Transcript

Transcript

Good evening everybody and welcome to this meeting of the overview and scrutiny committee. The 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 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. Good evening everybody, happy St George's Day and Shakespeare's birthday. Welcome to this evening's meeting of the committee and to our guests and officers and other council members who are here this evening for this important meeting and for members of the public who are listening along at home, thank you for taking the time to attend the meeting. We're going to begin with apologies for absence. Thank you chair, we have no apologies. Thank you and are there any declarations of interest from the committee? I declare an interest as Director of Opportunities. Councillor Wing. Yes, so to be clovin' to a Director of Attuness. Councillor Hills. Yes, I'm a member, I can't counter-counsel, definitely can't remember, so I should declare that. Thank you Councillor Hills. Okay, thank you, we're going to move on to the minutes, we have two sets of minutes in front of us, first of all, the minutes of our meeting on the 27th of February, are there any comments on the minutes? No, could I have a proposal for those? Thank you Councillor Martin and the seconder, Councillor Elaine Martin. All agreed on that? Agreed. Agreed, thank you. And we have a set of minutes from our Finance and Performance Scrutiny Subcommittee held on Tuesday the 12th of March, are there any comments in relation to those minutes? No, and could I have a proposal for those? Thank you Councillor McConville and the seconder, thank you Councillor Chapman, and all agreed on those? Agreed, thank you very much. Going to move on to our first main item of the evening, which is our discussion on the European entry exit system. I'm really glad that we're all here this evening to be able to discuss this and share our kind of knowledge and expertise together and to see how we can collectively prepare ourselves for this change. So for the benefit of everybody this evening, we're going to have a series of short presentations and we have our guests with us this evening who are going to leave those and then there will be an opportunity for questions between the presentations and then we'll have more of a collective discussion at the end. So I'd like to invite our colleagues from Kent County Council, Toby Howe and Andy Jeffrey to begin the discussion, thank you. Thank you Chair. The presentation I've got for you is an overview of exactly what the entry exit system is really as a very generic approach. Some of you may have seen it before, some of you may know the fact that some assuming that people don't know anything about it at the moment, so it's going back to scratch exactly what EES is all about. For those of you that don't know me, I'm Toby Howe, I'm the Strategic Resilience Manager for KZZ Iways, but I'm also the operational lead for the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum when it comes to border related issues. So EES is a new electronic system that the EU will be implementing basically to collect data on those that are entering and exiting the EU and the Schengen area and for those of you that aren't aware, the Schengen area is the EU countries plus the likes of Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland etc. So this is in effect going to be a security process to monitor third country nationals of which we are now one, those of us that reside and are of UK origin so to speak. We are third country nationals, so every time we enter the EU or leave the EU it will then be monitored by this system. So it's currently scheduled to come into force on the 6th of October. This date is not yet cast in stone, we're waiting for the EU to confirm that. There are a lot of the nations within the EU that are saying they're not ready and there are delays, but at the moment that is the date that we are working to for planning. It could be delayed, it's been delayed a number of times before, but at the moment as I say that is the only date that we have. Hopefully at some stage in the summer we will get confirmation and be able to work from that. So the real impact on us in Kent is because the port of Dover and Eurotunnel are juxtaposed ports, so whereas everything else when you fly or if you travel from any other port in the country all of your border checks are carried out on the other side of the channel, those border checks have to be carried out in England at the border of Dover and Eurotunnel, so that is why it is a major impact likely to be on Kent. So what you'll need to be doing is registering for the system and that registration is providing biometric data such as facial recognition, fingerprints and a scan of your passport. So it's a bit similar to the process if you're flying back into the country at the moment at the airport you've got a terminal that you can look at, scan your face, scan your passport through. The problem of course that we have is that this was designed for airports where you do that, it was not designed for ports where you're in a car and you may have up to seven people in that car that have then got to be processed. Another problem that we have is that this has to be supervised by an officer from Police Hill Frontier which is the French border force, so it cannot be done elsewhere, it has to be done either at the port of Dover or Eurotunnel. We are not able to pre-register anywhere else away from that, so it's not until the traffic actually arrives at those ports that they can then be processed. Both the Eurotunnel and Port of Dover are doing a lot of hard work at the moment to prepare for all of this, to really try and mitigate that impact that we're likely to see. For Port of Dover the only area that they can currently deal with this is within the buffer zone and that is where EES registration can be carried out at present. So therefore there's the possibility of more delays at the port because people have got to be processed more than just looking at the passport. So we could then see that queue of tourist traffic impacting freight as well. As we see tourist traffic, whereas freight can be dealt with, they can, their self-sufficient more, they can be held for longer outside the port, tourist traffic isn't necessarily as self-sufficient so they need to be got through as quickly as possible. So we could see queuing incant more frequently. It's possible therefore that we could see Dover Tap and Operation Brock more frequently. So whilst remote registration is technically possible, it's not yet available. There is a system being developed whereas the EU will develop the back end of a system and then it's each country to develop their front end. So when you register if you're going to France, you log into their system etc. But those front ends haven't necessarily been completed yet. France in particular, they've got the Olympics this year, so that is what they are focusing on. So therefore that has not been developed as yet. So at the moment there is no technological solution, no app available. We're hoping that will be available next year and that will help speed the process up. A lot of planning has been going on because this has been known for an awful long time. The problems that we really have is clear clarity on what's required for the portals, for those of us managing traffic etc. has not yet been issued by the EU. So a lot of it is we're having to guess what's going to be happening. But there has been a lot of information, a lot of processes going on already, there's been planning. Can can a council and the kind of Medway Resilience Forum have been working closely with Home Office and Department for Transport so far, looking at the traffic management, gathering data because we need that data to get a model to see what impact we're likely to see. Also Comms, what are we going to be doing about communication? What are we going to do about welfare and is there any legislation that we can use? So the impact of EES is likely to be far greater than the EU exit and all for a lot of time, money etc. went into planning for EU exit and in fact a lot of it was a damn squib in the end and it didn't have that impact. So whereas that was focused on freight, we are now hoping to focus on tourists and there is legislation for freight, we have BROC where when that is in place, HDV drivers heading to Europe are legally obliged to go down the M2820 corridor. There is no such legislation for tourist traffic so they will use their sat now if they will look at any possible route to either get to Europe or the Port of Dover based on whatever their women's at that time. I mentioned modelling, we're getting a lot of good data to create that model but my output isn't available and a reasonable worst case scenario is being developed by government but at the moment we don't have that information so until we've got that complete information it's then very hard again to plan planning for it. So having depressed you all on there, I'll hand you over to Andy Jeffery. Thank you. [end of transcript] . . There we go, success, apologies for that. Good evening for those of you who don't know me, my name is Andy Jeffery and I am the head of Residence and Emergency Planning at Kent County Council. I also chair the Kent and Medway Residence Forums EES tactical planning group as Sharon on screen there so I'm going to talk briefly about the preparations the Residence Forum has been making so far for EES. So for the planning phase and if there is a response phase that phase as well, Kent County Council is the lead agency within the Residence Forum for this work based on the fact that the impacts we found across Kent and there is no immediate threat to life so there's no need for the emergency services to take the lead on this. All the groups you can see there are multi-agency groups and the organizations who attend those groups attend ones where they can best contribute to the work of the Residence Forum. The EES planning groups are set there in the middle so we have the strategic group at the top followed by the tactical planning group, strategic setting out, strategic direction and the aims of the planning work, tactical, hard pulling together the work plan to identify how we get there and then we have a subgroup focusing on community impact which complements other groups in other parts of the structure. So on the left there is the structure that Toby just presented to you, the multi-agency structure focusing on highways impacts covering driver welfare, communications, traffic management as he mentioned. On the right hand side are the business as usual governance structures of the Residence Forum and in particular relevance to the work we're doing at the moment are those around community resilience and business continuity. The community impact group has been established to lead the planning work for communities relating to EES and it covers business and economy, community cohesion and public disorder, health and welfare, environmental infrastructure issues and aims to identify and coordinate information on the specific effects on residents and the travelling public in the county. It is co-chaired by Focused and Hive and Dover District Councils. As well as the structure you can see there on the screen the Residence Forum has set up a work plan to progress planning work through specific work streams. They cover four main areas so firstly risk where we review our existing risks and develop an EES specific threat and risk assessment for the county. Secondly plans and capabilities where we're reviewing our existing plans, updating them and developing new ones as necessary both for single and multi-agency settings, also looking at reviewing our business continuity arrangements as individual organisations mutual aid agreements and developing our response structures and rotors as needed. Thirdly we're looking at training and exercising, ensuring all our response staff are either newly trained or refreshed in their role, ensuring all plans are tested and exercised and developing a multi-agency pan resilience forum exercise to bring all partners together. And finally lessons identified where we review the progress of recommendations that have arisen from previous incidents, from EU exit, as well as capturing new lessons that have been identified during this planning phase. Other work streams cut across those four areas, Toby's already mentioned about traffic management and communications and driver welfare, reviewing our existing plans and making sure the capabilities we have are suitable for use in an instance responding to impacts from EES. But also community impact, which again is a key one. The work stream and the group that leads it will review the community impact analysis work that we previously carried out ahead of EU exit and update it when needed. It will also look to understand the concerns of communities and the potential impact on those communities of the new border checks and escalate any issues up through the planning group structure as needed that could be tactical, strategic or if necessary to central government. The final element of the planning work will be to look at how we manage any impacts from the new border checks on a day-to-day businesses user basis. Our organisations and communities can't spend extended periods of time in instant response mode, so the resilience forum will look to continue reviewing mitigations beyond the implementation of EES in order that we can minimise disruption to services, businesses, communities and the travelling public in Kent. Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much both of you. We'll just pause at that point and I'll ask the committee if they have any questions specifically on the presentations that we've heard so far. So I would suggest about the EES itself or the governance structures that have been talked about. Does the committee do any member of the committee have a question at this point? Councillor butcher. Yeah, thanks, Chair. Yes, there was about the mention of task and finish groups on but included traffic management and the community impact group and just noting that we've got colleagues from Hawke, Newington who will be hearing from shortly and clearly those are communities that are particularly impacted and will have ideas from the ground about the west way of doing things. So I'm interested in the best way of making use of their expertise and insights feeding into the governance groups that you're talking about. So colleagues from Folkston and Dover will probably talk a bit about that later as they lead the group but the Kent Association of Local Councillors are a member of the community impact group. So I guess either feeding in through that body or feeding in directly to in this case for Hawkins to Folkston and Hyde via the or other contacts in the Council is probably the best way to get issues escalated to that group. Yeah, so those routes can sound and can feel quite indirect and we've got quite limited time. So I guess it's a request that we could make more direct use of the expertise and experience that's on the ground. Yeah, I've been to that. Definitely. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Butcher. Thank you. Councillor Jones. Well, it's clearly going to be awful when it comes into place and it's going to have a big impact on our town and towns and villages. Is there going to be ongoing monitoring and ongoing modelling as progress is made when it is implemented so that we can look forward and see when the end is in sight. So at the moment I think if we have no idea how long it's going to take to but is there going to be an ongoing process of modelling throughout? Yes, there will be, as with every event that we have, whether that's the current situations at Easter or Summer, we do monitor that throughout. The modelling that we've got will make sure it's being updated accordingly, et cetera, but it'll be very live information, but certainly that monitoring will be ongoing because we've got to be able to be flexible and adapt accordingly. And how are you going to communicate that with the public? There will be regular tactical and strategic meetings that again incorporate the local, district and borough councils. So then that goes out. There will also be a communications plan, which Andy is about to step in on. Yes, so the communications group, which is one of the ones that Toby mentioned earlier, they are developing a comms plan specifically for EES-related information, and that will include a communication net to the public as well as part of organisations in the resilience forum. Thank you. I think something which is online and updated regularly would be very useful to Councillors and the public. Thank you, Councillor Jones. Councillor HONVIL. Thank you. I mean, obviously the main part of the presentation is focused on everyone going to the continent, but you made a point that there could be a significant impact of outbound freight due to the visitor holdup, so I don't know if you could sort of expand on that, and why you think that will be the case, and are we expecting that to be a very significant part of the implementation changes or just sort of a small sort of after effect? I think it's from experience, really, so if we look at July 22, when it was a big summer getaway, we had a number of incidents happen, we had a major crash on the M20, we had protesters on the M25, everything came together. If you put those into a tabletop exercise, nobody would have believed it, but it did happen, so we had huge delays to all the tourist traffic, or that men was a huge backlog of that freight, so we ended up with 4,500 HGVs parked up on the M25, so I suppose that is in effect a reasonable worst-case scenario of what could happen if freight trying to get out of the country, and then held up if there's any other event. The modelling we're doing is based on all the systems doing as they should do, and as the hard work that the portals are doing to make work, but it only takes a very fragile system, and that then will have that knock-and-effect on front. Thanks for that. I know a lot of work was done in the aftermath of that event, so hopefully there are this contingency, and there's better knowledge, better planning in case we do get to a worst-case scenario, hopefully it won't be as bad as the previous worst-case scenario. We can hope. And obviously the new systems, as you say, align more to how people travel by airports and such, is there been any sort of discussion that you're aware of with the French border force to perhaps have a segregated lanes, like they do at airports where we have a lot of EU returning traffic, a lot of people here have EU passports, where they wouldn't need to undergo the checks to sort of take some of the strain out of the main queue. I might leave that to our experts, obviously. That seems like an excellent segue into our next presentations. Thank you, Councillor McConville. So we're joined by Doug Banister, the Chief Executive of the Port of Dover and Natalie Benville, who's the Regional Affairs Manager for Eurotunnel. We're going to take these two presentations together, if that's OK with the committee, and then take questions after that, so I'll pass to you, Doug. Thanks. Is that on? That is on. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for having me around. So Doug Banister, Chief Executive of the Port of Dover, I've been in the job since January 2019, and so that was pretty much landing on the eve of the first Brexit. And then we've enjoyed the ride since then. So what I thought I'd do is just kind of let you know a little bit about what we've been doing, what the plans are, and where some of the risks and uncertainties may still be. Now, one of the things that's important around this, the Toby highlighted, is that this is not an issue for Eurotunnel and the Port of Dover. This is an issue for British passport holders. Whenever you cross into the European Union, wherever you do that, you will be going through this process. It just so happens with the juxtapose controls, that's going to be happening on UK soil at our two facilities. Now we've been at this for four or five years now. The problem is that it took us three and a half of those years to get our government engaged in it, and now they're a little bit more actively engaged. And most recently, I know Natalie may tell you a bit about this, but we've been engaging all over the place. So for me personally, I've been in Brussels, I've been in Paris, I've been in Leel, I've been up in London, to try and make certain that we're getting the right level of attention and the right level of traction on the things that we need to have in place. One of the things that's really important when we started out on this is that we needed to find a solution that would keep people safe. So as Toby said, the initial solution was about, was similar to an airport. And at an airport, pedestrians in a nice orderly way in a well lit hall can present themselves in front of the border. At all facilities, it's called loads of people on a dark stormy nights. It's a very different process. So we've gotten there now. One of the things that's important, at least as far as the port of Dover is concerned, we've got a long-term solution. Now that long-term solution is what we call our outbound controls project. What that's going to be is that it's going to move the current border processes deeper into the port and it's going to expand their capacity, and by the way, put them in the right order, because we're a little bit odd is that the way it's lined up in the port now is you enter France and then you leave the UK all before your intention to travel. So it's kind of backwards. We're going to fix all that. But importantly with this, what it's going to do through this project is it's going to create 40 percent more holding space within the port. That is the equivalent of tap. So what we should see, so when taps in and then eventually to Brock, that's why it really starts biting in Folkston or in the out lighting area. So with this project, its primary mission is to get the traffic off the roads and into the port. So we should see through this no more operational reasons for requiring tap, but we still may need to use it for big things, industrial action, weather delays, technical failures, that kind of stuff. So it should lead to a profound effect. Now this project is dependent on funding that we have been awarded by government but not yet granted. As long as that comes through, we've got a project plan that is going to see those new controls, the first phase of the project, these new controls in place September 27. So that means that we've got to find a solution that is going to help us manage EES between October 24 when it comes in and September 27. So for October, what we are going to be doing is we're going to be installing new facilities in the western docks on the site. Some of you may know it, we refer to it as our old boatyard. On that site, there's going to be two coach holes that are created. In those coach holes, we will have the full EES registration process done as well as the full shenging checks crossing into the border. At that point in time, the coach will be sealed and it will proceed to the ferry terminal and sail on through as long as the seal hasn't been tampered with. It will probably be a better process for coaches than what we have today. We reckon that that's going to get us back up to our current throughput levels of about 21-25 coaches an hour and that will allow us to handle our full volume of coaches seamlessly. Cars, for October, what we're going to be doing, so if you ever go cliff walking and you're out by the port, you're going to see a really, really big canopy go up across our buffer zone. So we are allocating six lanes of our buffer zone. We're going to put this canopy on top and for October, that's where the cars are going to get the registration process done. That's going to be done through a bunch of agents with handheld tablets going around the vehicle. What we couldn't do in our buffer zone is have passengers, tourists, leave their cars. That is dangerous. So we've come up with this solution to be able to do that. Now that solution will be in place for October and we'll have all the resources in place. I'll come back to it with a bit of risk and uncertainty, but that solution is going to allow us to process about 420 cars an hour. That is insufficient to meet summer getaway demands. It will be fine for October, likely fine, maybe a bit of busyness for Christmas, for the Feb half term, even for Easter. But when we get into the real heavy months of September, excuse me, of summer 2025, that's where we need something else. So we've got an idea around that and that idea is that we are seeking to allow cars to be registered in our western box docks on newly created land that we are reclaiming from one of the old docks. And with that process, we anticipate getting up to 600 an hour, which is what we basically did last summer and over Easter, which all went all right. So that doesn't have regulatory approval from the friendship. We're working really, really hard on getting that. And we had a visit from the director general of police all front time, the French board of police, the director general of the home office, they came down and they visited both of us, and we continued to work really hard on getting the solution. We're investigating all kinds of technology, excuse me, technology that would allow the assurance of the vehicle and its occupants through that process. So, you know, a roof force, and if you can make a mention of cars in the western docks, that would be great. Now, and so we're gearing up to, as long as we can get regulatory approval, we're gearing up for that solution to be in place, maybe just before Easter or just after Easter next year. What we don't want to do is impact on Easter itself if we're going through a bit of construction. Now, I think it's important also to appreciate that we spend a tremendous amount of our time considering how we may find solutions that would reduce the impact of our volumes on local communities. We're currently in Dover where we have the A20, the major access route, going right through the town center, basically, and on busy getaway days when the tourist, as Toby was describing or finding all the ways in, and it gridlocks. We are doing everything that we can to avoid that. We also know in the Port of Dover that it's not just Dover that we look after because if we're having some challenges, then that's going to impact further up the A20 and land on Folkston's doorstep. The examples of that, so for summer 23, we put in place some new infrastructure and some new processes and that allowed us to handle summer 23 in a pretty good fashion. Easter 24 this year, I don't know if you guys will remember what happened in Easter 23. I remember it very well, I still have the scars. Easter 24, completely different story. Everything sailed through. It works really well. That's not to say that we weren't busy, that's not to say that it was slow going on the roads. We didn't have congestion in Dover. It didn't impact further up the chain. It worked really well, and that's because we are constantly trying to find ways in which we can improve the way things are going, and we'll continue to do that. Risks and uncertainties, probably the last thing I want to cover, so guys, we don't know everything yet. We don't have the technology, we don't have the kiosks, we don't have the tablets, we don't know how it's going to connect, we don't know how long it's going to take. We don't have, at least as far as Port-Adover, for the improvement that we'd like to see happen for summer 25, we don't have regulatory approval for that, so we still have risk and uncertainties. But what we're trying to do is trying to work through everything we possibly can to minimize those risks and uncertainties and get clarity, and we're working very closely with our government, with the European Commission in Brussels, the French authorities, Ministry of Interior and Police All Frontar, as well as locally with the Ken Resilient Forum and all of our delivery partners as well. So we're working really, really hard on making certain that the reasonable worst-case scenario that Toby was talking about does not eventuate. I'll hand over to Natalie, thank you. Hi everyone, I'm just waiting for Jake to plug my laptop in, but while he's doing that, so I'm Natalie Benville, I've actually been at Eurotunnel for 23 years, I'm a local resident as well, so I do feel the pain, which I kind of think adds to my weight behind any argument that we have as an organisation. A lot of the issues and challenges that we're going through are very similar to the Port, we have got a different solution, obviously our terminal is very different to how the Port set out, and I kind of want to take you through our thinking and how we've got to where we are today with our ES solution. Hold on, oh look at that, it worked, let me just go back, right, so we kind of looked at our terminal as a blank canvas and thought, how on earth are we going to deal with this new challenge that we've got coming towards us, mainly minimise the impact, we don't want obviously our customers to feel any impact, we don't want any local residents to feel the impact either, and clearly we're a commercial business, we need our customers to keep coming back, Brexit's been quite a challenge on the general public and ours specifically on the short straits, so it's trying to bring those back without putting too much fear amongst them. Ideally, we would have liked a pre-registration, had the EU had the app ready in time for France to deliver that, that would have helped with the solution that we are with today. We've got the Olympics coming this year in Paris, so that kind of takes a priority for France, which we know we fully understand. We looked at it and thought, right, we need to try and minimise the board across in time and how can we do that, so for those of you that have travelled, we've actually created a new site which is part of our coach car park currently. The image on the left is actually, earlier this week, it's a bit more progress now. What the plan will be, customers will still arrive through check-in as they do today, they will be segregated for EU residents ready, they will bypass the new zone that we're creating, and any of the customers that need to will go straight on into the area. For information, we're looking at about an 80% passenger rate that's going to need to go through there, 20% of our customers that go through our EU nationals already, but just for tourists specifically, it's 80% of our traffic is going to need to go through this zone. Similarly to the Port of Dover, we used the kind of, what do we need to be able to get through check-in, that's about 700 vehicles an hour. So we've taken all of that into how we build it, and one of our teams internally has looked at modelling, and actually, well let's put that kind of volume through our system, let's see how it reacts to a new board of control area, and we use the digital twin to help us design what we've got today. So the area that we're creating in the UK specifically, and let's not forget, we've had to create the same in France as well because people have got to come back in, obviously. France is a little more ahead, they've had a little better weather than what we have here, so on the right you can see what it looks like currently in France. We have looked at the processing rate through the new control zone to be an additional six minutes. I have to say that's incredible considering what they've got to achieve, but we've started probably a year ago on the construction side of it, we've eaten into some of our terminal to give us a bigger area to get the cars through, and essentially what would happen is vehicles will pull up to the new ES zone, once they've already come through check-in, they'd be directed to a booth where they'll then be processed. Our answer to ES is different to what the port have gone through, purely because we can allow customers to get out of their vehicle in the zone that we've created. But just to go towards how we've worked on the six minutes, we used a model on, based on a period last year, where we were at our peak capacity of our traffic, and the, yeah, it's working, and the graphic on the right shows you with the new zone that we're creating, with the traffic levels that we had last year, which was our peak day last year, which was the Easter getaway, there's no congestion. So Touchwood, that's a good day, there's no instance on board, the roads are all running well, and actually the area that we created allowed a greater capacity on site, which then allows the traffic to flow through. This is just to show you where we're at now with the progress of the works. So just for a little understanding how it'll work, you will have a booth that you pull up to, on that booth for your vehicle, you will have two kiosks. So we've gone for an airport-style kiosk, so your passengers, your family will get out of your vehicle, you will process all of your biometrics that you need to there whilst under the governance of a path officer. So a French border official will be watching, and two cars at once doing that, he can watch four biometric kiosks at any one time. Once that's been completed, but in mind, you do it obviously on your entry into the EU, that's valid then for three years, so you don't have to input that again. Once you then return, whether it be through us, through the port, through an airport, you are then just checked, there's not a re-application of your biometrics. Once you leave this zone, you head through to border controls like you would today. So path obviously will still be there to resource their booths. And that is my final slide, but just to give some background when I was saying about the booth, we have ordered 106 kiosks for the UK terminal, so it's 53 parking areas for individual cars, and like I say, based on the volumes on a peak day where we need 700 vehicles an hour, it's an additional six minutes on to your journey time. So yeah, I hope that wasn't too detailed, I just wanted to give it a bit of background on where we've come to on our solution. Thank you very much, it's a lot to take in, but that was really helpful, thank you both of you. I'll open it to the committee for questions on those presentations. Councillor Martin. Thank you Chair. This is my initial observation there, so two very different sounding situations between the poor. I'm just curious just to, I think between you, you've answered it a little bit, but maybe you can just add a bit of colour to why it seems like less of an issue in one site and not the other. I sense it's partly the fact that the poor of Dover doesn't have the space to deal with, but it seems like one of you's handling it really well and the other one's going to, it's doing a load of great work, but maybe struggling to come up with the same quality of solution. Just from a Euro-ton of perspective, remembering we're the commercial operator as well. So we have control of our customers, we can pre-register them from a booking state, whereas the poor of Dover, not to speak on Doug's behalf, are a separate entity, and we also have a bigger terminal than what the poor do. Our border controls are after checking, so like Doug says, their aim is eventually to get to that point. So we've got a different area that we were able to work with. Essentially that's it. I mean, you also know that we've got cliffs on the one hand, we've got water on the other hand, and there's not much in between. Now our outbound controls project, as Natalie was saying, is that's the longer-term solution. That's going to be creating a lot more capacity, and I should say how did we get that more land inside the port? Well, we relocated our cargo terminal, which was in the corner of the eastern docks, out to the western docks, and that's created some space where we can actually construct all of this. So we are, we're not putting something in that we think is going to be there for the next 40 years, right? We're putting something in that is going to get us to September 27. It will, you know, it will have the same function, it's just going to be delivered in a slightly different way. That's just what we've done, actually, you'll notice we've not gone for permanent structures because the aim eventually will be a technological border. So everything will be done on advance, we won't need to do that. So as much as I didn't touch on it, but what we're at at the moment is cost us £40 million to get to where we are for this years project, but that's not with a permanent structure. In the hope that eventually, once all the further border controls come in down the line, it'll be a lot more seamless. I think I had Councillor Elaine Martin next. Yeah, thank you, I just wondered if there were any backup systems, I'm sure there will be in place if there's any major technological failure. Do you want me to go first? Yes, in remembering it's a border, it's a path, so the French border authorities, a lot kind of system, so there are things in place, nothing has been confirmed yet and I know that the port has been in discussions. The French are very in tune to not wanting to cause disruption, so they're very conscious that actually, on D-Day or when the next holiday period is, they don't want it to be awful in Kent. So there are discussions in place for a backup, essentially. So the way the following the direction from the European Commission, there's a regulation that this is all it, so police off-front there, they're having to operate within how they're interpreting that regulation to apply to all member states. One of the things that they've talked about in order to, across the European Union, in order to mitigate the significant disruption at major border crossings is to allow the quite locally to reduce the number of registrations that need to be taken place, so you don't need to do 100% of them. So they've got a relief valve there that they can call upon, and in particular while we're getting the processes bedded in, and we're testing and trialing and working with new technology, it does give us a bit of comfort that when the regulation comes in or the new regime comes in in October, there's a relief valve to be pulled until we start to get into a better rhythm. Thank you, Councillor Chapman. Thank you both, a lot of work. I was really interested, Mr. Bannister, in what you said about the government, perhaps not being as laser focused on this as you might have wanted until two or three years ago, at some stage the button is going to get pressed on a general election, and I wondered if you'd consider what impact that might have in terms of focus and what impact a potential change a government might have on this? Yeah, I'll avoid going too political if I may, so our government really, EES was this thing well over the horizon for a long time, right, and it was just out there somewhere. And whenever we try and engage a particular department, whether it was DFT, Home Office, Cabinet Office, Foreign Office, we were going after Treasury, we went after at one point in time, they would all point to another one, right? And it wasn't until December '22, so not quite that long ago, when Home Office took responsibility for it, once that happened, things started to move, which was really good. And so they are, whilst all the other departments are involved in this, they're the ones that are the prime movers engaging with officials over in France, specifically in our case. I don't know that any color of government would have done that any differently, you know, we were beating our heads against the wall, trying to get some sort of attention on it. I'm very pleased with the level of attention that we have now, and we're getting some activity on it. I don't know, I don't know whether a change of, probably the one risk that we would have with the change of government is that, you know, wonderful period where not a lot happens. So it's around the timing of it rather than the eventual outcome of the change of government would be where I think. Just to add one thing on that, and I think Toby referenced it, I think a lot of people within government just forget that we're juxtaposed. So a lot of ministers thought it's going to be the problem when you land, when you land in the country, forgetting that we have the border, obviously here. So it does completely right, it did take us quite some time to get some traction within government. They are very attuned to it now. It will be very interesting when there's a general election, what that'll have to do. You've done a lot of work with all of the parties to make sure that they're aware of what our plans are, but you never know when it actually happens. Thank you. If there's no more questions from the committee at this point at Councillor Hills. You just want a little quick question. Can I write an assuming, I didn't hear it mentioned, that the permit lasts about three years? Yeah. So the truck drivers, once you've gone through, you're doing a weekly run. Once they've done it, they've done it basically. Obviously the problem is tourism, and that's where the nightmare comes, but my money's on October, the second election, just before this happens. That was a good point actually, we didn't touch on fate, especially it's 10% of drivers are UK nationals, so for us, the solution is going to be done at the border. It'll be split. You'll have a EU national, so that's where it'll be done, but you're right, it's a three year renewal. And with that, if I may, Tony, the three years resets every time you cross the border, so as long as you're traveling, you never have to do it again in a way, which is I think good news. And as long as the app is in place to make certain that when you present yourself to the border, that it knows that you've done that, I think that's still part of the challenge. Where we do have an issue with freight, so ours is probably more 20% on British drivers for the traffic that comes through, but they will just go through pretty quickly anyway. The issue is if it's going really slow for tourists, and that blocks the access to the port, and then the freight will back up. If that happens over an extended period of time, then the trucks won't be able to return to Europe to pick up their next load, because quite a lot of our drivers, they're through our facility two or three times a week. And then everything slows down, and then there's impact on the shelves. It seems that it might be a good moment to bring in our colleagues from Dover District Council to speak about the community aspect of this and the experiences that have been in Dover. So we're joined by Nadim Aziz, who's the Chief Executive, and Jamie Powell, who's the Deputy Leader at the Council. Over to you both. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, so I'm going to speak, and then I think Nadim might come in later on if we have any specific questions. So yeah, just to introduce myself, I'm Councillor Jamie Pout, I'm the Deputy Leader at Dover District Council, and also the portfolio holder for transport. So I've been looking into some of these issues quite extensively since May, and meet with Doug quite regularly, so we're quite up to date with this. I think, yeah, I wanted to talk specifically about the community impact, because obviously I think we've heard quite a lot of the technical issues. And so in Dover, obviously we get quite a lot of these issues, and we suffer the consequences of these issues regularly, whether it's inclement weather, whether it's strike action, whether it's, you know, P&O's dodgy employment practices, whether it's this regular holiday traffic coming through, and, you know, whatever's going to come from, EES will obviously suffer the consequences of that as well. Brandy Corner, further down the M20, there will always get off more likely than us. I think so, you know, the real issues that we suffer in Dover, I think, are worth, you know, kind of hearing from, as we're on the cold face, it's not an inconvenience to us, it's not just an inconvenience to us. Not being able to get to work isn't just a bit of a pain. Not being able to get to appointments for people is not just a bit of a pain. It could be a matter of life and death for the residents in Dover, so I think it's critical. So I wanted to talk about that community impacts that community aspect, because I think quite often it's lost by just talking about these technical points. Back in January, I was taking part in a cost of living meeting with a whole host of people. One of those people taking part was a head teacher from St Edmund's School, I think, and she was the representative from the head teacher's forum from across the district. She unprompted, she spoke about this, and so we weren't talking about EES or traffic, but she brought it up, raising the point that there was no guidance, they received no guidance from KCC at all, on how they should plan for upcoming issues. They didn't know what they should plan for in terms of impact, they didn't know how they should plan, disaster planning, actually, is what she phrased it as. And I'm a teacher myself, and so I know what it's like on these really busy days to try and get into Dover, at Dover Boys, I teach them to try and actually get into school. So what's it going to be like for those kids on those days, when it's going to be particularly busy, 14-hour queues I think we've heard about, is stagecoach going to be running buses, will students get to school, will staff get to work, and what's the plan for that? Because schools don't know, and if we don't know, if they can't plan, what will we do? So there's lots of aspects I think that we need to think about, that those people need to know about, that are going to be particularly problematic. It's not just schools, what about nurseries? I'm not talking about your bedding plants in autumn, I'm talking about nursery workers. If we're saying the first five years of children's lives are particularly important in education, what's the plan for them? If staff can't get to work, can provisions not open? If they can't meet their statutory guidance on numbers, do they just close for that day, for two days, for the week, for months on end? Do we know, I don't know if we're short, does that mean parents can't go to work? These are massive knock-on effects for people in a local community, in a whole district, that might have a knock-on effect on people coming to work in this district, on the whole county, and I think these are issues we really need to think about and consider, above and beyond, just the operational impacts. That's if those parents can actually get off their drives in the first place, if they live right in Dover, which often happens as multiple people have pointed out, tourists trying to find ways in and out of Dover. We can direct the freight traffic, but we can't direct those tourists, and that's a real problem, right in Dover. If you're able bodied and you can walk to your local supermarket, that'll be great. If you're car stuck on your drive and you need to go and get your shopping, if you're a young family, you need to go and get some formula, and you get there, but there's been no deliveries, because the lorries are stuck out on the roads. Then what do you do? Have we thought about that? I'm not sure if we completely have, and if you're not able bodied and you're waiting for a Sainsbury's delivery, and that's stuck out in the traffic, what are we doing about that? I don't know if we've thought about that either, or if we have, I don't know if we've said it out loud. I totally hate the fact that we rely on them, but what about food banks? They rely on people getting food to them, they rely on getting food out to local people. In Dover, I think it is, or in the district, definitely there's a food bank that opens late now, one day in the week, so that people that work can get there, not during the day, but out of hours, so people were working during the day, then go to the food bank in the evening. If the roads are gridlocked, how are those people going to get there? Will there be any food when they get there, if they're not getting deliveries, if supermarkets that they rely on to get that food, are not getting their regular deliveries? And very rarely people talk about carers and care workers, we didn't talk about them in the pandemic, and I hope we're going to talk about them now, because if one of our counselors actually, at Dover district council, is a carer, and I was talking to her about this, and she was just talking to me about a regular day, she might start and deal at seven o'clock, for example, and get someone out of bed, and then she might an hour later go to, I don't know, Dover, and get another person out of bed, and that bike might be the morning routine, but what if you're two hours late to that next person, or three hours late, or four hours late, because there's traffic, and that second person is laying in their soil sheets, four hours late, they're waiting for their insulin, I don't know, there's all sorts of reasons why you might be going to get them out of bed, what are we doing for those people? Are we setting up, are we setting up care workers in the town, so they can walk? I don't know, but I think we need to think about that, and we need to consider the impacts of those people's southeast coast ambulance, so they're going to do the same, are they going to set up in the town? Will we expect to see motorbikes for paramedics? I don't know, but I think we need to consider all of those things, and in Dover, I imagine the same around here being a coastal area, the RNLI definitely struggled specifically when there was the most traffic along the A20, because they don't have staff sat the station down in the docks, they rely on volunteers, and so when there's particular traffic issues, what do they do? Another one, the last point I just want to make is that quite a few staff who work at the Port of Dover or work in border force got stuck in that traffic, who were supposed to be waved through, but often there wasn't quite the the marry up between the traffic staff and those, and so they got stuck in the traffic, and so the people that could help alleviate the traffic were stuck in the traffic, I mean you couldn't quite make it up, could you? But yeah, so all of those things need to be thought of, you know, they're real people with real jobs, just trying to go about their day, leading their real lives with real fears, I think, that we need to alleviate, so I'm glad that we've talked about communication, and so I really, you know, appreciate that that is being discussed at this point. Yeah, I don't like it when people just come with, I don't like when people just come with problems, so we've been offering up solutions, around about San Fajo would be a great start to move tap away, so that some of the people in Dover are not always impacted all the time. Dualing the A2 would be a great solution, so that we're not always using the A20, and I know that would have an impact down here in Folkestone, so the downhill tunnels are not closed, as often better CCTV across the network, so that that live monitoring and live modeling that we're talking about might actually start to happen, we would definitely welcome that, and that would feed into some live signage across the network, that would definitely be welcomed. I know that the team is offered up for KCC, so stationed someone in our CCTV operations centre, we would welcome someone to take up that offer, so that there's real time, you know, linking up with what's going on in the town, and where we can best put people to deal with those issues, and a hard shoulder, from court wood to aid cliff, so we can actually, you know, provide some provisions for tourists, and for lorry drivers who get stuck in this horrendous traffic, if it happens, let's hope it doesn't, so, you know, sometimes it feels like we hear the same stuff from the same people, when it comes to traffic, it'd be nice this time, if we heard something a little bit more radical, a little bit outside of the box, I don't know exactly what you're going to get out of this this meeting in terms of a resolution, but it would be nice to hear you guys resolve for KRF, maybe to be a bit more proactive and a bit more radical this time round, so particularly in Dover, and I know you guys suffer as well, we don't suffer again and again. Thank you, Councillor. I seem to do want to come in. Thank you, Chair. I'll be brief. If Doug's enjoyed the pain for the last half many years, I can say I've been at Dover and in chief for nearly 24 years now, so I've got 24 years of history of enjoying this particular pain, and the one thing I learned is there will be pain because that's not because all of our partners don't actually do their very level best, though Doug's doing his best, KRF, if they're doing their best, the police are doing their best, but there's no magic bullets here, and fundamentally the constraints combined with the potential multiple points of failure in a very complex system mean that at some point there's always going to be failure, and Jamie's outlined what that failure can mean, but historically, of course, that failure might have just been for a couple of days or a weekend of peak traffic. The really scary bit here is we may be looking at a sustained period, which is why I think we're gearing up to particularly focus on the community impacts, because those quite graphic sort of community impacts that Jamie covered are one thing if they're for an afternoon or a day, they're completely different if it's sustained over many months or even years, and I guess my biggest fear in all of that, Doug, is what's the plan if you don't get the money? I mean, you know, 40 odd million is welcome, it's needed, we're completely behind it, but if for whatever reason that money doesn't appear and or if there is delay in that implementation, you know, then we're looking at this pain for a considerable or considerably longer period if that's the issue, but you know, I think as Dover and folks and we're very much focused on that sort of community impact sell, Susan and I, I think we're going to co-chair it, so I'm trusting that all of the sort of technical and, you know, sort of traffic management type issues will do our best. The fear with that is something that we haven't quite experienced, which is historically, we've been able to manage the freight and hope that the tourists kind of look after themselves. If the tourists are now the problem and we can't manage them, as Toby said, it's fundamentally different, so which is why I think we're all slightly, slightly scared and planning for it. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Do you want to respond to that? Yeah. So we don't get the 45 million, we're right behind you on lobbying government for 400 million to really try and solve the problem. Are 45 million souls the problem? They would have to spend a whole lot more doing different interventions to get the same effect, right behind you, Nadine. I think that's clear. Thank you. I wanted to ask our County Council representatives if you wanted to respond to anything that's been said so far. Thank you, Chair. Yes, a lot of what has just been mentioned by Councillor about is happening. We are working very closely with the Dover District Council. They're involved in all of the planning as well. Lessons are learned each time we carry out things. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be able to build a roundabout at Samfahoe between now and October, but a lot of radical decisions are being put forward. Bids have been put into the Department for Transport for a lot of improvements. Unfortunately, if we don't get that money, a lot of those improvements cannot happen, but there is a lot of out-of-the-box thinking going on to really improve the network, improve signing, improve CCT, improve the road network. So those bids are with the Department for Transport. National highways have put in huge amount of bids really to improve things. The A2 dueling should have been done years ago. It's not rocket science that that is a key route. Unfortunately, it doesn't meet the criteria that somebody somewhere has, and so we have what we have. But we are working very closely with Dover District Council to really see what can be done with the resources that we have. Thank you. I'll open it to the committee at this point for any questions on the contribution so far. Councillor Butcher. Just to say, thank you for the journey. It was really helpful to hear all of that, and I guess people will be expecting similar related impacts in our district, and maybe this is a question for officers here or perhaps we hear about it, but I'd like to know what the planning is and the communication plan, contingency planning for those impacts. I think we will come to that, Councillor Butcher, when we get to that part of the presentation, so thanks for flagging. Councillor COMBILL. Yes, just picking up on some key things there that I think probably the community impact group, I'd like to see them take forward. Looking at places across the approaches to the port and the tunnel that could be providing additional facilities for bathrooms, drinking water, et cetera, in the case that there are long extended periods of car pile-up. A big very interesting to see if that sort of work is already starting, where those potential sites could be to make sure we're offering that level of welfare, and the potential perhaps for some sort of key worker roots. When things go really bad, we have this key worker sort of theme during COVID. It doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility for certain people, teachers, nurses, care workers, that sort of thing to have something, some sort of identification to say, I know the motorway's closed, I've got this, let me in, I need to get to where I'm going. So, you know, be interested also to see if there's been any conversation about that. Obviously, our agencies like the police would be heavily involved in something like that. But if not, I think that they're things I'd like to see the community impact group sort of work through and release in their comms. Before Andy sort of steps in on the detail of it, one example is I was with CCAM this morning. They have a working group looking exactly what's just been talked about, where they're looking at the logistics actually of setting up, for example, terminals, they have the key place at Auschwitz, they have a key place at Gillingham, they have a key place elsewhere, have actually setting up. So, there's a Dover location, there's a folks in the location. So, all of that planning is happening now by a lot of organisations, and I was about to answer another point that you just made as well there, which is totally now slip my mind, I should write these things down. So, on the welfare, oh, no, one bit, that was on the welfare before I hand over to Andy. One of the bids that we have put into department for transport is to have a couple of key locations on the approach specifically to the port of Dover. We've got another location on the approach to Euro Channel that could then be used, where we could put welfare facilities. So, if someone's then queued for hours and hours and hours, they've got a facility to come off and we could put toilets, we could put a boat and whatever. But again, until we get funding and we get a patient, but those plans, those requests are in place. Just in on tribal welfare, certainly something we've been looking at in terms of the type of welfare we offer, how we go about offering that welfare, where that is, on the carriage way actually in the queue or as an offsite or highway location. It should probably come as no surprise to anyone in this room that we like to queue and we are very resistant to leaving that queue, even if it is to go and kind of get welfare. So, typically, you know, we have to be queuing for an extended period of time to kind of want to consider that. And, you know, we're not necessarily going to provide welfare potentially everywhere. It'll be probably focused given the resources that we have available to us in our capabilities on those locations where people can't help themselves. So, where they aren't in a kind of, you know, passing a test go, or what have you, where it's on those motorway areas where they can't easily get off. How do we provide welfare to them? It's something that a driver welfare group is considering, considering how we approached it last time, the lessons we learned from that, how we can make improvements. Above all, what is what is reasonable, what is practical, and what prioritizes the safety of the people in the queue. Because the last thing we need is people wandering around the carriage way when it's not safe to do so. So, that's a kind of key consideration we have to take into account. Thank you. We're fortunate to be, sorry, Councillor Jones. Sorry, just while we're on welfare, how about people who are disabled or let's able to get out of their cars, how are we going to cope? And obviously, if they've been setting traffic for longer, that might not for certain health conditions, that might be a problem. Communications, so a lot of it is around making sure that people come prepared for extended periods of queuing, people with medication, making sure they have sufficient in the car, people travelling with babies and young children, making sure they have sufficient supplies for them, people who have disabilities, making sure they are aware of what their needs are and how they can be met. One of this kind of example I've used before is people who need particular access to toilet facilities. There are websites and apps that can signpost people to the facilities they need in the local area. So, that's another consideration. From a health perspective, the NHS did a lot of work around EU exits all using NHS 111. So, traditionally, when you call NHS 111, you are in a single location, you're not travelling anywhere, you're generally at home or a place you're staying at. So, it wasn't set up to deal with the travelling public and answering kind of non-emergency health-related calls from queues. So, again, the NHS has done a lot of work around that and that will be revisited and refreshed for this time as well. A good question. Thank you, Councillor Jones. I was about to say that we are very fortunate to be joined by other contributors from our parish and town councils this evening. So, we've Chris Johnson here from Hawkins Town Council and John Neal from Newington and Pean Parish Council. So, I'd like to invite them now to give a contribution. Okay, thanks, Chair. Thanks for inviting me. So, we've already added some references to the community impact and I've got a whole load more from our area which been built on what James already said. I don't have an understanding of peaks and troughs of traffic. So, I was 24 years at Eurotunnel before I retired. So, I'd like to highlight the huge impacts on our local community in Hawkins and surrounding villages of a tactic when Dover Tap is in force. This is the closure of the coastbound round-hills tunnel and diversion of all traffic off the M20 at Junction 13. The immediate effect of closing the tunnel and diverting the traffic off is a traffic queue from Junction 13 along Churchill Avenue up Hawkins Hill to the roundabout at the bottom Spitfire Way and then down the slip road back onto the A20. Remember that two lanes of traffic are now forced to use a single lane except for going up the hill and then back to one lane. Traffic static until the space to enter the A20 at the end of the tap queue. This creates a one-way valve which allows traffic to go from Hawkins to Folkston but not to get back. Roads in Folkston are quickly gridlocked and the blockage spreads outwards. Passenger traffic's mixed with freight and suffers the same delay. Laurie's sometimes stop on the Spitfire Way roundabout and block traffic in the Folkston direction which doubles the problem. So, we'd like to understand why port traffic can't be held at Junction 13 and drip fed up the A20 when the space at the end of the tap queue so that local traffic could then still use the usual route and the round hill tunnel. When the ghostbound tunnels close local traffic is moved to diversion routes through Alcombe, etching air, liminge, cable, pain and newington. Sometimes on single track roads with short passing spaces you can imagine the chaos caused by convoys of cars and sometimes even artics and coaches on these width restricted roads. The number 16 boss from Folkston to Canterbury is diverted up Stone Street on fire Dover and misses out Hawkins, Den Sol swingfield and Denton. The Kent Butler Britain Museum in Hawkins closes for the winter and reopens at Easter. Last year their visitor numbers at Easter were down by a half to two-thirds reducing income from entrance charges. Numbers were still down even after roads had cleared due to adverse publicity and the perception that East Kent was shut. Another result is that many southeastern train crew conductors, managers and drivers struggle to get to their depot in Dover. This has an ongoing impact in the train to cancel or significantly delayed from Dover, obviously delaying passengers all the way down the line. A 15-minute journey from Hawkins can take up to two hours. I asked on social media Hawkins residents what the impact of tunnel closures is on them and here's some examples. We don't go out, it's worse than Covid, at least then we could get to the supermarket and that was from several people. My son works at Dover Western docks and a 10-minute journey can take an hour. Worries are getting our secondary aged children down to school and back, the fear that emergency services will not get to the town in an emergency. My son had to walk for folks into Hawkins because the buses couldn't move. Cara is being able to get to us in Hawkins for our disabled daughter so we can get to work, us being unable to get home from work to take over from the Cara and then the Cara not being able to reach the next client. I live at the bottom of Hawkins Hill, it's like a car park here every time, can't get in or out. A church, and this is an odd one that you might not have thought of, a church minister said horses have been caught in the traffic as they try to make their way to Hawkins crematorium. Most of the funeral directors are using, are based in folks nor hides, so we'll need to come up the road that gets blocked. It also has an impact on those trying to get to the funeral of loved ones. I'm sure that Natalie and Doug will know of colleagues who were late for work. So it's not been an isolated incident going on back only a few years, we've had closures in 2020, September and Christmas, Christmas 21, 2022, our January, March, May and the famous July. Following this extended closure, a special meeting at this committee with guests from numerous agencies was held on the 7th of February last year. I understood that the tunnel's closure tactic was to be discussed, but there's no mention of it in the minutes. Despite the meeting, we've had closures since then, Easter, July, November and Christmas last year. Fortunately, we didn't have a closure this Easter, but we don't know if that was good fortune or improved planning. Toby, you said last May, that Brock should stop tap filling up into the tunnel, but you only said that it was significantly reduced the likelihood of the tunnel needing to be closed, so we don't know if the plan's been abandoned or not. The Hawkins resident had this reply from the National Highways Business Services coordinator in January this year. The ramhill tunnel may be closed as part of Operation Tap, if high levels of tourist and freight traffic pose a risk of congestion at the tunnel. Traffic's held on the M20 until its deemed safe to let traffic flow through safely. This is a safety measure to prevent traffic from queuing or becoming stationary within the tunnel. Well, that statement's incorrect and suggests that someone in Guilford doesn't understand the situation. Traffic is not held, it's diverted off. So the reply goes on, although there's no plant changes to the management of the round hill tunnel during Operation Tap, we'll continue to work as part of the KRF partnership to review how it can be improved during busy periods at the Port of Dover. Also, actively working with KRF to manage the changes under ES, which I'm sorry, I'm paraphrasing now we've done that. The residents of Hawkins and surrounding villages feel that the impacts of tunnel closures are not recognised by those in charge of traffic or if they are they're ignored. Our main source of information is Facebook, as Hawkins Town Council gets no direct information on predicted peaks, measures in place, possible risks, etc. So can someone please confirm that an alternative plan to closing the tunnel and diverting the traffic off is in place and that will be better informed in future? Thank you. Thank you, Chris. John, do you want to? Yeah, just to add to what's been said, my house is the nearest house to the tunnel, to the tunnel entrance, and until recently, I had two boys going to school at Dover College. So when there was traffic, I was caught both ends and spent many hours sitting and trying to take the boys, but I wasn't forced to school. Newington and Pean parish, the tunnel was part of our parish and we have great relationships. A lot of the problems have already been spoken about, the issues, I've spoken to many neighbours and parishioners about the problems that they had over several weekends. I walked down and stood looking at the M20 in the complete nightmare that was there. My wife was stuck in traffic coming off Junksley 11A for over six hours. She couldn't leave the car, she asked the police if she could leave the car and was told no, and it's literally a five-minute walk from there to our house. She was stuck behind a mini bus of, I think, eight disabled young children in the bus and they were having a bit of a nightmare. Some of them wanted to go to toilet, they didn't have sufficient drinking water on board, folks and my wife had some so other people were helping as well. But nothing's been spoken about, which has surprised me, is the total lack of police presence in the area. At the actual tunnel entrance there's quite often police, and I know you've got your own force that look after that, but around the area up at Bargrove, which comes from the A20 going into Hyde, that was absolutely chock-a-block. I have a motorbike and I managed to get down part of the way along and there was a couple of cars were fighting. The police were called, but of course the police said they couldn't get there. It's just a total lack. I didn't see any other apart from the entrance and I travelled all around the area. I didn't see any police whatsoever and surely on a weekend I know it was particularly bad, but it has happened on more than one occasion. We could perhaps have a few bobbers out on foot patrolling and give it a bit of moral support to people who would have stuck with, particularly with kids. The other thing I was going to mention, which has already been mentioned, but I was watching a number of kids playing football in the M20, which is something that I thought I'd never see, but again had there been police there. I understand if families were stuck in the cars for hours upon end, kids want to get out and stretch their legs, but it just didn't look very safe and playing football in the M20. These are just a few of the problems that I've personally seen and people have spoken to me about and thank you very much for inviting me. Thank you very much. I think you've both painted really vivid pictures of the problems that people have been experiencing. I know Toby, you were keen to come in in response to some of the points that were made. Would you like to do that? Thank you Chair. I won't go into all of it, but what I'd suggest initially is to actually come out and have a specific meeting with yourselves, listen to those points, rather than going through every individual point now. But one point there was to do with Rantill Tunnel this Easter, it wasn't a fluke. A lot of work went into that to really make sure the end, Susan, will remember my emails to them saying, Oh, they're about to close it. No, they're not closing it. They're not about to close it. They're not... We did everything possible to make sure that National Highways didn't close that tunnel and it worked this time round. So it is possible, but it still cannot be guaranteed, unfortunately. You mentioned the difference of... I mean, the theory is that, yes, everything held in Brock will stop tap from filling up. Unfortunately, it's all the gaps in between. So people leaving, stop 24, people leaving everything else. And sometimes if the issue is at the port of Dover, we then don't want to penalise Eurotunnel Freight that could run freely. And truck drivers are aren't for buggers at times. They'll think, Oh, Eurotunnel could use moving freely. We'll go down that queue and then jump and down. And they jump. So there's a lot of work going on. We've had meetings specifically with National Highways and Kent Police to really look at the diversion route you referred to to see actually what can be done. Currently, National Highways state, categorically, we cannot have stationary traffic in round hill tunnel. If there is going to be stationary traffic, we have to close it on safety purposes. Part of the bid I referred to earlier on that they've put into DFT is to put things in place that they could then do that safely. But again, that won't be in place as yet. So what I'd suggest, as I say, is that I'll contact you directly. We'll come out and sit down to you to see how we can create that communication specifically for yourselves, listen to your points as the locals, and actually make sure see what we can do. We won't fix. We do not have that magic wand to fix everything. Sadly, if I did, I'd be a very rich person. But we'll come out and talk to you both. That's very helpful. Thank you. I'll just see if any members of the committee want to make any comments or ask any questions at this point before we move on to our final presentation. Councillor Butcher. Just to pick up on Chris, we're going to add that response from National Highways asserting that traffic was going to be held on the motorway, which is, I think, Chris, the solution you've been advocating. So how come that doesn't happen if National Highways are suggesting that? I think, as he alluded to, it's probably someone that doesn't fully understand the area. One of the problems that if you then only held them on the M20 and didn't allow them off, it would be very soon backing up towards Junction 11A as well. So it's getting that balance of the different impacts. Everything has a knock on effect. You solve one problem you create another. It is this horrible monster that keeps growing. So yes, you could hold them only on the M20. You'd soon block up Junction 12, Junction 11A, et cetera, and it can back up. So it's working on those, ideally, as I say, is to come up with something so they can queue through the tunnel as well and keep them moving. There are red Xs above the tunnel. We've said why not use those and release. The trouble is you've got to have someone enforcing it because unless you've got that enforcement, the truck drivers ignore it, the way that's built on the viaduct, there isn't anywhere to put those people to enforce it. So like I say, there are a lot of discussions ongoing, but we're not there yet. And just to appreciate your offer to me, with colleagues from the town of parish council, that's really helpful. And the other point that was made by John was about the police, and I just wondered what sort of a missing presence from today and just wondered about that. I did actually write a note on that, and I totally forgot it. I can't actually directly respond on behalf of the police, but the key issue is, again, they have very limited resource, whether they're dealing with burglaries, whether they're dealing with traffic management, whether they're dealing with everything. So that is one of the key issues that it would be great to have hundreds of police officers that could help all of this, but unfortunately they're not there. I do understand they're involved in the discussions, and perhaps we'll touch on that in our next presentation, which I'll move on to now if everyone's comfortable with that. So we have D. Nelson with us, the Control Centre and Resilience Lead Specialist for Votes in the Live District Council, a long title D. [silence] So as Council Davidson said, I'm D. Nelson. I've been the emergency planning officer for the Council for seven years, so I've been involved in quite a lot of issues in the district over that time. I've done the presentation a different way as in what we're doing to prepare for the EES and the impact on the authority in the district. I can move on. It's not playing until I show that. So as Andrew, Andy, sorry, not Andrew, Andy said, we're involved in a lot of meetings that Kent Resilience Forum are taking a doing. We co-chair in the community impact group with Dover. That's just had its initial meeting, so it's in its infancy at the moment. The tactical coordination group is held every two weeks. That's where all key organisations, including police, CCAM, fire are included in that as well. And then there's the strategic coordination group, which is monthly. That also includes all key partners, but higher people, not me. There's the driver welfare group, which is in its infancy as well at the moment. We talked about what's happened at the Brexit issues, how we can try and alleviate some of those. That's been coordinated by Kent Resilience Forum. That's KCC, actually, isn't it? It's KCC, yeah. We've got an internal EES meeting going on, which is myself, Susan, Andy, Ewan and Combs, where we're trying to pull a plan together, which is really difficult when we don't have dates and don't really have a lot of information only from what we learn in Brexit. And also, the Combs manager is part of the Kent Combs sale that she's attending. I don't know, is that monthly? Yeah, monthly. So that will make sure that there's a joined up response to communication across all of the organisations. So, let's see, you can't read it, I just do this. What's happening in Folkestone Hive? So we're going to explain the EES to alert residents and businesses as we get closer to the time. We're going to provide, advise how the district can prepare for EES and work with local town councils and districts, because they're in that area. If we have got good luck on the road, they will be able to help and identify the more vulnerable people that need help and hopefully prepare for that. We're governing information on potential community impacts, and as I say, that is all from what we learned from Brexit. We're encouraging the development of business continuity plans and updating the councils, business continuity plans. We already have these in place, we're just making sure that they are up to date and they will take into account EES and the potential impact of that. We've created a specific email address so that you can put that out to the general public, it's to gather into information and if you need anything from us, it's monitored by myself and my team leader. But we will use that more as we go into EES to gather information and ask the people to send in more about community impacts so that we can raise that through tactical and strategic. There's a raising awareness of the role on council and emergency by promoting the LGA, the Council to Guide to Civil Emergencies. You've uploaded this, haven't you? So the Councillors can be attached to the minutes. Okay, yeah. So that link there is the LGA guidance for you and we're also going to internally do further training for staff and councillors on emergency planning and your role in that emergency. And also there is a multi-agency exercise taking place at the beginning of July which will be taking part in and all the learnings we will be using to make our plans. Any questions? Do you have any? Thanks, Dee. I think we're absorbing what you've said there. Do you want to come in, Susan? Thanks, Dee, for leading on that. I appreciate it. And, you know, we are, I think as a council, really well served with having Dee and her expertise. She's got very good connections in with our partners, so thanks, Dee, for that. Hopefully you'll have seen that, you know, I would describe it with the beginning of the detail planning phase. And thank you for the importance of quite, quite sobering, isn't it? And quite frightening, actually, when you think about the extent of the issues that we need to deal with with our partners. So between now and as we go forward, we've these outlined the regular meetings. What, of course, you didn't say is when there are issues. Some of those groups meet two or three, four times a day. You know, there's a really, really regular cycle. Sometimes I can spend most of my day on my phone with or in groups with Toby and others. And one of the big reflections from the emergencies and the challenges we've had in the past is the importance of real-time intelligence. And that is really where local board members really come into their own and hence setting up the dedicated email now so that we can get into the rhythm and also we can make sure that members know about that email because whenever we are stood up and there's a response, which of course we're all seeking to try and avoid response and being stood up. But when there is, there is always the sit-rep, which is, you know, what is going on locally, what is a local real-time intelligence. So for us, that absolutely is one of the most critical roles during an emergency or times of challenges that members can play. And of course, it's then more usual after the emergency where members come into their own in terms of the rebuilding and recovering. But certainly that would be something that as we go through the coming few months and we have more opportunities to talk to you and other members across the council, we will be talking more detailed about actually how best that can be supporting the effort and the endeavor for us. So hopefully that background reading that will circulate is a helpful sort of precursor to more detailed discussions with D myself and Andy and you. Thanks very much. I think, you know, it is quite overwhelming, isn't it, in terms of the volume of points that have been raised this evening. Councillor Powell raised the point about what we want to come out of this meeting this evening. So I think maybe if we just open the floor now, if any of our guests or contributors this evening have particular things that they would want us to kind of be aware of or take away from this or suggestions that would be useful to hear and also committee members, if you've got points you want to make or suggestions at this stage, it's probably a good time to kind of try and pull some of that together. Who would like to be first? Councillor Jones. I think from the council's point of view, we need to produce a leaflet or a very detailed publication which we can share on social media and perhaps send round to every house in the district outlining a little bit like they did with COVID, the steps that you should take. So it's a bit like an emergency plan so that people aren't panicking in advance and worrying about what might happen. But outlining the steps that have been taken but the port at the Eurotunnel and then obviously what the steps KCC are taking and the district council, I think that'd be a really positive step forward otherwise there will be all kinds of stories floating around on social media and worries and we don't want that to happen. Councillor Hales. I agree with what's just been said but it's a fine line between panicking communities and informing communities. I'd like to see a countdown. The date is the 6th of October. It's so many days to go and you count down each day and you send out regular updates to social media to tell people what's being done because they assume nothing's being done but there is a lot going to be done by all the organisations which are a tough, tough task and they need to be respected for that. So I think that communication is very important on a countdown basis so you can build a bit of pressure up going to the date and the other thing I would say, you could do already, another thing I was going to say was we should put pressure on our MPs. This is a government decision to spring more money and the MPs should be made, for this council I'd like to see, they need to pull their finger out and get behind this council and this problem and see if you can find some solution going forward. But thank you, I would say thank you everybody and I nearly got an awful lot of work on their hands but we'll get there. Thanks Councillor Hilles, do you want to come in and then Toby? Yeah thank you Councillor Hilles and just to pick up on your point in the internal meetings we've had we are going to do some kind of publication but the actual 6th of October isn't set in stone yet so we're waiting until the August date when we know if it moves or not moves and then we will send something out. As you said it is scaremongering or it's people preparing so yeah so we're waiting until that happens and then I think as organisations through the Medway Resilience Forum we're going to take a more consistent approach and we'll probably we'll send out reasonably the same comms about people being prepared but we'll have a focus and I've spent on it as well so yeah so we're waiting until August basically too because if we send it now then people will get scared. Just to be a scaremonger it's a hundred and there's 165 days only until the 6th of October. Just say I got total faith in Toby and I'm sure the day after we'll say oh yeah it all went fine because of Toby on day I'm planning months of leave. Doug or Natalie did you want to come back in on anything? The only thing I suppose we've not really touched on is the communication side of it. As I've already touched on we are a commercial business we don't want to completely put customers off traveling this summer and we don't have the final rule in from the EU yet so it's very difficult to communicate to customers but we don't really know what we can and can't say yet so our plan is get somewhere out the way hopefully we have a bit more clarity from the EU by then and then we can start on our comms plan specifically to obviously our customers after the Olympics yeah. No guys thanks for having us out I mean I'll tell you what we're we've been knocking our socks off trying to get some things done so that we can get things in place. I was talking with my my chief operations officer while I talked to her probably daily up out EES and we both reckon that we're probably her a bit more than me spending half to three quarters of our time just on this topic and that's how important it is to get it right. Hasn't a conflict. Thanks just come back to just the conversation earlier from from yourselves from your eternal report was I right you said you would have with the kiosk 52 kiosks was that was that right 53 53 and an officer could monitor for it. A hundred sorry a hundred and six kiosk but 53. And an officer can monitor four at a time and I assume that those officers aren't currently in place so that they'll be additional officers. Yeah they have started recruiting okay French have started recruiting for that already but yes they are aware of the demand that we'll need and at the point. We'll there be a significant a similar amount of increase in in in French officers at the Port of Dover or that that's fair to say as well. Yeah I mean this we're in the same boat so we're putting all of our notice I said same boat not same train anyway but yeah we're in the same boat because police offer on terror they know what the resourcing demands are and they've got to produce the resources. We also have a similar quantity of so-called agents basically people that are employed either by the by your teller by ourselves to operate these things under police all front terror supervision. Okay okay thank you I guess in terms of you know next steps I think the most important thing for us as a council is is really sort of looking at you know that community impact the the business impact and the welfare of you know our residents and also the residents that are passing through our districts you know so I think it's essential that something comes back to this committee prior to the implementation I particularly quite like to see any minutes actions or recommendations that come out of the community impact group moving forward just to see you know the work that's been done obviously you just said you know that's quite a quite a new thing that's starting so it'd be interesting to see where that body has got to in you know the next you know there's six months say and obviously just to sort of make sure that you mentioned our business continuity plans but that they are you know that they are updated with you know everything that we expect to see with regards to the EES being implemented and perhaps any you know updates on conversations with parish councils or CALP perhaps that could be part of a future agenda for the joint parish committee I think that'd be very valuable for the council. That's very helpful thank you Councillor CUMBILL I believe it is in the plan for it to be part of the agenda for all of those meetings in future Councillor Butcher. Yes just to build on that and I wonder if there's also a more direct contact with communities that are particularly affected and just think about you know we've heard from Chris and John and the exercise Chris went through to consult with people in his community and all that kind of detail feedback that seems to me to be absolutely invaluable and just you know being sure that if there can be a more direct connection with those town and parish councils that are particularly affected. I'm being told that's not a problem so that's I'm taking that. Any other comments or suggestions at this point from committee members or guests? No. Okay well I think Councilor McConville has made a suggestion that this issue comes back to the committee prior to implementation including feedback from the community impact group and the business the updating of business continuity plans is a committee members in agreement with that that would be I think really helpful thing to organise so we can bear that in mind for the forward plan for the committee for next year. But I just want to say thank you very much to all our guests who've come this evening giving up such time to talk with us about their experiences and the plans and all the work that you're all doing which is huge clearly from the presentations you've given this evening so thank you very much for sharing that with the committee. We're going to have a five-minute break just while our guests are able to leave so if members want to take a five-minute break please do. Thank you. We restart the meeting this evening and we're moving to another important item which is the motion from Council which considers the potential impact for the district of Kent County Council's decision to end its accommodation and support provision for care leavers once they reach the age of 19 and I think we're going to have an introduction on the item. Yeah thanks Adrian. Thank you. As Councilor Davidson has just said the the report considers the impacts of the decision by KCC to end its accommodation and support services for care leavers in the in the county once they reach the age of 19. It also considers the potential solutions and responses for the Council and our housing options service and the Council generally recognises the concerns that these changes will have for the young people affected. The report also follows the motion by the Council on 20th November last year in response to these issues. I'm happy to answer any questions on the report. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll open it to the committee. Councillor McConville. Well I'll start as I sort of tried to highlight this. Thanks very much for the report and and for the opportunity to bring it to the committee for a bit more of a discussion. Largely when the motion was put to Council it was it was part of a wider coordinated effort across many Kent or Kent districts just to try and put that pressure on KCC to make KCC aware that you know this does have a massive impact. Very disappointing that no response has been received from KCC. Colleagues in Canterbury was in discussion. I was hoping that Alan might the leader of Canterbury Council might be able to pop in and then share some of their sort of concerns with this as well but unfortunately he wasn't able to make it. But he again was very disappointed that his response from KCC to quote him. So we had a very neutral letter back from KCC but no commitments. So I mean it's very disappointing that you know such an important issue where you think you know there's going to be a change. You think people would be able to get around the table and work out a solution for the benefit of the people that are going to be massively impacted by this and the main person or the main organisation is not really engaging. I don't know what we can do as a council further or again with all the other district councils that are going to be affected by this to try and you know change that change that narrative from KCC. Maybe they feel that you know it's just too far down the line for them to be a big issue and I know they've got probably bigger plans afoot for the cost-shunting exercises to try and put more of the financial burden away from them and onto district councils but I'd be quite interested to hear what other members think that we could do especially some of our KCC colleagues to try and really push this issue. I mean you know if we look at there you know the estimated impact of around 200,000 I mean that's still very significant for this council but you think of Canterbury I mean they're you know their estimates are well over two to two and a half million a year you know that that is that is you know massive for small councils in this area that again not really any solutions but I think it's something we need to continue monitoring. It'd be good to start you know getting data now of you know these young people now that are currently on track to sort of come into that system just to try and just you know to try and get as much data as we can as to you know what they're doing in their you know within their lives if they are likely to stay here or if they're likely to if they think they're likely to be somewhere else by 19 you know it'd be good to have a coordinated sort of system within Kent that everyone knows they've got as much data as they can so they can they can prepare as best they can both financially direct financially in terms of the housing cost but also the all the all the you know the the associated things that will will have to definitely come into play to you know to provide care and support for all these these young people that are going to be affected. Thanks. Council Shallen. I mean I I don't know where to start with this I'm so absolutely furious about it. Care leavers by their by definition are some of the most vulnerable people in in our community and to basically abandon them like this is is quite disgraceful. The blame cannot lie solely at KCC's door but also very much at the door of central government that have forced councils into this position. It is an absolute false economy because the costs will be so much greater further down the line because these are such vulnerable young people. I'm thank you for the report. It's it's thorough. I don't understand the the risk assessment and particularly the likelihood column. Increased homelessness presentation to the council medium. I mean I just can't see how that is medium. Budgetary impacts medium. Increased risk of vulnerable young people not receiving the specialist help they need medium. I mean if you could talk me through I'd be grateful because I don't really understand how there's a medium. I think for us at the moment the issue is there's that uncertainty. We we provide some information on on the potential numbers of young people. We don't know exactly where those young people may go going forward. Some may approach other councils in Kent. Young people can actually go to any council because they're careful by the county they can actually approach any of the councils in Kent. So we're not exactly sure when those people may or whether they may actually approach us. We're not sure on the time scales but clearly what we try to do within that assessment is show the impact could be very serious but we don't fully know the impact at this at this time. That's that's why we suggested that the likelihood was medium at this time. So it could it could increase or decrease the population. Absolutely that can change and that's going to be part of our monitoring process. Obviously as we get more information and more certainty then we will need to bring that information to members going forward. Thank you. I can see that it's a very difficult position to ascertain and I appreciate your answer on that. Thank you. Councillor Lamartin. Thank you. Obviously whenever anything's withdrawn or reduced it's it's really difficult. I guess just trying to get my head around the impacts as well so it wasn't it wasn't such that the support previously given was completely open-ended it only went to the age of 21. So what we're talking about here is a is a reduction from 21 to 19 which absolutely has an impact but I guess I'm keen to better understand what currently happens at 21 and what sort of support happens as people transition because presumably not everyone necessarily would need support at that stage and whilst admittedly it's coming two years earlier than it was previously maybe not every not maybe not everything's lost but I don't really understand the the process and the situation well enough to judge. Well at the moment you've mentioned obviously 21 that clients get support for that longer period of time. Some of those clients going forward would have had assistance from KCC to access other accommodation solutions. They might have approached district councils across the county for help you know for example systems with rent deposits etc to try and access independent accommodation in the in the private rent sector and they might join council waiting this across the county as well with the potential to access affordable rented housing across the county. So it just happened on a more gradual basis I think it's fair to say and some of those individuals on reaching 21 yeah would certainly would have been in the position where they may have been able to solve their housing situation itself directly. Thank you yeah I guess building on that is it is is there a any more color you can provide around how that kind of sort of slopes off so presumably as people get older options come up people can find support in other areas people maybe in some instances no longer need support it's just be interesting to see how that kind of runs off over that sort of age group. I'm happy to go away from the meeting to to pull together some more detail from our own information and perhaps we can get some more information from from social services as well to try and you know provide a clearer picture on perhaps some of the past activity and what might happen going forward as well that would be helpful yeah great thank you yeah. Here's the shaman. Well just to come back on council Martin's point this is happening against a background of massively increased housing costs and a greatly reduced amount of housing that's accessible to these young people. The housing allowance is 280 pounds and several years ago that might have got you a room in a shared house but it won't touch the sides now so we've it's you know it's happening against that kind of a background and there's going to be a much greater need not there's not going to fall off it's just going to get it's going to get worse. Thank you. Councilor. Thank you for mixing the report it was very well put together. I'd like to highlight something we saw all the touched on and 3.4 3.5 we were talking about other agencies and moving people forward with assistance from other agencies I mean you all spoke about social services. I also thinking about sort of outside sort of charities and things and working with them. Absolutely yes other agencies the rainbow centre locally and more widely you know we'll work with as many partners as we can obviously working with other councils as well across the county to try and look for other solutions as well going forward but the options are limited I have to say you know the support and this will be young people going into private into the accommodation. Councillor accommodation without support that they may have had in the past you know we can't entirely make up for all of those the shortfalls that we're going to see going forward it's fair to say. Yes and of course it's already a problem with accommodation in the area anyway which of all the way off and also obviously local charities and things we're also struggling as casees here cut their funding as well so it's almost like a WHO sword but yeah thank you for that thank you. Councillor Wilcher just talks about offices we'll continue to monitor and update members as any further issues arise so because I guess what we're getting here is we're being alerted to a problem and I guess it's we're going to have to wait and see how this actually transpires so what what's the plan for updating does that come back to this committee or elsewhere we obviously monitor homelessness generally across the district we provide a suite of indicators on on presentations etc so that will certainly pick up on increases in numbers of young people approaching our housing options service but certainly I'm happy to bring more information back to this committee as and when as I mentioned the reports have followed the motion from from council back in November last year so obviously as as the group see fit we'll bring that information back to you. Is that something the committee would like to see? Yes. Yep I'm seeing nods okay that'd be helpful thank you. I think is there merit in a further follow-up to KCC in terms of not having had a response and whether there can be kind of engagement with them and also just on the figures that have been shared and 39 care leave is aged 16 to 21 is there a kind of more detailed breakdown of that so you can really get a sense of who's coming up to the age at which they might need some support over the next one two three years so we can really focus on on those individuals. That will certainly be part of our monitoring process officers obviously are speaking with KCC social services on an ongoing basis and that's more on a case-by-case basis I have to say but not the county councils across across the county the districts have obviously voiced their concerns jointly as part of the Kent housing group to KCC as well so they have there have been processes put in place beyond you know beyond that motion itself as well so but yeah I'm certainly we're certainly happy to pick up on all those issues as part of that reporting process going forward. Okay thank you I think Councillor McConville is just ahead of Councillor Hill's okay Councillor Hill's. If I can be of any help in my county role to officers to facilitate reaction from certain council officers at Kent I'm there to be used. Thank you Councillor Hills, Councillor McConville. Thank you and thanks for everyone's input into this. I think our council does very well with regards to people in care to my mind where the only council in all of Kent that offers council tax relief to care leave is up to the age of 25 something again that was put pressure on for KCC some time ago so I'd really like to think that we do everything we possibly can within our means to make this transition if that's what it is as best we can. I do have some concerns largely just to do with the allocations and things like that and if there's been any thinking in terms of what might happen when some of these young people do approach the council and I know the council currently sends people out of district usually larger families because we don't have any availability especially three, four bed that sort of thing but you know if there be any sort of thinking of any sort of special provision especially for care leave is possibly with mental health issues and various other issues who might have quite strong ties to the local area just to try and keep them in the local area and again care leave is possibly you mentioned it in the report may have more complex needs you know do we have any sort of scope or capacity for places accommodation that might disable access and that and those sorts of things that would be good to be sort of just get that in our thinking quite early on to see you know what what possible scenarios might arise when we start getting some of these when we start getting some of these approaches I know we'll potentially look at housing allocations over the next 12 months so it would be something to possibly think about when when that comes to this committee as well yeah yeah we certainly work with a range of providers in the district we have our own housing stock we have our housing association partners and obviously we need we do and we will continue to work closely with private sector landlords as well to encourage them to make their accommodation available to to these clients going forward and of course wider homeless clients as well you know that obviously we do our best to accommodate people in this district the accommodation supply is limited and certainly we would do all that we can where we where unfortunately we may be forced to temporarily place people outside of the district we do all that we can to move people back as quickly as possible you know we recognize their support networks are in this area and it's important that we bring those back together as quickly as possible but so you know we certainly can't accommodate everyone within the social sector and it's going to be vital going forward that we maintain those links with private sector landlords and do all that we can to support these the young people affected thanks Adrienne I think the housing allocation policy isn't formally on the program of the committee for next year but perhaps if the cabinet member is coming in front of the committee then that's something that we could include in update from the cabinet member and have the opportunity to to ask questions about then I'm seeing nods from the cabinet member who's with us this evening so she wants to come in Rebecca thank you um yeah so several things just wanted to um thank Adrienne for the report and just want to really stress the the really good work that that Adrienne and the team the housing options team particular does um I know well it's really hard on the prevention side of things I know the team is you know pressure and dedicated to that that work um ultimately this all comes back to um yeah cuts cuts cuts over 14 years and reaping the uh yeah we're seeing what that has resulted in um and you know this is one one particular group of very very vulnerable extremely young people um and I'm sure you know met most of ours I would hope you know when we that age had a huge support um that we could you know family friends that we could rely on um so yeah this is a particularly vulnerable group but obviously the cuts have affected all sorts of different different groups um so yeah I would like to hope that some uh you know some of that can be turned around but it's not it's going to take a long time for for the damage to be repaired um so yeah and allocations obviously is something that's on the agenda and uh definitely um this group of people we we need to certainly think about um how our allocations policy um cater for them uh yeah so thanks again to the team and thanks to the committee for discussing this thank you councillor shube are there any other comments on this item no okay um the recommendations are in front of us to receive and note the report and to comment on the point set out in the report which we have done and I think we've agreed that we would want to see this come back to the committee um once more detail is known and things have developed in due course so can I see a proposal for those recommendations councillor mcconville and a seconder councillor butcher and is that agreed thank you colleagues okay we are moving on to our next item um which is the forward plan for the overview and scrutiny committee for the 24 25 um year and the recommendations are to receive and note the report and to adopt and implement the scrutiny work program which is set out in the report and to note paragraph 1.4 of the report which I can uh just highlight to colleagues is that if we approve the work plan then we'll need to consider uh the chair and the vice chair of the committee will need to consider alongside officers the desired outcome and scope for the items detailed within the scrutiny work plan which essentially will mean further conversations about what the focus of those items should be um with input and feedback from the committee um and uh I also officers in that regard um i'm indeed do you want to speak to the item I think you've covered it very very well chair you've done my job for me um very very little to add um just to say that on um page um 36 onwards page 36 37 38 you will see um you know the list of topics that you have all selected as a committee I do understand chair that there are some additional items and perhaps members would be kind enough to confirm the position um such as the ESS item to be added as a reserve item and the corporate plan to be moved um for consideration as one of the main items um so nothing more to add other than what the chair has said and counselors are asked to confirm that point regarding ESS and the corporate plan please and to receive and note the recommendations on page 35 thank you thank you yes just to pick up on that point the discussion that term we've had as a committee is that because we have discussed the EES implementation this evening and it did appear on the forward plan as an item for next year that it makes sense to put the EES item into the reserve part of the program for revisiting later in the year as we've discussed in the first part of the meeting and therefore free up a space for the next item down on the list which is in the reserve section at the moment which is the corporate plan consultation responses which the committee felt it was important was included in the plan for the forthcoming year so that's the amendment to the documentation that's in front of us and that would be reflected in what goes forward to full council at the annual meeting to uh to review in conjunction with everything else that we'll be doing at that meeting so um that that is uh the understood position so that's come through from our from our discussions as a committee and so we can kind of collectively just affirm that's what we would we would want to do then that's fine um are there any uh comments councilor mccombill thank you chair um yeah largely yeah largely think the list is is pretty much where it needs to be in terms of what we need to to look at uh over the next year um the UK SPF and the RE PF uh the the rural uh fund and the shared prosperity fund did come to the finance subcommittee so i think it's reasonable for uh for that item to continue but to to obviously come back to the subcommittee is the subcommittee did ask for um some further feedback uh from the from those works um in due course and um potentially um the opportunity to tell us item seems um very much uh finance based so there i think there could be the potential for that item to uh to go to the to the subcommittee so we're still um we're still obviously scrutinizing as much um and uh perhaps similar to where we remember we had one subcommittee where all committee members could be invited so perhaps that could be that one meeting of the next year um i think that i think that meeting that we had um where where the other members of the committee were invited i work quite well thank you that's um good suggestions for filling up the work program for the subcommittee and getting some extra items under the radar that are not in the uh in the uh schedule um i think they were being written down so hopefully that's that's okay um any other comments from committee members we do uh try to keep track of the various items that we discuss and what we want to um revisit uh later on and i know that's something we've discussed as a committee as well um and i think that's something we can um look at how we perhaps build on that in the next uh cycle of the committee just to make sure that we are making sure that we're having things come back before us in could be in different formats but just making sure that we're keeping on top of the the work program as a whole and and we must thank our officers for keeping us on on track with that because there is a lot that comes before us so to follow all that through is is always challenging um okay if there are no other comments then um i read the recommendations before so can i have a uh a proposal for those recommendations councilor councilor jones are going to take you as the recommender and councilor mcconville you happy to second okay uh are all agreed on that agreed thank you okay i think that brings us to our last item this evening uh which is a straightforward one hopefully the annual report of the views of you and scrutiny committee um introduced by myself and councilor mcconville um and i think it you know thank you to the officers for their help in putting the report together it just takes us through the the things that we have discussed in the course of the year and i think you can see that that we have covered an awful lot of different topics during the course of the year um and it's good to see them all collated there and helpful i think in um helping us think about you know which ones we need to revisit in the in the year that's coming as well to have all that in one place um so i think just on a personal note i wanted to thank everybody on the committee for their contributions during the course of the year particularly john is the vice chair and to the officers for their support through the year and obviously all the contributors and guests and other officers that we've had with us through the course of the year um as part of the work program council mcconville i don't know if you wanted to add anything in relation to the subcommittee um no not uh not particularly just to obviously echo what what what i wrote down to put in there just to thank the members for their for their valuable input and for all the officers work that goes into it thank you didn't mean to put you on the spot there um are there any other comments from colleagues councilor butcher well just a neutral thanks to to you and connor for excellent sharing thank you very much um much appreciated i think it it has we've worked well as a committee during the course of the year and it's been uh you know very enjoyable to work together and i think we've got a lot out of the meetings that we've had together so thank you we just need to receive a note the report so do we have a proposal for that councilor martin elaine martin and a seconder councilor chatman all agreed that concludes the meeting and our final meeting of the year so thank you all very much safe journey home