're obviously going to have to yeah sorry i should have mentioned that it's a very technical change to the um relationship between investments and asset value on a money market fund capital bearing account it doesn't change our risk profile it just effectively reflects the fact that our um our investments are at a higher level and it gives us a bit more flexibility the challenge with having is uh the the balances that we have is finding somewhere to put uh put the investment effectively so this just helps a little bit but as i said no more risk profile attached to that change okay thank you very much right can i see who's got any questions on that i'm looking around before i catch graham i know you will have i'm just checking there isn't anybody else that's a phrase right council graham first then council fraser okay thank you i i think uh mrs mary is fully entitled to her plaudits and whichever expensive restaurant former councillor carpenter is currently in i hope he takes a moment between courses to reflect um the uh appendix b mentions the prudential indicators now it was the case that the intention of officers was to bring revised prudential indicators to this meeting i i know from a discussion beforehand that um there is no uh no malice in the fact that that has been put off however it does mean that the questions that we were planning to ask around um debt have yet to be put now it was mentioned earlier in the meeting that external debt is is dropping to zero that was on the plans are inherited obviously internal debt is currently being accumulated the only reason it's not external right now is because it's being borrowed internally but they then transfer out now within the the housing papers uh recently it was confirmed that there would be a total of 668 million of new borrowing just within the hra over the next 10 years and that for the first 30 years only that would result in debt interest payments of 606 million now obviously that comes to on my calculation 1.27 billion pounds in terms of the cost of what the administration is wanting to take on but that's with 20 years missing so when you add on the full lifetime cost um is it more than the sum being borrowed and what is it mrs murray okay with that one uh yes so i don't have the uh exact figures to hand but you're right that uh over 50 years the cost of the debt is higher than the debt but that's effectively what happens when you borrow over a long term so if i added up my mortgage and i added up all the interest over the years of my mortgage i probably wouldn't take out a mortgage because it's a big number but ultimately we are buying as i said earlier we're buying an asset we are using that asset we are avoiding um uh temporary accommodation costs by using the asset we are um offering uh social housing subsidized uh accommodation to households and we've got an asset that lasts beyond the length of that debt so even if it is 50 years worth of debt you know we've built a property for life so you're absolutely right that there is a cost of borrowing but we go into that uh conversation knowing that there is a cost of borrowing and we've done we've done the maths and you know it is it's an investment that we think is worth making and actually if you remember it's an investment that the previous administration not to the same level but the principles were there that you know borrowing to build houses is something that this council should be doing thank you very much can i come back on that very swiftly well i mean if we if we're going to compare it to a mortgage a mortgage advisor would never advise someone to take out a 50 year mortgage and indeed we don't live that well no it's not just because you wouldn't live that long if you go to a mortgage advisor and ask if you can get up to 30 years 28 years certainly you can get very easily these days they'll say don't make it longer if you can afford shorter now that interest rates are not low interest rates are not low yes councils and organizations are not individuals but the fact of the matter is taking out loans for 50 years is not normal it is not something that we did before and it will mean that the majority of that money will go on debt interest not on the asset okay thank you very much councillor mrs mary is obviously going to reply to that so i can i can definitely reply on the length of debt and whether 50 years is a reasonable term it is a reasonable term you know the public works loans board which is the government's debt uh debt agency uh borrows at length sorry uh 50 year terms the fundamental difference between a local authority borrowing to build houses and an individual taking out mortgage is at some point you know i don't want to be working anymore that i will not have an income stream to pay off the mortgage we've got an asset that is in perpetuity and we've got rental income streams that are to some extent uh guaranteed so you know i don't think we're comparing the same things i use the mortgage as an example of how if you take a number of new times it by a number of years and add it to the original it will always be a bigger number i completely accept that but you know we've got guaranteed rental income streams from those properties um and uh the net cost of that property will uh will be covered over the life of the asset okay thank you very no thank you councillor Fraser was next thank you very much and um just on this i think in terms of the change that you referenced in in terms of to the policy statement that's what's referenced in paragraph nine isn't it that explanation there no and that's really good i i think it's just to it's it's very pedantic but it's not got full stop so i'm just checking that that is where the sentence ends and it's not meant to have something else oh yes i subject it that's fine i wasn't thinking you've subjected something else but no no it's good work so um and i just want to check that that's what it was so thank you okay thank you um councillor graham you've had a good go at this one um i had a different one i had a different i actually had oh right i'll come to you in a minute is that can i ask what i was going to say um i was interested we said a bit more about how much we're actually gaining from treasury if we could do that and could you explain slightly in terms for some of us who aren't quite as au fait with the terms is roughly what that change in the policy is going to do for us i know you did say something and the last point i'd like to just say is i hear everything everyone says about debt being that my mortgage i remember mortgage rates being about 15 percent um i'm not entirely sure whether ours are hot they're high or low at the moment but one of the things that strikes me in this discussion is we had a discussion we were talking earlier about social value and something that hasn't been mentioned which i'd just like to say is obviously there is a big social value for people having their own homes and in fact we know that if you have your own home and it's a secure home and we will all know through our case work that actually that makes a big difference to people's life chances so the debt that we're taking on has other effects as well sorry that was my spiel um mrs mary then cancer island sorry i'm trying to scroll to the bit that um that you referenced so how much do we how much you get overall from the treasury and the change that we make where we hope how much extra do we hope we're going to get yeah okay so at the moment we are so let me think the treasury so hra and general fund is slightly slightly separate but i know the general fund figure off the top of my head which is about 24 million a year of uh income that we are getting um i wouldn't say that we get more from the change i we get more flexibility and we get more options so ultimately i think it's i can't put a figure on it i can just say that it helps us to um to maximize returns rather than it it will generate an additional return okay thank you very much councillor island you wanted to comment as well just to place on record my thanks to mrs mary and her team for all your hard work on this i'm very pleased and i would like to point out that interest rates were zero or close to zero for many years during the term of the previous administration and it's a real pity and a shame that they did not take advantage of that fact but we are where we are thank you okay right cancer graham you had a new point on this well it's yeah it's the board sorry excuse me my committee clerk is just letting me know the time we're coming up to you can see the clock and i can't we're coming up to 20 to 10. that's fine the broader point here is transparency i accept that the reason the credentials indicators aren't here today is is not is not deliberate but the fact is those figures in the housing paper were buried in appendix b we still don't have the figures we've put down council questions the last two meetings asking for the total figures and not got them if the administration say that they don't mind borrowing they don't mind paying more in debt interest to do it over longer term and that they're going to defend that on its merits that's fine they're entitled to do that they're in that is their decision to do that but they need to be transparent about what they're doing and about what it will cost this is likely to be over one and a half billion just on the hra when the general fund borrowing is included this could well be likely to be closer to two billion pounds i don't think many of them know that and why would they because it's never in the papers and it's not in the council answers even when we'll ask the question if they want to justify that to councillors and to residents and the borough as a whole they can they should but they need to be up front and transparent thank you very much councillor graham miss mary so councillor graham really sorry because i i have attempted to answer your question so if you haven't felt you've got the answer no no no no what i'm saying so if i turn that around and i'll just say that uh all the figures that you have been given do include all external borrowing in the hra they include all external borrowing currently planned in the general fund as well i think the point you've made separately to me is around internal borrowing and the fact that the indicator that you have asked me about is specifically an external borrowing indicator what we've talked about i think for absolute clarity is bringing those two figures together and presenting them in a way that shows the totality of the borrowing i don't have a problem with that and i will definitely reflect that in the next iteration is that all right i'm respect mrs mary's answer but the fact is she gave her answer uh earlier this year i i i think it was in the time of the budget setting when i was talking about this total figure in the absence of total figure and we still don't have it we've asked two council questions we don't have it the figure is not in the public domain and it should be but that's my point thank you very much okay thank you for your points right we're now in a position where we are going to look at the treasury management report we've been asked to to note the um end of year and mid-year review and authorize the change to the treasury management policy which is highlighted paragraph nine and appendix e okay so it's okay those in favor please raise their hands we all agree it okay that's a bit of a surprise um okay we're now moving on to paper 24 381 which is about our corporate complaints and mr evans and sorry miss wait if you could introduce this for us um as ever a very short introduction i have read the papers um and i'm going to assure i'm sure the rest of the committee have as well so please bear that in mind when you're introducing thank you very much uh thank you uh chair so this is the um annual complaints report for 23 24 it's a report that you've seen at this committee uh annually for uh several years it sets out a review of the complaints dealt with by the council as a whole including at the various stages of the complaints process and the council has a really well embedded uh stage complaints process that seeks to focus on the resolution of complaints at the earliest possible stage and as close to the service as as possible but provides for an escalation a transparent escalation where that is possible and where it's needed a key facet of our complaints process is learning from the complaints and you'll see from the report there is lots of focus on learning that the council has taken from the various complaints process and how that is embedded into services and the report sets out that changes needed to comply with a new joint complaints handling code as well which is a new code that we're required to adopt in all councils are required to adopt our performance relative to the ombudsman investigator cases also set out where we perform well um against upper areas and i've got uh katrina white here as well who helps manage the team um the complaints team so happy to try and tackle any questions okay thank you very much oh right questions from okay let's count councillor hedges first councillor lee councillor corner and i see some other hands sorry could you still councillor ambush super okay uh councillor hedges first off you go thank you chair and thank you for the report very comprehensive um and also for attaching the policy my question is um related to the chart on page 143 um 4.20 just to make reference to the the staff error slash attitude so in the 2022-23 year it's 11 percent and then in 23-24 it goes up to 21 percent and then i looked in the appendix as well and it too often the complaints that are upheld are as a result of staff um staff needing training is i mean this to me strikes me as um an issue that needs to be addressed i mean is it just because of the turnover of staff or is is there a a wider systemic issue here thank you okay which of you yep i mean i can attempt uh chair i mean it's a very uh broad question i mean it's obviously the complaints apply to all services across the council so um indeed where a complaint is upheld it often does relate to the fact that the resolution of that complaint essentially we will make sure further training is rolled out in that in that service so i don't think it's something we can say is a blanket issue i think it is service by service specific so um i mean we can try and get a bit more detail for that um uh after the committee if that would be helpful yep okay uh councillor lee can i just come back on that point as well in that there's quite often elements of communications in that so clarity um you know etc as well and that's something that i think you know we never stop trying to improve on um so i think that it's it will be something we continually work on across services councillor lee yeah i think that actually relates to the question i had as well which was um about some of the lessons we've learned through the case studies so one one talked about the use of um communication how we were written communication and talked about correspondence being provided in plain english um and another was about the use of technology um uh preventing digital exclusion i think yeah obviously it's so important that all of our residents can uh raise concerns and make complaints if if necessary and and that we can make it as uh inclusive and accessible as possible so yeah just ask if how we are going to take those learnings forward please work quite um the central complaints team works quite closely with um directorates across the board we go to quarterly dmt's and i think in building that really strong relationship with directorates and um you know myself and my um uh complaint main complaints manager will do that but the whole team will work and build relationships and that's incredibly important for helping them how do we handle complaints better how do we how do we do things better um so i think continuing to do that is really important and um that that training is a key part of what we do quite often you know telling people if there is a problem if there is a delay community communicating that can help ease um the concerns certainly i'm just going to oh sorry mr evans then i i want to try something yeah mr evans i'm sorry i can't resist this but the complaints team won one of the staff awards earlier today and in recognition of the um the support that they uh provide across the council so thank you and i just had a follow-up with this is about the use of plain english i noticed it was done in children's but i love getting things that are totally understandable there are nods here from everyone up you don't want to know what my parking fine letter said which was so please could we look really hard at rolling out plain english letters to everybody from all all directorates i mean i'm going to look at my colleagues on the other side there's nodding going on from councillor hedges yes plain english councillor graham isn't that something we've talked about we concur fantastic so that would be great from us as a body of council as if that can be done okay sorry i i think there is something about tone and empathy and compassion as well and and actually those in our responses are um hugely important and i think you're absolutely right is just people want to know what's going on and and mike's sorry getting worked up about complaints my experience is most people complain because actually they don't want the thing to happen again to someone else and we can learn and we should learn and we we want our residents to have as good as we all want i think it's fair to say as good as possible sorry stop going all right complaints chair at council corner thank you chair and this is really just a a follow-up inquiry to councillor the hedgehog's excellent question just now um it's really great that um there has been improvements in a lot of places but there are some standout um figures on that table and on page 145 children's services are doing excellently um but the still children's service statutory is like down 40 is down 40 which is excellent but the housing and regeneration up 38 why is there such a disrepancy between directorates i know the subject matter is different some might be attract more complaints than others due to the nature of the subject matter and what's being discussed and what the issues are but surely they're using the same approaches to try and minimize complaints i mean on the children's one i think actually the number of children being subject to protection orders i won't get that terminology quite right it is in the paper that has gone down considerably in the service so actually that's had an impact but in like housing and regeneration i think one of the biggest things there is actually you know the difficulties people are having with housing at the moment and i think that's probably a national wide issue the challenges that housing departments are facing and actually the housing ombudsman has really rebuffed itself and rebuilt itself and is actually doing a lot more and really raising um tenants rights and awareness to it so we're kind of expecting uh those figures to go up and that's kind of across the board as well okay thank you uh councillor ambash good thank you for the report i particularly found the appendices interesting and i read appendix five seven and nine very carefully and somehow you can look at complaints of things that have gone wrong without glass half empty but on the other hand you can look at them of what could we learn from complaint i'm i know we're being very positive about it so i want to pick out a positive particularly from uh appendix nine which is about learning but then that this is page two hundred and 19 19 um if you read right through it from end to end you see some interesting uh repeat issues so the positive thing i wanted to pick out is it's really good that this is documented in terms of what the learning is and what the management response is around the specific individual complaint but what's not clear to me where there are common issues and there are in a number of departments whether there's an analysis of what the common issues are and rather than just responding to the individual situation are there some common weaknesses so is that analysis done is it shared with dmt i'm very pleased to hear that you go quarterly to dmt's sorry dmt management department management groups um and i was wondering i know under the statutory reporting for children and adults the complaints report goes to the oscs but whether it goes to the housing and the environment committee and particularly picks up some of the common issues for learning in terms of the common issues um i think we're still building we're we're pretty good team um as we've got recognition which i'm really pleased about but there's always more we can do i think we are now capturing monitoring complaints a lot more comprehensively we've got plans to roll out a case management system which will allow us to do that a more granular level um and what you're talking about but those conversations at dmt's are helping us identify those themes and actually begin to address them i think um one example in housing regeneration recently where there were calls coming through and actually people struggling to get through to area housing teams they've now put those teams on net calls and actually i think 93 are being answered within you know a quite a short period of time so that's almost an example of where we're seeing a collection of complaints or trend that we're um those actions are being taken and it's rightly obviously it's within the service so the service will have the the right solutions um to to support the the concerns and needs of their um tenants and residents thank you uh council richard jones thanks chair i've got a question about the case study on page 151 so this was the um the instance with the the failure to send around the reminder for the parking permits renewal um and there's a reference here to the number of um members inquiries generated i think i myself submitted about 70 in total on this and and big shout out to lisa pool actually did a lot of work on this issue and was incredibly helpful um the case study is really helpful and revealing and and two things jumped out at me for which i'd be grateful for you for officers comments first was the comment that the initial feedback from the third party provider was slow and incomplete with the implication there that actually the provider wasn't perhaps as candid with officers initially as it should have been and that perhaps led to some delays in working out just how widespread the problem was secondly then is the the final point under learning where it says that in terms of future proofing the council emphasized the need for resilient permit reminder process going forwards um it my question then is were any additional checks or have any additional checks been put in place in this system specifically and also generally what what learnings if you like did officers take away because there's always a danger with third party provided software that and as seems what happened in this case was that the problem uh unless a critical mass of residents had complained uh and enough members had kicked up a fuss and officers hadn't identified quickly there was a problem the issue wouldn't have been detected uh and indeed the one could say it's not always in the immediate commercial interests of third party providers to surface these things quickly okay oh right so this is very yes because you've got parking yes so can i take that uh because uh this uh team sits under me and um thank you for recognizing the value of lisa paul in particular who um i refer to as miss marple because she will just keep going until she gets the right answer um i think so you're right to to highlight the issue with the uh the system provider they didn't know that effectively they didn't know there was a a gap in uh some of the uh controls that they had in place and some of the processes but lisa paul and her team uh were dogged in in in raising the issue as as katrina said you know you can't ignore a quantum of uh the quantum of complaints that were coming through and contacts customer contacts uh we had to keep going back to them saying there is more to this than you are you are seeing and they kept looking i think it's also testament to lisa and the team that actually she's got a very good relationship with the the system provider she often feeds into their processes they roll some of the controls and some of the workflows that uh her team ask for out into their wider um into their wider contract so it's definitely a collaborative uh relationship but she will hold them to account um we're going through a process now of upgrading the parking system and we have definitely uh closed some of those those holes some of those control holes have been closed and uh we're constantly learning from um where we have got issues that come through and making sure that they're fed into not just the system we've got but the system that we will procure thank you thank you mrs mary and yes i was very happy to receive about three reminders for my parking because i missed i missed it the year before and i got a letter and i got an email and i was very happy that mrs paul sorted that out councillor fraser thank you um i'll add as well that uh if we're saying nice things about mrs paul that she's been very good at sorting out a number of mine as well so i'll add that in so thank you and not mine personally but for my residents um i hasten to add um i was just thinking so it's great to see the case studies and then the learnings and the kind of work you do there i'm wondering and maybe this is something again linked to sam olson's change program work whether that then ladders up to any training needs or training plans and it might not be something that you get visibility of kind of through your work but just interested to see if that triggers any kind of learning plans or development plans to then help tackle some of that stuff i mean um this is more on the strategy side but um so my complaints manager will actually go in and talk with the the senior um uh social workers in their their kind of uh professional teams and actually look at the complaints and the learning and how they integrate that into um development and learning plans as well so that's one way um and the um complaints team will also do kind of face-to-face online complaints handling which kind of touches on a lot of it is about how you write a letter the tone of it making sure you're addressing all the points and you you know you clarify them if we're not clear so that actually the response people are getting is is comprehensive yeah happy thank you okay councilor lawless a lot of detail here and i think it's great that we're being this transparent um and we all enjoyed reading the 109 pages i'm sure um very thoroughly between us all um do other councils do this um do you know i might defer to uh miss weight on this but um i'm fairly sure that we produce a uh a a report um in uh the detail which i think would be difficult to find in many uh other areas most council there is a requirement for statutory complaints on adults and children's reported to committee uh but in this level of detail i think uh we would be relatively unusual but i've not not checked that but maybe it's why you could answer that yeah they're quite often our reports but i don't think they're certainly not at this this level in this detail it's really great that we're producing this much detail and being this transparent and so thank you very much okay thank you are there any further questions oh there's a further question from councillor fraser and then will thank you and actually it was just linked to that point because it's interesting you're kind of about the statutory reporting but then kind of why does housing come here and not to housing is there a reason that they don't get that we do so this this report is um a report on the operation of all the complaints processes across the council so housing ecs and the whole lot the the difference with um children's and adults is there is a a separate process of complaints in statute which has to be reported to those um osc's um so this is the all the entirety of the the rest essentially so it's a way of the committee uh looking at you know do we have an adequate complaints process and handling process and are we as a council learning across the border these complaints and many of them are cross-cutting as well so which is very important yeah okay thank you everyone um thanks very much to the team i would also just like to reiterate how important it is for the public to know that they could it sounds awful when you complain but as i say most people want us to do it in order to improve our service and we hope that we learn i wondered myself in terms of learning and maybe this is going to be something for the whips to think about is whether the councillors themselves could benefit from a session on how we handle the different sorts of complaints because actually one of the things we do in our our role is we deal we we have to sort of help navigate through that for some of our residents and it's quite helpful to know exactly what it was what it is and how it works and that's just a potential thought before we move to any comments from over there always just i mean we can certainly add that into the mix with the training the member training program so that's that's no problem sounds like a good idea okay thank you okay and we've been asked to excuse me i think we right i'm gonna have to find the page now because there is thank you very much councillor ambass we've got two two things to note the annual complaints report and learning and then we have to agree the new complaints policy and changes which actually we haven't discussed before we do that are there any questions on the changes in fact actually what i am going to say sorry i hadn't realized that could you just give us a quick summary of the changes please the most significant one is uh changes to the time scales that we're required to respond to complaints at the stage one and stage two um and this could you just elaborate a little bit stage one is stage one currently with 20 working days um that's been um moved to 10 working days and stage two is 25 moving to 20. stage one is an investigation stage and stage two is a review stage and we're having to um comply with that because that's the local government social care ombudsman and the aligning their um complaints uh handling code with the housing ombudsman service so it's it's something that okay and so and then a follow-up from me there is i've had to do investigations myself and 10 days can be remarkably tight especially if people are aware is there any flexibility if we talk to the you know if the resident agrees to to extend that um we need to respond within that time scale if um it is a complex complaint we may be able to extend it for a further 10 um but there are some um stringent restrictions around that it can't be because you know someone's on holiday or lack of capacity there has to be um a significant reason to extend it okay thank you very much right so uh we've got recommendations on page 127 to note the complaints report and to agree the new corporate complaints policy and the changes associated with it uh all in favor agreed we're all agreed excellent thank you very much for your work thank you for coming okay so we are now on to item 10 which is the annual debt right of policy uh which is paper 24382 and we have mrs mrs mary and miss wilson here to do a brief introduction with key points and one of the key points is we've got a new policy as well i'm just putting that out there already okay thank you thank you chair um so i'm alex wilson i'm the director of revenue services so this is the annual debt report for 2023-24 historically we bring the report to the committee each november and it looks back at the previous financial year so this report uh covers to the year to the end of march 2024 so no members are familiar with the write-off element of the report which we are required to bring to the committee um but the report has been expanded to include some additional background into things like external factors like the current economic climate and its impact on the council's debt levels as well as the work that the teams across the council do in collecting debts including the way we engage with and support those that are struggling to pay uh that also includes some of the wider work that we do and i know you've heard a lot about it in in previous papers it comes to this committee on the cost of living response but how we um work to improve to work with residents and businesses to help improve their financial resilience and therefore their ability to pay so that is all a really important part of our response to collecting debt um and as part of this report we've also included for the committee's review a new debt management policy and debt fairness charter so the policy establishes general principles of good governance to ensure consistency and approach and draws on the really good practice we've already got that's embedded across the council acknowledging that obviously there's more that we could be doing and improvements that we could make it effectively sets out the tools that the services can use as part of that debt management piece it also includes a debt fairness charter that i mentioned as part of the policy and that sets out the principles for how people who owe debt to the council should be treated the charter itself demonstrates our commitment to treat individuals and businesses in the borough who are struggling to pay and do so in a fair and consistent manner and that's very much aligned to the council's priorities as a fair and compassionate borough so i'm mindful there's a lot of information in the report um but i'm happy to answer any questions okay brilliant thank you miss larson okay who have i got questions from all right okay so i've got councillor hedges council or list council graham and councillor fraser thank you chair and uh thank you for the uh paper so as per the budget significant tax um is being raised through the new government's first budget in 14 years obviously and as i understand from mr diamond business rates for high streets had a 75 percent time limited relief during covid which will change post budget uh to 40 percent do you foresee this being an issue for struggling businesses in the borough in terms of having to write off more debt in the future i mean realistically will inevitably have an impact um but i think the team have been working really hard um in terms of of improving the way that they engage with businesses so one of the things that that is really important if you look at the kind of the numbers of alternative payment arrangements we've actually got in place they're you know really high and and and getting higher so so you know where businesses engage with us and and and um tell us that they're having issues with with paying then we will try and help by um making alternative payment arrangements i mean one of the things that we do of course is allow sort of 12 months to pay um both council tax and business rates bills rather than the sort of statutory 10 months so so things like that are all you know set to help businesses try and manage their ongoing liabilities i mean the other thing we do as well is is do some work around making sure that businesses are applying for and getting reliefs that they're entitled to so things like the small business rate relief okay yep councillor lawless thank you um i think uh putting compassion at the at the heart of this is really really important um and it's it's good to see some of the work and could you talk a bit more about how this policy with going to ensure um family and individuals um personal circumstances are sort of fully understood um and their debts managed in uh and recovered in a fair way yes so um and i i know i've talked a lot at this committee about things like the low income family tracker and and that's certainly something that that is being used across a number of our services to help inform um some of the conversations that we have with households who are struggling many of those are you know are families with children um i think there's more that we could and and will be doing around um the sort of data piece so um at the moment we don't have a single view of debt we've looked at options for that and um there's a piece of work happening at the moment around creating a data lake which will include debt data and we've had a very recent um workshop around developing the single view of debt utilizing that as a basis for it and i think that will help um pull together a lot of debt data across different council services which will help us understand um give us a more holistic view of um view of um a household's debt because they may owe um depth to more than one um council service so i think that will be incredibly helpful i think also we're we're sort of at the forefront of um using utilizing the digital economy act to get access to to um hmrc and dweb data that that's for the purposes of debt recovery and it's not just about you know identifying where somebody can pay but that won't and being able to kind of secure um attachment of earnings and that kind of thing it's also about understanding more somebody's debt position so that we're able to make a more informed decision and signpost them to the help that they need uh yes so my uh questions relate to table 19 which on page 263 263 we've got table 19 there looking at tenant arrears and rent arrears uh including 1.3 million written off over the last two years um i guess my concern with this is that that the increase for 23 24 is actually larger than the the increase the height of the pandemic um but when we're looking at the uh the analysis there it mentions the pandemic and the cost of living crisis which the edges come off and now completely come off this year it doesn't mention the level of the rents themselves surely the most striking difference is that on the previous columns of the graph you're looking at the impact of a cut in rents and then rents being flat whereas in 23 24 we had a seven percent hike in rents kick in that's been compounded by a 7.7 percent additional hike and indeed councillor dickadem has confirmed his intention to put the maximum possible increase of rent on council tenants every single year surely it is the administration's decision to put rents through the roof that is driving that increase for the last year and can officers give us any indication of what the tenant arrears are for the current year given where this is the second year of maximum possible increases sorry um one thing i would like to draw the commission's attention to is there are anyone who does logic will realize just because something happens doesn't mean something happens that it's caused the result i do not wish you to reply i would like the officers to reply about it rather than you trying to lead them about why there might be a problem maybe that and it may be something else okay and let's hear from the officers uh so thank you chair so i'll take that just very quickly obviously the uh the rents that we charge have a direct impact on the arrears um and a rent increase will obviously increase arrears accordingly just like council tax increases do the same um we do have uh significant amounts of uh subsidized rent uh our rent levels are um are average rents and they are a reasonable level and they are heavily discounted relative to the private rented market we have um a big program around ensuring that tenants as alex said are claiming the benefits that they are entitled to and maximizing the benefits and we've got our proactive response to migration from housing benefits universal credit which is also uh uh helping out uh the big issue uh the big change i think in our approach to rent uh was caused by covid and it was the uh impact of of uh a change in the way that arrears could be uh pursued through the courts and we've seen a significant amount of work over the past couple of years working closely with tenants around repayment of debt and uh longer payment plans the good news is the person that runs the uh rent team is uh lisa paul uh who also runs about randomly she does parking and rents which is a very bizarre combination but as anik said there are so many things that that team are doing proactively to manage and to help tenants the best thing that any tenant in arrears can do is contact the council because as soon as they do they will get a bespoke service effectively that will help them to manage their debt to reduce the worry around their debt and to maximize their income where they can we've got financial inclusion officers we've got uh very experienced rent collection officers and we've got uh income maximization officers and we've got tenancy support officers all helping out okay i asked two questions i don't think effectively i don't think either of them were answered there um i'm not blaming officers in any way for the uh political decision to increase tenants rents uh and i'm sure they're doing their best to mitigate that but my my question was why that rent increase and and particularly the fact that there's another one coming uh in in terms of these figures is not referenced in the paper why why when you you've admitted that that is a significant aspect and it will have an impact it's not listed here and what the the current figures are are as in what we're anticipating for this year given it's the second year of a big increase two big increases in array i acknowledge your point um councillor graham and i don't have the current rent figures but i'm happy to share them outside of this okay thank you very much okay clef cancer placer thank you almost said um just thinking about the points that you were raising there on kind of departments working together and just thinking about some residents who kind of have contacted me before when they've been worried and quite often what you know and it's happened on more than one occasion where they've said that they see the envelopes landing and you know a lot of these have things happen digitally now but sometimes they see the envelopes coming in and they kind of describe being paralyzed with fear and they just don't open them for fear of what's going into them and just thinking about kind of the departments working together and it might be something that the financial inclusion team are doing but just understanding if say for instance someone is in debt for or in arrears for housing if they then use kind of so a children's service with their little one and perhaps they go there or someone overhears a conversation and someone's saying i'm struggling are those kind of linkages made between kind of i'm thinking maybe health and education are some of those areas where where families or might be interacting with services where they're then hearing about stress or anxiety that's then created by what's happening at home yeah that's absolutely what's happening so there's a lot more cross um service working around that kind of thing and referrals that come in so um i think we've we've talked a lot about the every the every contact counts um uh view of working and that's that's absolutely what what we're trying to get to as i say it it can be difficult and it in and you know some of the data that we've got i think we've got some work to do to try and improve that but but absolutely conversations take place and i'll give you an example so so where we've got perhaps um a council tax debt um and we think it's a vulnerable um individual then that that's known to social adult social care there'll be a conversation that takes place between the council tax team and adult social care before we determine before we take forward any um formal recovery action so those conversations are are happening thank you councillor richard jones it's been answered already okay councillor lee thank you for the paper um and i want to just reiterate what councillor lawless said about the the uh compassionate nature of this paper and and how welcome that is i wanted to ask so you mentioned the low income families database and i wanted to ask what what we're doing or what we're able to do to proactively support those families who are at risk of going into debt but maybe haven't yet gone into debt to to prevent that from happening in the first place so there's some things that individual services are doing um proactively so for example um the rent team and the council tax team use um sms messaging so that if somebody misses a payment it's a sort of a proactive and early intervention um to reach out to them to send and part of that message is uh are you are you struggling to pay if so please contact us so that's sort of happening um as part and parcel of of what they do um but part of using the lift dashboard is to to be able to have access to information that can be used to have early conversations with households so again i use the lease walls rent um they did a piece of work around looking at um use use the lift dashboard to identify households that were in a quite a small level of arrears um but but where we were concerned that that might start spiraling and we proactively engaged with all of those about those households um so particularly where they didn't have alternative payment arrangements in place and part of that was firstly to see if if that was something that we could we could organize for them but also to do that sort of wider piece of work around you know um what is your financial situation are you getting all of the benefits that you're entitled to um can we help signpost you to maybe debt advice support and that kind of thing so it's a a much larger sort of holistic um support package that's provided by by teams like like the financial inclusion team in in rents but it's happening in other teams like council tax and housing benefit over payments they have the same sort of conversations okay right thank you very much officers um thank you mr wilson i think you're clearly passionate about this and i would just comment that from my perspective i would like to the more people who can avoid getting into bet debt the better because it's usually problematic cancer graham thank you uh this one will be less contentious you'll be pleased to know uh so appendix one this is something i've raised in the pre-meet and i hope maybe we now have a a slightly firmer answer on it um we've got sorry could you give us a page please so page 267 but i mean it goes on through i mean obviously when when an individual dies they shouldn't be named you know and that's the reason for debt but when we're talking about a language school provider or a restaurant or a food exchange or simply an address with no indication of what it was at all i'm not sure why companies that have not paid their tax should be protected from any any reputational hit that may come from being listed in appendix in council papers that very few people are going to see anyway and frankly if they haven't paid they probably should be named and shamed over um now i understand there were um are you asking why we don't do it yeah well i understand there was a general concern about gdpr but i mean the fact is that these these arguments are often had and legal advice is often over cautious i remember when you know people were caught um committing criminal acts on cctv and the gdpr legal advice was that you couldn't put out footage of them because it would violate their their individual you know rights under law it turned out that you pushed back at that legal advice and it collapsed and you could and i'm just i it just seems to be an example of over cautious um legal advice that is preventing us from actually naming companies that should be named for not paying their tax right officers um are you was that quite is it saying are you saying this is what we should be doing or do you want to know why we aren't doing it that's right that took me about 15 seconds to summarize what you said officers thank you chair so we i mean whether we like it or not we do need to be mindful of gdpr and i i we spoke to the team actually after uh the the question was raised last week and they pointed to a very specific incident a few years ago where actually uh publishing the name of the company did lead to a challenge and an issue particularly around a conflict of interest with the councillor now i'm not suggesting for one minute that that will be something that would continue or there would be an issue that would would come up like that again but it has made us uh reflect on the fact that actually uh keeping that level of information out of the paper is uh it's probably appropriate we can share um the names of the companies with members of the committee that's you know something that we could do but i'm not sure it particularly uh helps what actually you often find is that um councillors know which businesses they are they tend to recognize the address so you know one of them relates to a large department store in clapham junction well it doesn't take well i'll leave it there but um yeah i mean yeah i mean yeah at least we're cautious because um we think that's probably the best uh on balance that's probably the better uh position to take okay thank you very much i just think it might be worth us doing it and if it occasionally costs us something it costs us something but at least we're exposing those that should be exposed cancer graham i can't imagine that you're actually advocating that we should take the risk of spending the money but and the and the legal possible legal legal it's often the case that that people can take that there's a outside chance of challenge of course you you anticipate that might come but if the principle is such that there's actually a good thing to do and you're running an outside risk and occasionally if theoretically as well i'm not saying it's not because it actually happened you might get challenged well sometimes councils should do that and they should do the right thing and if they get challenged they should fight their corner i think it's a good thing castle corner to turn this from a a a negative thing for the businesses to a positive thing for the council might it actually be another tool in the council's armory to be able to name and shame companies um after some some some correspondence has been had and and you've got you've got nowhere with it is is it well i mean in your experience something they recover the death yeah well um yeah the the companies so all the the the five um instances in the report are all where the companies have gone into uh liquidation what i will say is that there are instances we know where businesses um go into liquidation and then they set up with the same directors and that's i think the kind of instances you're talking about and and we do look at that kind of stuff and and um the business rates team you know utilize things like companies house um so they're very mindful of that that kind of thing happening we also use an insolvency practitioner to help us recover some monies and there's actually a there are a number of specialist insolvency practitioners that that we would utilize if we thought we had a situation where that was happening they're experts in in that exact you know instance so so we are aware it happens and we do you know we do take action where where we find it i understand and i i'm sure that does happen and um but that's not quite my question my question is given i know and i know with all the examples they've gone into insolvency but previously in previous years when there's been a long-running kind of correspondence between the council and the business about whether they have to pay has taking it public been a tool that the council can deploy to make it more likely in your experience for that that company to miraculously find money to settle it that we haven't tried it right okay are we have we dealt with that um okay we've now got in front of us two uh recommendations um we're record we're requesting to approve the debt management policy which we've seen in appendix four and also recommended to write off the irrecoverable debts which is summarized in table one para 33 uh in excess of 25 000 pounds okay are we happy to agree the paper as a whole or we take it in parts okay absolutely that's agreed okay we now move to item 11 the wandsworth corporate plan plan actions and the kpi performance uh mr evans any key things for us to note and i would obviously we've already talked about the customer services uh chair um to coin a phrase given the lateness of the our um i will uh refrain from a big intro oven so this is the half year um update on uh kpis as it relates to this committee uh and also the uh half year update on the corporate plan actions so um we've covered a little bit of this with ms olsen um earlier today with relation to her indicators thank you okay right thank you very much questions from councillors and i'm okay councillor graham first then councillor ambash councillor hedges and council fraser thank you so uh page 327 second from the top a number of people offered advice through assistance advice bureau uh obviously this is uh significantly uh under the uh the target and also uh uh under where under where it was in um in the previous year and the council is providing a significant amount of money to citizens advice bureau through cost of living program and indeed some other things as well for immigration advice and so on um isn't this a concern if we were funding extra support i mean i know not all the support we're paying for is i mean there's a subset of this but isn't it a concern that we put up extra money and actually there's there's not the output there that we're expecting so uh thank you councillor graham and the the figure um on page 17 of the of the the pack or the actual uh reports um the figure uh the half year figure of 5738 is still um on target to meet the um uh what we hope will be the target for the at the end of the year i would like to reflect that citizen advice um are also funded through the cost of living uh fund as well for a significant amount of intervention in relation to uh cost of living and meeting some of the demand uh there and um i think it's fair to say we probably need to look at the combination of these figures with that and uh you received reports from the cost of living uh program at this committee um and i think it's probably an indicator we need to adapt as we as we move forward okay thank you very much right now council graham we're very tight for time and the next person on the list was councillor ambush questions on the corporate plan actions so first on page 313 the second to last dot on the mid-year update tells us about the successful money advice roadshow in bohampton we've been talking a lot about debt and money advice what have we learned from the pilot and where are we going to go next in terms of future money hub events okay thank you now before we get the answer um it's now 22 33 and the committee has been sitting for three hours after sitting for three hours including any time of the period period of time the meetings may have been adjourned um we shall discuss of the remaining business let me have a look right the wording the guillotine has now fallen and we will consider the remainder of the agenda as follows we will continue our debate on item 11 this on this item for a further up to a further 10 minutes it doesn't mean we have to do 10 minutes after which we vote on the recommendations and any amendments we will then vote without debate on the remaining items for recommendation to the executive if either the relevant director the section 151 officer the head of paid service and monitoring officer are of the view that the committee must receive advice before the committee votes then they may address the committee with the chair's permission members may ask questions for clarification only on any advice given by officers and not debate it any other matters on the agenda will be formally noted we will now continue our discussion of the excuse me of the kpis okay sorry on a point of order um on a point of order which i'm entitled to be heard on as we've related um the remaining number point of order what number i don't mean to give the number on the remaining sorry could you just do that in order you didn't ask council lawless to do that either i did well he said 20 so i'll use 20 as well there you go on on the remaining no it's not the correct one i'm afraid well then he's used the incorrect one and you allowed him to so either way consistency means you take my point of order counselor graham it's your i think it's 22 actually but anyway never mind on on the point no i'm going no well i'm entitled to a point of order and you are if you tell me the number okay you can go away and think about the number while the officers go and ask they can get cancer the clock's going down that's wasted two minutes i want councillor ambash's question answered first and if you can check out with the officer the correct number you're going to ask that will be fine councillor ambash did you get councillor ambash's question thank you so we had some really positive feedback from the first money hub roadshow in roehampton and part of the the process of the the roadshow was to try and also engage with residents who might want to have sort of more deep a more detailed case work approach so there was certainly one person who signed up for that and we'll be working with them quite closely to help provide um some detailed uh um support around improving financial um sustainability and and and that kind of thing so helping them get access to support and benefits that they aren't currently receiving so so that's that that that was really positive from that and we then subsequently held a similar roadshow in richmond and again fantastic feedback um and um so we plan to run some more roadshows what we might do is tailor that slightly so that we're conscious that there are a number of other um uh similar events that happen uh particularly uh particularly ones around housing and it might be that we piggyback on on some of that there's a lot of time and resource that goes into running these events and and and a lot of of different services that that attend so um we might look to just tailor those slightly um the other thing that we're looking to do is to to try and um expand that case management approach and that we're looking at potential uh to take on some or or expand the um current arrangement with citizens advice to maybe help us do some of that case management okay thank you thank i've got a second questions but i'm gonna forego it given the time and given that councillor hedges had a question point of order understanding order 16b in relation to a breach of a statutory provision oh that's exciting yeah if you if you ask me i can come back with it the point is and this is this is a serious point that we have placed i've placed two items on the agenda items 12 and 13 which will not be discussed the law entitles me the local government act 2000 uh if we need the details chapter 2 part 9 fc entitles me not just to place an item on the agenda but to have it discussed neither item will be discussed both items are therefore in breach of a statutory provision can the monitoring officer confirm that the way these items have been handled is unlawful okay would you like to go first and i'll comment of course uh so uh council graham is right that right is of a member of an osc to place items uh for the committee to consider and for it to be discussed but that this right is still within the parameters of the standing orders of the council in terms of time and management of meetings and if as a consequence of the way the meeting has gone it is not possible to discuss i'm afraid the standing order still are still operating discussed and it is not discussed that must be a breach of the provision the provision is that we can have it is not discussed it's a clear breach excuse me i've been sharing this meeting right i have frequently reminded you all about timing i frequently just write a couple of minutes ago you talked for two minutes to ask a question that i could have summarized in about 30 seconds i have reminded you throughout about the timing you have known i'm getting nods here there is an element of you managing your aspect of the meeting in order to get to the points i can't talk away my legal rights and the point is i reminded i reminded the chief executive when i placed these items on the agenda that this discussion was part of the provision and asked him to remind you that that would therefore meant placing the items up the order would ensure that the statutory provisions could be met i understand he did so and you have chosen to place these items at the bottom of the agenda therefore making discussion is my right it may be all right but that's your right understanding orders and it unfortunately has violated my legal statutory right you have no statutory right to do what i've you've done i do have a a statutory right to have these items discussed and they will not councillor graham may i also remind you it was your side that bought in the guillotine had you not had bought that guillotine in we would obviously have had to get through the papers doesn't allow you to break the law sorry councillor graham i may i just say something is we always have a lot of discussion about law breaking on my side i am not quite aware about this we have not suggesting you're the transport secretary but nevertheless right we have now got three minutes left according to me we had a question from councillor hedges i don't i wasn't quite aware that he actually had a question uh no councillor fraser was next last it took take me a minute to come to compose myself after after that um to remind myself what the question was after that uh break in whatever that was um i think you were going to ask i was i was going to ask a question yeah sorry um so mine was i said i had two questions so one was thinking about the the kpi on customer service presumably that would link in with some of the work on the change program perhaps to kind of improvements there and also just thinking about um we talk about the warm home packs as part of the cost of living work are we and the warm home packs how could you say how that links to the warm homes approach as well they were my two questions oh right mr wilson's had to go so are you okay to yeah no that's that's fine no so that's it and then after that we're into voting okay okay i'll be quick so um in terms of the customer service yeah i mean uh sort of customer services and um responsiveness is part of the change program i think um miss olsen just before she left she mentioned the sort of improvements i think on recognizing that the those indicators aren't where we where we want them to um uh be in terms of the um warm packs um we've uh been very popular very successful we've um given out um lots of warm packs as part of things like the the leaders road shows around the borough and they've proved very uh popular there and we're trying to get uh feedback in terms of you know how people have found them whether they've been useful um for for them so in terms of linkage with other programs perhaps i can get some detail to you from uh officers after the committee yeah okay thank you very much what do you reckon one minute 45 you've got a question on this paper please counts if you have one yes thank you um thank you my question relates to uh work match uh which is on page 327 there's been a reduction in the number of um placements um can i just ask officers for a reflection on um the sectors that jobs that people are normally placed in my understanding is that work match placements are often in the construction industry so it's quite interesting to see um the reduction and i wondered if it was linked to uh potential uh reductions in construction activity within the borough um unfortunately mr moore who um uh is um uh helps uh lead the work match services is not here but but certainly work matches um diversified into um other areas including hospitality um and all all areas of borough so yes it was there was a focus on construction uh particularly in the um early days work match but that has diversified as we've gone on i can't comment on the the exact reason for the the footfall there but we can get the information from the the service head um miss daniel after the committee okay uh thank you i was just going to say given that we've come to the end uh perhaps mr evans uh do you want more information because presumably we could actually ask for that to be sent over yes and perhaps it'll be on the work match annual report which um anyone could read but i just wondered what the cabinet member thought about that and if she has any plans gone past the time i'm sorry okay okay right we've come to the end of our extra 10 minutes so we now have to move to the votes the thousands of people listening at home um i i do think that it's right that um councillor graham's papers should be discussed by the committee obviously not tonight but at the next meeting so could you undertake i'm going to um comment i'll comment to the whole committee about this is i always give councillor graham the opportunity to talk to me about the timings for the agenda items this was not taken up this time i gave you the opportunity you did not take it up council critchard you know very well that i asked for it to be these items to be higher up the order and the fact you didn't discuss it with it well i tried to ring you this afternoon actually but it doesn't that doesn't matter it doesn't none of that matters when we're talking about the breach of statutes thank you let's move to the vote please okay so we've got paper uh the kpi paper well it's not it's a slightly different top of it this has got we've been generally pretty good tonight but we're getting to the tetchy phase it's a very quick question that will be of help to the whole no we're going to do what we're supposed to do which is take votes on everything so pay the paper we've got in front of us at the moment is 20 is paper 24 383 on the kpis we have us we're asked to accept this for a report for information okay happy with all that everyone brilliant okay the next report we have is paper excuse me oh yes sorry i've got several things here the uh impact of the autumn statement paper 24 3 8 4 we have various recommendations for on this paper that have been put forward recommendation uh a is to write to the chancellor recommendation b is to assess impact this is about the national insurance uh increase and 3 c is review the council strategy uh can we take those all together yeah okay those in favor of recommendation a please raise their hands thank you that's four those against please recommendation a please raise their hands that's five those um recommendation b sorry did we say we take them all together yeah fine that's done okay so that's sorted so i'm afraid the executive has not been recommended to do these things so i'm sure i'm sure they've actually certainly will do it um for the benefit of those listening stop we've voted right okay we've now got 20 24 386 which is approve the general fund um the oh oh sorry hang on 385 we were hoping to get a paper about the winter fuel payments but we have nothing so we can't discuss it i'm afraid okay um and then the last item on the agenda is the uh budget variations 24 386 um and we have asked to approve general fund variations uh could we agree to approve are we all agreed that we okay those in favor of proving the general fund the variations thank you that's five those against four abstentions i guess right thank you very much councillors um thank you officers it's been a long session