Transcript

Okay, welcome to this Finance Committee meeting. My name is Councillor Critchard and I am the Chair of this Committee. Members of the Committee, I am going to now ask you to introduce yourselves, starting on my left, please. Hello, I am Councillor Sean Lawless, 2-Ting Broadway Ward. Good evening, everyone. Councillor Jeremy Ambash, West Plattony Ward. Good evening, everyone. Councillor Worryle, Shasta and Queenstown Ward. Evening, Councillor Clare Fraser, South Ballam. Hi, good evening, everyone. Louis and Noah's Dar. I am Alie Richards-Jones. I am one of the councillors for Northcote Ward. Good evening. My name is Councillor Matt Corner. I am a member for the Nine Elms Ward. Good evening, everybody. I am Councillor Lindsay Hedges of Ballam Ward. Thank you. Councillor Peter Graham, Wall Councillor for Wandsworth Common and Opposition Speaker for Finance. Thank you very much. We also have Councillor Akinola, Cabinet Member for the Voluntary Sector Business, Engagement and Culture here, and Councillor Ireland, who is the Cabinet Member for Finance. And we have several offices present, but they will introduce themselves when they address the Committee. Okay, so item one is the minutes of the meeting on 4th of December, 2024. Are they agreed? Are there any amendments? Can we agree these minutes, please? Okay, thank you. I'm also aware that there are some actions outstanding from the previous meeting. The Clerk and I are following these up, and we will share the action log with committee members after this meeting. Okay, so we're on the case. Thank you. Members are aware of their duty to declare pecuniary interests and to keep the registers of interest up to date. For the benefit of any members of the public viewing the meeting, any interest declared during this part of the meeting should be related directly to the agenda items and the decisions being taken tonight. Members are advised to seek the advice of the monitoring officer in advance if they believe there is any conflict or pecuniary or other type of interest to be declared. Are there any declarations of either pecuniary, other registrable or non-registrable interests from anyone on the committee? Okay, I have to declare that I am one of the directors of the Wandsworth Trading Company, which will – we have a report from the trading company, but I have no pecuniary interest in it whatsoever. It's a council organisation, and I will continue to chair. Okay, our first item on the agenda is the London Council's Borough Subscription for 2627, paper 2518. The Assistant Chief Executive here, Mr Evans, would you like to say a couple of words about this paper that we see every year? Thank you, Chair. Yes, indeed, you do see it every year and have done for many years, but we've tried to include as much information as possible. So this is asking for the council to approve its contribution as one of 32 London boroughs are asked to contribute to the London Council's grand scheme, which commissions a range of pan-London services for those – things like homelessness, domestic violence, domestic abuse, so helping to provide services the most vulnerable in London. So the money and the budget is set out here. It's changed slightly since last year, based on – the amount is based on the calculation, based on our population of our borough. And there's a slight quirk in that even if we don't agree, I think the law states that as long as the majority of councils in London agree, then by law we have to pay it anyway. But it's an interesting quirk of the system. But happy to take any questions. Okay, thank you very much. Who's got any questions? Okay, Councillor Graham. Anyone from our side, on the other side? Fantastic. Okay. Yep, I'll see you in the council corner. Okay, yep. So, and this is something of an annual complaint. I have no problem with money being spent on combating homelessness or money being spent on tackling sexual and domestic violence. Those are good things. I'm sure the work that the organisations contracted under this grants programme are doing is good work. What I query is how we can assert in paragraph 19 that the LCGS benefits the borough by bringing economies of scale, efficiency and effectiveness to the services provided. Because we can see in the paragraph above that that we're getting a 2.5% share on one of the funds and 2.5% is almost exactly the same in terms of the percentage points on the other. And yet we are paying, if we look at the appendix, 3.7% of the cost on the subscriptions. In other words, the subscriptions are not proportionate or the money, the resource that's being given to us is not proportionate to the subscription. I appreciate that there's a central fund, but it does seem highly iniquitous. And you could potentially modify that by looking at needs to say, well, other boroughs have higher needs and therefore it's going where the need is. Although there is a 16-page methodology paper on the London Council site talking about how it will assess the need, there is no information on what the need is in each borough. There is a dashboard to which there is a link in the paper which allows one to make comparisons. So, for example, we, of the 85,700 and a bit total service users for the duration of the programme so far, we have 1,964. That's 2.3%. So, but look, say, at Islington for another in the London borough, they have 3,086. That's 3.6%. And yet they're only paying in 2.5. So, they're paying in 2.5% of the cost and they're getting 3.6% of the service. We're paying in 3.7 and getting 2.3. Could you come to your point, please? Well, I'll just make the fine things. Well, maybe that's because Islington is an in-London borough. So, let's look at Barnet. Barnet, 4,761. So, they're getting 5.6% of the resource. What are they paying in? 4.42. So, again, Barnet are getting more out than they're paying in. Completely different borough, completely different characteristics. How do we possibly assert in paragraph 19 that we're getting economies of scale, efficiency and effectiveness when we're getting 30% to 50% less than what we should in terms of just a straight allocation and we've got no data on needs? How can we say that? Thank you. Mr. Everett. Sorry, Councillor Coulter, is this about the same thing or something different? No, you can. Thanks. Okay, bye. Thank you, Chair. And, you know, I can't dispute the figures that Councillor Graham has put forward. I think I would say that clearly this is a pan-London scheme which is about making sure there are services in place for the most vulnerable across London. Some of these populations do move between boroughs. And undoubtedly, Wandsworth has got less of a need than some of the boroughs. Now, I'm not saying the allocations are all perfect, but I think there is a principle here where each council pays in to tackle an issue that is very much better tackled at a pan-London level, both commissioned and in terms of referral pathways and the organisations that do it and the learning across there. So I think the – so from a statistical point of view, absolutely, Councillor Graham is right. We, from a need point of view, and clearly one of us need as a borough in terms of its wealth and demography is less than some of the other boroughs in here. And so we wouldn't expect it to have the level that's – in terms of proportionate level. I think I come back to the principle. This is a pan-London programme that is aimed at tackling a problem that London faces. And there can not be a perfect allocation. But we do work very carefully with the – across the council to make sure that the schemes are promoted with our services to make sure that referrals go in and we get as much usage as we can out of them. Thank you very much. Make it quick. I will be a quick supplementary. So first, I mean, so you're acknowledging that the assertion in paragraph 19 is just that, an assertion without evidence. But the second aspect is Barnet is not an in the London borough. Barnet seems quite comparable to one's in many respects. It has an inner aspect of its southern end, but very leafy, wealthy, outer element to it. Barnet is getting more out than it pays in. So I would ask, given that I've raised this issue and raised the lack of needs data for two or three years now, have you sought this data from London councils? I think a couple of things I'm unfamiliar with Barnet, so thank you for that. We haven't sought that needs data as far as we're aware. We can certainly ask for that data. I will come back to that in a pan-London procured service tackling the issues that this is supposed to tackle, perfection in terms of allocation of money versus need is just not going to happen. And I think we have to accept that. So this committee is being asked to accept whether it is allocating, wishes to allocate that resource, to help tackle a London-wide problem, which does undoubtedly benefit Wanderth, but also the rest of the boroughs in London. Should we accept each year being told that you'll seek the data and each year you're not doing so? Councillor Graham, thank you. You said one supplementary, and I've got two other people who wish to speak. Okay. Councillor Corner, can you come to point, and then I'll come to you, Councillor Worrell, and then Councillor Arnbach. Thank you, Chair. Mr Evans, I know you pointed out that there's a quirk to this, which is even if we were to reject this as an idea as a council, we'd still legally have to pay it. Could you just explain how that mechanism works, and also what the alternatives are for the council to simply blindly accepting what the requested amount is every year, and to what extent the council might have negotiating power and leverage in the negotiations that lead to this figure being determined? I can't see. I mean, I can only go on the face, sorry, Chair. I can only go on the face value of that. Sorry, excuse me, one minute. Sorry. I know that Councillor Akinola has been to the meeting. Would you like to add something to this, Councillor Akinola? Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Yes, so there is actually quite a long process into deciding what the priorities of London councils are, which includes myself, because I attend the Grants Committee for London councils, and the leaders of all London councils as well. So they decide the priorities, and then we have to look at the range of services that need to be provided, and then we procure the services. But because, like quite, as you can see from the organisations that the services are procured from, they're all very different, and some are quite specialist. So they need to be procured at this sort of scale to make it worthwhile for those organisations. So there is quite a lot of negotiation, quite a lot of discussion before we get to the agreement that these are the services that we all want to pay into, because we all benefit. Thank you. Is there anything else to add there, Mr Evans, or are you happy with...? I can get some detail of the legal provision to Councillor Conner if he asks us if he wants that. Okay, thank you. But a bit of it is covered in the legal comment. I'm going to say supplementary very quick. Very quick. I don't need to see dense legal text, so you can save yourself time with that, but it would be good to see impact evaluations that London Council have published or made available in the last year. I don't think they have published them, looking at their website. And I just wondered if Councillor Akinola could ask if the subject of proportionality of contributions to money spent in Borough had been discussed at the Grants Committee and what her contributions to that discussion might have been. Yes, we have discussed proportionality, but as has already been said, the nature of the people who are being supported, they move around. So there's no reason to assume that because a service is being provided in Brent, it's not for a Wandsworth resident. A woman who is fleeing, or a man, fleeing domestic violence from Wandsworth may well be placed in Brent. So you have to think about all those other sort of factors to understand why we're procuring these services pan-London, and everybody is benefiting, in fact. Okay, thank you very much. Councillor Worrell. Thank you, Chair. I find it quite sad that we rehash this every year in terms of what is a service that actually does benefit Wandsworth. It's not only about numbers, and I know certain members across the table focus on the numbers a lot of the time. I think in terms of the grants process, it's also looking at what actually supports that process. It's the research that goes on behind in terms of need of the people who are using the service. It's the research into what's actually happening. I mean, there's the London Research Policy Partnership, which this makes a contribution into, in terms of giving us the information for our own local organisations to be able to tap into a national programme, a London programme. I think the other aspect, this is a multilateral solution that we're looking at. It is about people who are in transit from time to time. So there are times when a Wandsworth resident will be counted as a Wandsworth resident temporarily, goes across into another borough, counted as said, and then comes back and then is supported by us once again. It's about an integrated working process. And I think what we also are making a contribution to is what goes on behind the scenes. And I think it's actually really, really sad that we're quibbling over a small amount of money for what is a very beneficial service for a very vulnerable and marginalised group population in terms of those who are homeless or those who are subject to domestic violence. And what I'd like to see is actually agree the principle that actually we are together, as London, working together, making a contribution. There might be slight differences in terms of numbers from time to time, but this is a joint working process where we are actually working together. Okay. Thank you, Councillor Worrell. Councillor Ambash. I just wanted to follow up with John, one thing he said at the end, but I wanted to support what Councillor Akinola said about this is a very vulnerable population that moves around, and it's not always easy to say whether someone's what Wandsworth or maybe having a service outside Wandsworth. And the scale of some of these projects wouldn't be able to be replicated if we tried to do it on our own. And so it may be more efficient to do it pan-London. I accept that. I wonder with the 14 individual projects on page 8 and page 9, and they may change from year to year. I'm not sure if they're exactly the same as last year. But I just wanted to ask Mr. Evans the point he said about frontline staff. So we have quite a lot of frontline staff in the housing department, children's department, adults, and community safety who would need to know about these projects so we could make maximum use. Do we have information about all 14 projects with all of the frontline staff in those departments so that they're aware of all the projects and how they might make referrals? I mean, that's my understanding. I mean, there might be a gap or two, but certainly that is the case. And just coming back to the London Council does publish as part of their grants papers. I can see there's 50 pages here on their website of outcomes to the end of November, I think, which goes to the Grants Committee that Councillor Aconola mentioned. There's also a publicly available dashboard as well. So it isn't true that the London Council's Grants Committee doesn't publish the information. So that is there. And I'm looking at information here which highlights sort of ones with case studies actually in terms of their interaction with both council and other services. Brilliant. Thank you. It would be quite good if you could share the link to the ones with case studies with us. Quickly, Councillor... Oh, right. Councillor Graham, Councillor Worrell, and then you, Councillor Aconola? Yep. Quickly. Well, to be clear, it's not the outcomes data we're talking about. It's the needs data. It's the needs data that we know, because there is a 16-page methodology document online, we know that London Councils has got. It's that that will tell us whether or not we're getting a fair share and whether the resource being allocated here is proportionate to the need here. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it isn't. We shouldn't be having to have this debate every year because we've asked consistently for this data and it's reasonable to have this data. The data exists. And I wonder if Councillor Aconola could tell her whether she has the data, given that Ms. Evans has gone from her position on their grants committee. I think I remember slightly earlier in this conversation that Mr. Evans agreed to go and look for this. Is that not the case, Mr. Evans? I think you did, for the needs data. I can request it, yes. Yes. So I think it's fine. I think we've heard that request. With respect, Chair, I've had that same answer two years in a row and he hasn't sought it for two years. So why is it going to happen the third time it's asked for? Thank you. Every year it doesn't happen. Right. Thank you for your observation. Councillor Worrell and then Councillor Aconola. And then we'll finish. Fine. Okay. Councillor Aconola? Final word? Yeah, final word. I'm sorry. I'm unable to see into the future and the next four years and who is going to need, how many people are going to need to use these services. So I will be unable to give you that information. But to respond to what you said, Councillor Aconola, we actually also have feedback. We have webinars at lunchtime where these services come and they report back to us on how the service is going, what they're learning, things that we can take back to share with our staff here. And they are not all the same services because some of them have been re-procured and some organisations have decided that they're unable to deliver the kind of service that we need because the needs of people have increased quite a lot, especially around things like mental health support. Okay. Thank you very much, Councillor Aconola. Okay, and my comment on this is this is very much a sort of arrangement where it's from each according to their ability to each according to their need. I now suggest we move to the vote. We have an amendment, Councillor Critchard, which I'd like to introduce. And also, as we've already established, there is no data to underpin your assertion there. I think that's as unevidenced as the paragraph in the paper I pointed out. Right, yeah. Your amendment is to make representations. I think we've covered, you've talked about why you think that's... Well, just to be clear for those watching online because they won't know what it is, it is just simply asking for this lack of publicly available data to be made available because we're not asking Councillor Aconola to get out her crystal ball. We're asking for data we know exists because they've published the methodology they use to calculate it. They've just not published the results. I say that she doesn't have the results. We're suggesting that she should make representations and the Council should make representations to London Councils to get those results so we can see whether it's being allocated fairly. That is all. But our residents deserve their fair share of their money. Right. Can I have a seconder for that, please? Councillor Hedges, thank you very much. Okay, so the amendment in front of us is about making representations. I would comment that it does seem to be that we've already commented that we would do this. Those in favour of the amendment, please raise their hands. Four. Those against, please raise their hands. Five. The amendment falls. We're now asked to agree the Council's continued involvement in the grants. Just looking at page 11, paragraph 28. So it says the approval of the recommendations above will ensure that the Council's compliance with obligations under this scheme. So is it fair to say that if we don't vote with the recommendations, we are then in breach of our obligations under the scheme? Thank you very much. And then enact whatever legal provision is there. But, again, I'm not an absolute expert in that particular provision. No? Okay. Right. Okay. We've now been asked to agree the Council's continued involvement in the grant scheme and approve the contribution for next year, as detailed in paragraph 29. Those in favour, please raise their hands. You can break your whip, Councilor Corner. Those against, please raise their hands. Those abstaining. Right. Okay. Thank you very much, Councillors. Okay. We now move on to... Excuse me. I probably held it. Huh? Is that a vote passed? Yes. Yes. Yes. Just be careful to be here. Thank you. Right. Okay. Next item on the agenda is the trading company annual report. Okay. And, Mrs. Merry, would you like to just say, please say just one or two words about this before we can move to it. Thank you, Chair. So, this is the annual trading company accounts, which comes to this committee every year. We have, this is the only trading company the Council has, and we have it for a very particular reason, which is to provide admin back office support for some services that used to be part of the Council and no longer are, and they operate under a kind of a mutual spin-off. So, we needed this legal entity in order to provide services to them, and the services have reduced over time as they've started to become more self-sufficient, and we're left with a small turnover. We charge admin costs against that, and this year, the overall position is a very, very small loss. We will obviously be looking into that for future years, but really the paper is as it has been in previous years. All right. Thank you very much, Mrs. Merry, and just as a reminder, I'm one of the directors of the trading company. Does anyone have any questions on this, please? All right. Let's go the other way around. Councillor Worrell, would you like to go first? Okay. Thank you. My question might sound as if it's coming from the party opposite is just a quick question. Why do we keep this going? Very good question that we ask ourselves every year. When we're doing the paperwork, because we have to, legally, we are not allowed, we're not entitled as a local authority to trade in this way with these entities, so this is the only way we can do it. Thank you. I was just going to say, Chair, that tempted as I was to ask you whatever you did as a director to lose £794. It is a de minimis sum, and we are happy to approve the paper. Thank you. Okay. Right. So, we've been asked to note the performance of the company. Everyone, those in favour? Yes. Agreed unanimously. Agreed unanimously. Fantastic. And I would like to thank my fellow directors, of which I can, as well. A note of thanks to the other directors for their work with this. We now move to the annual paper 2520, which is the Procurement Forward Plan and Annual Update. Mr. Glacester is going to make a short introduction to this paper before we discuss it. Thank you, Chair. My name is Mark Glacester. I'm the Assistant Director of Procurement. A brief introduction, because I'm aware that a lot of people here probably weren't at the General Purposes Committee in December. I think it was in December. That General Purposes Committee and full council introduced the, or approved the introduction of the sensitivity matrix, so we could determine which contracts are considered by the Procurement Board, and which sensitive contracts are considered by the appropriate OSC. Within Appendix A, I've included details of that sensitivity matrix, the non-sensitive contracts, the sensitive contracts in Commissioner's opinion, and I've also included within that the process we go through to determine in terms of contract management, platinum, gold, silver and bronze. Members can, of course, ask for those items to move from sensitive onto the non-sensitive list and vice versa. We're going to be providing six monthly updates to the June-July round of OSCs, not only finance going forward. And my team is currently working on providing just a very brief description of what each of the contracts are, especially when you start to look at things from ICT. They don't really make much sense to anybody unless you work in ICT, myself included, I have to say. Thank you very much. The final change that was made was to increase the delegation level for officers to agree entering into contract from £214,000, which it was before, that's the services threshold, to £3 million, total lifetime value, unless the subject matter of the contract is particularly sensitive or if there is cheaply transfer of staff into or out of the Council. I'm happy to take any questions. Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Glacier. Councillor Ambash. Thank you for the report, Mr. Glacier. Yeah, I must admit I was at the General Purposes Committee, but I just wanted to go over something about how you get the results in the appendix. Looking at paragraph 3 on page 22, the sensitivity analysis talks about there being eight factors considered for each project. And then the result appears in the appendix A, which gives us two lists, one that goes to offices and the sensitive ones that come to OSCs, and it gives us the value of the contract and the classification. So it just gives us two of the eight factors, but please can you explain the methodology more clearly that leads to contracts being on one list or the other list eventually? What have you done to come up with that result? I facilitated commissioners doing that piece of work. I don't know the ins and outs of all of those contracts. I contribute, obviously, in terms of cost and contract classification. But taking, for example, strategic outcome on that sensitivity matrix, working across there, if you look at direct contribution to more than one strategic outcome, a good example of that, for example, would be leisure centres. Leisure centres, yes, they're there. Partly they're providing an income for the council through a concession, but they're also used by adult social care, for example, in terms of health and well-being for individuals. So if there's something like a leisure centres contract, that would receive a four. Things like public safety, obviously the waste contract, you know, if our waste wasn't being collected, that would be very significant. So that would score a four. But actually, the, you know, the cleaning contract for the highways and things like that, that's not actually a public safety issue, so that wouldn't score so highly. You know, this is commissioner's views of these things. This is the first time we've done this. I think it's worked quite well, but I think one of the important things, actually, is that we engage more with the lead cabinet members. So, for example, we've just set up bi-monthly meetings with Councillor Henderson, so we can constantly keep under review the portfolio of contracts in his areas, and we'd encourage other kind of cabinet holders to do exactly the same thing. Sorry, can I just clarify, am I right? For each contract, they get a score between one and four for each of the eight factors, and then you just add up the number, and it's anything over 20. Is that what the result is? As part of the change programme, we worked quite hard on this. It's quite challenging sometimes with some of the commissioners thinking, oh, can we just push it up to 22? Because they were trying to keep some off the list, and someone was saying, can we bring it down to 18? Eventually, we kind of had to agree on a figure, and 20 seemed about right. Okay, thank you very much. Councillor Hedges. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your work you've done on this. Just a quick one on paragraph eight, in terms of the cost pressures on council contracts. I know this is probably going to be a bit of a laborious question, but I just wondered if you had a rough average percentage of how much the price of tenders and quotes have gone up compared to the pre-tender estimate costs, and I get it's probably going to be quite different across different sectors. It is very different across sectors. I don't have that figure to hand. That would be quite difficult to calculate. In housing, for example, with construction, the pre-tender estimate we have is often very different to the tender that comes back, and part of that, actually, is the time that's elapsed between something going to the Capital Programme Board in terms of budget being agreed and actually going out to tender and getting prices back. Things fluctuate as well. I mean, you know, the cost of living up and down, it would be a very difficult calculation to make, I'd have to say, but I'd guess year on year you're probably looking at something about 5% increase on our contract costs. That is just a guess. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councillor Fraser. Thank you, Chair. I just wondered, with these contracts, are you aware of, are these all now stipulated that they have the living wage within them? Yeah, I mean, it's part of our accreditation to the Living Wage Foundation that, since we signed up to the Living Wage Foundation, I think I gave a number here, actually, of 254 contracts that have been re-let or renewed over that period of time. Even when we're extending a contract, even if there's an extension provision within that, we're triggering the requirement for living wage at the same time. And then within the contracts themselves, because we don't know what the increase is going to be in the living wage or the national minimum wage year on year, so there's a mechanism in the contract so that the supply will be no worse off, so actually we'll just align. They provide us essentially with our staffing figures. That goes through our financial control to make sure that we're giving them the right uplift. Thank you. Councilor Orrell. Thank you, Chair. I just want to go back to the sensitivity matrix for a second. And thank you for putting it in here. It really helps understand the context. I suppose in terms of the... This is a work in progress, I understand, because this has recently been introduced. I suppose in terms of the way that this works, some of it is quite subjective. If a potential contract is somewhere around 18 or 19, and so it's right on that borderline, if it's my understanding you would go back to the Cabinet member for clarification whether it should go on Group A or Group B, or how does that actually mechanism work? Because, as I said, the subjectivity bias can actually come to this. Yeah, I absolutely appreciate that. I mean, after Grenfell, for example, anything that was coming through housing to do with fire was instantly sensitive. You know, that's kind of dropped off over time. I think that's one of the really important things, is that that list is not set in stone. The whole reason for it... Well, not the whole reason, but one of the reasons it comes to this OSC, and it will be going to the other OSCs, so actually if officers think something is non-sensitive or even sensitive, it's there, it can be discussed, and actually between us we can move it across. If you could kind of consider how we were doing it before, it was basically me just using my kind of professional knowledge and judgment to put a list together for what I thought was sensitive. This is a much better way of doing it, much better way of doing it with the commissioners. The continued engagement as well with the lead Cabinet members as we're working up to these type of meetings, should ensure actually that everyone's in agreement in terms of politically and the commissioners. Thank you. Councillor Richard-Jones. Thank you, Chair. I've got two questions on paragraph six, on the real living wage. It was explored in your answer to Councillor Fraser's question in a moment, but it's the last sentence that says the terms and conditions that have been introduced into the extended or relet contracts that provide a mechanism to inflate the contract prices in line with the rise in the real living wage rate. Does the increase in the contract prices, sorry, I'll put it the other way, I think it's easier to understand. Does the increase in the real living wage rate directly inflate the contract price? So is the council picking up the entire increase? Or is the contractor expected to pick up some of the increase of the real living wage? No, if we left an element to the contractor, they would have to front load their prices to try and factor in what the increase might be. The least risky way and the most control that we get out of that is to agree to fully cover any increases in the real living wage in exactly the same as the national minimum wage. You know, there are some councils where they don't build any inflation provision into their contracts at all. So if I'm a bidder, I have to try and factor in what's going to happen over the four or six-year life cycle of that contract. Therefore, the way I look at it, you're going to be paying inflated prices in those earlier days. With a mechanism like this, you kind of fix your risk as far as you can. Yeah, I'm sure I can follow that. And actually, possibly that increases the council's negotiating hand when it's deciding the contracts because the contractor can't say, but this is an uncertainty we have to hedge for. Just my second question then is, the paragraph says that 234 contracts have had these terms now implemented in them. How many contracts roughly remain that don't have these real living wage terms in them? There are three contracts left. Three. And the reason there's only three is they are very long-term contracts. They had eight-year fixed terms and eight-year extension terms. They're into the extension terms now. They are the, off the top of my head, it's a couple of the cleaning contracts on housing estates and the grounds maintenance contracts. But we've also had a, you know, by April the 1st, 2026, we have to move everything up to the real living wage rates in any case to maintain our accreditation. And what we've done over the last couple of years, we've been incrementally increasing it above national minimum wage rates to try and close that gap. Thank you. Just a final question, if I may, because we're pretty much... Yeah, we're pretty much at the end of the project, which is good. Approximately, what has the cost to the Council been of this? Don't hold that figure. I'd have to get that from the financial control. Thank you very much. Councillor Graham. Yes, so I'm following on from what Councilor Richards-Jones was asking. I'd already understood that when contracts are renegotiated, the impact of the employers' NI increase will obviously have to be borne in mind. And I was going to ask whether that was properly factored into the annual values we're seeing for these contracts that are due for renewal in the immediate term. However, I'd also thought that for the contracts we had, they were just being purely assessed on a CPI basis. But is there any scope additionally for our contractors to use the real living wage and employment cost element to actually seek for compensation for NI increases through that mechanism? Thank you for the question. No, we've always sought legal advice on this, actually, because we've had some contractors primarily in housing so far already asking us if we're going to cover the costs for the national insurance increases. We did highlight to them, actually, that national insurance rates dropped about three years ago and they didn't offer us a refund on our contracts. So it doesn't seem unreasonable that if national insurance costs go up that they should bear the cost for that themselves as an employer. These are the employer's costs, not the wage costs. And our contracts are quite tight in terms of what they can actually increase. So I'm not saying we're not going to get national insurance increases come through. I think when we're re-tendering for contracts, we have no control over what bid price somebody comes in. And it wouldn't surprise, if I'm a bidder, if I'm a contractor, I'm going to factor in all of my costs in new procurements. But within our existing contracts, there's no provision in the contract itself in terms of the terms and conditions for an increase such as this to national insurance. And picking up the point around CPI, we look at each contract on its merits. So a cleaning contract, for example, most of the costs there are going to be staff-based, not CPI-based. So therefore, with a contract like that, it would probably break down of 70% of the increase would be linked to the national minimum wage or the real living wage, and 30% of it would be linked to CPI to cover things like that, back office costs, increases in utilities, et cetera. Something like a waste contract, we'll break that down into one of the big costs there, obviously staffing. But it's also the cost of diesel. So actually, we look at each contract in its merits. We don't just use CPI for everything. We put an indices in place that reflects the cost the contract is going to have to bear. Thank you. Could I did also ask whether the annual value attached to the contracts listed in Appendix A already accounted for the employer's NI changes or not? Are those annual values reflective or not? No, it doesn't. Right. So we could see significant pressures coming through on all of those contracts when they're re-tendered this year. Not on existing contracts because there's no provision within the terms and conditions for an increase of the employer's costs. On the contracts listed in Appendix A which are up for renewal, we could. Likely when they're re-tendered. One specific point also about those contracts listed in Appendix A, and then I have a separate question which I can come back to later. I had raised this before the meeting. On page 26, it's got communication service, £442,000 which seems extraordinarily high given we have our own comms team. Now I understand it is quite high for Richmond and there was some debate about whether the £442,000 figure was incorrect because it was actually accounting for Richmond's costs. Could you just clarify that? It is a Richmond contract. It's not a ones worth contract. I do my best to kind of cleanse these but there's always going to be something in there I'm afraid. It's the perils of working for two councils. That's fine. Thank you for clarifying. Thank you. Okay. Any further questions? I think it's my other one. Yeah. So yes, my other question was actually following on from some of the earlier points mentioned which is the sensitivity matrix. there's no problem in doing a sensitivity matrix but it is quite amusing to note that something could be of national political interest and significant public interest and yet fail to come to committee which I don't think in practice should really be the case. I'm sure you'd have spotted that and moved it out anyway. But I was going to ask you mentioned that the papers were run past the cabinet member. Did the cabinet member see the division of contracts into those that were due to come to committee and not and agree with them at least on a tentative basis? Not in this iteration but as I've said moving forward in preparation for the July round of committees we've already established the bi-monthly meeting with the Councillor Henderson and we'd be looking to do it with other councillors but the thing I can't really write into the sensitivity matrix is use your common sense. You know if something's very high using the Grenfell example again you know if you know as an officer that this is a very sensitive issue the fact is you're going to put it up to OSC you know this is a guide for our general work. Okay thank you. Right Mr Glacier I've actually got a couple of questions myself before we move to the amendment. The ATMS software procurement I just wondered how that was going that you've rolled it out already but obviously that's something that helps support the contracting it comes up to audit so we're quite keen to know I'm quite keen to know. Sorry the ATMS paragraph 7.1 the procurement software Oh ATMS sorry I thought you were asking me about a particular contractor No no I've got one of those I know quite a lot about most of them I don't know that level ATMS is going very well actually I mean I've I've learned some lessons myself actually because you know I'm sort of very commercial based and I do give other people quite a hard time when they're actually implementing their own software so it's been an interesting journey for me actually in the team implementing a brand new system it's going very well I mean we're about to have some sessions with commissioners looking at our spend analysis you know we've got lots of details here in terms of the contracts we've got but the software actually also allows us to look in detail of contract spend and there will be savings opportunities there it's allowed us to start to bring together our contract management so we've been working primarily with adults and children's in the first instance we're not going to be doing that contract monitoring for them but actually what the system allows us to do is to interact directly with the contractor so we can actually keep an eye on the fact that contract management is taking place and at a very high level we can see where there are issues with contracts so therefore me and my team actually can get involved relatively early where we think there's a potential failure coming up in a contract I can keep a very close eye in terms of the tendering activity that's going on within my team I couldn't do that before now I can click of a button I can see exactly who's working on what and exactly what progress we're making with everything social value is a big area we've been working on at the moment although the system could record the social value commitments that have been made what it couldn't do initially it has now because we've had it configured it couldn't actually record the information that's coming back in from the contractors to validate they've actually delivered their contract management so that's a very big step forward talking to one of my category managers yesterday they were all very resistant to it when it first came in because we've all had to learn a new system and I'm lucky I've got some younger people in my team who take to these things quite well but actually they love it they all love it they love the visibility they get over the system the ease of use we've got the new procurement act coming up and I think a lot of other councils are quite worried about that we're not really because actually we've configured our system so it automatically takes you through the process you don't have to kind of think about it too much all the new notices are already automated into the system so again there shouldn't be a huge requirement for us in terms of additional resources but I think it's going to be an issue for some other councils it's been a really worthwhile exercise and I think it's really value for money to have a person or people doing what this is doing would take me about three or four additional individuals in my team okay thank you you're obviously very passionate about that it's good to hear and then I had one small detailed question page 27 the digital ID checking it struck me because it's only £857 is that a typo or is that really I can share so I would have thought so okay I would I would guess I'm just guessing I would guess that's £8,570 this will be a software system okay right thank you very much now we have an amendment for this paper Councillor Worrell I believe you would like do I need to read it out yes okay fine just double checking yeah my amendment is that the committee recommends that the following three contracts should be moved to take to the table on page 29 this will mean that the health OSC considers these before approval by the executive the three contracts are services for people with a substance use disorder the extra care scheme for Prince of Wales drive and Western large homeless reduction the reason for the change is due to the sensitivity of these contracts and the likely public interest in the awards okay thank you very much do we have a seconder for that Councillor Hedges thank you okay all those in favour of that oh I just want to make a point so we're very supportive of this not least because we believe in principle that if members of an OSC wish to scrutinise something they should be able to do so and we hope that this will be borne through in other other respects and areas but we're happy to support members rights right okay all those in favour please for that amendment unanimous lovely thank you very much and we've been asked to now agree the paper which is to approve the list of contracts which is as amended now for the forward plan and note the general updates is everyone in favour right for 2A everyone all those in favour yeah we're all great and 2B all agreed excellent thank you very much councillors okay it's actually one of my favourite papers but it's a bit nerdy as well okay next paper is paper 2524 which is about the appropriation of land adjoining the alternate activity centre for the housing revenue account to the general fund and for this paper and the next paper Mr Richardson is here to talk us through and I think it's probably worth saying is these are legal changes around to make to enable the planning agreements that we've already got in place Mr Richardson thank you yes Joe Richardson interim director of development and place delivery paper 2524 really concerns as you say approval to appropriate the land from the HRA into the general fund really to deliver an objective from the alternate renewal plan there the second recommendation in the paper is to delegate powers to purchase gardens and immunity land I think on reflection we would acknowledge that actually that perhaps could have gone in a more general update paper but nevertheless we recommend we do recommend the the approval of that I mean it will certainly help the homes for one's worth program built continue its momentum as and when the need to purchase gardens and immunity land arises okay thank you Mr Richardson are there any questions on this one or comments I thought council lawless had something to okay council Graham yes I'm grateful for the acknowledgement that perhaps recommendation 2c should have should have been placed somewhere else because it does it does have nothing to do with the rest of the paper and I don't I'm not insinuating anything about that but it probably would would sit better elsewhere could Mr Richardson just just tell us on that point in terms of gardens being bought bought up for the for the wider one's worth program where some of these sites are and how many sites he anticipates this power being used for I can certainly tell you where they have been and not notably curse vehicle was one of them so in terms of the future we don't expect these this to be enacted very often it's really a case of as and when they they come in it would just allow those terms to be negotiated by the evaluation team and we can move on more rapidly in the program but we don't know this is happening a great deal of times I couldn't give you a real number right now I'd have to come back to you for something more specific I'm afraid I just to for clarity there's not a further question just for clarity we're happy to support the a and b about the activity centre but we won't be supporting c because some of the sites that may be affected are sites that we do not agree with being developed and so we would be rather unwise to well thank you I mean you've sort of preempted this obviously councillor lawless also has something to say thank you for sharing that councillor lawless thank you I've got a specific question about the the site itself if that's okay but if you can't answer I'm happy to take it away and I use the centre a lot as a kid because I grew up on Norton state and the parcel of land that we're looking at at the back and have we considered alternatives around the development and could we fit what we want to do elsewhere and could we just explain a little bit more about like the necessity of capturing that land specific parts of the land in the hatching I mean I really would have to come back to you we're getting into I just don't have that to hand I'll come back to you if you don't mind and thank you is would that also be something that we might find in the discussed at planning I don't think anyone here goes to planning do they which is a bit of a pity not any more okay yeah well some other people quite enjoyed planning when they were on it okay so we've now got three things to consider for this which is a is to look so let's go for go for where we are my understanding is everyone's unanimous on point a and b okay c which is to delegate the powers to delegate the powers in order to negotiate terms and complete acquisition of any other gardens those in favor please raise their hands that's five those against please raise their hands those abstaining thank you very much thank you councillors okay okay we now move on to paper 25 19 which is similar paper about appropriation and it concerns the land adjacent to Farnborough house Rushmore house and Chilcomb house and again Mr Richardson is going to tell us a bit more thank you chair yes and firstly I must apologize the for the late adjustments to the paper you'll note I think from you when you look at the pack the appendices four five and six were just not published in the original report with packet error appendix four is a list of the properties subject to appropriation five is a copy of the notice publicizing the council's intention to appropriate the land and appendix six is the quality impact and needs analysis and there's one one point of clarity in the text which is you'll see on page 10 it's an appendix I'm afraid it won't be 10 sorry and let me reference it it's appendix one and it's paragraph number three and it's the middle paragraph of of that section number three so appendix one number three so we've just got more clarity in there which we hope explains the principles rules more clearly and I'll just continue with the introduction but again I'll come back and work with many further questions on it and basically the paper concerns the appropriation of rights as you say that will facilitate delivery of homes for council rent 38 homes for council rent that will consent so excuse me Mr Richardson could you take it a little bit more slowly oh yes sorry sorry no problem yes so to recap so yeah the paper concerns the appropriation of rights that will enable the delivery of 38 homes for council rent that were consented under the planning application number 2023 forward slash 4762 which is three blocks of flats built that will be built to full passive house certification on adjacent to the landing in question the paper basically seeks approval to appropriate the to proceed with the appropriation process that will ultimately be concluded subject to approval by the secretary of state I just want to be clear that the appropriation process very much allows for compensation to be made to those residents affected very much subject to the surveys and further analysis that were referenced in the paper that will indeed follow and just to conclude approval of the paper will just mean that the process of determining the compensation levels will continue and ultimately allowing works to start once the contractor has been selected which we expect to be in place in the autumn again subject to further approvals on that day on that basis okay thank you very much and before we go to questions I'm just going to remind the committee that this has already gone through planning so we're looking at the appropriation of rights and we should try and maintain our concentrate the discussion on that matter and not on planning matters to do with the previous application that's gone through committee okay councillors right councillor ambash first of all yes yeah I understand there may be a technical answer but I just really want to understand it a bit more from mr richardson obviously we want to do anything that facilitates the development of 38 affordable housing units as part of the thousand homes but the paper seems to say that we're appropriating land from the housing revenue account to the general funds and then we're sending it back from the general fund to the housing revenue account so it costs nothing so just really want to know what why why we need to do this I'm sure there's a good reason yeah and I'm sure that I'll need to come back to you the reason is a very technical one I'm afraid sorry excuse me well mr richardson mr riley's happy to answer that one probably unwisely but but I'll have a crack at it so basically when it's in the housing revenue account land there are rights over that land that residents and leaseholders will have around being able to walk over the areas non-derogation etc those those rights would enable residents to injunct against development so if you if you move the land into the general fund those rights disappear you can then develop your housing which is what we will do and then you transfer that back into the housing revenue account once that process is over so that's rightly where that affordable and social housing should be what happens in the intervening period is that people who had rights that may have been impacted by the development have a right for compensation rather than the ability to injunct and stop the development so there's an approved formula by which anybody who raises complaints around non-derogation or rights to sunlight daylight will have those considerations looked at and consultation will be awarded if appropriate that is my simple guide to appropriation thank you very much mr riley thank you very helpful okay um right i think everyone is very clear now uh council graham uh yes so it's just a phrase in in paragraph three of the main report where it says it is expected any residents affected by the development would have engaged with new steer limited which suggests that we don't know if they engaged and more to the point if we don't know they engaged then clearly we haven't taken any heed of whatever they may have said in in the in the proposal so i i just i just wanted if that could be clarified uh yeah no very happy to uh this is uh the paper is a is a very much a moment in time it's certainly in terms of the engagement that has been made the council has written uh two letters ourselves to residents and new steer the appointed agent have made two further attempts we'll continue making those attempts uh to do so and i'm sure we'll you know it's absolutely our commitment is to do so so this is the report is a moment in time and as we say in the report uh this is a process this is a process that will continue and as you say ultimately uh once those findings from the assessment are made then then then yeah it will be closer from that point but there's still a way to go okay so just for clarity have any residents engaged and if they have what have they said i think it's very early it's early in this in the process i i yeah no i need to come back to you i mean the the process is very much the the request for approval is that we continue with the process um there is still a way to go on that basis i i i need i'll happily come back with you uh to with uh with figures on the number of responses we've had to the the uh letters to date but again there will be more anyway sorry mr riley did you that's fine i mean i think i think within the the document uh i suggest one one person had responded thus far and others may well do as as mr richardson says okay thank you very much um any other questions on this okay um one thing i'd just like to say is it's quite clear we've tried a few times and i would want to stress because there may be residents watching that obviously we want to get involved with them and the details about who they who to write to obviously they can always contact mr richardson or even the committee clerk will forward anything on that's necessary and i think i would like to try our best you know we obviously want to do the development but we do want to make sure that residents are compensated where if and when that is appropriate thank you okay though we have been asked to approve items a to c the appropriation authorize the director of property services to follow up and following the appropriation seek the secretary of state's consent uh cancer grams can ask are your siding agreement with all three of those things right okay all those in faith can we should take them all together yeah all those in favor of the recommendations please raise their hands thank you very much all those against and all those abstaining right thank you very much councillors we now move on to item eight which is uh latest cost of living update and mr threadgold has come to give us very short introduction and draw our attention to a couple of key points thank you chair and good evening everyone so the last update was back in october and so the focus of this paper has been very much on what has happened and changed since then and i think it's fair to say that from all of the things that we're seeing the number of entitled to calculations the demand for crisis grants the feedback we're getting from partners that it is still uh significant pressure on local residents communities and businesses and it's important that the council and our partners are continuing to deliver a wide program of activity and support the paper also highlights uh progress against a number of the recommendations of the cost living commission which was reported to this committee february 2024 and there's a really strong alignment between the work that we're doing in response to the commission recommendations and the other activity that ourselves and partners are delivering which will absolutely remain integral to the work we do going forward the focus of the program is increasingly on developing those longer-term strategies to support individuals communities and businesses by building their financial resilience recognizing that whilst there may not come when there may come a point where it's no longer a cost of living crisis per se there are still ongoing pressures that are creating a kind of new normal with higher levels of need complexity and demand across services so we're very much now over the coming months looking to mainstream activity where evidence demonstrates effectiveness and to ensure sustainability by seeking alternative funding sources working with partners to think about how how things can be embedded uh into their their standard delivery just to highlight specifically around the household support fund because when we came in october we didn't have confirmation about the the figures and so on that we'd be having to to work with having had that there is now an outline of the spend and although we've had confirmation in the autumn budget the household support fund will be extended through until march 2026 we are still awaiting confirmation of exactly what the the figure will be there is an anticipation it will be a slight reduction from the that we've had previously so although the spending says that it will continue to be spent all the proposals are to continue spending in the same areas that we have done holiday vouchers for free school meal people eligible for free school meals crisis grants uniform grants and so on there may be some decisions to be taken as we go through the year about whether to top up some of that funding from the cost of living reserve should there be uh ongoing need or indeed to revisit proposals and would order to report that back as appropriate when when we next come to committee what i would also just like to draw attention to is to a couple of corrections to make in the paper um page 65 paragraph seven there are two references to richmond which should very much say wandsworth and beneath down paragraph eight there is some reference to the outer london borough and so on which should actually be talking about the private rental prices in wandsworth being amongst the least affordable in london accounting for more than half of resident income and the final point on page 69 on the fourth row there is some missing text there that should be referring to the extension of the citizens advice wandsworth cost of living project through until march 2026 continuing to provide support for residents through a further two winters they're expected to be challenging financially and that this will help to maintain staffing levels to meet hardy mind for a high demand for advice and support as well as higher level of complexity of the complexity of cases so okay yes thank you the clerk's just confirmed that um you'll obviously email that to go into in because we haven't got paper copies so hopefully everyone's picked that up um before we i take questions i just wanted to say i'm going to try and take it in chunks okay if that's possible i would do my best so on the first four questions or comments on the main paper then if there's anything on the appendix one and then um we'll move on to the cost of living commission progress update i mean there may be some overlap but i'm going to try and keep it try and go through in without jumping about too much if that's possible okay council hedges and anybody else is interested just let me know chair may i ask two questions in my capacity as opposition spokesperson for business engagement thank you um so the first question and thank you mr gold um the first question is in terms of redundancies what estimates uh have been made in regard to the cost of living program in light of increased unemployment figures and the upcoming hike on um employer national insurance contributions uh which will ultimately lead to higher shop prices and then the second question is um i'm sure you've all seen today about uh sainsbury's they announced that they're going to cut 30 000 jobs sadly and we obviously expect more uh companies to do so given the higher tax bill um can you please confirm what the impact will be on the local stores in wandsworth as well and ultimately uh the cost of living on our residents and our businesses thank you i'm not entirely sure that's necessary question for well sorry excuse me cancer island i can hear a mutter i can hear something that i can't actually see you sorry okay i just wondered if one of you wanted to make any comments you said threadgold are you okay to answer that or is that um about all i can answer is those are very good questions i'm afraid i don't have responses to either of those directly we'll continue to work through a number of work streams uh including with our economic development colleagues and so on to understand what some of the implications will be and i will very happily take those questions back and feed them into those meetings thank you sorry and you said you had two questions oh that was two um can i just comment the only thing i sort of remember i may be wrong here is that the majority i thought a lot of our local businesses are actually quite small and therefore will actually pay less i don't know cancer i can notice that now i mean you're absolutely right i'm just addressing sainsbury's i mean they have huge profits so i don't know if we can really relate the fact that they're well no they don't qualify um because they they're million billionaires right um so i don't know if we can well no not the people that work there but sainsbury's the shop sainsbury's the shop however make huge profits millions of pounds worth of profits um i don't know how many people um i don't know how many businesses are planning redundancies maybe you know the names of the businesses if you share that with me then i can contact them and find out what redundancies that well if you ask that question i can only help you as a as i can but um you're absolutely right um councillor critchard most of the businesses in one in onesworth are smes because we are a borrower of smes so a lot of them will actually benefit from um the increased small business rates relief as opposed to um they'll actually pay less national insurance over the next year but i don't want us to get bogged down in into that conversation right now okay thank you councillor canola councillor fraser thank you very much chair um i had two points so page 69 on the the lift tracker and page 79 on the euler grant so just two observations with the lift i'm really glad seeing that i really love that that platform and the data that it provides just trying to understand is there still with that extension is there further capacity or capability we're looking at there and secondly on the euler's grant obviously that's was a was a really great kind of uh resource for our residents to be able to to use is it we've seen now that that's kind of done a good job and run its course now uh thank you on the euler's i think yes i was talking to the colleagues running that earlier today and the numbers of applications have slowed almost to a to a dead stop and it would and there are some people who were starting to uh do applications who have then stopped and abandoned it and so on so i think quite likely yes it has run its course i think in total about 120 930 applications to that had been paid out so um still did some good things but i think it's probably run its course in terms of the lift tracker yeah i mean we felt it was a really important thing to expand extend the access and there were some economies of scale from actually extending for a longer period you're absolutely right that needs to go hand in glove with a real understanding of the resources to use that effectively we will continue to do that primarily through the cost of living program team whilst they exist and the contracts for that the resource have been extended through until april in in line in april 26 in line with um the the ongoing need that we're expecting but part of that work is also to continue to work with service areas uh to understand how they can utilize it and how they can then embed it within their work going forward as well thank you can i just um following on from that actually in the appendix i did say i wasn't going to do is the appendix we allowed a million i think we allowed a million for the uh u layers but if we've only had a 129 applications that means the it's 129 000 um hopefully we can address that because obviously that if that's money that was earmarked but we think we don't need in the future perhaps it is it likely to be used for other projects yes it will be considered as part of the available funding we still have from this point forward brilliant thank you councillor corner oh sorry go on just just on that precise point um the the application for the ones us community transport bus to the program board specifically said uh cited the u less thing and then said hence it was considered appropriate to seek funding through the cost of living budget rather than seek funding via the rohampton committee paper in other words the program board when it approved uh the bus uh not only did say uh because because there was money available but then took that money uh and so it's already spent surely i think it was considered as part of that but as you would see from within the papers there is still a wider part of funding that is available and we will continue to to think about how best to allocate that okay but there's less left than the buses cost so i don't see how the bus can be an ongoing uh sorry that the um sorry i think we moved on to the bus rather than the u less if it's been marked incorrectly you know if the two things should be shown differently or shown separately it was the application to the cost of the cost of in program board that specifically linked the two together and said that the shortfall and one was going to pay for the other which is why it'd been hoiked out of a regular budget and put another cost of living which rather makes my point about this being a slush fund to ease pressure on other budgets thank you rather than being genuine measures i think one of your colleagues would like to speak council corner yes thank you chair um i have a question about the school uniform grant that is is offered by the council um i appreciate it's a relatively small amount of money we're talking about here so uh i recognize that um if you don't know the precise details but um from the oh sorry what page please council corner sorry uh page predominantly page 74 so um in the last year um 138k was spent on the school uniform grant and there is estimated to be a 17k increase in that to 155 for 25 26 do we know why this is is it purely inflationary or do we anticipate more um children and families being eligible for that grant perhaps because of um otherwise uh rising uniform prices um for other um increasing for reasons other than inflation the um school uniform grant is almost exclusively for people who are eligible for free school meals and as a result of increases in the number of people who are enrolled for free school meals which actually is partly as a result of the work we've been doing to auto enroll people through the low income family tracker that has then led to an increase in the number of people who are also eligible for a contribution to the uh the free to the school uniform okay yes so would it in a very quick supplementary would it be fair to say that the council is satisfied that um uniform prices haven't gone up um significantly um since the last year the reason i ask this is because it's quite a significant intervention by the council um you know worthwhile one absolutely but it might have um impacts on the school uniform market in the borough i i couldn't say definitively i think we know most things have gone up in price over the last few years um but most of the schools have statutory guidance which says that they need to uh make sure there are as many of the school uniform items are not branded to try to keep costs down and so on and certainly from talking to colleagues most of the schools that were sampled recently were certainly compliant with that so i would i would hope that that's being factored in yeah okay thank you very much uh councillor lawless thank you um talk about baby boxes which is on a few pages uh page 84 mostly um and we've seen the impact that these have had in other countries um and i saw the piece we had on bbc news um about this looks really really great um can you tell us a bit more about what uh what's entailed in them like physically um but also we talk about the family hub connector i think um could we talk about the impact that that's having as well cheers i will be honest i can't tell you exactly what is in a baby box um but what i would say is what's really important is it's a kind of starter box if you like but the the real value that comes from that is not only about what's being given out in the box it's actually about the wraparound support and as you say the the family connectors and so on so in some respects the the box is a kind of a hook if you like to start those conversations through which then to have informed conversations and to really help people to access all the wider support that's available to them and i think that's where the real value comes okay councillor ironbash i wanted to make a comment about something that i don't think has been as fully covered as it should in the paper really for offices for the future but then i've got two questions for councillor akinola one about support for businesses and one about food poverty so the one for officers is there are three members sitting around the table who are part of the um voluntary grants committee and this year we've uh had the cost of living grants funds to two rounds and allocated 14 grants to small organizations on the whole they haven't really been covered and i think why it's important for future reports to cover it more in the body of the report and in the appendix is to encourage more voluntary groups and local community groups to keep keep applying because they're very important so there are 14 projects and uh nearly nearly 200 grand that's been allocated to that so could you bear that in mind for future reports the questions for councillor akinola is could you say a little bit more councillor akinola about the support to businesses struggling in the cost of living particularly perhaps elaborate on para 16 on page 66 in terms of what we're doing to support struggling businesses that's the first one yes thank you so um as you know um you know council um finances um are quite tied when it comes to supporting private businesses anyway but the pleased to say that the housing and housing the high streets team were able to put together a um cost of living hub which is online and also um with that able to access some of the high streets um offices to help them um if they had any issues we also have um a project that that was going out called i think it's greening businesses to help to help businesses reduce their costs um their heating costs their energy costs and so that's the sort of support that we have given businesses there's quite a few um training connectors that also have come online through the arts team for new arts businesses and creative businesses as well thank you very much the second one was really about food poverty and genuinely don't understand exactly what we're doing the report talks about uh the onesworth food partnership on page 68 and page 70 on 68 i think there's 196k to develop the food partnership and strategy be interested to know how we're spending 196k to do that and what we're hoping to come out of the strategy and on page 70 could you elaborate councillor a canola about the well family and food bank service where is it based and who's the service targeted to and what's what's the service doing thank you very much okay the food the food partnership um so that that is or will be the combination of um a food strategy that's been written um and supported by the um policy team um and it will be about connecting all of the different players within the food system schools uh our big institutions our community services as well um and you know our sports centers and anyone that really brings food and if you if you we're thinking about food insecurity as a hook to actually reducing health inequalities across the board that's the kind of strategy that we can look forward to so that money will be used to bring all of the players together to write um and co-produce a strategy that everyone has bought into quite similar to what we're doing with the voluntary sector strategy as well i'm just going to pass over to on a point of order on a point of order no point of order on a point of order which i'm entitled to make no point no point of order you're not chairing the meeting councillor a canola on a point of order this is an important point of order relating to a declaration of interest the onesworth food partnership no point of order excuse me councillors right what let me take advice and i know where we're going with this one yeah okay so can you make your point of order yes my understanding is and certainly often the latest information available online the onesworth food partnership is convened by be enriched which is councillor a canola's charity and her disclosable pecuniary interest the sec the person acting as the secretariat to the onesworth food partnership was her personal assistant at being enriched how is it possibly in order for councillor a canola to be discussing this let alone to be involved in decisions where she has a direct conflict of interest where her income in her day job is relates to this this money sorry councillors i'm about to take some advice i would appreciate it if you would all let me take some advice yes so yes if uh councillor a canola considers that there is a uh um a disclosable pecuniary interest relevant to the item under discussion then she should declare it and if it is a um uh disclosable pecuniary interest that um would prevent her from uh from voting uh on the now on the matter then she should leave the room however councillor a canola is not a voting member of this committee she is here in her capacity as uh cabinet member um uh uh with a relevant portfolio uh she may if she wishes uh to make a declaration uh for the sake of transparency but as she is not a voting member um and she isn't uh providing uh she isn't determining uh the uh recommendation before this committee on this particular issue it isn't a um a disclosable pecuniary interest that would prevent her from participating um in this because she is not participating madam chair as a voting member of this committee thank you just following up that that point but councillor a canola's comments clearly indicated that she is involved in this aspect of the council's work she's other she's involved in the transfer of taxpayers money to her own organization from which she derives her income that is a conflict that should not be occurring i think you'll find that councillor canola has declared this on her register of yeah and we have just discussed that the point of order is around whether or not she would be able to vote on this and it is clear the point of order is should she be involved in this area i wish you would let me finish right the point of order we've discussed is whether or not she can vote it's been clear she can say things but she isn't a voting member of this committee if there are other things i would suggest you deal with this outside the committee we have had a discussion here about is councillor a canola now to vote and you have there's been a question about the food partnership which she has answered just precisely the point if with respect i have previously sought assurances and been told that councillor a canola was excluded from and not involved with anything to do with her charity because that would be improper that is why a decision previously was transferred from her to the leader of the council to take now she has clearly indicated that she is involved in that work that is highly improper she that is what she herself has exposed excuse me one of the things i would say is obviously it is your opinion that it is highly improper let me take my advice so madam chair um if there is a an issue uh relating to that matter that's something i will discuss further with councillor a canola my advice to members of this committee remains the same in terms of whether it's a matter that uh prevents uh councillor a canola uh participating if councillor a canola wishes to make a clarification statement at this point she can do so nevertheless if she wishes not to do so at the point that councillor graham has made i'm happy to take out of the outside of this committee it is not for this committee to determine that issue today okay thank you councillor a canola would you like to make a statement or would you i mean the choice is yours as to whether you're not you make a statement but you will then carry on so um yeah we we don't run the food partnership so anyway what i was saying is i'm going to pass over to um to the officers to answer your questions on the um food bank because i'm not i don't know all of the details about where exactly it is held but i do know that the council is um overseeing and supporting um several food banks across the accounts across the borough and i think that's really important okay so mr yeah yeah just to just to pick up so the the money is allocated from the fund um has helped um deliver some consultancy work around um how a food partnership might be developed in the uh in the borough and the food partnerships are something that uh many boroughs if not most boroughs have and um indeed we feel it's important it came out as a recommendation from cost of living commission in fact that we should develop that and certainly during things like covid it was the fact we had no um sort of coordinated and coherent uh mechanism which to um work with the sector and uh in terms of food and food security that you know that was definitely um a gap um the money will be looking to um recruit um an officer with the skills to help develop that partnership further with the um with the voluntary sector um not that post will sit within uh my teams to uh develop that so that work is um underway okay thank you councillor ambach oh sorry mr tregg well sorry i was just going to add very quickly that pot of 196 also includes a delivery pot for some of the actions that come out of the strategy and so on as well to help to address some of the concerns that have been identified and raised uh just to pick up the the other point that councillor ambach raised about the onesworth family food bank continuation bid and that service is actually a mental health and well-being service that visits food banks across the borough in order to provide support to people recognizing that the people who are accessing the food banks may well also be experiencing other challenges that means they're having to reach out for that and so it's the the wording of the bid i appreciate perhaps suggest that it's a food bank but i know that for example they've done a lot of work at elsewhere food food bank and at onesworth food bank reaching out to the people who are already attending sorry and which was that which could you remind me of which which um allocation it was i think like thank you super okay thank you very much yeah okay council graham you had a question uh yes so i'll preface my question just with a reaction to some said earlier about sainsbury um the the fact of the matter is we um produced for this committee a report in which we appended a letter from the british retail consortium uh that that shows that the labor government's budget imposed new costs of seven billion pounds on retailers uh but through changes to the cost of uh of their employees and through a two billion pound packaging levy the same letter shows that they um uh only have have margins of around three to five percent profit margins which amongst the lowest on anything anywhere and pay 55 percent of their profits in business taxes which is one of the highest anywhere the fact of the matter is that although people and we may all have our own gripes with supermarkets when we go coming out of this it will in due course but the idea sorry can we make it quicker than in due course well no it was dismissed that somehow sainsbury's or other supermarkets were making billions and could easily afford to meet these costs imposed by the government not if they're going to remain profitable they're not uh they're not charities even though some other things are they have to make money and of which more than half of their profit is then returned to the taxpayer it is ridiculous to suggest that costs which are making it uneconomic for them to employ staff and causing them to lay staff off are down to them and not down to the government this is a thank you for your observation and your perspective on this i'm not entirely sure that everyone shares that have you got a question councillor yes my question relates to winter support payments because the other paper that we produced which again was not discussed at the last committee was about why having voted against producing a support scheme of full council the administration then turned around and made one anyway and produced it on an incredibly narrow basis so that it only helps a thousand additional pensioners which is fewer than the numbers that they themselves agreed to be vulnerable and why as we see from this paper they are only assuming that the weather will be cold this winter and that next winter no support will be provided okay thank you very much councillor um who would like to take that one uh i can't see everybody down the end councillor ireland would you uh i'm afraid um councillor graham's completely misunderstood um the administration's intention now we continue so excuse me councillor ireland would you be able to move your mic right okay did you get what i said earlier start again yeah okay um i'm afraid councillor graham's completely misunderstood this administration's intention now we will continue to support pensioners and all residents that need our help through this cost of living crisis created by your government um and we aim to direct funds where they are most needed and where they can do the most good now we partner with the uh our reinvigorated excellent voluntary sector because they're experts in this field and they also help our residents now um we were working a point of fact we were working on a possible alternative when the government announced that they were restricting the winter fuel payment to those who are claiming pension credit we were working on that all summer which meant when we were ready to announce it when we had full information we were able to bring it in very speedily and for all those um eligible residents where we had their bank details they got the money before christmas and i want to thank mrs mary and her colleagues and mr threadgold for all the work they did on this now we are considering options for next year using the same process once again using the learning from this year's process and when we're ready to make an announcement having all the information we will do so but really i gave a speech on this in council a couple of months ago the key here is we've got crisis support but we've really got to help our businesses and our residents to to try to build financial sustainability and we have got a number of measures including the lift program and the entitled to um program on the council's website the we have had three campaigns might be four by now to sign up residents for pension credit and attendance allowance because that is where it's at making sure we can maximize the household income for these um residents so that they are able to absorb financial shocks in the future they're not just sitting around waiting for help you know so uh when i gave that speech i think i estimated that the benefit from um pension credits up to 10 000 pounds my colleague tells me it's more like 13 000 pounds and that's the key really making sure people claim what they're entitled to and we apply the same we apply the same logic to attendance allowance where we've also had sign-up schemes so yes this is constantly on our radar we've been working on it unlike the minority party that think the cross living crisis is over and wanted us to wind up the fund we are considering options and we'll be ready to make the announcement we will thank you a follow-up question can i ask why if she was always going to do it she voted against doing it i don't she didn't vote she's not member of this committee thank you very much a full council every single member of the labor group who was present voted against developing our own assistance scheme every single one what we were so that's that is a fair a fair point with one one stood aside from that however the point is council island and the um um administration argued against and voted against producing a scheme she's saying it throughout that period it was her intention to produce one why did she vote against it we we voted against your motion we didn't vote against paying the money to our vulnerable pensioners and we went ahead and did it now you know very well we've been working on this for months if you want to try to jump on the bandwagon that's fine but don't pretend that that it was your idea all along you right our motion was sorry sorry i do need to come back and our motion was an incredibly simple one that asked about the principle it didn't go into any further details please i am trying to say something we had this debate in council thank you we've re-heard it you've had an answer enough council richard jones thanks chair i've got two points and a question i've not said very much during this committee so i hope i can get this out um swiftly would be lovely as i say i've not taken up much air time in this committee whereas others have so i'd be grateful for some of my fair share first of all an observation you keep pressing members for questions the committee isn't just for questions it's for discussion right members like councillor warrell have fairly made observations and not questions that's entirely right members of the minority party should be allowed to too secondly the cabinet of finance in the discussion about the window fuel payment just said that she had been working on this all summer when i wrote to the leader in september urgently asking for work on this it was met with radio silence when we got to the committee on the 9th of october the cabinet member wouldn't divulge any information whatsoever about this work that had apparently been going on since the summer that is i'm afraid absolutely contemptuous of this committee and i'm really disappointed to hear that on my question it relates to disclosable pecuniary interests i don't want to talk at all about councillor akinola's personal circumstances that's been ventilated enough in this committee and i'm sure it'll arise again a very important question about the advice the module officer gave a moment ago so i understood the advice to mean that a member participating in this committee only has to disclose a pecuniary interest if they're a voting member if they're not a voting member but they have a pecuniary interest that's relevant to the agenda that's not disclosable now if i've understood that advice correctly that is very surprising advice to me because a member that partakes in the discussion even if they can't vote is influencing the discussion and would influence the outcome of any vote so presumably if there was a pecuniary interest relevant to an item on the agenda the member whether voting or not would have to declare it i just think i raise this because it's very very important that the committee and all council members understand what the position is so councillor graham sorry councillor richard jones you set it out sorry i'm used to addressing councillor graham um uh council richard jones uh yes you've set that out uh perhaps more clearly than i and then i did earlier you're right that um the uh the uh specific prohibition prohibition around disclosable pecuniary interest and the voting uh provisions uh are to prevent members uh of uh members from committing what would be potentially a criminal offense and taking part uh but in terms of whether uh members who are not members of the committee who are participating in debate um and might have an interest whether that's a disclosure of the community interest or some other interest the advice i always give to members is uh if it is a disposable pecuniary interest and therefore it is therefore prejudicial you ought not to participate um in in that uh discussion if there is a uh an interest that is not a dpi but nevertheless um for the purpose of transparency you ought to let members and members of the public uh who are watching know then that is something a matter for you to determine so we are at one uh on that and if i was not clear early i apologize i can't obviously talk about the specific uh issue with regards to council i can only and that's not this is not the appropriate uh place to do that so that's what uh my intent was to move that discussion away if there is a uh dpi uh that is relevant then i would look at that um and give advice appropriately to the relevant members okay well thank you and did you then have a question on the cost of living or a comment whatever given my comments on the cost of living right okay anybody else got any other one moment uh sorry anybody else got any other things they wanted to say on paper relevant to the paper uh council oh yes before we move to the we've obviously got two uh amendments on this um can i just make a comment about the presentation of the table um with all the lists in of the things that we've spent our projects on for the next time we see this could we have a look at reviewing that so it's clear which projects have finished and which are carrying on because that was one of the things that was quite hard to see and and that would be very happy to work with you to come up with something that makes that clearer okay we have so just to chat that you you mean the table in appendix one table in appendix one yeah brilliant okay we've got two amendments to this oh i do have a just a quick question i need um yeah to ask the officer in relation to lift in relation to lift all right can i just clarify in terms of the lift program the lift work that's going on at this moment in time that you are actively seeking all the time people who might be eligible for different benefits or who might be at risk in terms of cost of living related issues so that this is it's not a static you've done your work and then you've closed it that this is an ongoing program the reason i ask is that is my understanding that in terms we are always seeking people who are eligible for different benefits or support from the council and this is an active program that we are that we are doing all the time um yeah absolutely as you're describing council it's a platform that is drawing in data from a range of sources both from the council and externally dwp and so on it enables us in part to track the impact so hence when we can claim the numbers of the people who are now claiming who were not before it's because we can see that those people are now claiming there will be other people who are coming on and off those lists at various points which is why we repeat the campaigns throughout the year as well so that we continue to say to people we believe you are eligible we would encourage you to apply and this is how you should apply okay thank you very much okay there are two amendments so council graham just want to briefly introduce those amendments i thought you said you were going to turn to questions on appendix a oh sorry right okay i was i was hoping we've just we've just obviously spent a long time on this and i thought uh is it quick on appendix a well it's relatively quick because i've been pursuing um on on page on the page about financial travel and support for residents which page 95 of the pack uh we once again have the uh roehampton university uh bus uh cited with journey figures which are stated emphatically as an increase of 30 000. now a point i put repeatedly uh to officers is that uh certainly as i understand it and has been reported to me although i've never traveled on this bus um the the bus service um prior to this year uh involved in roehampton had no uh machinery digital or otherwise on board for recording passenger numbers that the drivers were not recording individual journeys prior to the council uh giving them hundreds of thousands of pounds in which case the baseline figures on which this uplift is being compared are are doubtful at best there may be no uplift at all if the bus journeys that figures that are being used for last year to calculate this increase are actually down to guesstimates at the end of the day or a driver just recording what they thought at the end of the day or the company accuracy of the figures yes or the company deciding it would it would massage them down a bit in order to try and re-attract the money um do we have is this something that you could handle is this something that we may need to take away and refer back to transport team which is it i'm happy to provide some information that i got from the transport team uh about this but i suspect that it may be helpful to to take this away and provide a a full briefing if that would be helpful for councillor graham once i've i've fed this information in um i mean from from their perspective the university and indeed tfl uh continue to fund this bus and provide licenses for and had done for some time and so we think it's probably fair to assume that they wouldn't continue to do that if they didn't have some assurance about the numbers that there were previously as the baseline that councillor graham is referring to and it's not only about drivers counting people on and off there are also on board cameras and there is also student feedback uh and we have put a number of things in place in the contract going forward to ask for more detail uh and to be more precise and robust in their data collection uh than perhaps that may have happened in other contracts and so on but uh yeah i'm happy to stop it sounds to me that this is something that would be better handled outside the committee so yeah i'll accept that but i have tried to get it clarified outside the committee on several occasions so far and not been able to do so the other point about this bus service is a separate point on page 82 it says that the point of this service is to provide access to affordable food in what is otherwise otherwise a food desert um i mean roehampton does have a small supermarket it does have other buses it does have other means to connect there are services we all know that will deliver supermarket food to your door um i i find this i find this surprising phrase but equally the previous papers didn't mention food at all they said the justification for this service was to allow people to get to work and i would point out that on both counts it's either it's still a food desert if one considers it so and it's still impossible to get to work from for the whole of the holiday period thank you for your very long observation on this we now have two amendments on that point what what is the justification for the bus service is it because of food or is it because of work and how does either justify it when for a lot of the year it's not running right right right excuse me i want to move to the am i going to get an answer to that question how we no we aren't going to get into this because none of us actually live on the estate i'm asking why we're paying hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money towards this we don't need to live on the estate to ask that that's our job to scrutinize that money on this committee thank you right you have two amendments would you like to move have i got um are you going to move amendment one about the winter fuel payment well i i think it's absolutely extraordinary that you're suggesting we shouldn't get an answer to that question but if you're if that is your ruling we will move on and members of the public can make their own uh assessment of that um so our first amendment is um asking the uh administration as a new uh recommendation in paragraph two to commit to expanding the ones worth winter fuel payment scheme to vulnerable pensioners who are not eligible for council tax reduction and to continuing a local scheme for the duration of the cost of living program do you have a seconder for that please let's have councillor rich jones have a different name in the box um i just wonder cancer island i know you've already answered if you've got a couple of points questions to make on this or further points i do have some questions but i think i'll leave it to um my colleagues if they don't ask them i'll address them oh well specifically and then i'll i'll give you one um residents who are not eligible for the council tax reduction uh so so could you move your mic again sorry um i'm not clear what you mean by residents who are not eligible for the council tax reduction do you have um an eligibility criteria related to income for instance for example it was vulnerable pensions not residents um if for example one of the council tax reduction scheme criteria is that if you have savings of more than 16 000 pounds no matter how low your income you won't qualify now to take for example uh a pensioner in one of the fits you blocks uh in my ward they are having major works coming down the line if they're a leaseholder for which they may get a bill for more than 16 000 pounds it's entirely reasonable for them to have those savings they're not touching them and can't touch them for their day-to-day cost of living needs because they know this bill from the council is coming and yet they don't qualify now i'm not saying what what the expanded nature of the scheme should be because we know that the the administration may have different views on that that's precisely why we wanted them to bring a scheme to committee so that we could discuss what it might look like and what those things should be instead the committee was bypassed this went through under so 83a and it went through in the narrowest form possible now it went through in a form that was easy for the council to automatically identify those people but there are many ways in which it could be extended including allowing a discretionary sum this is an incredibly small amount of money within the overall scope of the cost of living program we're spending much more on that bus than we are on helping pensioners who the administration acknowledges to be vulnerable and acknowledges are not covered by the scheme and i think that there are many ways in which this could be addressed we accept that this year they cannot be what this is an hour because you've already gone ahead with your scheme what we're asking for is for the criteria to be made more generous next year and for a commitment that that will be ongoing rather than a one-off payment this year and then leaving them high and dry the year after okay sorry councillor i should like to make a comment and then if councillor councillor has a short thing after that and then we'll move to vote on that there are two reasons why i'm not going to be voting for this well at least two we've not agreed anything that goes on as long as the cost of living program goes on councillor island has explained very eloquently how we've been very nimble and had developed specific programs as the the cost of living problem struggle has gone on over the last year or two or three so that would not be advisable to agree a scheme to go on as long as the cost of living program the second is i'm a vulnerable pensioner i've just had a knee operation as you know and i'm recovering well it's a very loose terminology this and uh there are many many people like myself who who shouldn't be considered eligible for any such scheme and uh this motion would it would include me so i'll be voting against okay thank you very much i'll respond to that so actually all right sorry excuse me guys we have now spent 50 minutes on the paper and we have spent an awful lot of time on this it's a very straightforward amendment you've heard that i would respond to the criticism because the points have been made to me as to why our amendment was inappropriate i should be allowed to explain why i don't think councillor ambushes criticism should should apply 30 seconds then we're moving to a vote fine so in the first instance there are plenty of elements of this cost of living program that are funded beyond this spring and that the intention is clearly to fund them throughout including for example money going to assistance advice money on staff money on many other things so it's perfectly reasonable to suggest that this should go forwards and and secondly the council themselves the administration themselves defined the vulnerable pensions we're talking about they talked in the paper they brought in october about the pensioners who were just above the threshold for pension credit but were nevertheless would be worse off than those on it and they specifically identified the group that we're talking about and they must acknowledge that council tax reduction does not uh actually help all of that group so it's quite clear and defined right thank you okay council irons any other let's move to a vote now please those in favor of this amendment please raise their hands four thank you those against this amendment please raise their hands five okay the amendment falls you have amendment two which is to commit for the 25 26 yes so this amendment two is is an alternative amendment which is much more limited because we anticipated that there might be some of the issues raised that we just were which is to commit to funding one one's worth winter fuel payments for the 2025 26 winter period which is as in no further than some of the schemes that they've already funded less distance than some of those schemes simply saying that there should be payments next year for which there is a lot of available money within the existing cost of living program and is unallocated okay right council graham sorry councillor island would you like to say a couple of words on that and then we'll move to vote right i think i covered that in my previous answer but yes um we are considering all options and we will continue to work on this as i say learning from our experience in the first year of this so it's initially a one-off but that does not preclude um continuing with it we need to consider all options and um i hope i hope councillor graham has advised the leaseholder resident leaseholder i'm assuming in fits you that uh they should be eligible for extended repayment terms of 48 months uh extended from 10 months of the previous administration for their major works yes but they still have to they still have to pay it and so that will have to come out of their savings so they can't spend their savings up front and then get magically up some more savings from somewhere excuse me they'll offset their major works enough have you got a have you got a second um for your amendment please councillor corner thank you very much okay the second amendment well i just wanted to ask councillor is she saying that the administration recognizes the need for winter fuel payments next winter and will provide them yes or no if you continue i'm going to have to ask you as i have to do almost every single meeting to go away and just compose yourself for a bit so please don't argue we're moving to a vote on amendment two okay those in favor of the amendment please raise your hands thank you four those against the amendment please raise their hands thank you okay so we that both amendments falls so we now are i do hope that we won't hear in future that all along councillor island was intending to do it next year and she just wouldn't tell us i don't think i actually indicated that you should speak at that moment i think i've been very generous with allowing you to speak there was no indication oh excuse me councillor island can you turn your mic off thanks there was no indication from me please normally yeah you are quite you can be very respectful to how things should operate i didn't indicate you should speak okay so we now have to we've now got one two three recommendations a to f now for uh councillor graham do you have a view on do you take them one at a time or on block well i mean a lot of them to note we're happy to note um but we will abstain on agreeing okay so a to a if we look at items a b c d and f which are all about noting various things that's agreed thank you unanimously a agree proposals for continuing spending those in favor of that please raise your hands thank you those against and yeah sorry sorry perhaps that doesn't need a cooling off period those abstaining thank you okay right all right we are now going to pay per she says looking for her relevant paper um item 10 which is a budget oh no we're not going there we're going to item 9 which is our council's general revenue budget paper 25 22 uh mrs mary for you to say a few words on that i will do chair thank you just briefly so um could i also ask you to hold the mic that's super when you do that yes so i will be brief the the paper is the first stage of a two-stage process to set the um budgets for the general fund revenue uh framework for 25 26 so the next financial year um we use this budget um proposal as the um consultation that we have to do uh under statute um and then we reconsider um the output from that that consultation and uh any changes and movements between now and the next finance committee meeting so we'll present a revised paper to the next meeting which will then go on to the executive and full council for formal approval of the budget and next year's council tax so as we've seen um through the year we've had some um significant variation in our um projected forecasts of spend um largely as a result of demand pressures in some of our statutory services so homelessness in particular children's services social care and adult social care so i won't go through those in too much detail now because you have heard um in this committee what that has been looking like throughout this year and each of those service committees has also discussed um those issues in detail in particular we've talked about effective demand management and mitigating actions that we are trying to take as a council um to minimize the impact of those pressures not just on the council's finances but also obviously making sure that the impact on our service users is um appropriate so those um issues are continuing and we projected those forward into the next financial year and so there is a a significant increase uh projected in um demand led budgets which is reflected in these figures there's about 16 million pounds of additional growth that's on top of about 15 million pounds worth of additional inflation that we're we're expecting next year we have included um some element of the national insurance impact in to that inflation estimate um for some some areas and we will be looking at whether or not we need to potentially increase that um to reflect some of the indirect costs that we may or may not um uh suffer which was mentioned earlier and we'll try and reflect that in the figures that come back in february so if you can bear with us on those please um we've also got um as i've said many times before the um the good news of treasury income um investment income has continued to um help us we've got about 24 million pounds worth of um income due this financial year from our investments and we're expecting that to continue into next year so that is continuing to to um help balance the budget um and we are currently recasting all the treasury figures and again we will update this paper for the next um the next committee with revised estimates on there i just wanted to um briefly mention the finance settlement which came through the provisional finance settlement came through just before christmas there was a headline um i think it was 5.7 increase in uh local authority funding um that assumes a number of grants um and it assumes um a full council tax increase of just under five percent and and that was the government's um commitment to particularly social care but also some other demand-led areas homelessness as well ones with did uh better than average we um averaged a six percent uh core spending power increase and that's largely um led by some of our demand-led budgets and um the new homes bonus continues to um bring in income for onesworth so we had about 13.5 million additional grants uh in the settlement which was good news but as i mentioned earlier we've had more uh financial pressure from demand and inflation than that so um overall um we are and sorry the one figure i've forgot to mention is we've got um additional business rates income of about 10 million assumed and again we'll recast that figure for february so overall this paper is showing that um the demand pressures continue and are expected to continue into um certainly next year um as we go into the future years we're we're more unsure of what will happen both in terms of that demand uh inflation and um the government's uh funding settlements so the the projections get a bit more um a bit less firm in future years so but we do iterate round and review those um a number of times before we actually commit those budgets into um the framework so overall as we stand we've got a net um drawing down on reserves to balance the budget as we stand um even with a full council tax um increase next year we would need um 8.6 million from reserves and that's on top of the use of reserves that we talked about in terms of our cost of living program access for all and some of our refugee support i'm happy to take questions if anyone has any okay oh sorry and just to say there are detailed budgets in the appendix and the some of those um obviously come here and and are collated into this paper um for the first time this year we are also going to present those detailed budgets to service committees for information so that um they can discuss the detail um of those service budgets alongside their um conversations around the quarter three forecast okay thank you very much okay so let me find my relevant bit of paper okay who has questions on the paper please right council corner would you like to start thank you jay yes this is actually a very quick clarification question why is the um referendum limit for future years 2.99 rather than 4.99 perhaps i've missed something because the government hasn't confirmed what it will be in future years they've confirmed it for 25 26 but not for future years so does that also that that's partly because it's it's always been made up of the council tax limit plus the um other social care adult social care is is that anything to do with that or just yes so there's two elements to the council tax increase but the point is the government hasn't committed to what future levels will be so we've assumed 2.99 we we've often done that if there hasn't been a future commitment we've assumed um a level that's more in line with inflation effectively we might get a multi-year settlement that um hard codes that referendum limit in for multi-years which i suspect will happen but we haven't had that yet okay thank you follow up it has been 4.99 for the most previous years right uh yeah but it's an annual decision um and inflation has been high over that period which has led it to be 4.99 i understand that but given that we are looking at uh budget deficits here for future years wouldn't it be prudent to budget based on a 4.99 assumed increase in council tax seems inconsistent to me no i think that's the opposite prudent that's assuming there'll be more income than anybody's suggesting there might be at this stage so okay go yeah maybe more more reflective of the more realistic of what the likely reality is going to be yes right okay council graham uh just before i turn to my question i think you may be right uh council critchard that the uh the social care levy aspect of the uh of the of the bill is not confirmed by the present government beyond this year and so the underlying referendum limit this year is is 2.99 and that is taken forward and that probably is is the correct i'm flattered that you consider i'm right i i always give you credit when when i when i i feel it's uh appropriate council critchard and that is that is more often than than might be the case so okay right um now uh my my question i have relates to council tax was a different point uh which is obviously the limit this year is 4.99 percent uh it's been reported in the media uh that local authorities have been instructed by the government that if they fail to take the full council tax potential council tax increase uh they will be penalized in future years uh settlements uh can officers confirm whether any of the information they have received uh is in line with what has been reported so may i just ask the source of the report there was the main report was in the daily telegraph but there have been other papers and media outlets have taken up as well reporting different variations on the same theme just wondered sorry uh mrs mary you happy to answer that of course so we don't know the detail um the government has committed to um what's previously been called a fair funding review so reviewing the national distribution um of funding and also multi-year settlement we've always said we've said for a number of years actually since uh the fair funding review was first uh mooted we talked about the impact on councils um with low council tax that isn't a new um a new issue that and we are at risk we are definitely at risk but our historic position has put us in a position where we are significantly below the average and there's something called council tax equalization if that comes in it depends how the methodology applies this this concept of how much council tax you actually collect compared to how much potentially you could collect um and the government would have to remove the referendum limit cap if it were to introduce that um kind of um penalty so until we see the detail we can't really tell how that will feed through to um the funding formula it's as simple as that but i i mean i have heard there have been comments about council tax and levels of council tax so yeah i recognize the point you're making so so officers haven't had any communications and clear that wasn't part of the funding framework documentation uh could the cabinet member confirm whether the administration has seen any communication from the government from the secretary of state about the idea that councils that set low council taxes should not be rewarded i'm sorry councillor island i i haven't seen any correspondence to that effect i think we'll just have to remain fascinating we should well we'll just have to wait until we're here as quite often happens okay um councillor ambush thank you for your report mrs mary uh at the last finance committee we had a report on the change program and we were told program would deliver savings over the lifetime of the program i think six to nine million was the kind of figure estimated i wonder are there any savings within the next financial year 25 26 that are going to result from the change program uh thank you good question um yes you'll see there are um savings that we have taken in the paper um 600 000 pounds has been taken from the um decision making accountability model that has been applied to the staffing structures and children services um we're doing more dma for short more dma um reviews at the moment and potentially that will deliver some efficiencies we haven't banked more than what we've already delivered though through children services the big thing that is coming up um with the change program in terms of efficiencies and delivering savings is the digital investment and we've got some really good uh lines of inquiry of uh digital products effectively that we can buy either to add on to our existing systems or processes um or to complement what we've already got that we know will deliver savings and we're going through quite a um a granular business case um process at the moment to understand exactly what we can do within which time frame and how much that is likely to deliver we've reflected some of that um as a kind of an estimate in some of the demand management figures that we've assumed in the paper but we're confident that there are definitely lines of inquiry that will deliver um digitally and are captured as part of that change program but we'll bring those to you as they um develop okay thank you okay further questions i can't believe it well i'll tell you what i'll ask a question i just wondered um in the school's budget broadwater school obviously we're hoping everything uh the changes we made so we've got special needs there have we factored anticipated stavings in for that change um so not in this paper because that i would appear in the dedicated schools budget paper which is imminently going to children's committee but we would reflect pupil roles pupil numbers and um the knock-on impact of additional scm places as you say is uh a saving of a of a higher it's an avoided cost effectively from um educating those children elsewhere so that would be in the figures um yes oh sorry but i was also thinking is because one of the costs we incur with special needs children often is the um travel costs in and out of borough that's quite big would would that not be affected yes sorry the sen transport budgets have been reviewed and they are in here apologies yeah brilliant thank you very much counselor worrell um just a question and i'm very happy for you to take it away and come back to me with an answer i suppose it's the establishment of the icbs and the aspect of how much shared sorry the integrated care boards my apologies um they're due to come online next year um although there's some confusion around um how they're going to work and a lot of commissioning is being developed down to that level which will involve joint work with local authorities i suppose my concern is what would what do you think the impact of that change in commissioning intentions and the way the money is actually being spent through the icb structure have on us and and how are we factoring how are we factoring that in in terms of our services especially in terms of health and public health gosh that is probably the biggest question that i cannot answer at all i'm not even going to try um it's something so jeremy de souza is um actively involved in the southwest london icb um he's our our lead on adult social care and public health and i know he's got this covered in the health committee so i'll ask him to specifically give you a briefing um because i don't have an answer okay thank you any other questions right council graham uh i've got two even but i i'd say only two um so the the first um this is mary uh which is obviously she mentioned um that there are further uh consequences of the uh increase in employers national insurance that will will hit these figures um i mean obviously and we've had discussions in which she said that she was relatively confident that a lot of the direct impact would be met uh could she just give the committee uh some wider understanding of the other costs indirect costs that are likely to come in uh and and and put some um if she can quantify the the parameters on that yeah happy to um so obviously this links to the conversation earlier on the procurement paper and mark glaster gave some good answers about the impact on our existing contracts where actually this is not something that the council holds the financial risk on for existing contracts because contractors um need to deal with that as part of their contract price um we do know though that we have got some spend um in our services that isn't contract um driven so we have spot what we call spot purchases in social care social care which is where we go to the market and request a particular package for a particular person at a particular time um so those spot purchase uh prices are definitely at risk because um suppliers will immediately try to pass on and will you know we expect that and and the government is expecting that they will try and pass on um any additional cost straight away and they're allowed to do that because ultimately the price that they uh put forward for a package will um will include that increased cost we've done some sums around what potentially that could look like um with um adult social care and we think it could be about two million a year i mean but we'll have to see obviously it depends which packages we go to the market for when and uh which suppliers are bidding on that so there might be about two million pounds and that also includes um the element you picked up earlier in your questions around increases in the uh living wage so they're all kind of mixed in together in as part of the price so the figures in this paper already include about 1.4 million so we've put about 10 uh provision on top of the inflation estimates we've used to um to identify that there will be an additional cost but i think we're going to have to put more in so just flagging that between now and the next paper i think that figure will increase that specifically spot purchase in adult social care there will be other contracts where this will have an impact um notwithstanding we will um hold contractors to their um contracted inflation so you know we won't as a matter of course be increasing our contract prices for this as those tenders as you rightly picked up earlier as those tenders start to come through and our contracts start coming to an end we do expect there to be an increase but we can't put a figure on that so again it's going to have to be a bit kind of finger in the air at the moment but definitely will be overall um you know those those cost increases will be passed on at some point um i have no doubt the government has covered um or has promised to cover the cost the direct costs so the council's costs or public sector costs um and we have some initial modeling that's come through uh not from government but um some projections that suggest that we might just slightly not cover our full costs with that with the amount of grant that we get but again we won't know that um until february so that will be reflected in the paper that comes to next committee okay thank you thank you that's very helpful um my second question comes off the back of that to the cabinet member uh for finance uh which we obviously see on the front page of the pack that there is um even assuming a 4.99 percent increase in council tax there is still over eight million pounds worth of budget gap um now in previous years we've seen similar gaps maybe not quite as large as that uh come down but in previous years there's largely only been good news left to come in uh we now see and i've just heard that there's some bad news still to come in as well um if is she still committed to setting a balanced budget which is what she said in the past um and if she can't this year when we get to february um does she agree that it would be inappropriate to fund any freeze um in council tax rates off the reserves sorry excuse me i just want to check something i think you said does councillor graham um councillor ireland uh uh commit to yeah exactly is in previous years when we asked what she was going to do no no you asked about setting a balanced budget yeah the fact you might take the money out of reserves i'm just concerned the budget isn't balanced councillor graham if i could explain rather than you trying to tell me what concerns me is i sense the implication and i would hate for you to do this to imply that councillor ireland might be breaking the law because as you know we all have to set a balanced budget so perhaps you might like to rephrase that to remove that councillor there are two ways in which one can take the phrase balanced budget one of them is whether income matches expenditure the other is whether you've literally got no ability to fund it whatsoever the the other is unlawful it's entirely lawful to set a budget in which expenditure is greater than income and to make the difference up from reserves however that is not a balanced budget in an internal sense it is a it is a balanced budget as far as the government's concerned because it because the money is coming from reserves so it's balanced by reserves it's not balanced in internal thank you i'm referring to the internal sense i think councillor ireland knew i was referring to the internal sense but if she didn't no sorry members of the public might not and obviously it's quite it's a very serious obligation that all councillors have to have that we balance our budget where the money if the money comes from reserves or doesn't you needed to make it clear councillor mary oh sorry it's late mrs mary good grief no question the question was to uh mrs mary yeah so just i'm sure you know i'm going to say this but i just feel i need to uh just for the record um we go by the statutory definition of balanced budget as the government does and that does include uh uh reasonable you know as a reasonable assumption of using reserves we have done that in the past and i'm i'm in no doubt that we will do it again in the future we've put money into reserves in the past and i've got no doubt that we'll do that in the future as well so um whatever the internal definition of balanced budget is that isn't the definition that we have to um abide by thank you very much councillor critchard to be in an effort to be helpful then i'll rephrase the question which is what you asked me to do no i think no does councillor councillor graham i think we've grasped this and i think we've made the point councillor ireland is now going to comment hopefully councillor ireland we're brilliant okay um i i want to thank mrs mary and colleagues and also want to thank my cabinet colleagues for all their hard work in setting um this budget this year they worked really hard um identified and achieved savings we are um local government is in a stressful but a financially stressed um situation and um we are doing our best to manage to increase demand including temporary accommodation costs i think that's going to cost us 33 million pounds next year um and also costs for social care for adults and children so uh thank you very much for your help and i think the one question about i think try to rephrase it then no let me have a go because i can usually do it more swiftly i think what cancer graham wants to know is in order to balance the budget are we likely to use reserves simple simples um we will make a decision about council tax in the normal way in line with the constitution when we have all the information i know that might be boring to people but i don't believe in making uninformed decisions uh the reserves are there to plug budget gaps the decisions about council tax will be taken in due course and you'll hear as soon as we know thank you i'll just come back with one supplementary on that does she think it'd be inappropriate to create a budget gap by taking less than the maximum council increase yeah i think i have answered she hasn't said sorry actually no i think we get through this every time is you know we all know this is paper that obviously goes out it goes out to budget business in terms of the way we have to consult we will not know until the february meeting what is going to happen and how it's going to work and i think it is obviously you can poke trying to get an answer but i'm pretty sure this is not going to be very productive because cancer island last year and the year before was very specific that she won't know until with respect cancer island doesn't need to know that to answer the question which is whether it would be appropriate to create a budget gap by taking less than the maximum council tax increase now she can refuse to answer that sure uh but the appropriateness or otherwise that should be answered now does she think it's appropriate i'll say it again decisions about the level of council tax have not yet been made we have not formed our opinion about what is the appropriate amount to levy there we won't until we've got all the information thank you i wasn't asking what the appropriate amount of council tax was i was asking council graham sometimes you ask a question and you ask it three times and you still you don't get the answer you're angling for or you would hope to get you get a different answer that's how it is and councillor island has always been very consistent in how she has approached these questions okay there aren't any more questions i suggest we move to vote on the budget paper council graham we've got recommendations a one two and b are we likely to agree all of these or is there going to be any difference in opinion we will abstain on a and approve b okay so can we take that we better have do it so we've properly counted those who agree right those in favor of 3a approving the basis this budget basis please raise their hands five uh those against and the abstentions we've got abstent four abstentions thank you and those in favor of b to approve the summary report as the basis of the statutory consultation that's agreed unanimously everyone great okay the final paper we have is excuse me if i can find it right it is item 10 the budget variations paper 25 25 okay and i think i'm correct this budget variation has already been discussed at housing committee yesterday that yeah that's confirmed okay agreed it relates to the appropriation that we agreed so yes okay all agreed thank you councillors thank you officers right