Transcript

on those three commissions so we need to kind of just pause that until we look at the medical centre and how that will manifest itself within the building. So hopefully we're better present that back to Cabinet later in the year, that's the aim. So it's been a bit of a meandering piece of work in terms of trying to find a direction of travel due to the elements I've just explained but hopefully we're starting to get a plan in terms of what we'll do with that by the end of the financial year or by the end of the calendar year, that's the aim. So any questions? I'm just checking, I think I've covered most aspects in the response but if not please do. Yeah, I think you have, thank you for that. I'm sure there will be questions, obviously it's our job to scrutinise these things so I'll open it up to colleagues on the committee to ask questions about the presentation. Councillor Walker. I just have possibly three questions, I just wondered about Folker 1, if you'd actually had an inkling of what that could be now it's not going to be the medical centre, if there's any ideas floating around people's heads at the moment as to what it could be, any plans that have been put in place? Thank you Councillor Walker, well I think what we need to do is just understand the financial implications of the building, as I mentioned there's a condition survey carried out at £3.8 million so we need to understand how that will work through. We need to understand also the fact that what's the appetite of the market out there in terms of commercial activity and who might go in there, in an ideal world you'd try and bring in a sector that isn't necessarily within the town centre at the moment, leisure is one that we'd be keen to bring in but that's again to do with that particular end of the building is quite complex and it's got a small sort of lots of igledy-piggledy rooms essentially and different levels so it makes it a bit tricky to sort of redevelop, there's talk of potentially boutique hotels and things like that that might be interesting but until we go out there and explore the market it's going to be difficult for us to make a judgement because at the end of the day it has to be viable because we've got some responsibility in terms of the finances that we will spend on that particular building but we are keen that we do move that one forward because obviously we're doing a lot of the levelling up works around that site. I do have a sort of a second question that relates to that if I can, I just wondered if the FOCA building will be driven purely by financial concerns will there be a wellbeing element to it as well and community benefit, will it just be commercial that you're looking at? Again it depends if everything the finances stack up, unfortunately the finances do dictate to a degree as you'll appreciate but where we can we appreciate that the community side is really important and where we can build that into either FOCA 1 or FOCA 2 then we will endeavour to do that. Sorry there was just a third question now, just relating to the windows and the repairs I just wondered if any damage has been done by not repairing them earlier regardless of what the use might be if there's been any further damage to the building by not repairing the windows at the moment? Yes it's a good question and I think the answer to that is probably yes mainly because we anticipated that that building would be taken on by the GPs and then they would potentially subject to planning demolish that building therefore any works that we would do on that building would be deemed as abortive, clearly that didn't manifest itself going forward so we are having to kind of now look at the implications of not maintaining it as we would have wanted to had we thought we were going to retain it. Thank you Councillor Walker. Councillor Martin. Thank you. Do you have any idea when you're expecting to know about whether the Medical Centre are going to take the space or not? Thank you Councillor. In terms of FOCA 2, certainly, so the aim really is that the GPs will be has been looking at that space they are presenting figures back to the ICB we're yet to get formal confirmation whether that is viable or not viable so but we're aiming to try and get conclusion on that within well during the summer period that's the aim because as I mentioned earlier they're levelling up works has to go ahead so we need to to make a decision in terms of that building going ahead. Thank you Chair. Talking about the 11 up and the 11 up funding at Winders have you got any timeline I mean how long when do we have to spend the money by base I know it's a timeline and any idea how long it would take to repair the roof and the Winders but how are we actually doing time wise is it getting a bit tight? It's starting to get a little bit tight in terms of we know it's going to take approximately 26 weeks to do the works and that's including the tender process as well within that and we therefore need to kind of make a decision reasonably quickly on that we have had a little bit of success with DLUC departmental levelling up in terms of the March 25 deadline so they've not called it an extension they've called it a re-baseline of the deadline so we've now got that to September 25 so that gives us a little bit more time in order to get our ducks in a row as it were but the key aim for us really is not to do abortive works therefore we're kind of holding back as much as we can we feel most of the works that we specified will actually be okay it's just the roof is the critical element depending on what goes on that roof in terms of the kit that if a Medical Centre or whoever goes in there we just need to understand that a little bit more. Councillor Martin. Thank you. Sounds like you're playing a really tricky game of Medical Centres solitaire and I just wonder at what point do we need to take a bit of a step back and review it so clearly there was a firm plan to put a Medical Centre in FOCA 1 you had other plans for FOCA 2 including maybe moving Civic Centre into there. In your answer just now it sounds like FOCA 1 is quite complicated whatever you try and put into there and I just wonder whether we're through a process of elimination getting to a stage or might get to a stage at some point later this year where we realise we're kind of grappling with a difficult puzzle and maybe there's a different way out rather than trying to put things into a space that we own. Thanks Councillor Martin. Yes it is a tricky one and I won't deny that I think we're trying to separate it slightly in terms of FOCA 1 I think that needs to be a separate entity and that's the aim is to separate that away and actually deal with that as a separate entity so it doesn't affect the FOCA 2 entity as I mentioned earlier we've got the levelling up funding which is a great opportunity and it would be a shame to have to hand that back if that was the ultimate decision so we're keen to try and push forward with an occupational strategy that works so as we're having regular meetings in which we are doing at the moment with as many parties as possible working with those three commissions I mentioned well I think commissions two commissions and one in-house team the aim is to continually have those conversations so we can tweak designs and as I've mentioned hopefully find the optimum sort of financial puzzle or jigsaw to the puzzle that we're trying to solve at the moment so that's the basis but there will come a time where we need to cut off and make a decision absolutely and that point will come probably towards the sort of tail end of this calendar year. Can I ask why it's taken such a long time to get to a place where it's been confirmed it isn't viable to have the Medical Centre in FOCA 1 because I think it was obvious fairly early on that the dimensions didn't fit with that building and certainly I think the kind of community response was that people didn't want to see that building knocked down so I'm just wondering why it's taken until now for us to be clear that it's not a viable project. Thank you I think the main reason is around the space requirements which I mentioned earlier so I think they've been discussing the space requirements and we've obviously not been involved in that discussion and there's a certain strict criteria in terms of how that space requirement is scrutinised by the ICB because obviously they've got a limited pot of money so they scrutinise it and then look at the potential designs and sort of spatial arrangements they were coming up with so I think that took quite a long time and I think a key person within that project fell ill so that didn't help the cause so delayed it sort of further so we've been continually trying to push them to sort of get an outcome really as to where that was going and I think it was exacerbated then also by the sort of financial instability and the wider economic issues that everybody's experienced in terms of the build costs and also the financial sort of interest rates as well so I think those were the kind of key component parts and it came to a crescendo where we were pushing them hard to come up with a decision basically on the basis that we need to understand where we are because we've got this levelling up funding that we need to sort of move forward on and therefore I think they sort of came to a head sort of the early part of this year and that's kind of where we came to but it has been a bit of a sort of a slow process I will grant you that. Yes, thank you for that. Is it, you talked about when consultation would happen in terms of the uses of the building, I'm just wondering whether any thought has been given to whether that should be happening sooner given the fact that we don't know whether these different options are going to proceed and the work that's gone on in terms of alternative options now obviously needs to be re-looked at because of these changes. Is it a moment to do an update to people, to the district on what's happening with the building and what the potential options could be or to seek feedback from people about those because I know I mean it's now it's four years isn't it since the council bought the building so it's a long time that it's been in the situation that it is and I think people are keen to see it brought into use but also keen to be able to give a view on what those uses might be so has any thought been given to the consultation timetable in that respect? Very much so. I mean I think that's sort of the forefront of our sort of project planning really in terms of trying to navigate that and you're right it has taken a long time but I think everyone will agree it's been quite a tumultuous period in the last four years and even the last two years I mean as I started a couple of years ago we were getting to a point where we were trying to put together a plan of action and that was coming to fruition we were talking to potential commercial sectors that might want to come in there to fulfill some of the voids that we were experiencing in terms of leisure where we were leaking to other districts like Ashford but as the autumn approached in that particular year when we had the autumn mini budget and therefore one of the wider issues in terms of wars that everybody just kind of receded and didn't want to engage anymore they were just basically consolidating so we then had to rethink what could we do with the building and then I think that's at the time of the administration they were thinking maybe a public sector we could go in there and try and work through on that basis which is what we were then doing and again we were producing designs and actually we were looking to try and come to public consultation this summer but of course the medical centre news came in and therefore we had to then take stock of that and actually just hold back so it is very much in the forefront of our minds but it's doing it at the right time we know we've got all our ducks aligned and more importantly the viability is there that is going to work so what we don't want to do is put something out there that might sound great but actually from a viability perspective when you scrutinise it a bit more it doesn't work so it's really important we get those numbers right and that's why our finance colleagues are really critical to this project. Thank you are there any other questions or comments from the committee? Councillor Hills and then Councillor Walker. Thank you, it's obviously an iconic building with a lot of history behind it and it's totally uncertain to modern business the truth be known so you might have to start thinking outside that particular box to me this is a bystander I always thought it would be a lovely adult education art centre that sort of thing community activity I just really couldn't get any money from government of course I really can't sit being a commercial but you might need to set up some sort of working party to try and investigate which way to go forward rather than leave it just to our officers we might have to get involved as well or somebody will to try and get the speed into it because you're quite right it's been going on for four years so it could go on for another four years. Thank you Councillor Hills did you want to come back on that? Thank you for the question it's a yeah like I mentioned earlier it's been quite a volatile four years so I think we've had to navigate a lot of surprises as we've gone through that period and not least the pandemic and the economic situation etcetera so I think now we've we've kind of learned an awful lot from that experience as well I think we're getting to a point where we know potentially what might happen there but we just need to make sure the viability and the figures start to stack up so I think we're getting there and I feel reasonably confident that we'll get to some we'll get a decision at some point now towards the end of this this calendar year keep saying financial year calendar year to enable us really then to progress going forward in a positive way you know if if things don't work out via in terms of the viability and the options that we're considering at the moment then of course we'll come back and then seek seek a kind of a direction of travel thereafter and then and then we can go from there but I think at the moment I feel like we're starting to get there even though it sounds like we might be still quite far apart in terms of the information I've imparted today. Councillor Walker yes I just wonder if there was a deadline for these surgeries to agree to this if they could potentially not happen? One of the critical elements actually I think as what I've read is around the district value and they've got a certain number that all projects have to kind of align to and I understand that they've not really moved that number over the last few years which has made it very difficult for medical centres and other provisions aligned to the NHS to actually become viable actually be delivered which is which is interesting in its own right therefore I think there needs to be a change somewhere in that structure to enable these projects then to become to become viable so but we are talking to the ICB about that and the variance and the torrents is within that particular number to see if there is anything there so we are having those conversations as well but they do need to get to a point because they've got a ring fence allocation of money for this because they see folks in as a priority area. I've got Councillor Chapman and then Councillor Jones. You're talking about the medical centre going into the I always get FOLK 1 and FOLK 2 mixed up but going into FOLK 2 instead so what impact would that potentially have on I know we've talked about the civic centre moving into that building or the council moving into that building what impact would that have on the council moving into that building? Essentially we've done the very rough estimates in terms of the area they have and the area that we require and it all fits believe it or not it's a massive building if you've gone into FOLK 2 it's a huge building still construction so it's quite a sort of a regulated building and layout so it's quite easy to adapt in that regard which is positive so we feel confident that we're going to accommodate everything that we need in that building and we hope to get some commercial in there as I mentioned earlier as well. Councillor Jones. Thank you now it's been really useful that you've given us so much information actually because when I looked at the notes there was not a lot to go on so I think what I would like to come out of this meeting is I'd like to see a proper timetable we've talked about time to us but when are we going to get decisions we really need to have that so that the council feel confident that we are going to be moving forward with this in time for the deadline for the levelling up money so I don't know whether that's possible to put that in place and to circulate that. Thank you yes it's a quick answer it is a very very challenging project as Rod's been outlined here we had a clear way forward with the Medical Centre going into Volker 1. The ICB have confirmed that's not happening there's no way that can happen within that footprint of that building can they come into Volker 2 there's loads of interest they really want to deliver this in folks and the surgeries really want to deliver this in Folkestone and it was one of the primary reasons right at the start of the project to help increase footfall get that new medical facility within Folkestone town centre as Rod said as we start progressing through the next few months we've got a really clear way forward now set out in how we're breaking this down and by the time we get over the summer we'll have a clear direction of where the Medical Centre are we will have done all the viability studies and then we have a plan coming in and I suggest that we do it probably in the next round of cabinet papers in New Autumn that we have a clear project timeline through that period to show you how that's happening that will include consultation delivery and everything else we're doing so yes and everyone's come back to I forgot what I was going to say so I won't come back I'll come back in a minute sorry yeah that was it sorry yeah no sorry that's that'd be great I think we just I think for confidence in the from the council in this project that is actually going to happen it'd be really nice to see those clear steps publicised is that okay absolutely and the point was regarding the council occupancy of the building I think the most important thing for the council is to have the front line face customer facing services within the building so looking at what services are people coming in to use the council for so not necessarily all the back office staff and everything that we have here it could end up just being sort of the front line service provision but again we need to work out that through the different users through the space how that factors into the viability and what makes the building work and what makes it doesn't work so I say it's massively complex and challenging but we will be in a much better position to bring further work back and reports in the autumn Council Chapman so can I just clarify so if I mean that amongst people in my ward there's quite a lot of there's quite strong feeling about when we've talked about the council going to that building I think it's a really great idea and are we saying that there isn't room for everything to go into that building or it it does fit or it doesn't fit I'm confused now yeah it does it does fit it depends on other users who wants to come into the space and how that goes into the viability model so it's very complex it's going to cost basically the bottom line is it's going to cost a big number a big amount of money to get the building up and running and where it needs to be so in order and that a lot of that will come from capital borrowing or capital receipts so we have to repay that money so we need a rental income from the building in order to service the debt for the building so that all gets factored into the viability model and we're also looking at obviously what's going to what's going to increase the footfall in the town centre what's in the best interest of the town centre and getting the mix right of the building as a success but so underpinning all of that is the viability so we need to make sure the rental income covers the debt associated with the building okay I think that's helpful to clarify and I think the committee would be keen to understand the detail behind these points in order to properly be able to kind of comment on it as part of bringing that information back to the committee in a timely way Councillor Butcher thanks Joe yeah I was just trying to understand on that this idea that some of what goes on here might move but not all if all does presumably then this site gets disposed off if only some does it doesn't could you just talk us through that Andy the different implications of some or all of what's here moving yeah we're still working through that ourselves it is of course an option for us to go there lock stock the whole lot but it's also an option for us not so we don't necessarily need to have that sort of location for all of our services so that could be in a serviced office accommodation in a non high street location for example which might be more efficient for the council to run if we can get a commercial tenant which would pay a higher rent in that building so it's all it's all balanced so what's the best use of the building where's the best place for us to go so the best thing for us to have in the high street location certainly is our front line services where our residents want to come in and use those services and interact with our staff that's paramount if there's space that we can take over for the rest of our services and that works out to be viable but we would then have to pay a rent in order to service the debt that I previously explained for the development itself or is it better for us to use have a commercial tenant coming in who would pay a higher rent potentially and have a better use of that space so this is all the stuff that we're working through at the moment I haven't got answers for it now but this is all the stuff we've got hugely complex financial models which everything gets fed into we're having lots of conversations around different users and things like people who are interested in the space and potentially taking tenants from here with us and looking after other stakeholders but a lot of it at the moment is just finalizing what's going on with the medical centre because that's critical to the success of the building everybody wants the medical centre in that building we want to make that happen the ICB want to make it happen the surgeries want to make it happen but we've just got to get to that point and part of coming here tonight is to get that on the journey of getting agreement to obviously exploring that in Fulker 2 and then us going away working with all the other teams involved and and seeing how we made that happen. When do you think you'd be in a position to come back to the committee with a more detailed update on these on these points? Certainly autumn this year this year so I was looking at the committee schedule September potentially yeah a lot of it we're still weighing in on ICB staff and when and when the processes that they have to go go through for their approvals and we've got obviously some are coming up but I would hope we want to get this bottomed out because we want to deliver on the loftworks and we want to know what's happening with the building so there's a huge amount of work going on in the background so obviously to you guys it might seem that obviously we've had the building for four years and we haven't done anything we have been doing a huge amount of work in the background on this I can assure you. I think we're very aware of that so I think that would be really helpful if it could come back before the committee as soon as that is feasible with the detail that we need to look at it is that something that the committee would agree with yeah and also I think in terms of the point about the viability obviously the point that Councillor Walker made around thinking about the kind of community aspect and the benefits of it is it would be another important point as part of that as part of that thinking. Okay can we note note that then in terms of next steps on this particular item and thank Rod and Andy for the detail they've been able to provide this evening a lot of questions so we appreciate your time in dealing with those okay we're going to move on to our second item which is the procurement plan and we have a presentation to go through this evening as as part of that are you ready Ola thank you very much. It's to provide an overview in terms of the council procurement plan most especially the section 5 of the procurement plan that focuses on the local businesses and the SMA participation and the paper also cover or share with you in detail what we are able to do within the constraints of the procurement regulations what the procurement team has been doing to be able to support that local plan. We are aware of the comment from your briefing in terms of data in terms of demonstration of what we are currently doing and that is one of the reasons we've got a procurement manager with us today and we're going to run through few slides and following those slides we'll be able to take questions thank you. Our procurement manager she's Ade Abola who is joining us for the first time today thank you. Good evening councillors and everybody I'm here to talk to you about what we've been doing and give a background about procurement the regulations and what we work towards and the how the regulation affects and rules or guides our decisions and what we do. So we have the public contrast regulation 2015 that basically is the regulation that regulates everything we do as procurement in terms of how we procure what we need to do as a single market when we go out to market what kind of procedures that we need to do the kind of competitive procedure that is allowed and how we work around different stuff. Although there is recently the social value hat that we need to implement into it as well but we have to factor in the regulation when we do things as well to make sure that they all work hand in hand. So it's also very important to us that we as a council and a procurement team we try to encourage local bidders to bid but not we cannot exclude others in favour of local suppliers because the regulation doesn't allow us to because one of the principles of the regulation is about being fair transparent and open to all competitors as a UK single market but it is anticipated that a new regulation is coming into force in October and this will kind of change maybe there's some flexibility and everything and also because we work primarily on the EU regulation as of now so the new regulation is UK is a UK one which is looking at different ways that we can procure in a better and more flexible way. So from the regulation we also have our own standing orders which reflects the whole regulations requirement and it also guides in terms of the different threshold and how we can procure and what we do. So we have the above regulations above threshold which complies with the CPR regulation those we have no control over we have to do them in line with the regulations and those are details on that. I have included the value which is inclusive of VAT and exclusive because most of the businesses we do are normally exclusive so we can understand what the thresholds are and they're different thresholds for works for services and these thresholds are not just they're not set in stone like it's forever so they change every two years in January. So these are the latest ones which was implemented in January of this year. So we now have the below thresholds so these are the ones that are governed by our constitution our council standing orders so we have anything 0 to 10,000 we can go up for a single quote anything between 10 to 100,000 we have to seek a minimum of three quotes and anything over 100,000 we have to do an open competitive process. But we do have a bit of flexibilities around that because that is governed by our own CSO we try to be as flexible around that much more rather than with the over threshold ones. So when we developed when the procurement plan was developed the aim was to incorporate the corporate plan as well and one of that was about the thriving environment and vibrant economy and the way we could do that and also is where we need to support the local economies and factor in social values, apprenticeships and where we need to look for you know reduced costs of value for money in terms of cost and also because the council is also one of the officials of the council this goes net zero by 2030 so that has been factored into it in terms of lower carbon emissions and shorter and less logistic challenges which will help if we are around you know using local. And since the implementation the team have been working to make sure that we improve our local suppliers participation and we've I think one of the things that we've done and the reason how we've done this is also actually listening to them and taking these into consideration and in terms of how we improve. So we've looked at ways that our tenders goes out and how simple they are, how we can make it simple for them you know and how we can also reduce our annual threshold, annual turnover so that it allows local bidders to come in not to minimize every barriers that we see you know sometimes when it's a low value do a quick quote that can turn things around without making it too long or too complicated where some bidders I just you know they don't have the time or they're not familiar with that kind of process and also you know be there to talk them to what we need as well and also factoring some social value into bigger and larger contracts in terms of apprenticeship are you going to employ locally, supply chain are you going to be buying from local suppliers are you going to do you know subcontracts locally, employ locally and also one of the things that we also need to note is also that sometimes and which we also factor is even though some companies might be local are they actually employing locally and those are the things we try to pull out to actually identify if the economy or if the money is being spent locally or within the economy. So based on what we've done so far we've pulled out some data to show our spend because when we say local we're not sure if it's supposed to be just Folkestone or if it's supposed to be East Kent or Kent so we've done something around all three as a whole so in 20 so you could see our spend in 2020, 21, 22 against what our overall spend is that is everything that we spend in general as a whole annually against what I spend and against our spend let me not talk too much. So just could you just pause on that one yeah and could you just talk us through in a bit more detail because I don't think I've quite grasped it. So the overall spend is everything we spend as a council in terms of business so it's not just based on the Kent spend, it's based on our overall spend with every single suppliers and everything that we purchase services works and everything that's what the overall is. So the FHDC is what we've spent within Folkestone, Folkestone district not just Folkestone alone every district that falls within Folkestone so it could be Hyde, it could be, didn't you judge? Yeah. So this is the yellow box or right I was wondering that so should they say 20/21, 21/22, 21/22 and 22/23, okay now it makes much more sense. Sorry my apologies and then what we spent in East Kent so every district that falls within East Kent that's 7 million we've spent in 2022/21 and the blue area here is showing that as well and that's the middle area in the last one is also showing that and then what we spent as Kent as a whole is on the third one for each financial year. Okay thank you for clarifying that. And then the data to show the upward trend of our spend with local suppliers so in 2020 we have 1.73% and in 2021 it's going up to 1.92 and in 2022/23 it's gone up to 2.85% so it shows that we're doing something and I hope that we continue to do something to improve and show an upward and if you can see the East Kent as well is showing an upward trend as well as Kent as a whole so it shows that we are spending more within the local area. So our plan and strategy is to continue doing what we're doing but seeking more opportunities and improving what we're doing so for considering breaking down contract notes to small notes where possible so because sometimes we have to think about economies of scale but where we feel that it is essential that this is something that can benefit from local suppliers participation we will consider breaking down our contracts. We will continue to promote the council's payment policy about 30 days and then we'll continue to always encourage local businesses to go on Kent Business Portal because that's where we advertise our we publish our opportunities that's where most of not even us all Kent's because we all Kent's local authorities publish their opportunities on that so we always always encourage local businesses to do that and yes we hold suppliers debrief we have individual meetings whenever we have to especially after they've submitted the tender or they're not successful in order to help them to be able to tender successfully with the council so we're always they're giving them guidance giving them debrief debrief is an important part of the procurement process because I believe if someone is of taken the time to tender then we need to go back to them and tell them what they've done right and where they can improve on what they have and then we've looked to simplify our tender documents we also look to simplify in terms of our contract agreements our draft agreements instead of making them too long we've shortened them or sometimes we don't even go for we'll go with the PO terms and condition that helps them in to actually understand things not just a long agreement that they need to sign where they are confused or they just go we don't want to do that because and then we take the local suppliers into account when creating tenders strategies we look at ways that we can make it simple or influence their participation so was our tenders opportunity I think that's all thank you very much if you have any questions thank you very much for that and do we I don't know if I think the committee only raised this sort of at the end of last week so you may not have had the chance to do this but do you have any data on recent procurement processes and the quarterly reviews of the procurement plan in terms of some of the actions that you've talked about where they've happened and what impact they've had or if you're if you're not haven't had the chance to to look at that would that be something that could be provided to the committee but thank you I think again we saw your comment very very late in terms of your request is something that we can take away have you look at it and come back to this committee with an update thank you thank you it may be something that could be circulated by email if that that would be possible then members could see that more swiftly yeah thank you the the just just for members of the committee this is this has come in front of us because of the motion that we agreed at full council and and I think it is linked to within the agenda but the the gist of that motion was around reviewing the council's procurement action plan and seeing what we can do to enhance our ability to have progressive procurement and look at community wealth building so you know that's very much I think the spirit in which the committee is wanting to to approach this and that's the conversations that we've had so far so I'll open it up to colleagues to to come in Councillor Chapman thank you and I can see there's a lot of work gone into this report so thank you very much for that I really appreciate it but what it doesn't seem to do is to engage with the substance of the motion it mentions it briefly at the beginning and then doesn't really seem to engage with it it talks a lot about what we can do within the legislation but the motion wasn't asking us to do anything outside of the legislation we were very much this is labour business it was part of the manifesto in which we were elected community wealth building and positive procurement is a well researched evidence-based approach to spending public money where councils like Preston but many others are seeing big benefits from it there was a paper in the Lancet published last year which showed that with Preston following this positive procurement model and this is a this is a peer-reviewed paper wages had gone up 11% over and above what would have been otherwise expected reported well-being was up antidepressant prescription was down there were huge benefits for the community and Preston I don't think we're suggesting for a minute that Preston are doing anything illegal or outside of the legislation so what I appreciate is a huge amount of work that's gone into this report what I would really like to see happen is for us to go away again and to really engage with the motion and look at how we can move towards what that what that motion was asking because it was largely carried by council I think there were two abstentions and it's something that I know that the community that I'm talking to are extremely excited about and I can't go back to them and say well you know we're just going to sort of stick with the status quo I want us to be showing that we're moving towards that as much as we possibly can so I wonder if I can with the greatest respect and the greatest amount of respect for the work that you've put into this ask that we could maybe go away and look at this again because I don't really feel like it's engaged with the spirit of the motion and I really want this community to see that happen thank you councillor Chapman do you want to come back on the at this stage I'm happy to make a comment again thanks so much for your comments and I think your comments about what Preston has been doing in terms of progressive procurement has been repeated and has been mentioned many many times similar to what you've said we'll definitely go away look at what we could do learn from our network have a discussion and see how we could move section five of the procurement further thank you that's really helpful thank you colleagues councillor Martin I mean I can see you're already doing quite a lot of good work in terms of engaging local businesses and the analysis that you've got here is already quite quite very revealing I think I've got a few a few thoughts around that maybe around how we could sort of enhance that and drill down into it but one of the questions I did have when I was looking at your graphs is so you show I think in the latest year sixty one and a half percent of business is sourced from within Kent which is already quite quite significant I'm quite curious to see where that other kind of thirty nine percent is is going and to understand I think you mentioned it a little bit yourself but you know are these national companies are they from slightly outside of Ken are they employing local local people and I'll be quite keen just to sort of complete that sort of economic loop if you like so we can get a really clear view of where that where that money's ending up aside from that I wonder whether beyond the work that you're already doing it's it's more a case of creating some transparency around that analysis and maybe sort of beefing the analysis up a little bit and just being able to transparently show where where where that business is going and then for us to monitor that over time and it might reveal some interesting areas within the thirty nine percent where for whatever reason we're not we're not going with with with local companies and maybe there's some action we can take around that I wonder whether you know on top of the work that you're already doing it's just adding that extra little piece of the of the jigsaw really the question I had was what should our aspiration be we had a chat about this on last week in our kind of pre pre meeting so so where this has been done elsewhere what were they aspiring for and what have they actually achieved because I think there's a there's always going to be this reason there's always going to be procurement rules and it's never going to be possible to place a hundred percent of your business with fully local organizations I guess the first question is what do we consider to be local and it strikes me that you kind of want to be placing business as local as possible but maybe there's almost a bit of a it's not venn diagram isn't it but there's this sort of ever increasing circles and if you look at your data now it'd be nice over time to see that business being placed getting closer and closer to to home and maybe that's something we monitor but what what we actually aspiring to achieve and what does good look look like is a question on my mind if I can just chip in I think that what you said about engaging with councils like Preston and what because there's no point in reinventing the wheel if they've done a lot of work as to what what is reasonable and what what local means can we build on the work that they've done so it would be really interesting to me if you could possibly engage with that and see see what is what has already been done and what we can work towards in in this area yeah again definitely in terms of using our network we definitely do that I mean Preston name has been mentioned over and over again procurement has got a network where they share information's where we share best and good practices as well so we can learn from each other we can decide we can define in terms of how far we want to take local participation and SMA and again in terms of aspiration I mean our procurement manager made reference to some of that during her slide in terms of supporting local economics attaining social and environmental benefits reducing cost lowering carbon emission and shorter and less logistic challenges those are some of the aspirations which we are currently working on to make sure we take the right boxes for local participation but I believe we can still do more than that by learning what is out there using our network and making sure we come back to this to to the committee with a relevant update thank you I think within the it is really worth looking at the Preston information because they they have ways that they're demonstrating it through data which could be really helpful to us I think to address Councillor Martin's point as well other comments colleagues Councillor Butcher thanks Jay I just wanted to drill down into the table you put up about the percentages so the 2.85 percent and how that compares with other districts I mean it's just a figure isn't it and unless we can see that in comparison is that good bad indifferent I know it's getting better but just do we have any data how it works I mean thank you thank you we haven't got that data but it's something that we could look through safer benchmarking and come up with I mean a better understanding of what other councils are doing which hopefully supports or in the range of what we are currently doing but it's something that we could we could look into yeah because I guess if we want to know whether all the efforts that you've outlined there all the processes if that to know if they're having the desired effect there is something yes about are we seeing an improvement but if it turns out other similar districts are doing way better then that would give us some clues as to what we might do differently and just I wasn't sure whether the folks in hive spend is then included in the East Kent spend which is then included in the Kent spend is that is that the way you've done the figures my understanding when you look at the table for 2021 21 22 and 22 23 we have an harmless spend of 39 million of which Foxton is 679 in 2021 604 in 2122 and 872 in 2223 I don't we are not hiding Foxton is Kent and Kent together to make that 39 there are other areas where we've actually spent some of this money but we're just looking at a proportion that has been spent locally but I guess the question comes down to this is when we look at the East Kent spend and then the percentage that's being spent in Foxton hive is that what we'd expect or is this particular bit of East Kent doing as well as the rest of East Kent and if not why not so I guess it's just I'm not expecting the answer now but it's just trying to get under the data to see what this is telling us so there's a numbers but what's it telling us about how we're doing comparatively so that we can then think well what policies might make a difference and I know a lot of this is about procedural things that we could do differently but I guess it's going to be a whole range of things to do with skills development thank you Councillor Bishop again I think we can go away and try and analyse some of those figures and break them down into a decision to understand what has been it and they will be able to come back to you on that thank you is that okay to carry on please do Councillor Butcher yeah it was a question about social value and just wanting to understand a bit more about that the sort of various references to social value criteria mostly with with reference to apprenticeships and skills development I don't really understand scored non-scored and the whole social value model as I understand it I mean it's got loads and loads of criteria hasn't it so I just wanted to understand so when we are tendering for big high value contracts so which will go out naturally nationally it is quite evident that sometimes that a local supplier might not get the business but as part of that tender process we have to include an aspect of social value for an example we are currently doing the tender for the responsive repairs the housing and one of the inclusion within there is to see what they will be offering in terms of apprenticeship within the local area in terms of skills in terms of training and where they will be sourcing their materials and stuff from local area and stuff and those are the things that we try to implement within the tender and see how they will respond and it it has been effective because some have come up with really good response in terms of helping the local economy or giving back and we've had a lot of apprenticeship that has been offered as part of the social value thing and there has been a lot of subcontractors so for example our current contract with Meers they are a big company, a big national company but they do recruit locally. When you are doing a tender like that do you select from the social value criteria ones that you think are particularly relevant that you ask people to respond to? Yes because there is no point in just generalising and that is one thing that we currently review because sometimes there is a general question and people will respond that we will plant trees we will do this but not relevant to that tender so we have to make it relevant so that we are seeing the kind of response that will be applicable to that particular contract. Thank you and then I suppose just the last observation looking at the Preston model it's quite a comprehensive approach, economic development and working with partners and so I guess that that's part of our curiosity in a sense is how do we get beyond all the good work that's being done now to be linking up with our economic development strategy and all of that so it's a more comprehensive approach. That's a wider question isn't it I think and you make the point in the report that this is not just going to be a procurement issue it's going to be a kind of whole council approach and certainly we've been discussing it in the corporate plan working group sessions that we've had is something that we would want to kind of push forward in on it's in the current corporate plan as well. So I think it's not going away as an issue that we're going to want to talk about as a council. Andy you're indicating. Thank you chair if I may just a couple of points really interesting conversation and obviously I run a lot of service areas that buy a lot of goods and I think some of the things the figures and this is something that we can try and drill down into but big contracts is which we've already referenced Veolia the sums of those two contracts alone is getting on for seven eight million pounds a year so when you look at it as a percentage it's taking a huge amount of that money out of there and I can think of service areas grounds maintenance assets engineering housing where we use hundreds of local contractors vehicle repairs fencing all of our timber supplies all of our other supplies nuts bolts things locks everything painters decorators mechanics they're all local suppliers all of them but the figures I think probably skewed because the big contracts are all grouped in I think they probably skew it the local supply network is vital for operation and we always go for all those services I've just mentioned and many many more we always go to local suppliers I just thought it was just worthy of just pointing that out. Thank you I had Councillor Walker indicating next. I just wondered if this could be an opportunity to have a new KPI with regard to procurement a heading like a vibrant economy maybe include some of these rest in the things done if cabinet and finance were able to consider that. Again thanks so much for your comment I'm not sure how this would be measured however as part of our research and networking we definitely have a discussion with our network I mean if Preston has got KPIs which they are using in terms of measuring local participations yeah it's something that we speak to them about and learn from them and then come back with what we think is reasonable or what we think is slashable. Thank you. Thank you and I think the KPIs are coming to our committee anyway so that's something that we can look at as a committee too I think. I had Councillor Hills next. Thank you for that I take on board what Andy said about obviously the big bucks go to big companies and that screws the figures around a little bit but surely what we're trying to achieve I don't know you can tell me I'm wrong is to try and put more back into our community. They pay taxes to us as well so it's a circular economy to a certain degree but like I think I'm very keen on the idea of this but it comes down to communicating with people people are very entrenched in their views and the way they see the council might not be the way you see the council so you have to keep pushing it that the whole time through social media other media to tell them we're open for business and we're supporting them. I think that's a very important aspect to carry forward but there's a lot of work being done and I thank you for that and I would think you know if you ask Ashford council for example who I've had quite a good working relationship with they would be quite open I wouldn't see what it wouldn't be to sharing sort of the splits on their figures so we can see how we measure against other local authorities in our patch and that might be useful it might not but you'll see something to the best we could be on in a certain degree in a bit of a blind spot but thanks for the work and in progress. Thanks Councillor Hills and in fact if you look at the work that Preston has done they have kind of reviewed their work as they've gone along and they've got some suggestions of things that they would do differently if they were starting again one of them is around communication and making sure that it's communicated to people what the council is doing in its approach so I think it's a good point. Councillor Martin. Thank you it's an obvious point and a few of us have alluded to this already but just picking up on Andy's two big contracts of course not all of that money is going out of the region and if there's an easy way without getting lost in pointless analysis if there's an easy way of showing you know of that money that goes to Veolia how much of that goes back to presumably all locally employed people are they employing largely people who live in Folkestone hive I think that would be a really good additional bit of analysis to see. I'm seeing nods so I think that's taken on board, good point. Any other comments? So I think collectively we're thanking you for the work that you've done and really appreciate that and we're asking if we can build on that in terms of the data and the approach and kind of how we might move this forward and for that then to come back in front of the committee for us to have further discussions about this because I think it is a topic that's close to our hearts and going to be important moving forward so appreciate your time and look forward to discussing it further when you come back to the committee thank you Ade. So we just have to formally receive and note the report so if I can have a proposer for that Councillor Martin and a seconder Councillor Hills okay thank you all in favour? Thank you that's agreed and that is our final item for this evening so thank you all very much and have a good evening. [BLANK_AUDIO]

Transcript

Good evening members and welcome to the first overview and scrutiny meeting for this municipal year. We'll move on to the first item for the appointment of chair. Do we have any nominations? I'd like to nominate Councillor Laura Davidson for the role. Thank you and do we have any seconders? I'd like to second it, thank you. And can I have a show of hands? Perfect, thank you. I'll hand over to you Laura. Thank you very much everybody, nice to see you all. And we're going to move on to our second item which is the appointment of the vice chair. So are there nominations please? I'd like to appoint Councillor Joanne Wynne. Thank you Councillor Martin. And a seconder? I think Councillor Chapman and Councillor Butcher both had their hands up at the same time there so I'll leave colleagues to determine which of them was quickest. And all in favour please. That's unanimous, thank you. I'd like to come up to Councillor Wynne. Nice to have you as the vice chair, Councillor Wynne, for this forthcoming municipal year. I'm going to read the notice just so that we've done that for the record. So formally good evening and welcome to the meeting of the OVU and Scrutiny Committee. This meeting will be webcast live to the internet. For those who do not wish to be recorded or filmed you'll need to leave the chamber. For members, officers and others speaking at the meeting it's important that the microphones are used so viewers on the webcast and others in the room may hear you. Would anyone with a mobile phone please switch it to silent mode as they can be distracting. I'd like to remind members that although we all have strong opinions on matters under consideration it's important to treat members, officers and public speakers with respect. So we're going to move on to item 3, apologies for absence. Are there any apologies? Thank you chair. We have one apology from Councillor McConville. Councillor Belinda Walker will be substituting. Thank you, welcome Councillor Walker. And are there any declarations of interest from the committee? Councillor Wing. Thank you chair. I'd like to declare as a director of opportunity analysis. Councillor Butcher. And the same for me. Councillor Hills. Just in case it comes up chairman, I'm a member of Kent County Council. Thank you, chair, not chairman. Thank you. OK, thank you noted Councillor Hills. Moving on to item 5, the minutes on pages 5 to 10 of your agenda. We need to approve these as a correct record of our last meeting. Councillor Walker I know you wouldn't have been at the meeting but for other colleagues are we happy to accept those as a correct record? I'm seeing nods, but I have a proposer. Councillor Butcher and a seconder. Councillor Chapman. And all agreed? Agreed. Thank you. Item 6 is the appointment of members and the election of the chair to the finance and performance scrutiny subcommittee. And we've had the following nominations for the committee. Councillor Alan Martin, Councillor John Wing, Councillor James Butcher, Councillor Connor McConville and Councillor Laura Davison. And my understanding is that Councillor McConville is willing to continue as the chair of the subcommittee for the forthcoming year. So if members of the committee are content, we'll take that as one item to agree the members of the committee and the appointment of the chair. So could I have a proposer for that? Councillor Martin. Thank you. And a seconder? Councillor Hills. And all those in favour? That's great. That's agreed. Thank you very much indeed. OK, that's the administrative items in front of us, so we're going to move on to our first substantive item of the evening, which is an update on the Folker project from our chief officer Rodleene. Thank you, chair. Just waiting for it to come up. Great. Thank you, everyone. I'm just going to give you a bit of an update on the Folker project, concentrating on the Medical Centre in Folker 1, and then some of the - oh, a tree, sorry. Apologies. There's one just sitting on that one. Second one down. I'm not sure if that's connected to the - just hidden away. Apologies about that technical mishap there. Don't worry. Start again. So, yeah, I'm aiming to talk about the Folker 1 project and the Medical Centre in particular, and we've got a bit of an overview, really, of a cabinet paper that's going to cabinet in June, so - and I understand that you've had a meeting about the presentation and you made some points, so I'll try and address those points as I go through, but if I do forget any as I go through them, please do ask at the end when we get on to the questions. Okay, it's back on now. Not doing very well here. Technology. Okay, so the backgrounds then, especially around the Medical Centre, was brought to cabinet in 2021 with the view of a medical centre going into what we deem as Folker 1, which is the Edwardian part of Folker, the brick built part of it, and the aim was that we were going to take forward that proposition with the understanding that we'd agree heads of terms, we'd get a capital receipt, and we would try and align that to the development of Folker 2. Within that report, it was on point seven there on the screen, it was noted that if there was any substantial change to the proposal that we would bring it back to cabinet, which is what we're doing now. So that's kind of what we're doing now. So going on to Folker 1 then, the medical centre and where we are, you'll see that the medical centre is no longer viable for Folker 1, and that's as a result of a few reasons, one of which was the original agreed floor space with the medical provision and ICB, as in they were trying to agree the floor space was 3,000 square metres. As they went through that process of scrutinising that space, that eventually was agreed at a much lower floor plate, circa 2,000 square metres, which obviously reduced substantially the viability in terms of addressing the ICB design standards and HDS design standards within the building, and they're quite high, and in order to meet those standards, they would have to have demolished, put in planning and then demolish Folker 1, which was going to be costly, and as a result of that sort of change in the foot plate, and also the wider economic situation in terms of the higher interest rates and build costs as well over the last few years, that really has put paid to that viability. We're not privy, I know that's one of the questions you asked, we're not privy to the detail of that, as you would appreciate, that's a commercially sensitive area between ICB and the GP practices and their developer, so we didn't get that, that was the rationale they gave to us, so they then asked us to look at potentially Folker 2 as an alternative. So part of the cabinet report that's going in June really is just to formalise that it's an unviable in Folker 1 with cabinet members, and to seek approval to explore option for the medical centre to go into Folker 2, because they believe that the construction costs will be a lot less because they do not have to demolish Folker

1. The actual construction of that particular building as well is a bit more sympathetic in terms of the NHS design standards, it's a much more square and uniform plan as opposed to the Edwardian building, which was quite a tricky building in terms of levels and size of rooms etc. So they wanted to ask us permission to explore that and just re-run their figures to see whether there was any chance that that could potentially be viable in Folker 2, so that's again what we're seeking approval for in the cabinet paper. And then in terms of Folker 1, one of the issues with Folker 1 is that we always deemed that to be a medical centre and that was always the direction of travel in terms of that building. As a result of that, there was no alternative Plan B for that building, and therefore we need to come back to the cabinet to basically look at the options for that building in terms of what we can do. Just to note that the building itself, we had a condition survey carried out by a consultant called Pelling's, and that came back at £3.8 million in terms of bringing the building back to a sort of shell and core ready for fit out, so quite a substantial cost as you'll appreciate. So the other element we wanted to discuss at cabinet was around the levelling up works and the fact that we've got a time limited programme with which to deliver those works. Now the original plan was to spend £2.48 million on the Folker building, which was as a result of a study that was carried out pre the levelling up submission. That basically gave us the money then to explore what we could do with the envelope of the building. So Pelling's, again, was a consultant who was tendered and procured. They won the commission and they were commissioned to oversee a series of surveys on the building, and with those series of surveys to present a report back to us as officers to determine the best use of that money that we had from the levelling up fund. That basically produced this, as I mentioned earlier, this envelope of the building, so that's repairing the roof, the windows and some strip out works with the aim of getting on and separating, sorry, separating the building as in Folker 1 from Folker 2 as well. So those works were all specified and ready to go to tender. But we held back on that on the premise of the changes, if you like, to the plans for that particular building. So we again are kind of now looking at how we ensure that we deliver on time in terms of the levelling up fund. But what we don't want to do pending the outcome of the medical provision, if we're allowed to explore it, is to ensure that what we do do isn't abortive works, if that makes sense. So what we wanted to do is understand who and who was going in there, the occupation essentially of Folker 2 before we kind of pushed the button on that particular tender. But that is time limited so we wanted to make members aware that we do need to move forward on that at a reasonable pace. And in terms of Folker 2 itself we were commissioned back in February 2023 to seek options or explore options in terms of the council moving into Folker 2 and making it into a potentially sort of a public sector building with some commercial. So we were asked to carry that out which we started the work on that. We commissioned an architect. We also commissioned an economic appraisal expert as well to determine the benefits of whoever goes in there from that work. And also we worked with our in-house finance colleagues to look at the financial makeup as well of that particular business case. So as you'll appreciate those three key commissions all kind of work together with the aim of kind of coming up with the ultimate and optimum solution for the building. And the aim then was that we were going to present that back and do some sort of public consultation on that, those options going forward and then re-present that back to cabinet later this year. So that was the aim of that work. Again because the medical centre potentially maybe we're going to explore that option then obviously that has a bearing on those three commissions so we need to kind of just pause that until we look at the medical centre and how that will manifest itself within the building. So hopefully we're going to present that back to cabinet later in the year. That's the aim. So it's been a bit of a meandering piece of work in terms of trying to find a direction of travel due to the elements I've just explained but hopefully we're starting to get a plan in terms of what we'll do with that by the end of the financial year or by the end of the calendar year. That's the aim. So any questions? I'm just checking. I think I've covered most aspects in the response but if not please do. Yeah I think you have. Thank you for that. I'm sure there will be questions. Obviously it's our job to scrutinise these things so I'll open it up to colleagues on the committee to ask questions about the presentation. Councillor Walker. I just have possibly three questions. I just wondered about Volcker 1 if you'd actually had an inkling what that could be now it's not going to be the medical centre. If there's any ideas floating around people's heads at the moment as to what it could be, if any plans have been put in place. Thank you Councillor Walker. Well I think what we need to do is just understand the financial implications of the building. As I mentioned there's a condition survey carried out at 3.8 million pounds so we need to understand how that will work through. We need to understand also the fact that what's the appetite of the market out there in terms of commercial activity and who might go in there. In an ideal world you'd try and bring in a sector that isn't necessarily within the town centre at the moment. Leisure is one that we'd be keen to bring in but that's again to do with that particular end of the building is quite complex and it's got a small sort of lots of pickledy rooms essentially and different levels so it makes it a bit tricky to redevelop. Let's talk of potentially boutique hotels and things like that that might be interesting but until we go out there and explore the market it's going to be difficult for us to make a judgement because at the end of the day it has to be viable because we've got some responsibility in terms of the finances that we will spend on that particular building. But we are keen that we do move that one forward because obviously we're doing a lot of the levelling up works around that site. I do have a sort of a second question that relates to that if I can. I just wondered if the FOCA building will be driven purely by financial concerns or if there will be a wellbeing element to it as well and community benefit? Or would it just be commercial that you're looking at? Again it depends if everything, the finances stack up. Unfortunately the finances do dictate to a degree as you'll appreciate but where we can we appreciate that the community side is really important and where we can build that into either FOCA 1 or FOCA 2 then we will endeavour to do that. Sorry there was just a third question now. Just relating to the windows and the repairs I just wondered if any damage has been done by not repairing them earlier regardless of what the use might be. If there's been any further damage to the building by not repairing the windows at the moment? Yes it's a good question and I think the answer to that is probably yes. Mainly because we anticipated that that building would be taken on by the GPs and then they would potentially subject to planning demolish that building. Therefore any works that we would do on that building would be deemed as abortive. Clearly that didn't manifest itself going forward so we are having to kind of now look at the implications of not maintaining it as we would have wanted to had we thought we were going to retain it. Thank you Councillor Walker. Councillor Martin? Thank you. Do you have any idea when you're expecting to know about whether the Medical Centre are going to take the space or not? Thank you Councillor. In terms of FOCA too, certainly. So the aim really is that the GPs developer has been looking at that space. They are presenting figures back to the ICB. We're yet to get formal confirmation whether that is viable or not viable. But we're aiming to try and get a conclusion on that within, well during the summer period. That's the aim. Because as I mentioned earlier the levelling up works has to go ahead so we need to make a decision on that building going ahead. Thank you. Councillor Wing. Thank you Chair. Talking about the levelling up fund and the windows, have you got any timeline? I mean when do we have to spend the money by a base? I know it's a timeline and any idea how long it would take to repair the roof and the windows? How are we actually doing time wise? Is it getting a bit tight? It's starting to get a little bit tight in terms of we know it's going to take approximately 26 weeks to do the works and that's including the tender process as well within that. And we therefore need to kind of make a decision reasonably quickly on that. We have had a little bit of success with DLUC, Department of Levelling Up in terms of the March 25 deadline. So that, they've not called it an extension, they've called it a re-baseline of the deadline. So we've now got that to September 25. So that gives us a little bit more time in order to get our docs in a row as it were. But the key aim for us really is not to do abortive works. Therefore we're kind of holding back as much as we can. We feel most of the works that we specified will actually be okay. It's just the roof is the critical element depending on what goes on that roof in terms of the kit. If a medical centre or whoever goes in there we just need to understand that a little bit more. Councillor Martin. Thank you. Sounds like you're playing a really tricky game of medical centres solitaire and I just wonder at what point do we need to take a bit of a step back and review it? So clearly there was a firm plan to put a medical centre in forca one. You had other plans for forca two including maybe moving Civic Centre into there. In your answer just now it sounds like forca one's quite complicated whatever you try and put into there and I just wonder whether we're through a process of elimination getting to a stage or might get to a stage at some point later this year where we realise we're kind of grappling with a difficult puzzle and maybe there's a different way out rather than trying to put things into a space that we own. Thanks Councillor Martin. Yes it is a tricky one and I won't deny that. I think we're trying to separate it slightly in terms of forca one. I think that needs to be a separate entity and that's the aim is to separate that away and actually deal with that as a separate entity so it doesn't affect the forca two entity. As I mentioned earlier we've got the levelling up funding which is a great opportunity and it would be a shame to have to hand that back if that was the ultimate decision. So we're keen to try and push forward with an occupational strategy that works. So as we're having regular meetings and which we are doing at the moment with as many parties as possible, working with those three commissions I mentioned
2. well I say commissions, two commissions and one in-house team - the aim is to continually have those conversations so we can tweak designs and as I've mentioned hopefully find the optimum sort of financial puzzle or jigsaw to the puzzle that we're trying to solve at the moment and that's kind of the basis but there will come a time where we need to cut off and make a decision absolutely and that point will come probably towards the sort of tail end of this calendar year. Can I ask why it's taken such a long time to get to a place where it's been confirmed it isn't viable to have the Medical Centre in Folker 1 because I think it was obvious fairly early on that the dimensions didn't fit with that building and certainly I think the kind of community response was that people didn't want to see that building knocked down so I'm just wondering why it's taken until now for us to be clear that it's not a viable project. Thank you. I think the main reason is around the space requirements which I mentioned earlier so I think they've been discussing the space requirements and we've obviously not been involved in that discussion. There's a certain strict criteria in terms of how that space requirement is scrutinised by the ICB because obviously they've got a limited pot of money so they scrutinise it and then look at the potential designs and sort of spatial arrangements they were coming up with so I think that took quite a long time and I think a key person within that project fell ill so that didn't help the cause or delayed it sort of further so we've been continually trying to push them to sort of get an outcome really as to where that was going and I think it was exacerbated then also by the sort of financial instability and the wider economic issues that everybody's experienced in terms of the build costs and also the financial sort of interest rates as well so I think those were the kind of key component parts and it came to a crescendo where we were pushing them hard to come up with a decision basically on the basis that we need to understand where we are because we've got this levelling up funding that we need to sort of move forward on and therefore I think they sort of came to a head sort of the early part of this year and that's kind of where we came to but it has been a bit of a slow process I would grant you that. Yes, thank you for that. Is it, you talked about when consultation would happen in terms of the uses of the building, I'm just wondering whether any thought has been given to whether that should be happening sooner given the fact that we don't know whether these different options are going to proceed and the work that's gone on in terms of alternative options now obviously needs to be re-looked at because of these changes. Is it a moment to do an update to people, to the district on what's happening with the building and what the potential options could be or to seek feedback from people about those because I know I mean it's now it's four years isn't it since the council bought the building so it's a long time that it's been in the situation that it is and I think people are keen to see it brought into use but also keen to be able to give a view on what those uses might be so has any thought been given to the consultation timetable in that respect? Very much so. I mean I think that's sort of the forefront of our sort of project planning really in terms of trying to navigate that and you're right it has taken a long time but I think everyone will agree it's been quite a tumultuous period in the last four years and even the last two years I mean as I started a couple of years ago we were getting to a point where we were trying to put together a plan of action and that was coming to fruition we were talking to potential commercial sectors that might want to come in there to fulfil some of the voids that we were experiencing in terms of leisure where we were leaking to other districts like Ashford but as the autumn approached in that particular year when we had the autumn mini-budget and therefore one of the wider issues in terms of wars that everybody just kind of receded and didn't want to engage anymore they were just basically consolidating so we then had to rethink what could we do with the building and then I think that's at the time of the administration they were thinking maybe a public sector we could go in there and try and work through on that basis which is what we were then doing and again we were producing designs and actually we were looking to try and come to public consultation this summer but of course the medical centre news came in and therefore we had to then take stock of that and actually just hold back so it is very much in the forefront of our minds but it's doing it at the right time we know we've got all our ducks aligned and more importantly the viability is there that is going to work so what we don't want to do is put something out there that might sound great but actually from a viability perspective when you scrutinise it a bit more it doesn't work so it's really important we get those numbers right and that's why our finance colleagues are really critical to this project. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments from the committee? Councillor Hills and then Councillor Walker. Thank you. It's obviously an iconic building with a lot of history behind it and it's totally uncertain to modern business the truth be known so you might have to start thinking outside that particular box. To me, this is a bystander, I always thought it would make a lovely adult education art centre that sort of thing, community activity. I just really couldn't get any money from government of course. I really can't see it being that commercial but we might need to set up some sort of working party to try and investigate which ways to go forward rather than leave it just to our officers. We might have to get involved as well or somebody will to try and get the speed into it because you're quite right it's been going on for four years so it could go on for another four years. Thank you Councillor Hills. Did you want to come back on that, Roger? Thank you for the question. Like I mentioned earlier, it's been quite a volatile four years so I think we've had to navigate a lot of surprises as we've gone through that period and not least the pandemic and the economic situation etcetera so I think now we've kind of learned an awful lot from that experience as well. I think we're getting to a point where we know potentially what might happen there but we just need to make sure the viability and the figures start to stack up so I think we're getting there and I feel reasonably confident that we'll get a decision at some point now towards the end of this calendar year, I keep saying financial year, calendar year to enable us really then to progress going forward in a positive way. If things don't work out in terms of the viability and the options that we're considering at the moment then of course we'll come back and then seek a direction of travel thereafter and then we can go from there but I think at the moment I feel like we're starting to get there even though it sounds like we might be still quite far apart in terms of the information that I've imparted today. Councillor Walker. Yes I just wondered if there was a deadline for these surgeries to agree to this, if they could potentially not happen? One of the critical elements actually I think from what I've read is around the district value and they've got a certain number that all projects have to kind of align to and I understand that they've not really moved that number over the last few years which is very difficult for medical centres and other provisions aligned to the NHS to actually become viable, actually be delivered, which is interesting in its own right. Therefore I think there needs to be a change somewhere in that structure to enable these projects then to become viable. But we are talking to the ICB about that and the variance and the torrents is within that particular number to see if there is anything there. So we are having those conversations as well. But they do need to get to a point because they've got a ring fence allocation of money for at least because they see Folkestone as a priority area. I've got Councillor Chapman and then Councillor Jones. You're talking about the medical centre going into the, I always get Foulker 1 and Foulker 2 mixed up, but going into Foulker 2 instead. So what impact would that potentially have on, I know we've talked about the civic centre moving into that building or the council moving into that building, what impact would that have on the council moving into that building? Essentially we've done the very rough estimates in terms of the area they have and the area that we require and it all fits believe it or not. It's a massive building if you've gone into Foulker 2, it's a huge building. Still construction so it's quite a regulated building and layout so it's quite easy to adapt in that regard which is positive. So we feel confident that we're going to accommodate everything that we need in that building and we hope to get some commercial in there as I mentioned earlier as well. Councillor Jones. Thank you, now it's been really useful that you've given us so much information actually because when I looked at the notes there was not a lot to go on so I think what I would like to come out of this meeting is I'd like to see a proper timetable, we've talked about timetables, but when are we going to get decisions? We really need to have that so that the council feel confident that we are going to be moving forward with this in time for the deadline, for the levelling up money. So I don't know whether that's possible to put that in place and to circulate that. Hi, thank you. Yes, it's a quick answer. It is a very, very challenging project as Rod has been outlining to you, we had a clear way forward with the Medical Centre going into Foulker 1. The ICB have confirmed that's not happening, there's no way that can happen within that footprint of that building. Can they come into Foulker 2? There's loads of interest, they really want to deliver this in Fosden, the surgeries really want to deliver this in Fosden and it was one of the primary reasons right at the start of the project to help increase footfall, get that new medical facility within Fosden Town Centre. As Rod said, as we start progressing through the next few months, we've got a really clear way forward now, set out in how we're breaking this down and by the time we get over the summer we'll have a clear direction of where the Medical Centre are. We will have done all the viability studies and then we can have a plan coming in and I'd suggest that we do it probably in the next round of cabinet papers in the autumn, that we have a clear project timeline through that period to show you how that's happening. That will include consultation, delivery and everything else we're doing. So yes, and then everyone has to come back to… I think for confidence from the Council in this project that is actually going to happen, it would be really nice to see those clear steps publicised, is that OK? Absolutely, and the point was regarding the Council occupancy of the building. I think the most important thing for the Council is to have the frontline customer-facing services within the building, so looking at what services are people coming in to use the Council for, so not necessarily all the back office staff and everything that we have here, it could end up just being sort of the frontline service provision, but again we need to work out that through the different users, through the space, how that factors into the viability and what makes the building work and what makes it doesn't work. So as I say, it's massively complex and challenging, but we will be in a much better position to bring further work back and reports in the autumn. Councillor Chapman. So can I just clarify? So if, I mean, amongst people in my ward there's quite a lot of, there's quite a strong feeling about, when we've talked about the Council going to that building, I think it's a really great idea. Are we saying that there isn't room for everything to go into that building, or it does fit, or it doesn't fit? I'm confused now. Yeah, it does fit. It depends on other users, who wants to come into the space and how that goes into the viability model, so it's very complex. It's going to cost, basically the bottom line is it's going to cost a big number, a big amount of money to get the building up and running and where it needs to be. So in order, and a lot of that will come from capital borrowing or capital receipts, so we have to repay that money. So we need a rental income from the building in order to service the debt for the building. So that all gets factored into the viability model and we're also looking at obviously what's going to increase the footfall in the town centre, what's in the best interest of the town centre and getting the mix right of the building as a success. So underpinning all of that is the viability, so we need to make sure the rental income covers the debt associated with the building. Okay, I think that's helpful to clarify. I think the committee would be keen to understand the detail behind these points in order to properly be able to kind of comment on it as part of bringing that information back to the committee in a timely way. Councillor Butcher. Thanks. I was just trying to understand on that, this idea that some of what goes on here might move but not all. If all does, presumably, then this site gets disposed of. If only some does, it doesn't. Could you just talk us through that Andy, the different implications of some or all of what's here moving? Yeah, we're still working through that ourselves. It is of course an option for us to go there lock stock, the whole lot, but it's also an option for us not, so we don't necessarily need to have that sort of location for all of our services. So that could be in a service office accommodation in a non High Street location, for example, which might be more efficient for the council to run if we can get a commercial tenant, which would pay a higher rent in that building. So it's all balanced. So what's the best use of the building? Where's the best place for us to go? So the best thing for us to have in the High Street location certainly is our frontline services where our residents want to come in and use those services and interact with our staff. That's paramount. If there's space that we can take over for the rest of our services and that works out to be viable but we would then have to pay a rent in order to service the debt that I previously explained for the development itself or is it better for us to have a commercial tenant coming in who would pay a higher rent potentially and have a better use of that space. So this is all the stuff that we're working through at the moment. I haven't got answers for it now but this is all the stuff. We've got hugely complex financial models which everything gets fed into. We're having lots of conversations around different users and things like that and people who are interested in the space and potentially taking tenants from here with us and looking after other stakeholders but a lot of it at the moment is just finalising what's going on with the Medical Centre because that's critical to the success of the building. Everybody wants the Medical Centre in that building. We want to make that happen, the ICB want to make it happen, the surgeries want to make it happen but we've just got to get to that point and part of coming here tonight is to get that on the journey of getting agreement to obviously exploring that in Fulgertown and then us going away, working with all the other teams involved and seeing how we made that happen. When do you think you'd be in a position to come back to the committee with a more detailed update on these points? Certainly autumn this year. This year so I'll have to look at the committee schedule in September potentially. A lot of it we're still weighing in on ICB staff and when the processes that they have to go through for their approvals and we've got obviously some are coming up but I would hope that we want to get this bottomed out because we want to deliver on the Lough Works and we want to know what's happening with the building. So there's a huge amount of work going on in the background so obviously to you guys it might seem that obviously we've had the building for four years and we haven't done anything. We have been doing a huge amount of work in the background on this I can assure you. I think we're very aware of that so I think that would be really helpful if it could come back before the committee as soon as that is feasible with the detail that we need to look at it. Is that something that the committee would agree with? Yeah and also I think in terms of the point about the viability obviously the point that Councillor Walker made around thinking about the kind of community aspect and the benefits of it would be another important point as part of that thinking. Okay can we note that then in terms of next steps on this particular item and thank Rod and Andy for the detail they've been able to provide this evening. A lot of questions so we appreciate your time in dealing with those. Okay we're going to move on to our second item which is the procurement plan and we have a presentation to go through this evening as part of that. Are you ready to deal with that? Thank you very much. It's to provide an overview in terms of the council procurement plan. Most especially the section five of the procurement plan that focuses on the local businesses and the SMA participation and the paper also cover or share with you in detail what we are able to do within the constraints of the procurement regulations what the procurement team has been doing to be able to support that local plan. We are aware of the comment from your briefing in terms of data, in terms of demonstration of what we are currently doing and that is one of the reason we've got a procurement manager with us today and we're going to run through few slides and following those slides we'll be able to take questions. Thank you. Our procurement manager she's Ade Abola who is joining us for the first time today. Thank you. Good evening Councillors and everybody. I'm here to talk to you about what we've been doing and give a background about procurement the regulations and what we work towards and how the regulation affects and rules or guides our decisions and what we do. So we have the public contrast regulation 2015 that basically is the regulation that regulates everything we do as procurement in terms of how we procure what we need to do as a single market, when we go out to market, what kind of procedures that we need to do, the kind of competitive procedure that is allowed and how we work around different stuff. Although there is recently the social value hat that we need to implement into it as well but we have to factor in the regulation when we do things as well to make sure that they all work hand in hand. So it's also very important to us that we as a council and a procurement team we try to encourage local bidders to bid but not we cannot exclude others in favour of local suppliers because the regulation doesn't allow us to because one of the principles of the regulation is about being fair, transparent and open to all competitors as a UK single market. But it is anticipated that a new regulation is coming into force in October and this will kind of change maybe there's some flexibility and everything and also because we work primarily on the EU regulation as of now so the new regulation is UK, is a UK one which is looking at different ways that we can procure in a better and more flexible way. So from the regulation we also have our own standing orders which reflects the whole regulations requirement and it also guides in terms of the different threshold and how we can procure and what we do. So we have the above regulations, above threshold which complies with the CPR regulation, those we have no control over we have to do them in line with the regulations and those are details on that. I have included the value which is inclusive of VAT and exclusive because most of the businesses we do are normally exclusive so we can understand what the thresholds are and they're different thresholds for works for services and these thresholds are not just, they're not set in stone like it's forever so they change every two years in January so these are the latest ones which was implemented in January of this year. So we now have the below thresholds so these are the ones that are governed by our constitution, our council standing orders so we have anything 0 to 10,000 we can go up for a single quote, anything between 10 to 100,000 we have to seek a minimum of 3 quotes and anything over 100,000 we have to do an open competitive process. But we do have a bit of flexibilities around that because that is governed by our own CSO so we try to be as flexible around that much more rather than with the over threshold ones. So when we developed, when the procurement plan was developed the aim was to incorporate the corporate plan as well and one of that was about the thriving environment and vibrant economy and the way we could do that and also where we need to support the local economies and factor in social values, apprenticeships and where we need to look for reduced costs, to value for money in terms of cost and also because the council is also, one of the issues of the council is to go net zero by 2030 so that has been factored into it in terms of lower carbon emissions and shorter and less logistic challenges which will help if we are around using local. And since the implementation the team have been working to make sure that we improve our local suppliers' participation and I think one of the things that we've done and how we've done this is also actually listening to them and taking this into consideration and in terms of how we improve so we've looked at ways that our tenders goes out and how simple they are, how we can make it simple for them you know and how we can also reduce our annual threshold, annual turnover so that it allows local bidders to come in, not to minimize every barriers that we see. Sometimes when it's a low value do a quick quote that can turn things around without making it too long or too complicated where some bidders I just you know they don't have the time or they're not familiar with that kind of process and also you know be there to talk them through what we need as well and also factor in some social value into bigger and larger contracts in terms of apprenticeship. Are you going to employ locally, supply chain, are you going to be buying from local suppliers, are you going to do you know subcontracts locally, employ locally and also one of the things that we also need to note is also that sometimes and which we also factor is even though some companies might be local are they actually employing locally and those are the things we try to pull out to actually identify if the economy or if the money is being spent locally or within the economy. So based on what we've done so far we've pulled out some data to show our spend because when we say local we're not sure if it's supposed to be just Folkstone or if it's supposed to be East Kent or Kent so we've done something around all three, all three as a whole. So in 20 so you could see our spending 20, 21, 22 against what our overall spend is that is everything that we spend in general as a whole annually against what I spend and against our spend, let me not talk too much. So and just could you just pause on that one yeah and could you just talk us through in a bit more detail because I don't think I've quite grasped it. So the overall spend is everything we spend as a council in terms of business so it's not just based on the Kent spend, it's based on our overall spend with every single suppliers and everything that we purchase, services, works and everything that's what the overall is. So the FHDC is what we've spent within Folkstone, Folkstone district not just Folkstone alone every district that falls within Folkstone so it could be Hyde, it could be Demchurch. So this is the yellow box or right I was wondering that so should they say 20/21, 21/22 and 22/23? Yes it should have said. Ok now it makes much more sense. So my apologies and then what we spent in East Kent so every district that falls within East Kent that's 7 million we've spent in 20/22/21 and the blue area here is showing that as well and that's the middle area in the last one is also showing that and then what we spent as Kent as a whole is on the third one for each financial year. Ok thank you for clarifying that. And then the data to show the upward trend of our spend with local suppliers. So in 2020 we have 1.7 we spent 1.73% and in 2021 is going up to 1.92 and in 2022/23 is going up to 2.85%. So which shows that we're doing something and I hope that we continue to do something to improve and show an upward and if you can see the East Kent as well is showing an upward trend as well as Kent as a whole. So it shows that we are spending more within the local area. So our plan and strategy is to continue doing what we're doing but seeking more opportunities and improving what we're doing. So for considering breaking down contract into small lots where possible. So because sometimes we have to think about economies of scale but where we feel that it is essential that this is something that can benefit from local suppliers participation we will consider breaking down our contracts. We will continue to promote that we you know the council's payment policy about 30 days and then we'll continue to will always encourage local businesses to go on Kent business portal because that's where we advertise our we publish our opportunities that's where most of not even us all Kent's because we all Kent's local authorities publish the opportunities on that. So we always always encourage local businesses to do that and yes we hold suppliers debrief we have individual meetings whenever we have to especially after they've submitted the tender or they're not successful in order to help them to be able to tender successfully with the council. So we're always they're giving them guidance giving them debrief debrief is an important part of the procurement process because I believe if someone has of taken the time to tender then we need to go back to them and tell them what they've done right that way they can improve on what they have done and then we've looked to simplify our tender documents we also look to simplify in terms of our contract agreements our draft agreements instead of making them too long we've shortened them or sometimes we don't even go for we'll go with the PO terms and condition that helps them to actually understand things not just a long agreement that they need to sign where they are confused or they just go we don't want to do that because and then we take the local suppliers into account when creating tenders strategies we look at ways that we can make it simple or influence their participation towards our tenders opportunity. I think that's all thank you very much if you have any questions. Thank you very much for that. Do we I don't know if I think the committee only raised this sort of at the end of last week so you may not have had the chance to do this but do you have any data on recent procurement processes and the quarterly reviews of the procurement plan in terms of some of the actions that you've talked about where they've happened and what impact they've had or if you haven't had the chance to look at that would that be something that could be provided to the committee? Thank you I think again we saw your comment very very late in terms of your request is something that we can take away have you look at it and come back to this committee with an update thank you. Thank you it may be something that could be circulated by email if that would be possible then members could see that more swiftly yeah thank you. Just for members of the committee this has come in front of us because of the motion that we agreed at full council and I think it is linked to within the agenda but the gist of that motion was around reviewing the council's procurement action plan and seeing what we can do to enhance our ability to have progressive procurement and look at community wealth building so that's very much I think the spirit in which the committee is wanting to approach this and that's the conversations that we've had so far so I'll open it up to colleagues to come in. Councillor Chapman. Thank you and I can see there's a lot of work gone into this report so thank you very much for that I really appreciate it but what it doesn't seem to do is to engage with the substance of the motion it mentions it briefly at the beginning and then doesn't really seem to engage with it it talks a lot about what we can do within the legislation but the motion wasn't asking us to do anything outside the legislation we were very much this is labour business it was part of the manifesto in which we were elected community wealth building and positive procurement is a well researched evidence based approach to spending public money where councils like Preston but many others are seeing big benefits from it there was a paper in the Lancet published last year which showed that with Preston following this positive procurement model and this is a this is a peer-reviewed paper wages had gone up eleven percent over and above what would have been otherwise expected reported well-being was up antidepressant prescription was down there were huge benefits for the community and Preston I don't think we're suggesting for a minute that Preston are doing anything illegal or outside of the legislation so while I appreciate there's a huge amount of work that's gone into this report what I would really like to see happen is for us to go away again and to really engage with the motion and look at how we can move towards what that what that motion was asking because it was largely carried by council I think there were two abstentions and it's something that I know that the community that I'm talking to are extremely excited about and I can't go back to them and say well you know we're just going to sort of stick with the status quo I want us to be showing that we're moving towards that as much as we possibly can so I wonder if I can with the greatest respect and the greatest amount of respect for the work that you've put into this ask that we could maybe go away and look at this again because I don't really feel like it's engaged with the spirit of the motion and I really want this community to see that happen. Thank you Councillor Chapman. Do you want to come back on the stage? I'm happy to make a comment again thanks so much for your comment and I think your comment about what Preston has been doing in terms of progressive procurement has been repeated and has been mentioned many many times similar to what you've said we'll definitely go away look at what we could do learn from our network have a discussion and see how we can move section five of the procurement for that thank you. That's really helpful thank you colleagues Councillor Martin. I mean I can see you're already doing quite a lot of good work in terms of engaging local businesses and the analysis that you've got here is already quite quite revealing I think I've got a few a few thoughts around that maybe around how we could sort of enhance that and drill down into it. One of the questions I did have when I was looking at your graphs is so you show I think in the latest year sixty one and a half percent of business is sourced from within Kent which is already quite quite significant I'm quite curious to see where that other kind of thirty nine percent is is going and to understand I think you mentioned it a little bit yourself but you know are these national companies are they from slightly outside of Kent are they employing local local people and I'd be quite keen just to sort of complete that sort of economic loop if you like so we can get a really clear view of where that where that money's ending up. Aside from that I wonder whether beyond the work that you're already doing it's more a case of creating some transparency around that analysis and maybe sort of beefing the analysis up a little bit and just being able to transparently show where where where that business is going and then for us to monitor that over time and it might reveal some interesting areas within the thirty nine percent where for whatever reason we're not we're not going with with local companies and maybe there's some action we can take around that but I wonder whether you know on top of the work that you're already doing it's just adding that extra little piece of the of the jigsaw really. The question I had was what should our aspiration be? We had a chat about this on last week in our kind of pre pre meeting so so where this has been done elsewhere what were they aspiring for and what have they actually achieved because I think there's a there's always going to be this reason there's always going to be procurement rules and it's never going to be possible to place a hundred percent of your business with fully local organisations. I guess the first question is what do we consider to be local and it strikes me that you kind of want to be placing business as local as possible but maybe there's almost a bit of a it's not a Venn diagram isn't it but there's just sort of ever increasing circles and if you look at your data now it'd be nice over time to see that business being placed getting closer and closer to home and maybe that's something we monitor but what what we actually aspiring to achieve and what does good look like is a question on my mind. If I can just chip in I think that what you said about engaging with councils like Preston and what because there's no point in reinventing the wheel if they've done a lot of work as to what what is reasonable and what what local means can we build on the work that they've done so it would be really interesting to me if you could possibly engage with that and see what is what has already been done and what we can work towards in this area. Yeah again definitely in terms of using our network we definitely do that I mean Preston's name has been mentioned over and over again and procurement has got a network where they share information where we share best and good practices as well so we can learn from each other we can decide we can define in terms of how far we want to take local participation and SMA and again in terms of aspiration I mean our procurement manager made reference to some of that during her slide in terms of supporting local economics, attending social and environmental benefit, reducing costs, lowering carbon emission and shorter and less logistic challenges. Those are some of the aspirations which we are currently working on to make sure we tick the right boxes for local participation but I believe we can still do more than that by learning what is out there using our network and making sure we come back to this to the recruitment committee with a relevant update. Thank you. I think within the it is really worth looking at the Preston information because they they they have ways that they are demonstrating it through data which could be really helpful to us I think to address Councillor Martin's point as well. Other comments, colleagues, Councillor Butcher? Thanks Jay I just wanted to drill down into the table you put up about the percentages so the 2.85% and how that compares with other districts I mean it's just a figure isn't it and unless we can see that in comparison is that good bad indifferent I know it's getting better but just do we have any data how it compares? Thank you Councillor Butcher. We haven't got that data but it's something that we could look through see for benchmarking and come up with I mean a better understanding of what other councils are doing which hopefully supports or in the range of what we are currently doing but it's something that we could we could look into. Yeah because I guess if we want to know whether all the efforts that you've outlined there all the processes to know if they're having the desired effect there is something yes about are we seeing an improvement but if it turns out other similar districts are doing way better then that would give us some clues as to what we might do differently and just I wasn't sure whether the Folks and Hives spend is then included in the East Kent spend which is then included in the Kent spend is that the way you've done the figures? My understanding when you look at the table for 2021, 21, 22 and 23. We have an harmless spend of 39 million of which Foxton is 679 in 2021, 604 in 21-22 and 872 in 22-23. I don't we are not hiding Foxton, East Kent and Kent together to make that at tonight there are other areas where we've actually spent some of those money but we're just looking at a proportion that has been spent locally. But I guess the question comes down to this is when we look at the East Kent spend and then the percentage that's being spent in Folks and Hives is that what we'd expect? Is this particular bit of East Kent doing as well as the rest of East Kent and if not why not? So I guess it's just I'm not expecting the answer now but it's just trying to get under the data to see what this is telling us. So there's the numbers but what's it telling us about how we're doing comparatively so that we can then think what policies might make a difference and I know a lot of this is about procedural things that we could do differently but I guess there's going to be a whole range of things to do with skills development. Thank you Councillor Butcher. Again I think we can go away and try and analyse some of those figures and break them down into a distance to understand what has been it and they will be able to come back to you on that. Thank you. Is that okay to carry on? Please do Councillor Butcher. Yeah it was a question about social value and just wanting to understand a bit more about that. There's sort of various references to social value criteria mostly with reference to apprenticeships and skills development. I don't really understand scored, non-scored and the whole social value model as I understand it. It's got loads and loads of criteria hasn't it? So I just wanted to understand. So when we're tendering for big high value contracts which will go out naturally it is quite evident that sometimes a local supplier might not get the business but as part of that tender process we have to include an aspect of social value. For an example we are currently doing the tender for the responsive repairs, the housing and one of the inclusion within there is to see what they will be offering in terms of apprenticeship within the local area in terms of skills, in terms of training and where they will be sourcing their materials and stuff from local area and stuff and those are the things that we try to implement within the tender and see how they will respond and it has been effective because some have come up with really good response in terms of helping the local economy or giving back and we've had a lot of apprenticeship that has been offered as part of the social value thing and there has been a lot of subcontractors. So for example our current contract with Meers they're a big company, a big national company but they do recruit locally. And so when you're doing a tender like that do you select from the social value criteria ones that you think are particularly relevant that you ask people to respond to? Yes because there is no point in just generalising and that is one thing that we currently review because sometimes there is a general question and people will respond that we will plant trees, we will do this but not relevant to that tender so we have to make it relevant so that we are seeing the kind of response that will be applicable to that particular contract. Thank you and then I suppose just the last observation looking at the Preston model it's quite a comprehensive approach, economic development and working with partners and so I guess that's part of our curiosity in a sense is how do we get beyond all the good work that's being done now to be linking up with our economic development strategy and all of that. So it's a more comprehensive approach. That's a wider question isn't it I think and you make the point in the report that this is not just going to be a procurement issue it's going to be a kind of whole council approach and certainly we've been discussing it in the corporate plan working group sessions that we've had as something that we would want to kind of push forward in on, it's in the current corporate plan as well. So I think it's not going away as an issue that we're going to want to talk about as a council. Andy you're indicating. Thank you Chair if I may, just a couple of points, really interesting conversation and obviously I run a lot of service areas that buy a lot of goods and I think some of the things the figures and this is something that we can try and drill down into but big contracts is, which we've already referenced, Veolia. The sums of those two contracts alone is getting on for seven eight million pounds a year so when you look at it as a percentage it's taking a huge amount of that money out of there and I can think of service areas, grounds maintenance, assets, engineering, housing where we use hundreds of local contractors, vehicle repairs, fencing, all of our timber suppliers, all of our other suppliers, nuts, bolts, things, locks, everything, painters, decorators, mechanics, they're all local suppliers, all of them but the figures I think probably skew because the big contracts are all grouped in I think they probably skew it, the local supply network is vital for our operation and we always go for all those services I've just mentioned and many many more, we always go to local suppliers, I just thought it was just worthy of just pointing that out. Thank you, I had Councillor Walker indicating next. I just wondered if this could be an opportunity to have a new KPI with regard to procurement, a heading like a vibrant economy which includes some of these crestingly things done if cabinet technicians were able to consider that. Again thanks so much for your comment, I'm not sure how this would be measured however as part of our research and networking we definitely have a discussion with our network, I mean if Preston has got KPIs which they are using in terms of measuring local participations yeah it's something that we can speak to them about and learn from them and then come back with what we think is reasonable or what we think is achievable. Thank you. Thank you and I think the KPIs are coming to our committee anyway so that's something that we can look at as a committee too I think. I had Councillor Hills next. Thank you for that, I take on board what Andy said about obviously the big bucks go to big companies and that screws the figures around a little bit but surely what we're trying to achieve, I don't know if you can tell me I'm wrong, is to try and put more back into our community. They pay taxes to us as well so it's a circular economy to a certain degree but I think I'm very keen on the idea of this but it comes down to communicating with people. People are very entrenched in their views and the way they see the council might not be the way you see the council so you have to keep pushing at that the whole time through social media, other media, to tell them we're open for business and we're supporting them. I think that's a very important aspect to carry forward but there's a lot of work being done and I thank you for that and I would think you know if you ask Ashford Council for example who I've had quite a good working relationship with, they would be quite open, I wouldn't see what it wouldn't be, to sharing sort of splits on their figures so we can see how we measure against other local authorities in our patch and that might be useful it might not but it would see something to the best of what could be done in a certain degree in a bit of a blind spot but thanks for the work and in progress. Thanks Councillor Hills and in fact if you look at the work that Preston has done they have kind of reviewed their work as they've gone along and they've got some suggestions of things that they would do differently if they were starting again. One of them is around communication and making sure that it's communicated to people what the council is doing in its approach so I think it's a good point. Councillor Martin. Thank you. It's an obvious point and a few of us have alluded to this already but just picking up on Andy's two big contracts, of course not all of that money is going out of the region and if there's an easy way, without getting lost in pointless analysis, if there's an easy way of showing of that money that goes to Veolia how much of that goes back to presumably all locally employed people, me as to are they employing largely people who live in Folkestone and Hive I think that would be a really good additional bit of analysis to see. I'm seeing nods so I think that's taken on board, good point. Any other comments? So I think collectively we're thanking you for the work that you've done and really appreciate that and we're asking if we can build on that in terms of the data and the approach and how we might move this forward and for that then to come back in front of the committee for us to have further discussions about this because I think it is a topic that's close to our hearts and going to be important moving forward so appreciate your time and look forward to discussing it further when you come back to the committee, thank you Ade. So we just have to formally receive and note the report so if I can have a proposer for that, Councillor Martin and a seconder, Councillor Hills, okay thank you, all in favour? Thank you that's agreed and that is our final item for this evening so thank you all very much and have a good evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [silence]