Transcript

Okay, just to remind you, are we live? Yeah, exactly. Not yet. We're nearly going to be live, guys, so, um, microphone pick up. Oh my god, come on. Oh my god, come on. I don't put my name. Oh, no. Working. I did. I did. I did. Good luck with my IT since I've been here. Okay. Good stuff, so. Recording as well to make sure we're in a business. I'll run through a few things before we get into it. Yeah, I'm one. Please don't talk about that. Yeah, it's not even. Sorry. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. No. I keep on the road. I can't find out. I can't find out. I just feel. And it looks. I'm not. But something is fine. No, I, um, something. No, LTM. Fine. Coming away. Hey, we tried to say, I don't know. We could tell them, it was happening, he had a diagnosis. I didn't give notice in advance but I didn't really tell you to do it, of course, so thank you girls thank you mate thank you mate we are, yeah maybe I'll just film it maybe I'll just film it oh wow oh my goodness amazing yeah it'll be fun yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so so it seems to be kind of the 13th I'm told it's unlucky yeah um I don't know if it's going to be online I still think I think there's a second item so you won't be around okay yeah yeah yeah happy new to you hey shall we I just think still glasses but the timing so okay okay good evening and welcome to this evening's overview and scrutiny committee meeting I'm councillor Liz Atkins chair of the committee this meeting is being recorded and is being broadcast live in the event that technical issues require the meeting to be adjourned and it can't be restarted within a few minutes further updates will be posted on the council's democracy critical account which is at the real democracy the council has a duty to protect sensitive personal data to ensure such information is not inadvertently disclosed please avoid using full names or any other details that may reveal the identity of others no apologies for absence have been received um I think we're all present fine let's then move on to introductions uh can overview and scrutiny committee members please introduce themselves and say if you have any declarations of interest in relation to any matters do not see how you can abolish there you go are we in? oh hi um we seem to have some um heckling but let me uh start off with people introducing themselves from the left we go to councillor Gallop first hi good evening councillor Annie Gallop Myats Fields Ward I don't have anything to declare uh good evening councillor Marianna Masters councillor in Streatham Wells and I have no pecuniary interest um good evening I'm Nicole Lubbys I'm the Green Party councillor in Streatham St Lennies and I have no interest to declare good evening I'm councillor Bernie Curtis of Clapham Common and Amberville Ward and I don't have any interest good evening everyone I'm councillor Deepak Saidi Ward councillor in Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction and no pecuniary interest to declare councillor Jay Drabble of Wormby, Stockwell West and Larkhall Ward no interest to declare David Oxley councillor for Stockwell West and Larkhall Ward no interest to declare councillor Alison Inglis Jones councillor Clapham Common and Abbeville no interest to declare okay and I'm councillor for Shuttam Hill East and similarly don't have any any interest to declare okay so let's check that people can hear can everyone hear the room okay from online yeah yeah I think so good stuff thank you very much okay now we'll move to the minutes of the previous meeting of committee held on the 2nd of December last year no amendments have been received that's where I just hear it are the minutes agreed? I've got it on but I can't hear there must be something with your sound no because they've got it on the 6th of December where are we getting any interference from that's a bit late girl we can hear you person trying to speak like identify themselves they're good now they need it okay I need to hear anything sorry okay now we move to the first item a core business for tonight's meeting which is employment skills and training for disadvantaged groups Lambeth does a lot to help disadvantaged residents into work but are we reaching the people we need to reach and are we providing them with the right support you'll first hear from the cabinet member for economic inclusion councillor Marcia Cameron Marcia you have 5 minutes to introduce the report thank you chair this report addresses what we are doing to provide employment skills and training with disadvantaged groups the report details our delivery across adult learning youth employment and economic inclusion we'd like to highlight some of our key successes firstly our provision for young people has continued to strengthen targeting groups of young people who faced particular disadvantage we have worked closely with colleagues in education and children's services to improve this our adult and community learning service also consistently performs highly against targets set by the community learning service also consistently performs highly against targets set by the GLA with the service delivery very high achievement rates in accredited and non accredited learning and lastly our work on financial resilience is an example of innovation and effective alignment with other council services particularly with the tackling poverty agenda through this area of work we've continued to encourage and influence employers to accredit the Living Wage Foundation however we also face significant challenges which we are working towards mitigating one of these is the need to work as effectively as possible with residents who are economically inactive and who are out of work and not seeking work and who often face significant barriers to employment we've been able to improve our reach to this group but are aware that it is a large cohort with significant needs and we need to continue to make improvements in this area we know that many Lambeth residents struggle with their housing needs and that our support needs to target residents who are in temporary accommodation or unstable housing situations we have worked with housing services to promote our services directly to housing tenants with positive results but we know we need to go further skills and employment services at Lambeth operate in a position of limited funding and resource with significant parts of our funding provided through grants from central government this context makes it important to target our work at those who need it most there are a number of opportunities to make our work even more effective in supporting Lambeth residents these include the opportunity to focus more on supporting residents with complex barriers including those including through the up and coming connect to work fund the opportunity to strengthen our support for young people even further particularly in context of the get written work in white paper which prioritizes this group and lastly the opportunity to further develop our adult learning program and effectively provide further support to residents at all stages of education and career readiness I'll now hand back over to you chair as you indicate to officers to present Thank you very much okay we've had requests to speak from three people we'll start off with Raymond who is online I believe who's a resident who has used training at high trees yes hi can you hear me would you like to you've got three minutes to be can you hear me yes we can thank you perfect so yes my name is Raymond as you've heard I'm originally from Uganda I'm originally from Uganda and I was living in the Lambeth area and last year around March to July of 2024 I received training from lamb from high trees and I was doing an IT course I gained valuable skills incredible skills including soft MS getting more confidence in MS programs and while at high trees I was able to get in touch with the community because being a newcomer and being new to London and England in general I was able to get in touch with different community members from different diversities and this also helped me to gain other skills like interpersonal skills so shortly into my course I was moved by the Home Office to the BBC Stockholm hence which posed a challenge to my education at high trees since this was an in-person course however the high trees team that at the time included Alex and Giuseppe was able to extend to me a laptop which I used to remotely attend classes and I successfully completed my course which I wouldn't have if they didn't extend this service to me I showed my interest to continue learning and continue with the course and they also you know chipped in for me and helped me complete this yes I on top of that I received self-assessment materials that helped me stay engaged during the time on the bird and it also helped me access other services like seek for employment you know attend remote interviews and etc etc so yes that was it the with regards to any recommendations should I get to that yeah anything anything you'd like to recommend yes yes so um one I would like to recommend that an increase in the visibility of the service because it's only that I was searching for something I was searching for education and knowledge that I got in touch with high trees but other than that I would have never so in if there's something that can be done maybe they can increase the visibility of these courses maybe that ASO courses to the groups that actually need them especially new migrants to the country maybe refugees or asylum seekers this can be done directly by targeting them i.e. by through organizations that they meet through or the hostels where they get accommodated in that can help reach more people that actually need the service because I feel like so many people need these services that are provided in order to successfully integrate into the service but most of them do not even know that the services are available to more frequent classes can be provided because for instance at high trees would only have one class and you look and you'll agree with me that if you just have one class a week by the next time you come back you've literally forgotten almost everything and they have to spend like an hour just doing a preamble okay thanks very much um your your time is up really appreciate your contribution thank you let's move on to um steve from the stockholm partnership center you have three minutes can you hear me yes yes excellent okay uh thank you chair um so stockholm partnership was commissioned by the council's employment skills team in august last year um to support parents from disadvantaged communities into work um it's our first commission by the team um but we do have over 25 years of experience of working closely particularly with migrant communities in our neighbourhood in areas such as financial resilience health and wellbeing and employment and here are some of the key points for the council you know i tried to summarize for the council to consider uh number one local support works especially for disadvantaged communities so i think you know but the fact that we're you know organizations such as ours which are place based and have been in communities for a long time but already developed trust and relationships with with people in the area um we have all of our frontline staff are bilinguals so they speak the main local community languages and this has helped us to sort of recruit people into this program quite quickly and also then it helps us to sustain those people through stages of their life sometimes you know so it could be just not more than more than the work finding work uh the second point flexibility around these sort of programs is essential um we've been impressed by the work so far with the employment skills team because they seem to really get this and to understand that you know it's not just about getting somebody straight into work and giving them the employability skills skills like presentation skills and writing writing and job search it's also particularly with parents who quite often face barriers around you know maybe language or you know child care um they have very busy lives they want to spend time with their children they need um a lot of background support as well so helping in areas of financial resilience they're claiming benefits um well-being mental health all these kind of things can be vital to to creating getting them in the right place to not only find but also to stay in the job um in terms of uh you know we understand that a lot of paperwork is needed but in terms of keeping on the flexibility point um we find that if we have to get lots of sensitive information about from parents out in the as soon as soon as they join the program that can often put them off so it's better to try and drip feed that information it after trust has been built up um around flexibility as well we want to get volunteer positions in local employers um sometimes this is not that easy uh and parents are actually quite keen to do it where they think it will be meaningful volunteer positions that might need to work so working with um employers to help them understand the needs of parents and also to give them volunteer places is important the third point i was going to say was that is that peer support is a valuable tool uh we need to connect people to employers and services obviously we also need to connect them to each each other and over the past years our organization stock world partnership has been increasingly moving away from the model of just helping people on individual basis to putting them into peer support groups um where individuals can not only get professional advice from external people but also make friends with each other in their own similar disadvantaged backgrounds um which can have you know we've already demonstrated you know through a thriving stock world program this kind of major effect on well-being motivation happiness financial resilience things like that so so getting that piece of board is critical um so those are our key recommendations that we would like to say about employment programs trying to reach disadvantaged groups uh i was asked to identify any weaknesses but today we haven't really hadn't seen any of those to be honest the response is responsiveness and support of the officers has been fantastic and uh a networking event held in november between service providers was very helpful so i suppose just to finish above all the most important thing for a program like this we see is is connection it's about connecting people to people peer support it's about people to services people to employers but also services to services thank you very much thank you thanks a lot okay now we move on to um anna hello can you hear me yes yeah so um i'm from the bay tree center which is a social inclusion charity that's been supporting women and girls in lambo and from our premises at 300 brixton road for 33 years last year we supported 1200 women and girls all our services are structured around the five pillars of the bay tree bridge which are education employment well-being family and finance and we deliver one-to-one services such as long-term coaching information advice and guidance as well as group workshops and courses we don't have a typical learner but to provide you with a picture uh 90 of our learners were not born in the uk and significant proportions come from the latin american and somali communities a very high proportion have low levels of prior education and many have only been to primary school or may not have been to school at all and they have very low levels of literacy and digital literacy in terms of employment many don't currently work and those that do tend to be in low paid unstable cleaning jobs in addition to low level skills they face lots of other barriers to participating in the workforce including as you've mentioned being vulnerably housed suffering from mental or physical ill health and being carers of children with special educational needs or children who are at risk of criminal exploitation so high levels of uncertainty and stress mean that the women often struggle with attendance with course completion and with retaining information the women choose to learn in our safe all the women who are at risk of all female space for a variety of reasons including historic and current male perpetrated violence and religious and cultural requirements many hear about the center through words of mouth and we've got a strong network of local referral partners including social prescribers gp practices children's centers and schools schools lambeth adult learning um funds several of our beginners and entry-level esor clock english courses and obviously learning english is a critical first step towards active positive participation in the community and ultimately the workforce we provide women who are amongst the most excluded in the borough not just with the english skills but also with improved networks confidence and employability skills the type of employment support that we provide and what constitutes progress will look very different obviously for different women so whilst some will secure jobs during their time with us others will undertake work experience or training with one of our employability partners many gain the english and confidence they need to go on to do more advanced courses elsewhere and for some learning to turn up on time or even organize a file of papers for the first time in their lives is that vital first step in their journey towards work um working with laos has greatly solidified our education provision i'd say um it's enabled us to improve our quality cycle and access excellent training for our staff share best practice with the louse network and it's improved our connection with lambeth council more generally the louse team have always been super collaborative and supportive and it seems as though the louse model of delivering education through community embedded providers um achieves great results um thanks very much contribution um we um you probably see we also had a number of written submissions from raymond steve and connor from department for work and pensions and from richard um but uh which obviously will inform our discussions but are there any direct questions for the witnesses okay let's move on to um members questions i'll start off with one um how do we identify harder to reach individuals who need support in accessing work steps we take um should i cut hi um should i come in and just introduce ourselves very quickly chairs we've got we've got the skills and employment team i think it's best if people introduce themselves as they speak that's what i was going to suggest there's quite a a few of us here but i was going to suggest when when when them colleagues come on they just introduce themselves i know i know i'm i'm a regular here i should i should be a member of it let me um let me let me bring in let me bring in allison uh may who's our assistant director of skills and employment for this question um thanks to bill um from hallow committee so in terms of um how we uh reach out to um those uh residents are most distant from the labor market and maybe potentially from some of our services um i think the witnesses covered um some of those ways we we we do that but also some of the um areas that we still would like to further to develop um so first of all we do that through external referrals so um for both um adult community learning economic inclusion and indeed um youth programs we work closely with the dwp um we also look at other external uh relationships many of our commissioned providers uh as anna and steve talked about um have their own ways of outreaching into the community um and um different programs that will um facilitate uh referral routes um we work very closely and this came through with us through the witnesses uh with other services within the council um so actually raymond touched on one of the recommendations around improving uh referrals for those seeking esol we work very closely with the sanctuary forum and the sanctuary seeking team uh around supporting uh sanctuary seekers into um adult community learning and and other programs as well um when you look into the paper things like connect to work which is addressing the economically inactive um that um very much will be connections with adult social care um children service colleagues um we uh make sure we market and promote our courses in uh other uh council facilities so children centers libraries are very important um and then particularly for our young people we have kind of more uh i suppose dynamic uh ways of uh engaging with them so that may be through our social media channels like lamb of made of course we talk about in the paper b lamberth do we actually um work in schools with young people who are at risk of becoming neat for example when they're say 14 or 15. absolutely so we work firstly work um mostly with education and children service colleagues to identify uh those young people um lamb of made and if you want to know more i'll bring in nicola here um have um networks with career leads we have the career network where we get career leads in regularly from all schools uh to network with our vcs organizations employers etc um so there is a established regular um process that through that through lab we've made so we provide um kind of work experience and placements and so on for say 14 15 year olds um we support schools in understanding how to do that and having the connections with employers nicola i don't know if you want to come in here and explain a bit more um around kind of nexus and other programs yeah happy to come in um uh hello everyone i'm nicola mclean the head of skills and employment for young people at the council um so we do have one of the work streams um as part of lamb have made is raising aspirations and skills which is our school-based work stream which works with young people 11 to 16. so within that work stream we have mentoring programs for young people at risk of becoming neat uh we have sports-based uh programs as well so we have mentoring and rugby we also have a work experience program and all of these are delivered by our community organizations so um spiral skills delivers our work experience uh careers program in schools um school of hard knocks delivers the rugby and sports um and eet group delivers our risk of neat mentoring program we are also um for careers week in march we are developing an all schools careers fair um and that will target year 10 students so we'll be bringing employers from our growth sectors um and other industries um that are able to offer work experience pro um opportunities to our young people um and the young people will get an opportunity to meet them in march and kind of network with employers um uh that have work experience opportunities for them uh for their year 10 work experience so yeah we are doing quite a lot in our schools thank you very much i'll open up to questions so i've got um i wanted to respond to allison penny brianna did i see nicole sorry sorry did i see your hat oh did i see ben's hat i'm going to bend first i'm not going to i'm not going to give away and then it's cold did you want to come in after that okay yeah before you move on i just wanted to add a little bit more on to um the response to your question which was a really important one is that um we are restructuring our skills and employment board as well as we've got additional funding um through the connect to work um fund so we're looking across the board in terms of growth and strategy where we're looking at a single point of access so that you know if someone applies for a job so that we're not um duplicating the work that we're doing and people aren't doing bits for the same cohort um at the same time so we're looking at how um you know um people that seek employment if they go on the website say b land of website it triages them to the right support and every show i'm sure i'm sure we'll come on to that okay so um allison uh two questions is that all right yeah yeah yeah thank you um so i do face-to-face advice in a number of food bank hubs across land but it's the 40 plus euros and i'm sorry sorry first off i wanted to say to raymond um inspirational really to hear that thank you very much for coming on as a witness and his experience um and i i was interested to note that it's the connectivity in his community that actually showed that he got the results that he wanted and i've come across other people um probably about five or so in the last few months of the 40 plus who were still finding a struggle to get through to the portal and then trying to navigate their way through it so i wondered if we could unpack that a little bit more um and secondly um i won't mention his name but um a very senior architect who suffers from a debilitating disease um who's not in my ward but i came across at a breakfast club um when we're looking at point 9.1.3 um strategic focus towards support targeted at helping individuals with complex barriers i wondered what timeline there was on that he was very keen to get back to work clearly has a huge amount of talent but just needs that additional support and i wondered when i'll be able to tell him that actually that might be available and there are work coaches available particularly um at our job centers like stretton job center they have work coaches um for different age groups young people over 50s and those with disabilities and mental health and with the connect to work fund we're also hoping um to work across the board with um nhs trust um develop that support for people who need it and that um for example in streatham job center they'll go to interviews with them and they'll assist them and they'll help them with application and job search um so we hope to expand on that and look at as i said before what others are doing so we don't duplicate and we streamline um what we're doing in terms of support but officers might want to add to that yeah thank you councillor cameron i'll take the connect to work question and then i'll pass on to jackie for the 40s and 50s plus uh support if that's okay councillors um so on connect to work so we're actually actively in discussions at the moment with our sub-regional partnership central london forward so the way the connect to work program is going to work as part of the devolution deal that london is negotiating the sub-regional partnerships will be the lead accountable bodies and so we have to enter into a contract with them in order to draw down the funding so we're actively in discussions with them at the moment and the hope is the hope is that we'll be able to sign a contract this side of um the new financial year with a view that the new five-year program kicks off from april but it is still a moving feast i would say as you can imagine there's a lot of uh toing and froing still going on um so i wouldn't want to sort of commit to that date but it's definitely um sooner rather than later um is the intention to sort of kick start that program i'll pass i'll pass over to jackie to answer your other question if that's okay councillor thank you nabil um and to pick up on the the point from um councillor english jones around the age demographic with the people accessing the advice services and the links to employment support uh through our recent uk spf grant program one of the target groups that we've been working with have been economically in active residents so doing more in terms of outreach and co-location with those services is something that's been happening more and it is certainly on the agenda um moving forward when we look at the age demographic and i don't have the exact figures but can look into those and share them afterwards we've been working proactively with department for work and pensions they've been getting together some groups of 50 plus residents um for us to engage with and certainly through the connecting communities program which was the uh precursor to our current uk spf delivery i believe around 40 percent of the outcomes were residents who were 40 or 45 plus um but i can look back at that data and provide that specifically for you so we are very conscious and in fact the dwp claimant rate data um tells us that alongside all the work that uh nicola and team are doing with young people um the age group that actually recovered the slowest and is still the most impacted from covid is 35 plus uh so there is an equal and opposite amount of work going going into that what we are tending to find is that it's not so much necessarily the services that need to be different the services that we deliver are all um highly personalized and it's very difficult to say kind of across the board what and what a a particular older age group needs so rather than having specific programs that are for 50 plus or older residents it's really about the team being skilled and equipped in understanding what individual needs are and finding opportunities for them um so if it would be helpful we can go back and bring some specific data about the kind of 45 plus i think was the connecting communities age group um but we very much recognize that this is a a group that needs supporting and are working proactively to to engage those like i said through co-location with advice services uh through sessions with department for work and pensions we do see that those coming through the portal tend to be um not necessarily as much from an older age group so that's why there's a focus more on the outreach delivery and going to where people are rather than expecting them to come to us through just through the digital uh processes that we have thank you do you want to follow up at all no no thank you okay um annie hi um i just wanted to make a couple of observations first i thought this is a really good report and i thought it was really good before for the recognition of of inequalities and realizing the challenges that there are and i really liked the um working with housing services and and um jumping with that so my question is um about 1.3.3 um you're saying about the national challenges to getting data um i really love the hyper local activity data especially around the number of people who live on council estates who are affected by unemployment etc i'd like to see more of that but what are the national challenges yeah sure i'll um i'll start with that if that's okay um and then i'll bring in ruth for the sort of specific land birth data but at a national level this is the real concern actually and it's not just a concern for skills and employment services it's actually a there's a macroeconomic concern even the bank of england has waded into the into this debate in recent um months and that's because the data that we're getting the labor market information um has has has been proven uh to be not so accurate let's just say so the ons are revising some of their methodology and this is having huge implications not just for us as local service providers but also um for hm treasury and sort of modeling what the future um needs are going to be for our for for some of our um labor market intervention so you're absolutely right to pick on that and um and and sort of ask more questions on it because this is this is a genuine concern across the piece i think what we're trying to do locally is we're trying to triangulate with some of the data that we have locally and this is where i'll bring in ruth because i think that's the best we can do given given the ons are changing some of the methodology uh definitions at national level ruth do you want to just touch on some of our local work on this yeah thanks nabil um and just to introduce myself and ruth principal employment and skills officer in the skills and employment team um and as nabil said there's a couple of sort of national challenges particularly around that ons data and in particular where it comes to those groups who we're really trying to reach a lot of it is to do with who's responding who's responding to surveys who's engaging with national data collection um and disadvantaged groups might be less likely to do that so that's obviously a very key concern for us locally in lambeth um what we've been doing as a result is trying to understand um as much as we can unpick locally so putting together data sets um that our other council services have um and other sort of partners have um and in the example i think one of the things that hopefully we can sort of extrapolate from more widely is that that housing data does really show um some of those particular particular inequities locally and so where we can do that we can get a really sort of neighborhood sense um of what the data is telling us and then use that to tell a bit more of a broader story across the borough and so that's our sort of that's our hope with that data collection thank you uh no thank you thank you i just wanted to ask very quickly are you going out to youth hubs within council estates especially tmo managed council estates we have done um job fairs on estates and we've let you know some of the estates um quite welcome it so we have um like vacancies um like people come organizations i mean set up a table and we've had that and that usually um goes across the board we also um have um job offers at um the country show as well so but that's the wider demographic and we're not sure whether they're all from lambeth or not because it's so wild but um yeah we have done it in the past not so we haven't been as robust lately and that's something to be considered because i think what we're looking at is having more bigger scale like in the town hall or at the oval and stuff like that so that we have more wider bigger spread and um variety of um employers thank you mariana brilliant um uh first of all i should say it's really good report and um we're always in scrutiny of data and so i was really pleased i could only spot one area that um i couldn't find any data and that was on responsible procurement so i had no outcomes but just a narrative um my questions really um some have been answered so i won't go over them um but um i i got a sense that um even when we were talking about sort of difficult hard to reach groups that doesn't necessarily equate to the lowest sort of rung of of of jobs and i think one would do a fantastic job but i think we could increase our ambition in terms of access to a variety of jobs and i've worked with um trusts like the guys at thomas's they've worked with us but targeting sort of a range of jobs that are very the low end of the spectrum so we've got kids that are presenting in difficult circumstances but they're not because you don't know what you don't know they're often very bright but they're not given the access to employers sort of middle tier and even top tier jobs and apprenticeships and all manner of different jobs like for example a typical hospital trust has between 200 and 300 jobs and our schools know very little of about about the different sort of jobs so my question is and i think marcia touched on it is um what are we doing with employers to actually get them to demystify the whole range of work that they offer so it's not just plugging the gap to quarters or cleaners or uh but actually it's looking for um x-ray and um technicians uh you know a whole raft of jobs and um and then um and also can i just quickly say uh shout out to high trees and bay tree who just do phenomenal work and um i've had not access directly with them but with service users who access their services that's fantastic i wish we could replicate that across um lambeth could do more of that um could i also ask about the um over 50s in that i think we need a much different offering in terms of range of of because they already have transferable skills from work um how are we get gearing them up to say um be sort of savvy about ai and just new new work programs that they could access because often they feel that they can't go back to what they've been doing things have moved on and how are we skilling them up for the new challenges of the future one of the things um that is really good questions and we've already started the work in terms of um medtech and we're looking at growth um in terms of our growth and so um and life science so there is um apprenticeship schemes that and um training that get young people and um of different and people of different ages into um that life science medtech mirror and we've also we've already had cohorts that have been through the program and i mean it does raise um their income as well in terms of not going in at the lower level and some of the young people um that have seen how much they'll get paid by operating some of the machinery in um medtech and life science are quite blown away and they tell their friends but we're just at the beginning of it and it's been successful and i'm sure officers will talk more on it so yeah thank you the over 50s point yeah yeah yeah yeah thank you councillor cameron um i mean just firstly just to pick up on your response to procurement data point we can get you that we do have that data so we can we can follow up that as an action if that's helpful um just to build on councillor cameron's point let me bring in matt to talk about isc1 work and then we'll cover off the over 50s question as well thanks nabil um yeah so nabil mentions sc1 for those who don't know this is a partnership that lambeth and southwark councils have created with king's college london um and the nhs trusts uh in in across lambeth and southwark it's all about um trying to grow the number of health and life science jobs um in in our areas but also connecting local people better to the opportunities that arise from them um we've used uk shared prosperity funds to do some new work in this area um i will bring in my colleague ruth in a moment to to explain a bit more about that but as marcia mentioned medtech is a particular specialism within our health and life science economy um and on the uh st thomas's campus there's a brand new institute for medtech it's called the london institute of health healthcare engineering got globally leading um startups and uh major companies collaborating with clinicians and the university there so really kind of cutting edge economy stuff um and through uk shared prosperity fund we've taken first steps in introducing local residents to what that economy is all about the range of different job roles and so on i'll bring in ruth just to um explain a bit more about that perfect thanks matt um yeah i'm very much sort of emerging projects that we've been able to fund through the uk shared prosperity fund but i think quite exciting ones um particularly looking at that point that was mentioned around demystifying some of those careers we're very aware that's something that's really important in terms of getting um sort of more disadvantaged residents into those growth sectors is that they may not know what those careers look like they may not feel like they're accessible to them or that they're able to take those first steps um so in particular one of the things that we've been doing with um the london institute of healthcare engineering that matt mentioned is providing some work experience opportunities to young people who have been able to learn about those medtech opportunities that's really shown i think the value of getting those young people in that sort of first step um and they've also been producing some engagement tools and videos that can be shared more widely with schools and with young people that are coming from that young people's voice which i think also um really hopefully helps break down some of those barriers so that's very much an early an early sort of example of the kind of things that we're trying we're starting to do with life sciences as a particular growth sector but a lot of opportunities there i think so yeah just to add one final point there was that's the sort of um first example of particularly around life science and medtech that this is very much building on a growth sector stream of work that we've had in place for a few years now so um members of the committee that um were here this time last year talking about skills and employment might have heard about the elevate program which has been working for a long time um with leading employers in the creative industries um and at the moment we're creating um quite a large number of paid internships for local residents in the creative sectors as well as doing many other employment skills activities and you'll also see referenced in the paper some really fantastic work that's been done by the council around the green economy particularly with the um lambert london south bank colleges group um sustainable ventures various of the partners in that green economy um space thank you um on to bed thank you very much indeed i'll echo the comments of my colleagues i think this is a very impressive report and the um the testimony from from the various witnesses and the written evidence received um only seeks to to augment that so well done um i just want to touch upon the corporate uh the core corporate ppi six of them um five have been hit some of them smashed which is very impressive um and so the first question would be what's going to be what's going to be done to kind of try for um strive for um strive for more um and and with the the failed kpi which relates residents i've been engaged with in regards to the growth sector programs specifically um is there a reason you know kind of why this has happened is there any kind of learning that can be gathered from that um yeah be kind of really useful to know those those two things within the growth sector i mean um the um government has now um got um a london growth plan um which um hasn't been finalized but a lot of consultation has gone into that so um the the actual finished product isn't quite ready yet um in tangent to that we've got our local um growth plan and which we're formulating so at the moment out of government there's so many different moving parts where they're consulting with us um and we are seen as trailblazing in some of our areas in um how we um assist people um into employment particularly um with our young people but perhaps i can hand over um to matt or the bill to um delve deeper into the response yeah sure let me let me let me pass straight over to matt that thanks to bill yeah on the corporate kpis um thank you for that question yeah the the one area we're read in is as you've rightly pointed out is that growth sectors area that's really down to um the fact that a lot of the live projects that we have up and running now have been commissioned through um the uk shared prosperity fund um and rather than take a a kind of blanket approach um to the commissioning process is quite a lot of um bespoke projects uh with smaller scale organizations which came through from the witness statements is one of the kind of features of the way we work sometimes that means that things take slightly longer to get going um and and in this case that that's basically where we are but we expect to hit those targets by the end of the year so um we are quite confident of turning that one green pretty soon where we look like we have smashed or you know really substantially overachieved targets um there's a couple of points to note there one is which sometimes we win funding during the year so um where is the adult community learning service for example we're pretty sure at the beginning of the year how much money we'll get from the gla uh in other parts of the program we might competitively apply for funding during the year if we have a win um that can then kind of expand our delivery and lead to us overachieving in the case of the advice services that was a kind of completely different way of commissioning to the way that we've done before and so yeah we we were sort of setting that target for the first time the services are up and running they've been overwhelmed with with demand and i think in in setting the target for next year we'll we'll adjust our target upwards um and yeah you probably won't see the amount of overachievement there this time last year because we'll we'll be a year into the process and know um what's a more kind of realistic and challenging target to set and just to say that um some of the targets are part of um our application for funding and um some of the targets um particularly in um adult learning is set by the gla thank you i've seen six six screen next year do you want to do you don't come back yeah sorry nicole is next yeah and yeah thank you very much for the report and thank you to everybody for taking the time to come and speak to us tonight as well um it's very very interesting hearing and reading about everything um and i'm just going to raise three points one of which is i've worked as a job coach in the past and tried to find things on the lambeth websites and there's a lot of them and it's quite hard to mind the thing i'm just wondering and i've mentioned this before but if there's a way of actually somehow making that communication easier people to find all the various offers all the amazing stuff that goes on in the summer um it can be quite difficult to find it or actually receive it as well some one of the things we're looking at and the team are looking at is um you're quite right we need to um do better in terms of how we get that information out and one of the things we're doing is we're developing a strategy just to address that um it's called the rs um vp raising and showcasing visibility plan where we're looking at all what you're saying in all across the board all different areas in how we can promote more effectively and what we're doing but there's other ways that we do get out there um through our partners and in other ways as as they said in um schools and libraries and job centers career services i think it's whatever you do to get that information out so you're talking about making the land but we're a bit more accessible anyway it'll be through the the youth class as well because i mean there's no need to these so that's like putting especially young people work some it's actually linking things together um you don't have to go to too many places to find things and yeah if um then that's going to be interesting to see how that progresses um others comment on the uh 5.5 supported employment of course numbers is very very low in the number of um learning disabled residents we have in employment it's only three percent or at least um and that's acknowledged to me um but is it is these getting any better because i know that the um office are very aware of this i know you're aware of this and that various um programs have been in place but are they effective and is there a target are we across it's on average seven percent of young people and adults with learning disabilities are in work and so lambert is very very low it's one got the lowest to think across um so what is there a target in place um and what is happening because this has to change really quickly so can we hear a bit more about that's a really um good point yeah again um with um the connect to work fund this is one of the groups that we're actually um prioritizing um because we um you know want to make improvement in in that area so um we're looking at um organizations that we already have on board um that have um really got a good track um record and increasing um their capabilities um to take on um bigger cohorts because they have been deemed successful in in areas um but i'll hand that over to no just can i just add to that um i think they're talking about um individuals with send i thought i thought it was very impressive the um uh the the section on the project search supported internship for young people with send but of course you're only talking about like basically the health sector but also um about um the also the the um support for for deaf individuals but talking about quite a small cohort now do we have really echoing um nicole's point could we have ambitions to extend that to other sectors because um it strikes me that um that's a superb scheme but actually our ambition is is too low at the moment and that's why we're doing the mapping um exercise chair where we're looking across the board because we know that the voluntary sector and um nhs trusts are supporting people also and um looking at um neighboring boroughs as well and working together so we are carrying out that mapping exercise as part of the connect to work fund so that we're more streamlined in support in um that those um people with send and others as well that um we see as a priority as well learning from best practice and when when officers answer that this question sets the questions and are we known for best practice in other boroughs where should be important always because always because through um london forward which is a cluster of um local authorities we share information on what works what doesn't work and we actually speak to each other and we work cross borough so i believe we are but i'm not saying that improvements can't be made there's always improvements and that can be made too which we'll do through our mapping exercise and looking at provisions across the board but we already have those solid partnerships and with other local authorities i just i've got one example of um actually um you do fantastic work but i know the team is quite stretched and i know for example with um guys and st thomas's trust uh the heads of widening participation invited me to the ward ceremony with assisted for an assisted learning program which wasn't just um the healthcare center it was like hilton different employers and it was in southwark and um and she was saying how difficult it was to engage with lambeth because you would put out a call and you didn't have any response so they all the people that they had going through there that they had actually had on a year-long placement were from southwark so a part of of um you know that sort of deep dive with our employers to find out what they're already doing needs to happen there sort of needs to be connectivity and also we have things like lambeth school partnership um and again i've had people saying that they've contacted them and not had the responses and we've missed a trick in terms of what's going on you know outside of our control that would benefit our our own um rest of other employers you mean yeah yeah yeah because um because um because i because i want to come on the back of that because we we seem to do an awful lot with um i do secure employment and training opportunities through section 106 and our responsible procurement policy but it's how engaging other employers who who we don't have direct connection with i mean i thought i really like the reverse jobs fair approach mentioned in the paper uh i mean do we are you know are we actively engaging other employers and and uh actually um providing them advice about how to take on hard to reach individuals you know and offering maybe i don't know um can we pay jobs or wage subsidies you know in work support to actually make the process of taking harder to reach individuals into their workplace and just encouraging them to pursue that are we doing doing more we have paid employment so yeah we have paid employment and for them where um we support them with payment in some of our schemes um i've lost my 12 now it counts the camera is it is it worth um i think i know officers are keen to respond to many of these points and i'm going to go to to jacqueline fogler first across actually all the areas and we really are very much engaged in that that initial agenda you talked about is is those huge barriers to entry to employment um for residents with disabilities so i'm going to go to jacqueline fogler first to talk about some of those programs and some of those challenges around working with employers and and and upscaling thank you uh so i mean thanks for recognizing one of the projects that you know for my area of work i'm probably most proud of which is project search which is in its third year now um and project search was a good place to start with this work because it's an internationally recognized and well-known model that as you've picked up does tend to focus on public sector organizations that have quite big workforces and are able um and sometimes accustomed to supporting people with higher needs um what we have done in this uh next year which really kind of leans into what you were saying um for this year the program as well as the public sector bodies has brought together a number of um initially employers where we have that leverage we have the section 106 we have the responsible procurement opportunities and as well as internships that we're looking at within the council and we've actually coined a new project search phrase of externships where we are acting as the umbrella host but we have project search placements within some of our section 106 employers some of our community partners and bounce back have taken on placement orange bow which is a charity have taken on a placement so we are already looking beyond and kind of innovating beyond the typical um grounds of project search which is the public sector bodies um with as i think uh councillor masters pointed out guys and st thomas's do have a supported employment program a few years ago they were actually a project search site but moved outside of the project search model and have set up their own program i wasn't aware of there being any calls out i suspect that might have been to another part within the council um around their program but where um guys in st thomas's have a section 106 agreement for the evelina there's been a big expansion of the hospital there one of the first things that we have spoken to them about is bringing together our supported employment program and there is their supported employment offer um as one of the commitments through that connect work um to pick up on the kind of limitations of the age range of the send programs and project search um and are we increasing the focus of that moving forward connect work which we've mentioned a few times and which is the new dwp program that will run over five years 75 of that is focused on expanding the individual placement support model that is typical for people with mental health conditions but 25 of that program is delivered to the through the supported employment accredited accredited quality framework so that gives us a really big opportunity to expand the work that we've been doing and project search has given us a really good grounding and a good baseline to work from but not only is it our intention to expand but the funding that we have secured um actually requires that we expand that in terms of employer engagement uh in terms of the ages of people that we are working with and adult social care have been sort of first and and foremost in the conversations around uh getting into day centers speaking to um adults who are known to them recognizing that really low reported employment rate for people with learning disabilities it is probably also worth mentioning um that the silent hands program that was in there that is focused on deaf residents will be expanding the parameters to be working with residents with um a a wider set of needs and um also worth mentioning that although we are not um disputing that employment rate is low there are we understand from adult social care a lot of challenges around getting that data um so yes it is definitely an area of focus for us um the work that we have coming forward through connect to work provides us a really good platform to build on the excellent work that's been done so far in supported employment i'm just diving quickly um the um connor from dwp um in his submission he mentioned something about difficulties in co-locating work coaches with some things like children's centers and family hubs and so forth um what was that about do you recognize that as being a problem because obviously to increase awareness of um the skills employment and training that's available obviously co-location is an excellent way of doing that so are there barriers that we are experiencing in in achieving that if i can just pick up on that because recognizing uh having read through connor's statement i we had a conversation with the skills and employment officer who's been involved in those conversations and i think probably the most important thing to note is the last part of the statement that says the traction is now starting to be made certainly from our perspective since we've been involved in those conversations and there's been a bit of a change in the way that dwp are delivering and it has taken some time to kind of realign the models and understand uh how that will work in terms of the children's centers but from our perspective and you know i know that you heard from steve from the stockwell partnership earlier on around the parental employment program which is co-locating in children's services and providing employment support in family hubs um it's definitely something that's on a positive um uptick and and positive progress has been made some of the things that were in the statement were not necessarily conversations that we've been involved in but i have picked up with connor separately to understand where there may be other specific issues that we can support with but certainly in the context of children's centers as we heard from the stockwell partnership earlier on there is co-location happening and happening successfully to make sure that we're supporting the residents accessing those services okay well there's just one point that was missed and it was that how um are um people send supported in workplaces and with the new connect to work fund um employers actually have to um go through a framework assessment to enable them to understand um when the people when the people send come in how to manage them and um support them in their employment okay so we i've got uh nicole mariana the nanny thank you uh because that's so picking up on that a little because it's actually really really important for employer gets the support as well as the employee exactly it's certainly with um young life work with have learning disabilities they need one-to-one support in um and they'll also possibly need an assisted travel um program to to work through but also flexible working so why you find an employer who is prepared to be very very flexible and a bit around in that space um and that that level of support the ceiling from maybe job culture or work yeah um and is i know this is just not source responsibility there's lots of organizations which are involved in this um but it's actually about having sufficient resources to for that level of vision and i just wanted to raise one other point which is actually um like the pre-employment stage actually being able to encourage the person to offer um work placements and work experience just for three months or six months or a year so that the person can gain confidence and actually learn what it means in it you learn so much it's huge to do that and then the employer can also find out for themselves whether or not they're able to um sustain that sort of offer for a longer period of time and that would be an offer for uh school and college um as i call it school and college okay um right um very honored you're you're just linked it's sort of linked yes in that um uh one thing that i'm finding is that schools are under pressure uh to to signpost children for workplace uh for work work experience and they just don't have that i mean in the old days i think there was much more a parent network um so you've got work experience because so-and-so's parent knew so-and-so or they were working in a certain industry and these links are of are quite precarious schools don't have the resource so can we work perhaps on a with partners that we have on a on a sort of register of so we can we can actually scope out uh where work experience is and then provide it to and help schools because one of the things that often happens is there's huge numbers of children that don't get work experience um and also there are some organizations sorry i refer to the health sector because that's the i know best in that they have they want young people to be interested and to follow different pathways but then it may not because of health and safety be able to provide work experience but what they would like are different options of perhaps like an open day so i organized one at guys guys um hospital where i brought in lambeth youth counselor counselors and autism voice and um some asylum seekers and they were sort of had different departments talk to them about different um parts of the of the nhs and i'm hoping to do that in a school dunraven um and i'd love if i could speak to officers about help to do that so that we can get because i've i've also twisted steve reed here so that he would um come and and and you know come along as well but we should pull all the levers that we have because we've got mps that have um quite quite sort of senior roles in in government to actually help employers contribute to our schools and and demystify the jobs that are there okay and is your point any along the same lines or something different not particularly let's so any response to those two two questions yeah i think i'll come back to that uh marianne if that's okay i mean we we always welcome any additional signposting that you can do so i mean i think the team do a grand job in in in sort of maximizing our own networks but if you if you come across or if you you can sort of open doors for us we will always welcome that we're always open for a conversation okay um annie i think it's similar anyway it was just um i i get quite excited when i get my b lambeth emails above my young person and um that they're getting more and more interesting and more and more exciting this week we had the names of ralph loren and rio ferdinand foundation and some other opportunities which of course are very exciting and they're paid internships but i was wondering did the same um you know the parameters we have like would careful if if somebody was going to go for this ralph loren paid internship would somebody would their priorities be the same as we have like if a care leaver went for it that would be the priority or is it different and is it more more is it more for um all of london or all of the country these paid internships or are they specifically lambeth that's a really good question um i think um with the b lambeth website it's um um for our employers um that offer section 106 um funding it could be made lamberth i get made so we have a lamberth website job website and we have b lamberth b lamberth is predominantly um for our partners i'll just come in on that and so yeah it was the lambeth made newsletter so i'm really glad that your young person's receiving that um so that opportunity that specific opportunity is um available to any young person but what we do have is our next us program that is funded through uk spf and that that program is to support it's a targeted neat program so it's a young person that's not in education employment or training but needs to have an additional barrier and so a care leaver a young person known to the criminal justice service etc um the internships that we've created through that program are ring fence to young people on that program and the reason why we do that is because the if they're if they're on the nexus program they get allocated a link worker and that person supports them with kind of cv writing interview skills employability support um they also go on a pre-employment boot camp for two weeks um so it's a lot of kind of um prep to prepare them for the internship opportunities that we've created all of the internships are a minimum of 16 hours um a week and they're all paid at london living wage um and they're with within our creative sector within lambeth um just picking up on a previous point for these internships all of the employers also receive training and support during the the six-month placement because these are young people that are furbors from the labor market um as it is a targeted neat program and we know that the employers do need that additional support um so they get training from our speech and language therapist team around you know how some young people may communicate understanding and understanding that they get trauma-informed training um uh and and lots of a package of training that comes with it that they have to do before taking on that young person we we you know we pay the wages and that's something that's great you know an opportunity for them and and they're quite keen but we make it quite clear that they have to do the training first and they have to take on young people from within our program um and so while that young person's on their six-month internship they've got the link worker there as well supporting them through that thank you okay um and going on to deeper um thank you chair um i also wanted to pass on my thanks to officers for the reports and also to um the public speakers as well i was uh particularly pleased to hear from the bay tree center representative having seen firsthand the difference that your work makes um to some of my constituents so thank you very much um what one of my um first of my two questions was around the data it was really good to see um the data presented on the people being reached through the various programs by protected characteristics such as ethnicity and gender i wondered to what extent it's been possible to do any intersectionality analysis to see what are the overlaps between some of those protected characteristics i feel that's a very relevant um discussion to be having on this topic which is about reaching the most disadvantaged people in our borough and my second question was on the section 106 again i was really pleased to see that content in the report um it seems like a lot of value is being unlocked by the council in order to progress our emissions in relation to employment skills and training although i couldn't help but think there is more to come so i just wondered what were some of the results that you wanted to see in 2025 that perhaps to date hasn't been realized thus far in relation to section 106 and this topic thank you chair okay i'm going to um ask a response to that but i just want to shove in my last question which was around we've heard some really good feedback from residents about the quality of the training they've received and we've we've got some really good performance data against targets you've set yourself but have we actually um sought to evaluate um what um people who've received the training actually think about the training and how they think it might be improved i mean we have obviously good anecdotal um feedback but have we got any uh anonymized feedback from users of our services to actually get a sense of um whether it's meeting their needs sure i'll start off with the 106 question if that's okay and then i'll bring in i'll bring in um the team for the other two so on the on the 106 question sorry to be rather glib but i think what i would say is we just need more housing delivery and more mixed use scheme coming forward in the borough which then means that we can negotiate some of these 106 agreements with with um the developers that are bringing these schemes forward so that will be my one big ask for 2025 uh through all the other work that we'll hear about uh potentially later when we come onto the key guarantee scheme allowing us to actually unlock more delivery um in the borough which then allows this team the employment and skills team to go out and get us a really good sort of 106 agreement negotiated with said said developer so that that'll be my rather glib answer as to what more we can expect in 2025 but let me let me bring in ruth on the data question because that's a very that's a key question you've just asked about intersectionality and one that we are constantly uh trying to address as a team so let me bring in ruth to address that question in particular thanks nabil and yes absolutely um a key point and a really useful question around that sort of intersectionality of data um it's something that we are really working to ensure we can get as consistent as possible and you can see from the report we have demographic data all across our programs um in some cases that's um slightly sort of driven by the funding in terms of the specific questions we ask residents um but we're trying to make sure that we have as much data as we possibly can collect um we can so we can sort of cross-reference and understand for example um people's health conditions or disabilities and the length of the lengths of sort of unemployment or support that they've needed um we also have a lot of data particularly on our young people's programs around the sort of more granular priority groups that we want to be supporting so you know we've talked about project search but also groups like care experience young people um and other groups who have those sort of multiple barriers and so that's something that we're really working to collect as much as we possibly can um because that's definitely a sort of area we want to be targeting our programs um and it is something that we are very aware sort of building into our strategy in future and making sure that we're not just sort of looking at those priority groups on one level but that we're bringing them together um as a full piece thanks ruth and then chair your question on evaluation we do we do a number of evaluations but i think it'd be helpful if we focus on one specific one and expand that out for the for the for the purpose of the committee so let me bring in leslie who can talk to you about adult community learning evaluation thank you uh thanks nabil um and for the question yeah so i would say so learner voice um is intrinsic to everything that we do um so you know all all the provision is you know entirely sort of built around learners needs so starting you know right from the outset um um we will often get referrals from our partners um so a housing association or a hostel um you know and we'll be told that um learners require a certain type of learning but actually um when we talk to learners they often need they're not quite ready to do that and they often need something totally different so learners um we will jointly decide even what type of learning you know um learners need to engage and inspire them and then the curriculum offer is flexed throughout the year so we work with you know some of the borough's residents who are furthest from learning and from the labour market um and move them through um so that at some point um learners are then you know more job ready um and so you know we we we work with learners and um design pre-employment training for example um to equip them to take up ring fenced vacancies um working in partnership with job center plus and so we're co-located in the job centers for that so we get great referrals from them um so whatever the learning so whether it's english math digital skills or whether it's a very entry level you know working in a hostel um the the type of offer that will engage and inspire people and get people out of bed you know so whether it's digital photography or whether it's filmmaking it's something that will enable people to engage in purposeful activity so we start with that whatever they're learning so throughout their learning journey from the sort of very initial stages through to progressing on to further non-accredited learning and then doing the english getting the math skills getting digital skills and moving maybe into employment and throughout that whole learning journey and we constantly talk to learners and get their opinion on the quality of the provision we get suggestions on how we can do things differently what we can do more of and we do that through a variety of ways through through learner surveys for example through um learner forums so each of our provider partners holds learner forums um and the service as a whole holds cross partnership learner forums so every three months or so and we get really useful feedback learners get involved and you know so learners will help to design the learner handbook for example learners will input into safeguarding arrangements what will make that clearer safer um how we can improve the support to enable people to get into employment so it's a key part of our work and the adult learning service service is also subject to ofsted um and we're funded by the gla so as you can imagine there is quite a lot of um continuous evaluation that's good that's very reassuring thanks very much that's that's good to know okay i want to draw this now to a close uh and seek to um come up with a chair can i just put your attention to one of the comments um here three nights item request to know how long this item was last and she's been given 10 minutes she has a disabled daughter oh right no i'm just i'm just now going to um run through the recommendations okay okay so um uh so tell me if you want to uh change any of these so so first of all to ensure we support secondary schools to signpost disadvantaged young people to um tailor support such as work placements and other work experience mariana's point um to um increase awareness of the employment and skills and training available um through partnering with with a with local and a wider range of organizations to support the hardest to reach individuals such as um migrant groups parent groups um and also um encouraging as much co-location with um family hubs children centers and uh leaving care services as possible and i add just to increase that awareness um it was actually i can't read my eyesight so bad uh but there was mention a mention of uh those from the criminal justice can we add stats yeah yes i started talking and and yeah and and so so ranges including um offender management um offender offender support so ex-offender support services services yeah okay um and then the support internship point which just takes steps to extend the support internships to other sectors and employers um and you and duplicate best practice from other boroughs yeah just to get to um make the numbers website more accessible easier to find the offers available employment skills and training um to seek to engage more land worth employers um particularly those without a direct relationship with the council to take on disadvantaged individuals through um encouragement the targeted use of support such as wage subsidies temporary paid jobs and in work support uh and perhaps do that through the bids and through job center plus which i think the point that um uh the guy from dwp made and um provide osc with more data on the outcomes from our responsible procurement policy and that's that's what i had anything else i've missed i was going to say raymond uh thank you um oh i thought we would be roger's theorist um but it would be yeah that we might be able to take a recommendation for what anna's saying here incentivizing employers yes flexible school hours local work okay so something about incentivizing local land within employers to take on uh take on um hard to reach individuals through um flexibility in terms of well it kind of ties in with a responsible procurement because i think anyone that's benefiting from a contract we need to have much more detail and it should also be ranked so the bigger the contract you have the more you should provide so i don't mind you know yeah and to be fair the paper did actually report did actually kind of say that they're having some difficulty in um actually you've asked you know having a centralized approach but we could say do more to um to monitor report on the social value outcomes and contractors through a more centralized approach but recognizing you know the financial difficulties uh that all our services is obviously um face at the moment and and uh any any additional burdens obviously have have cost implications okay anything and raymond who was our i'd like to endorse what his recommendations were um i did make a note of them um can't see it now but so um more access to um other services more visibility of the service the point the point i think we just made yeah okay i'll go through them just in case we have this look sanctuary seeker services more frequent classes yeah again that's resources issue i think i mean the visibility i was not trying to mention that yeah that's right streamlining the the different offerings because we got confused was it lambeth made or was it uh and and also i think another missing piece is could there be perhaps only for people that have benefited from it some sort of online um forum that they access into their experiences of work because a lot of what i hear from employers is that regardless of what we put them through in school they're just not ready for the reality of work so something that we could some sort of service that we could provide for say six months into your job that you've got access to this sort of chat that's overseen by someone and to give advice or you know oh you don't know whether we have that i mean i i think that in terms of the um streamlining i think that's partly an issue about the accessibility of the website isn't it in terms of you know it's a bit all over the place yeah yeah information yeah absolutely and and providing that as a problem okay um i'm gonna close this item down now because we have another item which was yeah uh well i just wanted to say that i'd like to see more hyper local data included in reports like this and other reports for osc okay yeah absolutely so so add that to the terms of the point but more data about outcomes also my point was about the data of greater sophistication of the analysis people we reach from a intersectionality intersectionality level have you got that intersectionality yeah okay there's several points on data so we just just got to capture that okay thank you very much well thank you very much um martia thank you very much officers online very much appreciate it and thanks very much for a very comprehensive and uh detailed report which we showed a lot of success which is great and um you know we'll be obviously impressed by that but obviously hope that you increase your ambition even further so thanks so much for coming along um thank you thank you thank you and um you're welcome to save the next item i'm sure you'll find it very exciting but if not um have a good evening come too much all right okay so um now we move on to the second item called business with nice meeting which is uh key guarantees and key guarantees and key guarantees are the council's commitment uh for secure tenants and council homeowners whose homes are due to be um redeveloped the report proposes to replace these guarantees with um as an estate landlord offer now obviously what we need to discuss is is this the right decision that the council can make okay so um we now um first go to the deputy leader for housing investment new homes councillor diddy poor and you have up to three minutes up to five minutes sorry to introduce you to thank you chair thank you members of the committee so this report details our friends decision to end the new valencies which have been the council's commitment to secure tenants and council homeowners whose home space and potential redevelopment under the council's estate renewal program this proposed decision will bring us in line with best practice at other boroughs and also with gla funding requirements under the current guarantees for those who wish to move from their state in advance of any redevelopment rather than staying and taking a new home a band-aid allocation was offered to secure tenants whilst council homeowners were offered an early buyback the report sets out the significant council impact these buybacks have on the council as they have been about significant expense since the establishment of the key guarantees over the period from 2015 to 2017 the situation has moved on considerably one of the first decisions i took in my cabinet role in this position was to reset our approach to estate regeneration and leave all options on the table on the remaining estates as a result we're currently conducting options appraisals on three estates central hill dressing gardens and fennick and furthermore the gla in 2018 introduced a new ballot requirement for social animals to receive grant funding to build new affordable homes and i've also committed publicly to holding a ballot on all these estates if full demolition and redevelopment is pursued in the future at the end of this options appraisal process therefore the council currently has no confirmed plans for demolition on these remaining estates and in any case any plans that are brought forward will be subject to resident approval through a ballot before they could go forwards it's also important to note that we benchmark ourselves against what other local authorities are doing and there are no other local authorities or housing associations in england that have either an early homeowner buyback or a number of places where demolition is not confirmed and where mass planning redevelopment has not even begun it therefore makes sense for us to align ourselves with this standard practice as well if the new options appraisal exercises do recommend demolition and redevelopment on any of these estates only then will a landlord offer be prepared for their residence this will strengthen residents voices as landlord offer will they be something they can vote on as part of that ballot process furthermore we have now had the key guarantees across the estates from at least 2017 which has given plenty of opportunity for tenants and homeowners to take up this offer if they wish to do so 629 households to date have taken up this key guarantee offer of moving away from their estates so now with this a fresh refreshed approach that we now have to estate renewal all options being back on the table and options braces currently taking place across the reining estates alongside our new commitment to ballot it makes sense to update our key guarantees in response to this as well and that is therefore the time to end the current key guarantees and the support goes into further details on decision being taken the reasons why and how we're going to do this um i think that's it for that i'd share that me and officers are here to take any questions members have thank you thank you very much okay well we have received um uh two uh requests to speak um pete elliott was due to speak but cannot uh so we have um uh dreena lyle and galinda so i'll take dreena first i think she'll all right you have up to three minutes to speak uh can you hear me yes yep sorry hello um i'm dreena dr dreena lyle uh from south lambeth estate i'm a family carer and i live here with my daughter who i'm trying to care for whilst waiting for this um we're one of the six estates subject to key guarantees uh i was the chair of our tra for over 20 years i also attended the resident engagement panel along with six other residents every month for over six years so i do have much insight into your regeneration process unfortunately all along communication has been extremely muddled with lambeth changing their uh approach constantly for example the move to informal drop-ins from formal minuted meetings personnel changes um new teams conducting various initiatives which really amounted to just more confusion for residents um it is really confusing being a resident here and it needs to be emphasized we have a higher percentage of older and digitally excluded residents for some for some 10 years lambeth have assured our residents constantly they have these key guarantees people have relied on them to make decisions about their lives i had a recent call from one of our residents he was totally panicked by the letter he had received i've since had numerous conversations with residents expressing the same concern they don't see how the key guarantees can be replaced with an unspecified landlord's offer you're just asking them to accept that and residents are finding this very confusing i we don't understand why you couldn't itemize what will be the same and explain what the possible differences will be perhaps then people could make some judgment but by not explaining there is a lot of supposition taking place and bear in mind this is on the back of 10 years of very muddled and confused engagement which was raised by the curse lake report and we south lambeth was specifically referred to in that report they said until they had done lessons learned they weren't going to move on to the next phase we've had one meeting apparently about lessons learned that people didn't even get invites to it's not clear in your in your letter to the residents it's not clear if residents will be able to stay on the state on the estate or what rights they may have to forfeit it's not clear what the proposed ballot on your landlord offer will entail it there's nothing about this new rule from the gla that requires residents to put forfeit their rights in order for you to obtain funding we don't understand how that can be the case why would you forfeit rights in order for you to get funding it doesn't make sense surely such an impactful change needs thoughtful discussion not a rush through survey that you're asking residents to vote on with no actual reference to what the the the options are you haven't even offered support to our value vulnerable residents to discuss in person okay thank you very much is that my last minute is that if any of you were offered to change your mortgage would you do it if you weren't explain what the new mortgage was thanks very much and now thank you on to uh galinda who is also online hi i'm galena ganiebal so i'm one of the board members on the quitium gardens resident management kick i will concur with reena on if everything on this uh this was literally dropped as a bombshell last week on residence and people are now panicking they think demolitions on the table your communication is absolutely atrocious and you've learned nothing Also, I want to know why is this coming now to the Scrutiny Committee when the consultation was dropped onto residents last week? You have no results here. This is a bit early. And why hasn't it even been to Cabinet? This is a serious proposal that should not be decided through a Cabinet member delegation. Sorry. The Coastal Review clearly stated that this Council needed to regain the trust of residents. This latest action is in clear contravention of what was recommended and promise to residents and that every iteration promises to residents are further and further eroded. It was under Steve Reid, your wonderful MP, Steve Reid, who started the regeneration. And at that point, we were promised by also your previous leader that nothing would be done without the full support of residents. Then we got promises made in a flashy brochure, which were then even more reduced by these key guarantees. And now you want to remove them altogether. These key guarantees should be the absolute minimum. And your own report here, if you read the detail, says you could actually have those and then build upon them for the land health offer. You don't have to remove them. So this is all ridiculous and your consultation says nothing of this. So let's be honest here. After 12 years, land health have finally run out of money and can't afford the ill-advised regeneration programme. This is the real reason. Let's be very clear. This is why you're going to take them off the table and leave us with nothing. So if you're going to take them off the table, then let's make a clear, unambiguous public announcement that demolition is completely off the table. Let us residents kindly enjoy our communities and homes in peace. When you write no confirmed plans, but then the next sentence is right, but we are doing an option appraisal. This is still a threat of demolition. You are still blighting the communities. Ask yourselves personally, would you want to settle your family into a community where within months your home could be emailed for demolition? No way in hell! Offers are fundamentally incorrect in their thinking if they think this report will remove any possible blight. This report is also in conflict with the latest policies to create temporary accommodation ghettos. If there are no confirmed plans, then why are all the new residents that are coming onto the estates not being offered secure tenancies? Why are the refurbishments happening at snail's pace with an estimated five years to clear the backlog of Cytex homes? But in summary, this is a blatant abuse of residents and their communities. This is a contravention with the Cursake review and findings, and you cannot have your cake and eat it as well. Today's report is not enough to avoid blight as officers have tried to claim. This report should not be coming to this committee before the resident consultation is completed because you do not have all the information and any decision should be taken back to cabinet because the authority to remove the key guarantees was never delegated. So I hope this committee really pushes back and says this needs to go for proper consultation, back to the cabinet, and before it comes into scrutiny. Unless, if it's just to be noted, that's ridiculous, it's a time waster. This should be completely thrown out. Thank you very much. Are there any questions to residents? And in addition, you'll have the statement from Pete Elliot, which has been circulated. So anyway, any first one, any questions to residents before? Yeah, I just thank you very much to Trina and to Galinda for everything that they've said. I'd like to hear a little bit more about some of the resident feedback that you've heard. Can you tell us just a couple more stories very quickly each about about how residents on your estates have responded to this? They're shocked. It's a bombshell. This came out of the blue. We have no resident engagement panel. Officers won't even talk to the board here. We can't invite officers for even basic things they won't turn up. So I'm sorry, residents are shocked. They think their homes are being demolished. They think you're shortcutting this process. You're taking away their rights or little rights they have. And do you think that just your complaint is completely right, but they're in the shock. They're panicking. They really are panicking here. You're putting the stress back onto people. They don't think they have a choice. You're making unilateral decisions once again. Okay. Trina, you're welcome. Hello. Did you want to ask? Did you want to ask a question? Okay. Any other questions to witnesses? No? Okay. Let's move on to questions then to Danny and officers. I will start off. First of all, we'll ask what would be the financial implications of maintaining the key guarantees offer for all council homeowners and secure tenants on the estates due for redevelopment under the estate renewal program. I mean, with that chair, obviously we depend on how many more residents that remain chose to take up the guarantees. So that would really depend on what final figure would be. But analysis has been done on that. And I think Catherine's on the call has got some further details on that she could share with the committee if that would be helpful. I'm actually, if you don't mind, Danny, you're going to pass this over to Alice just to confirm the current budget, Alice, and what would be remaining on the estates? I find that would be useful. Yeah. So as councillor did board notes, this is a resident demand led at the moment, particularly on Central Hill, Crasseham and Fenwick. The average cost of the council of moving a secure tenant is around £10,000. That's made up of about £8,000 of a home loss payment and then other just sort of disbursements, including flooring and such like. In terms of the cost of the buybacks, again, that's dependent. We would assume that a significant number would carry on staying, but the compensation is, so obviously the property prices are on average about £350,000 to £550,000, depending on the estate, the average compensation that's paid. So obviously for those, the council does receive the asset and we do have that to use. But under the key guarantees, we are also paying around £50,000 to £60,000 compensation to each of the homeowners, because you get between 7.5% and 10% of the value of the property. We also pay all of the conveyancing costs and the stamp valuations, because obviously residents that get homeowners have their own valuations done, and also we pay for the stamp duty for their onward purchase. So it's significant. Total around is around I think it's £130 million outstanding if all homeowners would take up. I think 94 actually, sorry. Thank you. OK, so I had Ben, Mariana, Nicole, any others at this point? OK, so let's go to Ben. Yeah, thank you very much, Councillor Dillapour and officers. I guess the question that was raised by the second witness about the consultation and the kind of question being, you know, has this process perhaps come too soon, obviously, before the consultation is finished? And I just kind of beg the question as to whether or not the results of the consultation will be kind of considered. So, I suppose the officers can't start agreeing. Sure, I'm happy to confirm before I take the decision, I'll absolutely consider the feedback from the constitution. I'm clear on what the recommendation for officers is and the recommended path that I'm approving, but obviously I've brought the paper to school tonight to get views of members, and include through the consultation process as well, we're seeking views of residents to help inform that final decision before it is taken. But I'm clear about the recommended way forwards that I do think is in the best interests both for our residents and for the council, given the significant finances involved. Officers, do you have anything further you wish to add to that? Thanks, Councillor Dillapour. No, I think just to underline what you just said, of course, when we go out to consult, we always consider the feedback that we receive, and it is factored into decision making. Just to be clear on the consultation, it is not a yes or no consultation that the council is seeking on. It is to sort of get feedback on the key guarantees. So, we've got the survey, it has been circulating. Yes, there you go. So, the details in the consultation as to the questions that are being asked. So, it's not a yes or no or a binding decision or feedback response that they're seeking. Ben, do you have any comments? Ben, can I just clarify? I mean, so the survey is now, the consultation is now live. When are you anticipating giving, are you going to give feedback to residents on the consultation? And are we talking, you know, quite soon, like at the end of March or something like that? Or, and presumably, any issue to raise, you'll try to seek to give residents clarification on any issues they raise. I mean, clearly this, residents already raise some issues they're concerned about in terms of the future of the estate and the nature of the landlord offer. But, I mean, tell me what happens to the consultation feedback when you get it. Sure. So, it launched on the 13th of January, as this is in the paper, in the next six weeks. And this will give us opportunity to see the kind of concerns and questions that need to be answered. So, based on the feedback received, anything that needs further clarity around the position of residents and future steps forward, we'll help inform the communications that we need to do as a result of that. So, we'll analyse the responses we get and that'll help to inform how to communicate the next steps and any gaps in what we've communicated already so far. Anything else, Nabil? Yeah, the only thing I would add to that, Councillor Zillipour, is that there is a frequently asked questions document that was circulated as part of the consultation, which actually addressed some of the questions that we've heard this evening being raised. And, of course, following the feedback that we get from residents, we will then update our FAQ document and go back to residents with our responses. So, yeah, that will all be factored into the response to the residents following the closing of the survey. Okay, well, we might just capture that in the recommendation anyway, but just so, we're clearly going to go beyond nine o'clock. Can we suspend standing orders and go on, if necessary, until 9.30? Yes, thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to say that to hear the officers and cabinet leads, I'm sort of reassured, but then when you get to the sort of reality of actually speaking to tenants, there's always a sort of massive disconnect. And I think comms is at the heart of it. So, what I would ask is, you know, there's scant sort of reference to Kerr's Lake, and it would be really nice if really clear for residents if it was this recommendation was made, and as a result, we are doing this. So, it's very sort of very clear, because throughout this process, and somebody, I've forgotten the name of, I think it was Trina, alluded to, this is sort of a 20-year up and down mistrust that's been embedded in this community, you know, with certain cohorts. And so, I think that we have to go above and beyond in reassuring that there's, A, no nefarious intent. So, you know, a mention was made about us running out of money, and that advancing, which is not true. Oh, it says in your report, you don't have the money. But the reason why I've understood that all of this is happening is, there's a real engagement. And also, the second point that I've heard from residents that have contacted me is the feeling that where these estates, where it's happened to these estates, and there's been an influx of temporary accommodation residents, they feel that they haven't been onboarded, and it's changed the dynamic that people are not unwelcoming, but they feel that people that need additional supports that aren't getting it, are dumped on their, dumped is their words, on their estates. So, is there any, is there a sort of support to temporary accommodation residents that are placed in the aforementioned estates? There's plenty of questions. You and I, do you want to hear more? I mean, on the first point, I agree with Councillor Masters that, you know, I think when I took over the role, I was quite honest that I think the communications weren't up to standard on state regeneration. And I apologise for that, or council, I'm happy to repeat that apology again tonight, because I don't think it was good enough, and that's what was important that we reset that relationship. And as part of that, we have tried to go back to first principles, and that's where we've been clear that all options are on the table. So, on any of these estates, I'm not going to pre-empt what's happening in the minutes of this engagement and say that regeneration will definitely happen, regeneration definitely won't. I'm just being very clear that we're considering all possible options, and as we've done all the due diligence to see what is deliverable on those estates, everyone to commit an indirection. As a result of that, the key guarantees need to move to meet that new situation we find ourselves in, because it doesn't make sense, either for residents or for financials of council, to offer key guarantees based on demolition, when demolition may not go ahead on those estates. So, that is what is driving this decision, why I was recommending this new approach, because that would fit in better with what the approach now is on those estates. And I just pointed out in the paper, it would also fit what other councils are doing. We're in a bit of a unique position where we've been very generous in the past about having these guarantees in place before we had plans in place, which has really created lots of anomalies on these estates, and added to the confusion the residents have understandably felt. So, it's much better now to recognise that that was, you know, maybe at the time done with good intent at heart, but the reality now is that we're not in a place where we can say, absolutely, we're going to have full demolition of those estates. Therefore, it makes no sense to keep the key guarantees that were put in at the time, and that was the plan for the council. So, this brings us up to speed what other councils are doing, and it reflects the reality of what our approach now is on those estates. Officers, would you like to add anything to that? I mean, I think I would just point out on paragraph 2.12 to address your query, Mariana. We do mention the Coastlet report in there, and it's very clear the Coastlet report does say that we need a reset, and we have sort of addressed that, but I take your point that we could sort of expand on that a bit further. I'll bring in Alice for your second question, if that's okay. Alice? Can you just clarify the second question? Well, the second question was with regards to residents on the affected estates feeling that they don't want to be unwelcoming, but they feel that the influx of temporary accommodation residents often with problems that they feel aren't being addressed has changed the dynamic of their estate. It sounds very NIMBYism, but I know these people, and they're not hostile, but it's just that they feel that people are put on their estates that don't have the right support. There's a lot of mental health issues, and it's led also to a rise of antisocial behaviour on estates. So the question was, what help are we providing also to temporary accommodation residents on the affected estates? Yes, certainly, because obviously the key guarantees themselves have provided for this opportunity for secure tenants to move away, and that in itself has created the empty properties, and obviously it's well documented the pressures that the council has in being able to secure affordable temporary accommodation in the borough. So I think it's right that we do use these properties and these homes. You can see from the numbers there has been a change in the communities on the estates, just by virtue of the numbers of people moving, which is higher than it would be in that normal period. In terms of the specific detail around the support that TA households get, if it's all right with you, Chair, I would like to speak to my colleagues who work in homeless services, just so we can get you a bit more of a detailed response to that point. Okay, perhaps we'll capture that in the recommendation in terms to come back to the committee on that, yeah? Okay, I have Nicole. Thank you, Chair. So I've read the report, I've read this survey document, and I've read the FAQs, and I've listened to everything so far. I still have absolutely no idea what residents are losing these key guarantees, and I can understand why there's a reaction of panic and confusion because, and I'd really appreciate it actually by the current member or the officers can actually make it really, really clear to us tonight what it is that is either being gained or lost to the resident who actually lives on the estate. So if I'm on the estate and I receive and I'm losing my key guarantees, what does it mean for me? And I absolutely get why residents from the estate, after all the hell that they've been through for nearly 20 years, are now being thrown into panic once again by the cabinet members saying they may or may not be in March for demolition, we don't know at the moment. Well, I think that depends on the people. What I understand is that on each estate the landlord offer will be different, but certain basic guarantees are being given both to secure tenants and to resident homeowners on the estates. But because the offer on each estate has not yet been developed, that's why currently that can't be communicated to residents. I mean, Danny, is that around? Yeah, I mean, I'll try and answer as best I can, Councillor Griffiths, essentially in terms of what is going in the key guarantees. So the current situation is that residents on the estates who wish to move in advance of any redevelopment, rather than taking up the new home that result from the full demolition and redevelopment, were offered ban their allocation. And otherwise, if they were leaseholder homeowners, they were offered a buyback, which is a considerable expense to the council. And also now we know on those estates, there's not necessarily going to be the demolition that the new homes provided. So it's a key guarantee that doesn't fit what we're committed to currently on those estates. In terms of what we'll replace it, it will be a landlord offer tailored to what proposal does come forward on any of those estates. And that'll be for the residents to decide whether to approve or reject as part of the ballot process, which is also a key point that, you know, this is not going to be imposed in any way because it all is tied in with the ballots that will have to take place on these estates as well, which gives that certainty and that say to residents as part of what comes forward. But really, that's the best mechanism of kind of what is being taken away in the current key guarantees and what that would look like in the replacement in the future. It doesn't, it doesn't actually answer what I was saying, which is if I am that resident receiving this survey saying to me that the key guarantees are being removed, what is my situation? So there's no guarantee until the decision is made about the estate and then you'll the new landlord agreement. So what we're talking about is the key guarantees are being removed and that's it. But does that mean that if somebody wants to move from the estate because they're still a little unsure about what the future is and they were automatically banned A, will that person still be banned A? Will they still be able to be a priority? My understanding of the officers, the people that I applied to who put themselves forward and are in banned A have been moved up to the estate and there's nobody that's currently been allocated in that way that isn't still in place. But officers, maybe you can clarify that point. And when does the offer, I mean, when does the key guarantees offer end? Does that end with a cabinet decision to end the guarantee? So do people currently on the estate, if they're secure tenants or resident homeowners, able to take up the key guarantees or the key guarantees are currently in abeyance? What is the current situation? Catherine, I think you've got to focus on that in terms of the current situation and the current ones that are in advance of the chair. So if you could maybe give an update on where things currently sit as of this financial year. Yeah, so we are currently proceeding with a number of leasehold buybacks across the estates. So the key guarantees are still operational. But as Danny and yourself, Chair, have said, what this would mean would be that when a a regeneration scheme comes forward, then those particular residents within that estate would have a bespoke, tailored landlord offer, which was financially viable within the development of the scheme. So that's the really key thing. It brings this in line with the GLA requirements, and it means that as the scheme comes forward, those residents within that estate will have a bespoke landlord offer. I suppose it's key to also point out that in the seven or eight years that it's been running, 629 households have already taken up the offer. And actually, we're still, like I say, working with residents at the moment. So it's not that there has been a lot of opportunity for residents to move, should they wish to, or for residents to approach the council to buy back their homes over that really quite extended period. Alice, did you want to come in just on the second point? I was just going to say, just to be clear about, you know, if I am a secure tenant on one of these estates, what does this really mean? What does this look like for me? And just to be clear, in addition to obviously some of the stuff we've laid out in the report, if you are a council tenant in any of our other stock, and you need to move either because you want to, or because your home doesn't meet your needs because of health concerns, you're overcrowded, you have a right to make an application to the transfer list in the council, and you are then prioritised in line with the allocations policy. So if it's, you know, band B for medical need or overcrowding, that is how the system works if you are a tenant, a secure tenant on any one of our estates in Lambeth. What the key guarantees did was say, actually, if you want to move, we don't mind if your current home meets your needs, if you've got the right bedrooms, if you've got no medical need to move, we will give you band A priority. So these households have had the highest priority, higher than homelessness households, or households facing homelessness, and with some medical need. So what it would look like if the key guarantees removed were removed for that secure tenant, is they would still be able to approach the council and say, I would like to move. But instead of just automatically being given that band A priority, they would be treated in the same way as all other secure tenants living in our properties across the borough. So our colleagues in allocations would look at them and work with them. Are you overcrowded? Are you under occupied? And so they would still have the opportunity, but it wouldn't be that automatic passporting straight to the band A. That will be the case until a landlord offer is put in place. Now, just to be clear, while I know Drina earlier, you talked about what would be in a landlord offer document. The one thing we did say, because it would be bespoke, we couldn't go into all of the detail, but we were very clear that whatever landlord offer document there was, it would guarantee a new home on these estates for residents in the same way that the key guarantees would. So I hope that that sort of gives you a kind of better explanation of the impact of the decision. Okay, David. So I just need to explain something. Sorry, can I explain? The residents are not treated like the residents. Sorry, sorry, we've got members questions down. So David, David, David, you need to protect the residents and give them a choice. Sorry, it's members questions down. If they want to come back to you, they will. David, your question. It's clearly clear, as if I'm missing something here, whatever. We're now saying that things change, things that certain councillors and others have campaigned for, that they actually are balanced on these things. That campaign has been successful. It's the same in other councils or whatever. So we're not currently going ahead with the regeneration. So it makes sense that we don't have key guarantees because it's not going ahead because you would need a balance to be successful for that to happen. So it's not, it shouldn't be a surprise that the key guarantee is not going to be there anymore. If in some time in the future you manage to persuade the residents or whatever to actually vote for it, then you would have free generation and you would bring forward the offer from the landlord. It almost like explains itself what they would be willing to do for the actual residents. And that seems fairly clear to me. Now, have I missed something? I just want to know. No, that's it. I thought I was missing something. It's just, yeah, circumstances will change, therefore the offer has changed. Also, there's a requirement from the GLC to hold resident ballots, which we hadn't in the past and which Danny has explained, you know, engagement with residents hasn't been at its best. But clearly a resident ballot is a key aspect of, you know, moving forward in terms of regeneration. There wouldn't be regeneration. Exactly, exactly, exactly. So that's where we are now, isn't it really? Any further questions? Chair, I had just a quick question on 4.1, which talks about advancing equality. It mentions various protected characteristics. I just wondered why people with care experience wasn't included within that list, given that two years ago the Council has committed to treating care as a protected characteristic. becoming one of the best councillors in London to do so. Just a quick question on 4.1. Thank you, Councillor Sardewald. I thought that was a very good point and I'm sure it's only an oversight, but obviously it would be great if you could take that one away and confirm on that point for Councillor Sardewald, please. Okay, any further? And Nicole? It's just that, because I'm very concerned about the points that the residents have raised, if they're on the receiving end of all ballots or no ballots, that's not really the point. It's just what we've heard tonight is that resident experience is actually very negative. So there's a reason for that. So what we're hearing is that residents on these estates are having a panic and shocked by this decision. Partly, maybe it's because of a failure in communication. I don't know. I think there's been an agreement that's probably the case, but also a lack of understanding the confusion about actually what it means and why it's being introduced now. And I think they put a point here, which is actually, you know, most of these people who live on the estates want to stay living on the estates. They don't want them to be demolished. Well, there's a separate thing. Exactly, exactly. So they can be demolished and they don't want to lose their home. So that's really important. It's actually, you know, and it's the point about temporary accommodation. What you want is to be able to have a home, you know, in what feels like a community that feels safe and secure and is going... Surely the question, the issue about having residence ballot is absolutely key in this respect because, you know, I think all of us will accept that the council's engagement with residents on these regeneration estates has been pretty appalling. And one of the things we haven't done is allowed residents to take decisions about the future of their estates. So I think by having resident ballots that strikes me as the right way forward to make sure that residents really are in the driver's seat. But that says, you know, I can't see why the council should provide a much more enhanced offer than other boroughs do in relation to regeneration, particularly when we don't know whether the estates will be regenerated or not. And currently we're in a kind of limbo. I think we need to move things on. Danny? Yeah, I think that's precisely it, that we have to be honest about what the current situation is and have an offer that matches what the reality is. Because at the minute we have key guarantee based on all of these states being regenerated, which may or may not happen in a few years time, and then having a key guarantee that we can't necessarily back up in the future if not honest with residents. What we're proposing now is a lot more honest. And if I can give any further reassurance, I'll try my best to do so, but because of the ballot issue, because of the landlord offer, nobody is going to leave their homes or be forced into a demonstrate project, unless the residents on that estate vote for it now. And that's not just because of the GLA having a ballot funding, that's a political commitment that I've made that even if in the future we're able to do any of these projects without GLA funding, I have said we will ballot on these estates anyway, because that is now the political position we have as an authority. And to be clear, as part of that balloting process, the master plan for those estates would be spell that through residents, the landlord offer and the rehousing offer would be spelled as part of that ballot process as well. So it'd be crystal clear what the whole package entails, what the offer is, what the commitment is, and what the plan is, and they'd be able to residents to say yes or no to it. That final decision on all of these future plans, if they do emerge for demolition and regeneration, the residents will say yes or no. And if they say no, none of this will happen. I don't think there can be any clear on that about it. Thank you. Okay, I think I'm going to close it down at this point. I don't think we have actually many recommendations. I think we certainly want clarity for residents. So I'd say that, say ensure that residents who are consulted on the ending of the key guarantee to receive full feedback on the response state by state. Any issues raised should be responded to and included in the resident feedback. And then I think the other issue that was raised would provide the committee with details and support being given to residents put into the current estate in temporary accommodation. I've had residents seem to think that there's not clear notice of meetings that happen where they can engage more frankly with officers and understand. Because again, if you were to hear Danny say 10 times saying the same thing and actually then thinking, okay, stress testing that, you might be more inclined to believe the pathway rather than at the moment people feeling something has been live from the 15th of January. And then Chinese whispers throughout the borough on, well, you know, do we have a choice, do we not? There is still a disconnect between the comms on the ground. Okay, so we were saying something like provide residents with clarity about future plans including care engagement in terms of communication, residents meetings and updates on timescales in relation to Can I also request that we get? Sorry, can I just request? No, no, sorry. We don't read recommendations. Thank you. Nicole? Perhaps for each of these six estates, there could be a nursing meeting specifically about this so that actually anybody who... Residents be treated like others. Well, actually... Can we keep you muted please? I'll keep trying. So that there's basically a surgery about this. Yeah. Okay, we guarantee surgery on every estate so that all these concerns can be directly responded to so that there isn't a misunderstanding about what it all means and that the residents and concerns get to in person. Okay, is that something which... Yeah, I'm just going to make a suggestion as well, so that obviously it's for you to accept to reject because I don't want to steer the committee, but last year we did launch our new engagement framework and we have committed to that being a live and rolling document and process. If that recommendation could be geared towards a refresh of the engagement framework, identify any gaps in it and look at those improvements along the sort that you've outlined about, you know, meetings, notification. I think if we tie it into that engagement framework process, which we're committed to reviewing and refreshing anyway, that would be a sensible way forward if the committee is comfortable. Are people happy with that? That's good. Okay. That's the recommendation to the committee. Yeah, yeah, in terms of refreshing me and engaging you what we say. Yeah. No, no, I mean, I mean, clearly, clearly we need to provide much more clarity to residents about what is happening. I mean, I have to say that, you know, clearly this is something that residents have had to live through, but over the last five to seven years, they have had the various offers and, and of course now it probably feels as if something has been kind of snatched away from them. But, but the offer is in place until the key guarantees are actually removed. And so if people are on the kind of cusp of deciding what they want to do, then that's fair enough. But obviously we recognize- They've already been stopped. The residents already stopped. Sorry, have the key guarantees already been stopped? Stopped, yes. Homeowners have been told they will not do any more buybacks. Can I have clarity from officers, please? I understood that an officer, I think, said there are buybacks actually going through at the moment. Do you want to come in just in terms of how many we're progressing with at the moment? Yeah, so I think we, sorry, we do have four that are going through at the moment. What we have said, because we set the budget at the beginning of the year, and obviously this is resident demand led, that we earlier created a waiting list for some home owners, say, so we could give them priority once a new budget was established. Okay, thanks very much. Okay, so any further recommendations? Okay, well thank you very much Danny and officers and witnesses for having along this evening, can I just say that there does seem to be a small cohort of residents who've been adversely affected and I wondered whether there was any kind of sort of mediation that could happen, because it's just quite clear that, you know, everybody wants good outcomes and I think if there was a sort of an appreciation, you know, an acknowledgement that we haven't always done things correctly and that there was an extra step taken for mediation, that would that would perhaps be something. It ties in with the consultation as well. I think it feeds in with the consultation, making sure that the issues and ways are then dealt with. I think that's the important thing and making sure that we follow that through. Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate all the contributions. Um, then let's move on to the work programme. Um, you will see, um, the work programme in front of you. Are there any additional items that people want to write? Obviously you can add items to at any point, um, throughout the year. Okay, just to get to the end of the actual council year, so really we've just got the next meeting, and then we'll have a bit of a programme, dedicated programme meeting. Yeah, that's, that's right. And you'll see from the work programme that items, thank you, um, listed there, the next meeting in March, we're planning to review libraries, their support for vulnerable residents and the planned capital spend. Also looking at the council support for cultural and performing arts, including the nighttime economy. But I think, um, that we also, didn't you David, I think it was actually you, you were talking about, um, the use of, um, um, uh, the council's non-housing assets or something we discussed as well as, um, the, um, how the council pays its bills and deals with debts owed to the council. So I think that was some kind of meeting we were thinking about at some point, which would be part of the, the new list. Yeah. Not that this has been, been covered and covered, covered by some of the subcommittees, but those two items are something which, uh, we've discussed before. I'm just thinking that, um, we may not have time to commission papers and have a work programming meeting. So I think we need to get things perhaps lined up. Would people, um, members think that those two items would be something we could consider for a meeting after March in June or July? Well, assets and dealing with debt. It was a landless financial non-housing assets, including how the council managed third sector and other leases and how the council pays its bills owed to the council. So, um, I think there's something I certainly, I had the case in my floor of, um, a restaurant which wasn't treated all that well in terms of repairs. And, um, there's the ongoing issue with a lot of the amazing groups that we help with in terms of funding, but they do in enormous good in our communities that have historically had, um, uh, access to our non-housing assets and are now, because we need revenue, we are asking extortionate, in their view, rents from them. And, and I'm still not satisfied with hearing sort of the rationale, knowing that if we force them out, either they seek, some of them are seeking, um, to go to other boroughs, that which means we lose support for all our residents, um, and some will just go to the walls. So, it would be really, I mean, it would be really good to, um, identify some witnesses. Yeah, yeah, I've, I've got, okay, so, so we, to the West Indian council that in for a meeting after March, yeah? Well, I was going to say for the main meeting, obviously, you're going to have the elections in the middle, so if we pencil it in for May, and then maybe, probably, you're going to have, maybe have another housing item, probably maybe the new homes program or something in that March meeting, that May meeting. Uh, well, let's see. I mean, this one for the May meeting at least, then we can consider a second item for that. Well, we're talking, we're talking, now there are two items I mentioned, um, which is mostly, um, council assets, non-housing assets, but also the paying debts. Oh, so two, oh, oh, there's two, sorry. There are two separate items. Yeah, there's two. Okay, so, okay, so let's just pencil that in. I mean, obviously, something urgent might come up, um, which members might feel, uh, should, should, at least I can alert officers early, and then discuss. Yeah, but it'd be good just to get papers commissioned, because too often, suddenly told, oh, we can't, um, do that, because we haven't got time to commission, so let's, um, at least try to get the paper commissioned, um, in readiness for a meeting. Okay, so are the recommendations and report accepted? Deepak, do you come in? Okay, so, um, uh, suggestion for an item, it was just whether any consideration will be given to site visits, um, which is a key part of any work that the committee undertakes, where that's most relevant to the public that's under discussion. Yeah, no, no, absolutely. Good idea. I would, I would absolutely thank you for bringing that point, because, um, when I was talking about, um, sort of, uh, community, um, voluntary groups, I'm thinking of, um, the, um, building in Clapham, the, um, service, the West Indies, and it would be really good, because I've heard Cabinet members describe it in one way, and I think the reality of actually visiting it and seeing the services there would be another. Can you pass the details to Roger? Yeah, can you pass the details? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. No, any, any suggestions about, about site visits? Deepak for that, because we have in the past done that, and we, I think we, well, it fell apart with, um, with Covid and the, and that. And I've done a lot of work as well. And obviously we've done work with the police and so on, but yeah, it certainly, um, brings the, uh, issues to light, and I think it's very important to have site visits if we can. Um, anything else anyone would like to raise? Okay, anything else? No? Okay, um, so we agree the current recommendations in the report. Um, that concludes the business this evening. Thank you very much for attending both in person and online. Thanks very much. It's on the 11th of March, so this is a really good script.