Transcript

Good evening and welcome everyone to this evening's meeting. I'm councillor Clare Holland, Leader of the Council and Chair of this meeting. This meeting is being recorded and is being broadcast live and the recording of tonight's meeting may also be used for quality and training purposes. In the event that technical issues require the meeting to be adjourned and it cannot be restarted within a few minutes, further updates will be posted on the Council's Democracy Twitter account, which is at LBL Democracy. Do we have any members of the public here? OK, I think we all know where the fire exits and the toilets are. So we have tonight received apologies from Councillor David Amos. Job share voting arrangements. As to out on the agenda, the portfolio for healthier communities operates under a job share arrangement. The current decision maker for healthier communities is councillor Jackie Dyer. The portfolio for equalities, governance and change also operates under a job share arrangement. The current decision maker for equalities, governance and change is councillor Nanda Manmigran. So does any councillor have a disclosable pecuniary interest that they have not already declared? OK, thank you, colleagues. Well, we've indicated that we'll move on to the next item. Are the minutes of the meeting held on the 9th of December agreed as a correct record of these proceedings? Agreed. Thank you. The minutes are confirmed as a correct record. So we'll now move on to the next item, which is quarter two performance. And a quick note about the papers. There is a minor error to appendix one of the Q2 finance performance item on page 42 of the published agenda pact. This has now been rectified. So do let us know if that's given you any issues. So this item will be introduced by Councillor Nanda Manley-Brown, Cabinet Member for Equalities, Governance and Change. And I think we have the key officers here who are Shadash, Kieran and Peter. Right. So, Nanda, would you like to introduce the item? Kieran and Peter, actually, sorry. So it's great to present before you today and share the Q2 performance update for 2024-25. And it's a report that reflects not only our resilience, but also our collective determination to deliver for the keeping of landworth. At the heart of our work is Landworth 2030, after our plan, a vision built on three fundamental ambitions, making landworth's neighbourhoods fit for the future, making landworth one of the safest boroughs in London and making landworth a place where we can all call home. And threaded through these ambitions is our unwavering commitment to equity and justice, ensuring that every decision we make seats the bridge, divides and uplift those who need it most. Despite the ongoing financial pressures we face, like all local authorities, navigating the aftermath of 14 years of austerity, I'm proud to report that landworth is delivering. As of quarter two, we are meeting 74% of our targets under the outcomes framework, and that's a testament to the strength of our teams and the partnerships we've built across this borough. But let me just share some highlights. Making landworth's neighbourhoods fit for the future, one of the key goals is to make landworth a net zero borough. And while we're seeing high levels of curbside cycling, we know that there's more work to be done on improving cycling on our streets. And this isn't just an operational challenge, but it's about fostering a shared community and sustainability across the community. We're also prioritising the health and wellbeing of our residents, particularly those experiencing the poorest outcomes. And I'm thrilled to report that we are ahead of our target in reducing blood pressure amongst our black and multi ethnic communities and ensuring that the people that people with type two diabetes have access to all eight essential care processes. Now, these achievements underscore our focus on health equity, proving that targeted community centred approaches yield positive results. Now, making landworth one of our safest boroughs in London is a key focus for us as well. And safety is a fundamental right. And we're working to address the root causes, improving access to education, employment and empowering residents to shape the responses that serve them. In quarter two, we saw a reduction of rural funding rates among children known to the youth justice system and a decrease in the use of custody of young people aged 10 to 17. Now, these are early but promising signs of progress. Now, equally also important is our work supporting residents impacted by gender-based violence. The Gaia Centre continues to make a profound difference. 97% of service users reporting increased confidence in accessing health and support. With the relaunch of the Gaia Centre contract last July, we've added specialist partners like the Africa Advocacy Foundation and RISPIRTO to ensure that we're meeting the diverse needs of our communities. And finally, health is more than just a roof over our heads. It's a cornerstone of stability and opportunity. And I'm pleased to report that an increase in homes meeting the decent home standard in quarter two is something that we should also pay close attention to. However, we recognise that resident satisfaction with housing repairs is not where it needs to be, but we will continue and remain committed to driving improvements in this very critical area. And we're also investing in our borough's future by creating opportunities for residents to thrive in land that is growing through the streets. And in quarter two of those, we've supported over 842 residents in the employment, education and training. And that's a powerful reminder of the five changing potential for collaboration and opportunity. So as we reflect on these achievements, let's also acknowledge the challenges that still remain. This is not a time for complacency, but one for the new to resolve. And Lamb of 2030 is not just a plan, but it's a promise. A promise to our residents that we will build a borough where every resident, regardless of their background or circumstances, can look to a future workflow. So we will continue to push those boundaries and challenge inequities and work together to create a Lamb of this fit for the future. Thank you very much, Councillor. And did the officers want to add anything before I call the speakers to the table? OK, thank you very much. We've had two members who have indicated they wish to speak, Councillor Scott Ainslie and Councillor Matthew Bryant. OK, Scott, Matthew, sorry, would you like to come up to the table? OK. Scott, you know the score, you have three minutes to address Cabinet. Thank you very much. I'm just picking up on the last point that the Cabinet member mentioned. The LGA predicted that there could be 1,800 getting on to 2,000 well paid long term sustainable jobs in the sustainable sector. It would be good to see. Did that number come from Lambeth? Did it come from the LGA? Presumably Lambeth feeds into that by 2030. These jobs should be in place. What I see in the appendix of the Q2 report does not show these high skill jobs. It shows jobs. Absolutely. But could we get more on the progress towards these long term, sustainable, highly skilled jobs? I mean, the biggest place where we could have most impact is on our leakiest homes. We have a lot of them. And in this Q2 report, it shows that we had some homes, I think about 185 retrofitted homes on our estates last year, predicted to be about 120 this year. Why aren't we more ambitious moving towards that? It seems as though that would go hand in hand with these long term sustainable jobs. I have asked the Cabinet members about this and I've not had to reply. So I've had to take it up with the Chief Executive to chase officers to get progress on that specific marrying of two things that we could really be delivering on in the borough. One thing I also flagged at recent council was the observations of the external auditors who said that there were continuing failures of governance year on year. It would it seems as though we are not very we're not learning the lessons because we keep going over the in year spends. So what extra things have we done put in place now what extra measures have we put in place now to ensure that we don't keep getting short with this in year pressure of. TAA, etc. That's this putting these cost pressures on and I think the odd the external auditors already flagged that because in that report from the external auditor, they also flagged that, although the reserve the reserves 30 seconds, the reserves on the general fund. are at risk with the time it's taken to capitalise the redress scheme, the time it may take to capitalise the 40 million that you've gone to the government with to ask for on the HRA. So what extra provisions have we been putting in place? And we could hear some of the stuff on that. And finally, youth violence. I wonder if we could just deliver on existing strategies rather than reinventing the wheel, because that doesn't seem to have gone anywhere and hasn't for some time. Thank you, Scott. OK, I'm going to take you, Matthew, and then I'll turn to the officers afterwards. OK, you have three minutes. Thank you, Matthew. Thank you, Chair. Thank you to the officers for producing the report. The performance report is always an interesting read. A few things left out of the page to me. The first one, Councillor Manly Rourke referenced the relatively high rates on curbside recycling. But I would really like to focus really on estate recycling, where we're showing at the moment only 6% of waste is currently sent for reuse, recycling or composting. That's really lamentable. And the target's 14%, so it's well below the target. The target is fairly unambitious. There's some mention there of initiatives that have been taken to rectify or try to increase this percentage. I'd be interested to know what more the Cabinet and officers are planning to do in that direction. And particularly, I think one of the biggest factors, certainly I observed on the states in my ward, is the level of contamination. So I do have to look in recycling bins because they're usually overflowing when I'm going around there. I'm trying to help the residents out. And it's obvious there's a lot of mixed waste in there. I'd be interested to know how much actually the stuff that's put in recyclable containers ends up having to go to the landfill because it's contaminated. I don't know whether that information is to hand. The second one is obviously a very important issue. And I think it's still a concern on page 42, which we're showing that the average time to remove and treat mould is still over 19 weeks, which that's about double the target. And I would be interested to know what more is being done to rectify that. And finally, I would like to ask what is being done to increase the number of young people who are taking up membership of Active Lambeth? On page 45, we see that at the moment it's just 6,600 people under the age of 16 who are in membership. The target is 11,000. Again, there's mention of some initiatives. I think there was a period there was an offer for there being no joining fee for young people. I don't know whether that's been continued, but whether that could be continued. What other financial incentives could be made to encourage young people to sign up to use of our own leisure centres? Those are my three main points. Thank you very much. OK, thank you very much, Matthew. So, Benicia, I was going to come to you. And if you could speak through the chair, that would be great. Around recycling on estates, what initiatives have we got and how much is getting contaminated? And then was there something else on recycling? No, but then there was also encouraging young people, more young people to join Active Lambeth. And then, you know, there was something about the auditors. I know that about the in-year spend. I mean, I think that's a reference to the London-wide crisis and temporary accommodation and how across London, 80% of boroughs overspend on TA this year. And then also, Nabil, there was something about retrofitted homes. Are we doing more? And about highly skilled jobs by 2030. And there was a question about youth violence. Well, I call it violence affecting young people. Because it does affect all young people. But I don't know what... Oh, why are we not... Sorry, this is for you, Benicia, or Amy. Why are we not just relying on existing structures? Did you have anything else? Yeah, sure. Do you want to go to the officer first? Yeah, and then I'll bring you in. Thanks. Okay, Benicia, do you want to kick it off over us? Thank you, Chair. So just picking up on estates recycling, and as Councilman LeBron referenced, we are below a target on that, even though we're overachieving on curbside recycling. It's always difficult looking at communal type recycling. But some of the initiatives we've started and will continue throughout the year is increased signage. So signposting people to where they put their recycling materials. Increasing the amount of storage, because as the Council referenced, we do have overflowing bins in some estates. And when the recycling ones are full, people tend to put in the residual area. We do have about 36% contamination levels, which is what is contributing to the 6% recycling rates on estates. So there are a couple of initiatives we have kickstarted, increasing our signposting, increasing the outreach. We've engaged four outreach officers primarily to work on estates. One, because we do have to introduce food waste recycling throughout this financial year. So that will be quite important in terms of increasing recycling rates on estates. So we keep those initiatives going. But it's a lot about communication and education and outreach, in addition to the infrastructure that will support those endeavours. I think the other question, Chair, was around the membership in active lab for people under the age of 16. We offered no joining fee and we've kept that going. Usually we'd offer that just throughout January, but we've looked at the take-up and realised we haven't had the numbers we expected. We have started some work in schools that will ensure we can attract more young people in. It is about changing the classes that we provide and we're offering now free personal training for the first six months, help with healthy eating that will complement some of the memberships and we'll see if that does increase memberships coming in. We're conscious that there's more we need to do. We started an athletes programme for those people who are interested in athletics, free gym membership that we've run over three years, supporting them through whatever athletic scheme they might be engaged in. So we'll keep those initiatives going and see if we have a better outcome in terms of the stats next quarter. Thank you very much, Venetia. So, violence reduction. So we do a violence against young people's strategy which we have been doing some significant work on. We ran a summer violence programme throughout last summer. We're doing a current review of that to see if it targeted the right groups because we did have, I think, 4,000 people that attended but it is about the groups that turn up to those, the young people that turn up to those. So we're reviewing those programmes to see if we can improve in terms of having the right attendees, the targeting of those individuals that, you know, are most at risk. We've been doing some work in the youth justice system, working with Andrew Green, looking at first-time entrants. So we engaged on a programme reviewing some of the activities we've already undertaken but creating an action plan to improve work in that area. Do you want to come in, Andrew? Yes. So all I'd add to share again, the data in the report is around those young people who've already come into contact with the youth justice service and what we can see. So we're performing better than national and we're performing better than London. Young people who come into contact with the service, managing to ensure that those young people do not re-offend. As Venetia has said, what we're working to do is to stop young people coming into contact with the service in the first place. Yes, we have to always do the basics and continually make sure we do the basics right but it is also important to innovate because as you had said, our young people are not only the offenders, for want of a better word, but they are also the victims. So how do we innovate on both sides? How do we listen to what young people are saying to us and improve our responses, which is probably what we're going to do. Great. Thank you very much, Andrew. I was going to bring, okay, I'll bring Hashi in on that point and then I'll bring you in. Councillor Mohamed Hashi. Chair, I think I just wanted to reiterate specifically part of the question. So in our half, last year we expanded 62 organisations out of 85, which is 72% and part of the requirements for both the half and the BAE programmes is that they're a Lambeth-based organisation that employs staff from the local community but also that they have a two-year working history of working in Lambeth. So these are not new organisations that we're doing. We're not abandoning organisations in order to do new work. So I'm not quite sure where that has come from. As a result of that work, we've seen an 11.3 reduction in violence with injury and a 3.9 reduction in knife crime compared to a London increase of 9.1%. So it looks like the programmes that we're delivering and the people that are delivering it for us have been extremely successful. So it'd be really good if people could come to places like this and celebrate that rather than trying to find fault in our approach. Yeah. Thank you very much, Councillor. Councillor Sharadu, you wanted to come in on something? Yes. Councillor Bryant mentioned landfill landfill and I just wanted to disabuse you of that. All our residual waste goes to energy from waste plant. So none of our waste goes to landfill. It's all energy from waste and our green waste of food and garden waste goes to in-vessel composting. Great. Thank you very much for that clarification. So then who wants to come in next in the bill? Do you want to come in about? Yeah. Yes. Sure. Thank you, Chair. Retrofit. Yeah, sure. So, I mean, the first thing I would say is the green economy is one of our growth sector here in Lambeth and we've been very clear that this is where we see future sort of jobs coming and the kind of high qualification, high knowledge level jobs that we want to see more of in Lambeth. So we did, last year, the council did publish the green economy strategy which you can find on our website and it's very clearly articulates what some of the challenges are in growing the green economy to where we want it to be. So the numbers we're very clear on at the moment there are 348 companies within Lambeth that constitute part of the green economy that's about 6,000 people working in the green economy and we've identified five things that we need to do more of between now and 2030 to really increase the market share of the green economy and some of those measures revolve around space and clustering so providing more affordable workspace some of them around funding investment how we draw more investment in, some of them around partnership and advocacy and we've obviously done a lot of websternable ventures up in City Hall setting that up some of it's around business support so actually some of the business support that's required for some of these companies to be able to start up and scale up and then finally on employment skills I think it's a really important point to mention we have got a number of programmes that are currently underway focusing on to take advantage of some of these green jobs so we have got a we have got a pilot underway in terms of the Mayor's Construction Academy which focuses on green skills in particular we're working in conjunction with Southwark and Wandsworth and we're working with local construction local employers and local colleges to actually ensure that the qualifications we're putting on can actually be can actually be used in this sort of workplace so there's a lot of work going on what I would what I would suggest is if anyone wants more information they go on our website and look at our future green economy reports and our and our strategy around that because it outlines the not only the sort of current market in Lambert but also the specific measures that we as a council are taking to grow the green economy over the next five years until 2030 thank you and the innovation that we're doing as you say like the skills pathways with London Southwark Uni and working with all our partners because we know that that's the way to really get good high quality well paid sustainable jobs for our residents so thank you Nabil retrofit oh yes sorry so on retrofit I'll bring I might bring Ruth in speaking to you about our housing stock and some of the things that we're doing but also what I would say on retrofit is we are actively so I appreciate sometimes strategies can be quite ethereal but we are actively looking at individual case studies and bringing them forward so show to our residents some of the impactful measures that we are taking as a council and again I would signpost colleagues towards the case study of one of our young people in the borough who came to us via our opportunity Lambeth portal we then matched her up with an opportunity that was going to work on a passive house scheme that we're developing down in Gypsy Hill and through that two week internship she then ended up getting a full-time job so a direct example of us sort of intervening where the market is slightly broken connecting our residents with high paid high value jobs that's going to be sustainable and also making a difference in terms of actually bringing forward sustainable new homes in the borough great thank you very much and then on the retrofit should we just check up on just on retrofit so we did retrofit 192 homes in the last year and one of the challenges is financial constraints so we look at grants and use those as well as far as we can to make that go as far as possible and just on the damper mould so the reporting in the pack is actually days not weeks we have seen a real improvement in our ability and our turnaround on damper mould over the last year so at the beginning of the year it was around 30 days I think that's reported in the pack now it's come down from that to around 11 days so we're pretty close to our target now as we go towards the end of the year and that's partly the change in contractor but also really putting a lot of emphasis on this and we're piloting sensors also in our stays which hopefully will be a sort of early warning system for our residents so we can get in quickly and we've got some predictive modelling that we're putting in as well to try and make sure we're devoting those properties I'd like to have problems getting to student work about that the more impact in the first place also to be quickly where it does great thank you very much Roof I'm just going to go to see Dina did you want to ask the question about the auditors yes so the auditors report actually related to 22 to 23 but it was significantly delayed so it was actually only presented at the committee at the end of November we have agreed all of the recommendations and setting out the options to improve the governance arrangements that they've referenced those recommendations but obviously we have done things since 22-23 we're currently working through the 23-24 accounts so we will bring forward these recommendations and update them for 23-24 so we've caught up so hopefully that will cover up all of the points particularly around the year which we are accounting for in the budget process okay great thank you very much so those are all the questions answered I was going to open it up to colleagues now if there's any more comments or questions observations on any aspect of the report if anyone wish to speak councillor I have final information but also some of our young people use as one of what suits them now we are trying to implement variation of other activities that are not only going to the gym or going to swimming there are more sports activities that are happening in the gym if you look at day to day use you will see the massive increase of young people using our leisure centers even though they are not members but they are using it as they choose to when they choose to rather than having the membership as Vinisha said we are trying to work with other partners in relation to introducing that membership with their additional interest so that that becomes how we attract usage by our young people so it's something you are working towards and also working again as people in the moods to come our relationship with sports London sports and sports England trying to again increase our facilities that again is being used you know not mission in our parks you know that's where our young people go to football basically baseball and it's all those type of them because that's the way they try to use it so hopefully we are also seeing the increase in membership overall so and this is continuous I would point out the next report would actually see a jump of where we are now because it's constantly in prison okay that's really helpful information thank you councillor anyone else want to come in on this item no okay and I'm assuming that the officers haven't got anything to add okay well colleagues there are two recommendations on this item this evening that on page 11 of your agenda and that's to note the latest performance update dates to delivery that comes very well and to note the financial position that's at the end of court two are those we're noting them so are we agreeing to note them thank you very much and thank you councillor Nanda Manley Brown for that so we're going to go on to the next item now thank you very much thank you guys this is HRA budget rent and service charge setting report this will be introduced by councillor Daniel Adilipor deputy leader of the council housing investment and new homes and we've got Ruth and Simon and Peter still okay Danny are you going to introduce it great thanks so the housing revenue account is the council's refund landlord account for our housing stock which we use to fund our repairs to our stock and as many members know we are the second largest social housing landlord in London over 33,000 properties socially rented and lease and lease and this report is about our decision to raise rent levels of 25 to 26 by 2.7% CPI plus 1% and this is the maximum level allowed by the government this level of increase will see average rents increase by £3.60 per week and this 2.7% increase to our overall rent will add £4.2 million of much needed income to our HRA the report also sets out our service charges which are calculated only on a cost recovery basis like HRAs across London in Lambeth as facing severe financial pressures due to previous government decisions particularly around the four-year rent reduction policy and the 23-24 rent cap during record inflation our HRA will lose about a billion pounds of income over the next 30 years of our HRA business plan this means less money available to us as a direct result of decisions the last government made which means less money for investment in people's homes and improving our estates these government interventions have also totally undermined the principles of the self-financing HRA settlement from 2012 making this model no longer fit for purpose however we have engaged with the new government on this and responded to the recent rent consultation advocating for sustainable rent settlement for future years the difficult financial pressures that we have faced with the HRA also mean we've been in open conversations with central government to determine what support is needed to support us in helping finance our HRA in the next few years on top of this the previous government also placed additional regulatory burdens on local government without any additional financing to help us to fund the extra cost as burdens added to us particularly around fire safety and building regulation at the same time they removed funding under the home standard making it even more expensive to improve our housing stock with less money to do so and as because Lambeth has a disproportionately higher level of high-rise blocks the requirements we face on these homes amount to £76 million between 2018 to 2028 without the necessary funding to meet the works required however despite these significant challenges we face with the HRA we are continuing to deliver for our residents to ensure that improvements are made to the processes around repairs and improvements to our estates this was recognised recently by the regulator of social housing giving us a C2 grading the highest grading received by the local authority in London so far and particularly highlighting our problems in meeting fire safety assessments and gas safety checks however we are clear that the government needs to bring in a new approach towards HRAs to make them sustainable and Lambeth is echoing their asks from London councils which of course is chaired by Councillor Holland for a fair and sustainable HRA rent settlement as well as a revised self-financed debt settlement and support for new housing delivery well I know I just finish by saying it's really crucial that the next government works with us to get this right because social housing provides the foundation that many of our residents rely on in order to put down routes in our local communities and build their lives in Lambeth and that's something we want to see continuing in the years ahead therefore across the country the government must work with local authorities to enact radical reforms to ensure that social housing continues to provide a lifeline and a source of security instability to so many of our residents and I'll leave it there thank you chair thank you very much Danny okay so I'm assuming that the officers don't want to add anything before I call on the existing members so we had a member of the public indicate they wanted to speak but I can't see them in the room so I'm going to go directly to visiting members so Councillor Scott Ainslie and Councillor Matthew Bryant you both indicate you wish to speak Scott I'll take you first you have three minutes thank you so in the space of a year the HRA has gone from an 18 million pound surplus to a 23 million deficit this shouldn't really be coming as a surprise why is it coming to light now where were the red flags why weren't red flags not raised earlier mitigation plans put in place I've repeatedly asked the question on what the 13.5 million paid to TLT solicitors has been I understand that's just the beginning and not the end of it it could be a lot more maybe Matthew's got something on that I don't know so look I've been tracking the HRA income and outgillings over the last sort of seven or eight years and it seems as though the rents coming in are more than what's going out in repairs and what's going out on management so I'm concerned about this deficit it's clearly got a lot to do with disrepairs legal claims and legal challenges I don't know where this one billion pound figure comes from and I'd like to see some transparency around that it's a large number to pluck out of the air yes the inflation went up to 12% but you know it would be good it would be good to have some justification behind that very very large sum I know it's a 30 year plan but it would be good to kind of like have that broken down for us also the 40 million pound bailout that you've just requested from the government now why were we not made aware of this earlier on in a process it just seems as though this was sprung on I don't know about other opposition parties but maybe other councillors too the reason I flag this is because the capitalisation direction for the redress scheme took well over a year to receive the central government approval so how long will it take to receive centre of the government approval for this bailout and what are the consequences if the council does not receive the government approval so and how will this council be able to get a balanced budget and avoid having to issue a section 114 notice and just to finally point out as I've said repeatedly the external auditors have really flagged the serious situation over governance in relation to the reserves I don't know thanks okay thank you Scott Matthew you have three minutes thank you thank you some similar points probably raised by Scott but ultimately it comes around to some real concerns here around the transparency of the process I think the first bit is obviously looking at this capitalisation direction which as Scott has mentioned is loosely referred to in this report but I don't think it ever been mentioned previously to capital certainly not for opposition groups it's obviously quite a significant change I think from our side we're particularly concerned about what are the consequences of it I understand the rationale for it but the particular consequences are there interest costs on this that will therefore fall to the HRA in future years so it's actually an additional burden is there any repayment mechanism I think there's a question about it's 40 million pounds now may we will be going back to the Department of Housing for more in subsequent years there are various questions there about this 40 million and it's literally just touched on in a couple paragraphs in this paper the second issue is then it's obviously incumbent on us particularly given the pressures I mean I think the figures are slightly different to the one Scott had mentioned but obviously we've been flagging this up the last three years because each year the reserve the balance on the HRA reserve and it's actually shown in paragraph 2.2 the report has gone down year on year and obviously it's now at a critical level where it's only forecast to be 5 million at the end of this year and obviously at a level of overspending that's not sustainable going into the future there's obviously incumbent on the whole council to be making sure that we're actually managing the HRA as efficiently as possible and particularly we've obviously seen this year in the previous report about the overspend on repairs repair costs and disrepair costs but one of the particular things which Scott touched on is actually the huge amount of money that the council appears to be spending on legal things now if you look at the actual transparency reports that the council provides they're on its own website that's over 20 million pounds in the first six months of this year now that thing is actually confusing because it's actually not very transparent because the 13.75 million payment that Scott is referring to I have found from inquiries I made actually relates to a lease renewal so it's but it's bashed under that transparency report as legal services which is completely misleading and it's misleading to any casual reader of that information that information is there for the benefit of our council taxpayers so I'd ask that that information is improved but that it still leaves a large amount of money we're spending on legal fees that I would like to have explained and then the final point I would just want to mention is there's obviously a reference here that there's quite a significant increase in charges to residents in sheltered accommodation the report suggests that that will actually all be recoverable or payable through benefits paid to those residents I would just like to have it confirmed that that is the case and that there aren't any residents that actually may be personally or individually financially impacted as a result of that change well let's not start a benefits conversation we have to go back to the years of the coalition government that did so much damage about the benefits but anyway there's questions there I got I'm trying to pull out the questions that Scott raised both have raised issues around transparency of the figures that they're quoting at us so I'm I think the question can't be about because the figures are out there presumably it's about why not earlier on the process and the legal fees what is it the increase in cost sheltered and the impact of the capitalisation in terms of interest and repayment did you get anything else okay who am I going to first am I going to Ruth or the finance scholars yeah so if I make a start so one of the reasons why I've got such a significant financial issue is because of rent threeses and rent reductions so the rent cap and rent reductions that the previous government imposed and that's why there's the £1 billion shortfall that we've got so that's a shortfall on rent so that's causing the underlying issue in terms of the timing around capitalisation so as has been observed the reserves level within the HRA has been falling over the previous few years and so we've approached the government around what sort of support might be available so capitalisation is one type of support because this is essentially due to caps in the rental income that we can receive we obviously asked the government if they could make adjustments to that or whether they could provide grant support and other options and the one they've come back with which is relatively recently is just capitalisation so that's why that's not being discussed before ultimately this report is about setting the rents for the next year and we'll be setting the council's overall budget next month including the HRA and that will deal with the full kind of implications of this £40 million capitalisation and what the issues are for the HRA going forward okay thank you Peter did you want to add anything no I mean you asked the question around the you have to go through the chair so chair yeah so you asked the question around the payment to TLT around the lease it was for a lease extension that amount it was paid to the solicitors acting on our behalf so that was why it was shown as a legal payment because we didn't pay direct to the landlord we paid it through our solicitors okay great thank you for clearing that one up um roof sorry go sheltered housing so um so I think the question around sheltered housing was impact on on residents so there is um uh so some of those fees and charges will be covered off for people who are on benefits um we are doing a big review at the moment of sheltered housing leading with social care to look at how we go forward with managing our sheltered provision um so it dovetails uh more effectively into the needs that we see coming forward and particularly around adult social care so this is a sort of transition as we go into the next year where we do expect that there may well be a further increase in the service charges because at the moment we don't cost to cover fully on that we're quite a long way from cost recovery and we will hopefully get to cost recovery in the next year as we do that transition so that will happen over the 25-26 financial year thank you sorry there was the question that that scott said that we've got more money coming in than we pay out is that correct also what are you doing with it then so so on the the levels of the items of expenditure that were identified that is correct so management and repairs however we do fund some money to uh depreciation some money some money that goes into capital resources and we also pay the financing cost of historic borrowing and those two items uh make the expenditure greater than the income thank you very much for doing that okay yeah ben councillor ben kind just ask a question the historic borrowing are you talking about the money that we borrowed for the uh landworth housing standard program um in that in that sense of the half a billion that we put in those properties so the hrh borrowing position predates self-financing in 2012 so there's a level of debt when we got to 2012 the government readjusted our debt position um at around 400 million and it's pretty much stayed at that level so it's even further back than that it's a long term historic debt in the hra okay all right i think they were the yes covered okay all right danny did you want to come back before i open it up all right colleagues any questions or comments that's for tim windall um i just wanted to ask so um obviously the the red freeze has kind of impacted our hra and will continue to on sort of a compound basis into the future um is it also true that um those reduced rents have actually reduced the government's housing benefit bill so i might be able to say this is a politician but would it be too much restraining to say that the causes of the previous government were basically propping up central government public finances on the back of the hra rate that was absolutely the case the rent reduction from 2016 to 2020 was about reducing the housing benefit bill to the treasury to the government funding that uh and similarly the the rent cap in 2023 was to do with the you know making sure that the housing benefit bill didn't go up by the 11.1 percent that the rents would have would have gone up with if they followed their own their own policy um and absolutely again i mean if i can link that back to the billion pound loss of rent it is the compound impact of that over 30 years and how inflation impacts on that that makes it such a large figure yes that's great and i think it as um councillor daniel dillapour said in his introduction the whole settlement and from 2012 was never set up in the way that it was supposed to be set up so it we were on a losing wicket from the start and then we've had additional unfunded burdens added plus rent caps and rent freezes plus cost of services going up plus the withdrawal of the decent homestand which means we haven't had capital to put into repairs so it all makes for a perfect storm of housing being really difficult in London and in Lambeth is that right thank you um anyone else councillor when you mentioned the same home standard and i have you know looking at all the legalites here when that decent home standard was there they refused to apply for it when they were in coalition with the tourists that actually ended up we you know as councillor the information we have an old homes that amount of money that other authorities used to keep their homes was lost in Lambert because of their incompetence and now we're picking this up including that level of rent that we never collected because of their policy that they supported the Tories so if you look at the history how we ended up with the difficult situation we found ourselves in houses it started from them so I just wanted to find that out thank you very much councillor that's a fred cowell yes I have a question concerning paragraph 3.2 of details concerning level the reserve reserve has been suggested before the political parties that the correct way to avoid expenditure and raising costs when it comes to dealing with issues that we find is to utilise the reserves it seems that it really isn't a possibility and in fact to do so be dangerous and I really would appreciate just finding a little bit more about where we are with our reserves in the HRA and what realistically would and wouldn't be so useful those people so yes so our current reserve level we're forecasting there's overall within the HRA at the end of the year will be at around 5 million and we would expect an absolute minimum level of 10 million plus we probably have an expectation to have to have more than that to be honest in terms of EARMARCH reserves for some future liabilities that we know about at the moment so obviously we're in a position where we want to be actually building up reserves at the moment rather than using them to support our extended check thank you very much any any other questions or comments or observations no okay Danny did you want to suppose just to really quickly summarise I think what today really highlights in the report is when decisions are made by central government they have long term consequences and that's the really important thing to note tonight because it was the coalition government in 2012 that said to local government you need to make your HOA self financing point that then restricted their ability to raise rent and imposed caps on that and that's what created the £1 billion deficit that council queried that's simply a calculation based on those government decisions applied over the next 30 years and when you combine that by those government decisions around decent homes funding as well it is a perfect storm now so really all I can say is this report is a tale of financial point now I think in this report we've tried to spell that in as much detail as possible and be clear about how serious that challenge is the decision we're making tonight on rent is the maximum we're allowed to do and that would be welcome income that helps us to prioritise the repairs expenditure we need but I don't think we can be more clear than we have been that we okay well thank you very much and colleagues there's five recommendations in relation to this and they're on page 104 of the agenda so I'm not proposing to read them all out they're all set out very very clearly are those five recommendations agreed okay thank you and thank you Simon Peter thank you very much thank you Scott and Matthew okay we now move on to the next item if you'll bear with me I found myself right Western Riverside Waste Authority Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy this will be introduced by Deputy Leader of the Council Sustainable Lambeth and Clean Air Councillor Rosina Chowdhury and we've got Venetia John okay thanks Rosina thank you chair so this report provides information on the development of a new joint municipal waste management strategy for the Western Riverside Waste Authority the WRWA as it's affectionately called and its four constituent councils which comprise London boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham Lambeth Wandsworth and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea so the WRWA is Lambeth's Waste Disposal Authority and it's responsible for managing the disposal of the borough's municipal waste waste this is separate to waste collection which the council itself is responsible for as the waste collection authority so the strategy sets out the strategic aims and aspirations of the Western Riverside partners in reducing the environmental impact of waste disposal in light of future changes and policies and outlines how the partner authorities will work together to manage resources and waste within their boundaries between 2025 and 2040 so to put this in context the previous joint municipal waste management strategy was adopted by WRWA in 2006 and was then updated in 2013 so in 2018 it was agreed to delay production of a new joint municipal waste management strategy until there was more certainty about the impacts from the resources and waste strategy Brexit implications for waste the circular economy and the collection and packaging reforms nowadays we refer to these as the extended producer responsibility EPR deposit return scheme ERS and simpler recycling so government consultations in 2019 and 2021 on collection and packaging reforms indicated that together with the tax on plastic packaging the measures are likely to change the type and quantity of waste in the future however there have been many significant delays to the implementation of collection and packaging reforms which have in turn delayed preparations for a new joint municipal waste management strategy as a result we can expect the following initiatives to be happening in the next few years so extended producer responsibility process and payments from 2025 simpler recycling which includes uniform waste streams collected with exemptions from 2026 plastic film collection from 2027 food waste collection for all so that's commercial from 2025 and residential 2026 and the deposit return scheme from 2027 so on the DRS the deposit return scheme after years of dither and delay we received some really positive news that on the 21st of January following a debate the deposit return scheme regulations finally passed through the House of Commons at the round table of local government representatives at DEFRA last week we were delightful to hear Mary Cray the minister who signed this off saying this would be the end of litter so you may recall that the WRWA in collaboration with the four constituent boroughs carried out a public consultation last year to feed into the strategy which resulted in the insertion of stretch targets for recycling targets but before that strategy can be adopted by the WRWA it must also be agreed by the Greater London Authority however before that can happen it must be ratified by the constituent boroughs which is why we brought this paper to cabinet and after that the WRWA will sign off the final strategy edit board meeting next month so that's me done so I'm happy to hand over to Benicia and John thank you very much that was really helpful explanation councillor did you want to add anything no okay nobody has indicated that they wish to speak so I'm going to turn straight to colleagues and have you got any questions any comments observations no very exciting document I think it genuinely is no I mean genuinely yes I made one observation out of it which is that somewhere in there there's a table which compares the four boroughs and the authority and the service that's offered and I found it interesting to see that only as recently as 2023 the other authorities were not doing food waste collection for instance when we'd already had it rolled out and they weren't doing green garden waste collection in two of the authorities and that their other residual waste collections were still black bags and not wheelie bins and quite how far behind us they are in that sense I guess it's good that this version of the report then takes what we've done and introduces that over there for the three of the boroughs which are all and I think as I would say that's better in the houses as well thank you that's very yes Donatus well I can tell you the reason the time you were talking about it was led by the conservative boroughs and those conservative boroughs were completely out of sync with the way environmental and waste collection was handled and then also looking at the strategy and what it looked and I was kind of again trying to this is for your sanity whether you did find this easier because I still think some of our police in other boroughs are still dragging their feet to agree with some of the elements of what that strategy is suggested based on their own historical block in the past I don't know what your views are with officers as well relationship you are building in relation to the previous theme that were in the authority in that sense but again maybe they have changed so is there any new move to come to where we are as the borough as councillor was suggesting are they dragging and kicking or are they just now realising it needs to be done what to answer that yeah yeah yeah yeah quite a difficult one to answer I'll switch to something about the recycling right so the version that the RRAA put out for initial consultations said the recycling target was around 35% we as a borough were well ahead of that in terms of per side recycling we were at 44% so our response to the consultation was that we needed a target that was much higher than what we had rather than a target that meant what others had which is why the document has ended up with a stretched target of 50% which gives us something to aim to but we are closer to it than everybody else is so that's the way we've put some influence in terms of getting others to rise to where we are than also accepting a target that's below us I mean we could have taken that and then just stop one day after saying we've met the target or surpassed it but Fiona wouldn't have allowed me to do that well you know and as you say it's an ambitious and meaningful target rather than just doing a tick-bock exercise because this matters so much to us because you know climate justice is the heart of what we do absolutely thank you for that really helpful explanation any other comments or questions again quickly how are we in comparison with other waste authorities W-R-W-A you mean yeah it's a little bit more difficult to answer I think North London waste I think does have much higher targets than W-R-W-A but I don't know about the others only about the West London Alliance so and I think obviously the more curbside properties you have because garden waste is included in the stats it's much easier for shires and streets to meet the targets than it is for densely urban areas like ourselves yeah any other did you want to add I can add that in terms of inner London authorities it's a collective so we'll always have a lower recycling percentage for the exact reasons lack of garden waste lack of organic waste and high density housing so we do very well on curbside we're about national average in terms of curbside but it's when you get into the more densely populated areas where inner London will always struggle as compared to outer London yeah absolutely and I remember the pilot on the Vauxhall Gardens estate in terms of food collection and talking to the residents there if you're up on the fifth floor and you've come down you've forgotten you're rubbish but you've got to drop the kids at school you know the chances are you're not going to have time to go back up so it's really understanding people's behaviour and what anything else councillor Chowdhury did you want to finish on anything no thank you very much so colleagues there's one recommendation on page 142 of the agenda and it's to approve the WRWA joint municipal waste management strategy agreed thank you very much so that concludes this evening's business the next cabinet meeting is scheduled to take place on Monday 23rd February yeah okay thank you everybody have a good evening