Transcript

I will now run through some housekeeping rules. Social media, in line with the regarding the use of social media, I am happy for anyone attending today's meeting, including members of the Council, to use social media, provided that this does not disturb the business of the meeting. Mobile phones, please turn mobile phones on silent. Webcast members, please may I remind you that this meeting is being webcast live, although I have the right to turn on. the right to suspend filming, but the need arises and it is open to the public. I would also like to mention that this meeting allows for participants by videoconference via Microsoft Teams and that some attendees are participating remotely. For those participating remotely, please note that the chat feature is disabled as its use limits to transparency and open discussion we aim to maintain in a public meeting. Microphones, members, will have to indicate that they wish to speak through the chair and when called use your microphone to speak. Please remember to turn this off after you have spoken. Fire drills, there are no fire drills expected, so in the event of a fire alarm sounding, everyone present is asked to leave by the nearest exit and assemble at the top car park, reporting to a member of the building management team. Staff will be on hand to guide you to your nearest exit. Speaking rules, those that can, please stand when addressing the chair and council. speeches will be time limited as usual. We will be using the timer light system, the clock will appear in the corner of the screen. When a member has 30 seconds remaining, the clock will change to amber. When a member's time is up, the clock will flash red. Voting, a recorded voting must be undertaken for setting the council's annual budget, including the amendments, item five, little one and little two. Otherwise, voting will be by raising your hands, or by verbal assent or electronically. I will confirm how voting will be done for each item, having the time of the meeting. Using the timer light system, the clock will appear in the corner of the screen. When a member has 30 seconds remaining, the clock will change to amber. When a member's time is up, the clock will flash red. Voting, a recorded voting must be taken for setting the council's annual budget, including the amendments, item five, little one and little two. Otherwise, voting will be by raising your hands, or by verbal assent or electronically. I will confirm how voting will be done for each item as we go through the agenda. Conduct. Members, as you know, this is the budget meeting of the county council, and we will be voting today on matters of extreme importance to residents. Please remember to act courteously and with respect to colleagues across the chamber. Members are to remain seated until I have concluded and closed the meeting before leaving the chamber. Item one, apologies for absence. I ask the Assistant Director, Governors and Democratic Services, Vicky Herbert, to report apologies for absence. Thank you, Chair. Apologies for absence have been received from Chris Farr, Will Forster, John Fury, David Lewis Camberley-West, Rebecca Paul and Mark Subden. Any members attending remotely have speaking rights, but no voting rights. Thank you. Are there any other apologies? Item two is the minutes, pages 9 to 58 of the agenda. May I sign the minutes of the council meeting held on 10th December 24th and 8th January 25th as a correct record of the meetings? Thank you. Item three is the declaration of interest. Regarding item five, in accordance with the section 105 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992, members must disclose where any payment of council tax that is payable by a member if it has been outstanding for two months or more at the time of a meeting. The member must disclose the fact of their arrears, though they are not required to declare the amount and cannot vote on this item. Failure to disclose such arrears or to participate in a vote on any matters in A to C above is a criminal offence. The disclosure should be made as soon as possible after the start of the meeting. Are there any declarations of disclosable pecuniary interest, significant personal interest, or previous interest that members wish to make at this point? Rachel Lake. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As always, I always stand and say that I do have a member of my family, my son, that works for Surrey County Council. Thank you. Thank you. Keith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Likewise, one of my daughters works for Surrey County Council in its very hard-working finance department. Ernie. I have a son who works for Surrey Choices, which is owned by Surrey County Council. Thank you. Any other interests? Thank you. Item four is the Chair's announcement. King's New Honours List. King's New Honours List. Surrey has been a remarkable number of its residents recognized in the King's New Honours List for 2025. I extend my heartfelt congratulations and gratitude to all the honorees. My full announcements can be found in the Council agenda front sheet. I'd do like to actually point out the Holocaust ceremony this year. We had it at the Woking History Museum in Woking. That was my old school, so it was lovely to visit the old school, but it was well attended, and it was good to remember all the Holocaust victims. Item five is the final budget medium-term financial strategy to 2029-2030, pages 59 to 200 of the agenda. The papers for this item are circulated in the main agenda from pages 59. Unless I receive any objections, I intend to take all the recommendations as one recorded vote. Any member who is not entitled to vote on this item should withdraw. Chair, could I suggest that any amendments are taken in separate parts? The amendments will be, yes, sorry. This is only for the main, yeah. The arrangements for this debate on the budget are slightly different to those of our usual debate, as set out in Standing Order 1-18-M-N. I now call Tim Oliver, the leader of the Council, to present his report. There is no time, may I remind you that members can make comments as well as ask questions. Good morning, Mr Chairman, members. As is customary at our February meeting today, we will be discussing the Council budget for the forthcoming financial year. One of, if not the most important items that comes before us as members. Our budget is what enables everything we do. It pays for our people, our social workers, our highways engineers, our caregivers. It pays for our tools, our equipment, our technology, our vehicles. And it pays for our infrastructure, our buildings, our fire stations, libraries, schools. The importance of our budget cannot be overstated, and it's something that we, as the leadership of this Council, take extremely seriously. This is public money we are responsible for, which makes it even more vital that we take care of every single penny. It is our duty as elected members, and that of our officers, to ensure it is invested wisely, to support those who need us most, and ultimately to make Surrey a safer and better place. Before I go into more detail in presenting next year's budget, it's important that we recognise the context in which we are delivering it. Mr. Chairman, I cannot recall a speech I have delivered to this meeting, where I have been able to reference a calm, stable, serene environment in which we operate. There hasn't been, and indeed there isn't now. So, we are used to assessing our budget in challenging circumstances, but the current climate feels more challenging than ever. We have the impact of high inflation and rising costs over the last two years, increased costs of the national living wage and national insurance contributions for this Council and our supply chain. We have a new government with a new agenda, the full extent of which is not yet known. We have a global geopolitical landscape full of uncertainty, unpredictability and instability. Public finances are squeezed to near breaking point, and local government is bearing the brunt. A funding review from 2026 will see a redistribution of existing funds across local government. The recent settlement from government, and in particular the distribution of a recovery grant to areas other than rural counties, suggests Surrey will get even less money in the future. And, of course, demand is increasing year after year, especially on care services and SEND provision. The impact of climate change is being felt across our landscape. Much of the country's infrastructure, from water systems to roads and rail networks, is ageing and expensive to maintain, let alone replace. All of this comes on top of over a decade of reductions in spending power for local authorities, and greater expectations on the services we must deliver. So, while that may be a gloomy backdrop, it is important to understand, as this Council manages yet again to set a balanced budget in the most challenging of times. That ability should not be overlooked or indeed taken for granted. We have seen many Councils over recent months and years issue Section 114 notices, seek exceptional financial support from the government, use capital receipts from the sale of assets to support their revenue budget, or even look to raise Council tax by 25% in some areas. Indeed, we have Councils on our own doorstep here in Surrey that have completely unsustainable debt levels that are impacting residents. But not here, not at this Council. Although the choices we have are tough ones, at least we are in a position to have choices at all. It is a testament to years of strong and pragmatic financial management, identifying future challenges, spotting issues that need fixing, looking for new opportunities to deliver services more efficiently, and stepping up to the plate. At Surrey County Council, we do not shirk a challenge, and this moment is no difference. Work started on setting this 25-26 budget even before the 24-25 financial year began. It has been led by our expert finance team, but included input from every single service of this organisation, as well as engagement with our strategic partners. No stone has been left unturned in that push to deliver our services more efficiently and to focus our resources on what really matters. The proposed budget we will discuss today includes over 66 million of savings in order to help us offset the pressures from higher costs and demand. Those savings are largely down to transforming the way we work as an organisation. Our one Council approach aims to reduce duplication, benefit from economies of scale at every opportunity, maximize cross-cutting opportunities, and streamline our workforce where appropriate. Our data and digital transformation program looks to take advantage of innovative technology, automating some aspects of work to help staff prioritize workload and allowing frontline staff to focus on frontline delivery. This will result not just in revenue savings, but also more effective service delivery. We also have to prioritize what we should be spending public money on, what will deliver maximum benefits, and what services are vital to those who need us the most. This means we have examined, and indeed will continue to examine, all our discretionary services and the level to which our services are delivered. There is no doubt that this Council has gone above and beyond our statutory duties in many areas, always for good reason and with the best of intention. But we have a responsibility to scrutinize every penny and to be straight with people who might see services they like to use change. For example, the vast majority of residents would rightly expect us to review the 65 million pounds we spent last year on home to school transport, which in many cases has been a discretionary spend rather than a statutory requirement. We know that it is an important service for many people, whether that is based on distance or support needs. However, it is not a universal obligation, and our residents would expect us to provide it only to those who really need it, so we can protect the service for those people and other vital services that more people rely on. Mr. Chairman, we are also having to propose we raise Council Tax by the maximum of 4.99% in total. That includes 2.99% Council Tax and the 2% Adult Social Care Precept. That is £1.69 per week for a Band D household. A Council Tax rise at any level is not ideal, and certainly not at this level. As Conservatives, we always strive to keep taxes low and get the best value for residents. Members of my own group have been working hard making the case for a smaller rise, which of course would be my choice too. And I would make particular mention of the Townbridge members who have been particularly tenacious. But, unfortunately, as I have already said, Surrey is facing financial pressures driven in large part by demand like never before. The Government's recent funding settlement for local government demonstrated their clear intention that Council Tax will be the only way to meaningfully raise the funds we need to deliver services. If we don't seek the maximum amount now, the Labour Government will almost certainly turn round and argue that we don't need the funding for services and will cut the limited grants we currently receive even further. It is clear that this Government is focusing its attention elsewhere, and with it, its limited resources. While targeting money to areas of high deprivation is understandable, and indeed noble in its aims, solely focusing on one metric unfortunately ignores many other factors that will ultimately leave people up and down the country worse off. And councils like us, with no option but to use our council tax base to meet our obligations. I want to take, though, this opportunity to thank my colleagues for their support, their suggestions, and ultimately their understanding, and also, I hope, the understanding of residents, of the situation we find ourselves in, indeed one not of our own making. I recognise that any increase in council tax is hard to stomach for many of our residents who are already feeling the pinch, but I give them this guarantee. Every penny of your council tax is spent on improving the County of Surrey through supporting those people who really need it and enhancing the quality of life for everyone who lives here. And to support our mission and ambition to leave nobody behind and to make Surrey a better place. This budget builds on the strong foundations we have put in place through continued investment over the past few years, and really will deliver for the people of Surrey. So what are we doing with our residents' money? We're maintaining school buildings and facilities, supporting teachers, teaching assistants, social workers, care workers, foster families, caring for young and old with complex needs that rely on us in their day-to-day lives. Helping older people stay in their homes with care advice and support. Ensuring Surrey fire and rescue is there when and where it's needed. Investing in more educational psychologists and SCND support. Maintaining and improving our 3,000 miles of roads and pavements. Yes, fixing thousands of potholes. Keeping our rural and urban environments safe and accessible. Managing our beautiful countryside. Enhancing our libraries and supporting our library staff across all 52 sites. Target support with public health interventions to help people live healthier lives. Processing Surrey's household waste and recycling. Supporting businesses. Helping to deliver a skilled workforce for Surrey and investing in our entrepreneurs. Helping deliver a better public transport system. And registering birth, deaths and marriages. We are here every single day from cradle to grave for everyone in Surrey. And we're not just maintaining the status quo. We are investing in the future too. While we have reviewed our capital investment program carefully. We remain committed to investing in the things we know will improve this county. And make our services sustainable. And make Surrey a place that is fit for the future. We're building new children's homes. So young people in care can stay close to their communities. Providing a more stable, comforting and better quality environment. To help them thrive and ultimately improve their life chances. We're investing in more SEND provision. Including specialist places. Investment in mainstream schools to support them to be more inclusive. Recruiting more specialists to improve assessments and support. Doing everything we possibly can within a national system that is not fit for purpose. We're transforming town centres like Farnham. And road networks like the A320. To make our places better and more accessible. Boosting our local economy. And making journeys within Surrey easier and safer. We're reshaping our residential and supported living care for adults with diverse needs. Making sure accommodation is fit for purpose. Suitable for specific requirements. And enabling people to use their strengths to live as independently as possible. We're modernising Surrey Fire and Rescue training facilities. And FAST and FAST stations. To make sure our firefighters are the very best they can be. Keeping residents and businesses safe from emergencies. We're resurfacing roads, building new cycle routes, improving pavements, bridges and other structures on our highways. Tackling the scourge of potholes and an ageing network. We're investing in our wonderful libraries to make them even more useful for residents. Whether that's for rhyme time, internet access, a warm place to socialise, to find support, access other services. Meet as a community group. Start a business. Or a whole multitude of other reasons. Real hubs in the heart of our communities. We're continuing to see community-led projects delivered through your Fund Surrey. Sporting facilities, playgrounds, community shops, wildlife centres, cultural facilities. Investment in legacy projects across Surrey that everyone can access and improve the quality of life in every corner of the county. Mr. Chairman, those are the things that we are spending our residents' moneys on. There is no doubt this council is delivering and this budget in the most challenging of times will allow us to continue that good work. Mr. Chairman, it would probably be notable by his absence if I did not mention the current spectre of local government reorganisation and devolution that hangs over local councils like ours following the government's white paper before Christmas. Unfortunately, at this moment in time, there is no update to give, though I am hopeful we will hear something this week. We await the Minister's response to our letter, which outlined our ambition to go ahead with reorganisation at pace in order to deliver the benefits for our residents, certainly for our workforce and unlock the benefits of devolution for Surrey. I continue to meet constructively with Surrey leaders across our district and boroughs and other public service partners to try and ensure that we work collaboratively on our proposal to government. That work will continue in earnest, whatever the response from the Minister, and I will be sure to keep all members updated. So, Mr. Chairman, can I thank members and officers for their diligence and dedication to ensuring this council is on a sound financial footing. While the year ahead will be full of challenge and change, this council is in sound shape to guide this county through whatever is thrown at us and to embrace and take advantage of the opportunities in front of us. I recommend the budget to council. Thank you. The budget is now open for debate. I will give the leaders of minority groups an opportunity to speak. I will call Paul Fellas to speak and you have 10 minutes. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the council, public and press. Let me begin by thanking everyone involved in the crafting of this budget. Producing these documents, briefing members and attempting the increasingly impossible task of balancing local government finances is no small feat. And I also appreciate the patience shown in answering questions from myself and my Liberal Democrat colleagues. And this has enabled me to speak to this budget and the wider medium-term financial plans of this council. But what a strange time it is to be a Surrey County Councillor. I stand here discussing a budget for the coming year while the council leadership rushes headlong into the uncertainty of local government reorganisation. We're told this budget is balanced and sustainable, yet the same administration seem intent on avoiding the electorate, perhaps hoping reorganisation will provide a convenient escape route in the meantime. But let's not sugarcoat it. Reorganising Surrey's local government isn't a fix. Indeed, it's a Pandora's box. Harmonising council tax, disaggregating IT systems and countywide services, untangling £5 billion worth of local government debt. These challenges will take more than the last-minute figure pulled out of thin air for this budget. And yet here we are, a figure in this budget for LGR that has had no real scrutiny, clarity or confidence. It certainly will not stand the test of reality as we're seeing any of us who were part of those discussions already. Now moving forward to that bigger picture, local government funding as the leader has mentioned. It's the one constant in an otherwise chaotic universe for us. Demand for services is accelerating and costs are inflating faster than our funding. And the government perpetually looking into it. I've heard reform, small r, let's be clear, coming next year for eight consecutive years. It's always next year, never now. Both parties in Westminster over the last decade have failed to address the crisis, leaving councils like Surrey scrambling to make ends meet, often the expense of our residents. The challenge from the council's leadership to their political colleagues in Westminster over the last decade has been weak. It is one of the reasons we are where we are. Now let's talk numbers because no budget speech is complete without a dose of financial reality. In another role, it's my honour to lead an authority that's consistently achieved balanced budgets, is up to date with its current accounts with a clean audit report. It's not magic, it's careful planning. And here in Surrey, that picture is less inspiring. When you dig into the budget, the numbers raise far more questions than they answer. Take highways, for example. Nearly £30 million of capital is allocated for pothole repairs over the medium-term financial plan, funded by borrowing and asset sales. Have those assets been chosen? What are they? And while we're on curious decisions, £5 million of one-off verge cutting. Coincidence, or could this be the 2025 dictionary definition of hedging your bets before an election? As a resident of Waverley, I can't also help but clock the additional £4.4 million of capital being placed into the money pit that is Farmer Brightwell's. Infrastructure, of course, fares no better, with projects relying heavily on vague asset sales and ever more unaffordable debt, and repeatedly undelivered transformation plans. Tell me how many years does it take for a transformation plan at Surrey to not hit its targets before it's removed or even sensibly and seriously reconsidered with a critical or, indeed, external eye? Meanwhile, Surrey's ambitious promise to plant 1.2 million trees has fallen somewhat short by 1.17 million trees, to be precise, assuming we're counting only the ones that Surrey has. No sensible council in this county is taking those payments as anything other than a one-off for perhaps one or two years. Because, of course, in almost all countries in the west, we're sent to new packaging, and therefore the money goes down. We can see this everywhere it's happened, so why on earth are Surrey budgeting it for five years? In children and families domain. Leader, your apology to Surrey residents for this county's failings in this area took exactly 18 seconds to deliver. Would you perhaps take a bit longer to talk about the £140 million in defined cuts over the MTFP, and £150 million in undefined cuts, which begs the question, of course, how will those vulnerable children be impacted? Similarly, the adult and social care budget faces demand that far outstrips funding, with hundreds of millions in cuts targeting older residents and those with disabilities. And yet, over £300 million in this MTFP appears unfunded even after the efficiencies that have been identified. 287 jobs targeted for cuts. Who's going to define what they are and what those efficiencies will be if they're gone? And who won't be helped when they're not here anymore? Demand will increase, as we have seen. Local government reorganisation will make this more complicated and further. What planet is this sustainable? And finally, reserves. The gap in this MTFP is a staggering £1 billion when all the unfunded and unspecified elements are tallied. This reflects a worrying trend. Surrey's reserves remain alarmingly low, leaving little cushion for operational needs. Ultimately, Surrey is, as it has been for some years, a financial house of cards. Now, I have planned to propose two amendments today. One is the Band H Voluntary Contribution Scheme, which has been accepted for consideration later this morning. The second was seeking external validation of Surrey's financial processes. And this has been denied, and it has to be said, on my opinion, of technicality. That's been rebadged as the motion at the end of the agenda. This council could have reassured residents by inviting independent scrutiny of its budget and governance practices. But instead, we're left with unrealistic assumptions, unanswered questions and growing risks. So let me be clear. As it stands, I cannot support this budget. This is a balanced budget on paper only. It will not and does not stand up to any test of reality. It is clearly not sustainable even on paper. It stands that it's unsustainable in the medium term. You have effectively conceded so in your own letter arguing for the pace of LGR. Too many services are already essentially on paper as well. And in particular, some statutory services with residents not in practice receiving the service that they expect at all. I will also repeat a point I made at the start. Transformation projects that have repeatedly not delivered should either be critically reviewed or removed. And not continuously claimed as possible year after year in these budget discussions. If there are elections, and if we're in a position to act, the Liberal Democrat group will commission a full and independent So the residents deserve that transparency, they deserve accountability, and they deserve better than what's on offer here. They deserve that mantra of nobody left behind to really mean something in the real world and not just on paper. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I now call Catherine Powell. Thank you, Chair. Good morning all. We are indeed in uncertain times. Still no decision on the timing of local government reorganisation due last Friday. No clear strategy from the government about how Council's unserviceable debt is to be addressed, and future funding uncertainty. Combined with what the budget papers describe as exponential increase in demand for services, particularly within adults and children's social care and home to school travel assistance. But the rise in demand for statutory services is hardly a surprise. One of the last blogs from the Conservative government stated, there is strong evidence that the first 1001,001 days from conception to the age of two set the foundations for our cognitive, emotional and physical development. In 2019, there were 58 Sure Start centres across Surrey providing for families and young children. Now we have 21 family centres, the majority run by our amazing voluntary sector. There's lots of evidence of the benefits of youth provision. A recent study stated, there is clear association between participation in youth provision and positive short-term outcomes relating to physical health, wellbeing, pro-social behaviour and education. There is also strong evidence that short-term outcomes are sustained over decades. Yet youth provision is lower now than it was five years ago. Now mostly provided again by our amazing voluntary sector, some of which is at risk because of the land and property strategy to ensure assets are effectively used without an understanding of how youth provision is currently being funded by the voluntary sector. All against the backdrop of the most recent Good Childhood Report from the Children's Society making sobering reading. As although the UK ranks highly in terms of family support, the UK ranks in the bottom 20% in Europe for 15 year old wellbeing. With particular concern for girls, a feeling of belonging and being safe at school, lack of physical exercise and long-term absence from school. We are all aware that the SEND system, such as it is, is broken. There is also acknowledgement that the pandemic has created long-term challenges with babies born during this period having, as an officer recently put it, more issues with speech and language delay, other developmental delay, behavioural challenges, increased ADHD, autism conditions and readiness for school. We are increasing support that more is desperately needed. What about short breaks and specialist youth clubs and youth play groups for children with SEND? These services are much needed as respite for parents and carers, as well as providing activities to improve the wellbeing of children and young people, in line with Section 507B of the Education Act. However, one of the efficiencies listed in CFLL section of the budget is to identify and benchmark against available provision compared with other local authorities, with a prudential efficiency in 26-27 of £800,000. We've been here before. We simply must do more to support children and young people, particularly those with SEND and living in poverty. What does no one left behind really mean if we don't? What does good look like for children and young people? Being happy and healthy or not needing statutory social worker intervention? What about the capital budget? The papers show borrowing will increase from £767 million in March 24 to more than £1.4 billion by March 2028, leading to financing costs rising from a net of £41 million in 24-25 to £75 million in 29-30, whilst reserves dropped by £91.2 million in this financial year, with a further reduction of £70.9 million next year. Whether that proposed level of borrowing is sustainable is, of course, a judgement. There is, however, significant uncertainty and risk. One thing is certain. The 25-26 final budget and medium-term financial strategy does not consider the impact of any debt redistribution that may come from local government reorganisation, driven by the white paper issued on the 16th of December. The Section 151 officer confirmed this during a recent member briefing. Whilst the Leader has asked the Minister to write off those debts held by districts and boroughs, particularly the £2 billion held by Woking Borough Council, it is far from certain that they will. Even a small proportion of this debt will make the proposed level of borrowing unsustainable, as we would be unable to service the debt and maintain statutory services, let alone support the discretionary services, early intervention, prevention and support that address the rising statutory demand. There are also still ongoing strains on the capital programme. Last year there were concerns about the rising costs of the SEND capital programme, but the review was still ongoing. When the review was completed, various issues, including the condition of existing buildings, the cost had risen by 40% in June. This resulted in significant changes to that programme, including the removal of additional places for girls with ASD and for children with moderate and specific learning difficulties. A task and finish group was requested in June 24. Still nothing. This year we are waiting on the condition and life cycle analysis assessment commissioned by Land and Property. Members have raised concerns as one recent planning application stated that a building that the Council was planning to extend was 51 years old and approaching the end of its usable life. Despite this and the outstanding report, the capital budget for maintenance of schools and other capital buildings has a limited increase over the next two years and then a sharp decline. There are also issues with just not getting the basics right and continuing to work in silos. We still don't have out of office emails being sent up by officers or end of employment notification. More than 18 months into the EHCP end-to-end process review, the filing system still appears to be broken. As we as members often hear from parents, I've sent that document before, I'll send it again. Or I've made those corrections before, but it's come back the same again. We still aren't fixing potholes right first time and there are still issues with cleaning gullies and working with the districts and boroughs to ensure that all work associated with our roads is effective and coordinated. Maybe something LGR will fix. The provision of transport is still split across multiple teams using different criteria, some statutory, some not. Surely this should be integrated. If we provide for one, we should provide for all. Rather than transforming, we need to get the basics right. Focus on working out how we really address early intervention, prevention and support, particularly whether that's in children's services, adults, looking after our roads or infrastructure, or planning for climate change adaption. One thought I will leave you with. The average Band D council tax last year, this year, essentially 23-24, was £2,065. In Surrey, in the same year, was £1,559.74, in one of the most expensive areas to live in the whole of the country. I cannot support the proposed budget. I have put forward budget amendments which are carefully researched and I have shared with you more information than is in the papers and I sincerely hope you will support. Thank you. Jonathan Messicks? Members of the public, fellow councillors, leader, whether we have elections or not, whether Surrey County Council still exists, the same services will need to be provided challenges overcome in the next year. So what has changed in the terms of Surrey County Council's budget since this time last year? Last year's budget speech I promised, I quote, to direct extra funding to prevention measures and support for children with additional needs and disabilities. Thankfully the EHCP backlog is sort of addressed, albeit with some concerns over the quality of outcomes and with even more families challenging Surrey County Council on their child's placements in tribunals. But dealing with this backlog has increased special need school place demand, so one might expect a larger capital budget for send school places today than a year ago. No, instead in June 2024 the number of high need specialist school places was reduced and has been replaced by a similar number of send units in mainstream schools. Also needed but for different children and the promised free schools delayed again. So the reliance on non-maintained and independent sector to supply school places often far from where people live is higher than anticipated a year ago. So I hope the school transport spending continues to spiral upwards with a higher budget next year to plug the gap created this year. So whilst parts of the Children's Director are heading towards being rated as good, more needs to be done to improve support for Surrey's children with additional needs and disabilities and this budget does not give that assurance. With a reduced place ambition in our capital programme and a budget that plugs gaps in home to school transport overspend rather than addressing the underlying issue. Now as a serving borough as well as county council I was concerned about those being made redundant locally who deliver Surrey's contracts under the government supporting families programme providing one-to-one support for families to provide targeted support to Surrey's children. They're being replaced with a lower level of support to families over a shorter period of time, ironically called the Intensive Family Support Programme. I asked if this would support as many families in total. Local council staff who were commissioned to do this work till next month say Surrey County Council have the figures but our staff would not share this information so I hope it is enough. Either way though there is a saving here which I've been assured by our officers has already been ring-fenced to work with our partners such as in family centres who deliver prevention and early help work in children's services. A relief as this was raised by a few of us in budget scrutiny of children's services. The reason it appears we couldn't figure out where it was in the budget is because it isn't actually mentioned in the budget at all. Some positives. We commend the work in maintaining and extending our library service including refurbishment of Redhill library following discovery of RAG. Contrast perhaps to the police station which remains closed in Rygate and the Harlequin theatre in Redhill which is still pondering what to do after initial survey 16 months after the theatre was closed. And we welcome and urge continued ambition in the building of new children's homes in Surrey as a perfect example of invest to save budget that responds directly to the long-term profiteering in the sector highlighted by the McAllister report. However, the continued closing and selling off of Surrey County Council's last residential care homes such as in Merston and Hawley look short-sighted in comparison with at least one in eight beds in the sector already owned by private equity investors. Reforming social care must start by ensuring there is no profiteering at the expense of those we entrust in our care. So can we not keep some care homes rather than continuing to place residents in homes that require improvement and in doing so at least retain a benchmark against which the quality and cost of our private providers can be judged. Now our repeated budget plan to sell off such public assets in Surrey is combined with owning commercial property across the UK. A gamble which has far less opportunity to benefit our residents and I believe it remains a poor one. So I think we need a stronger commitment to make sure our sites when they're sold off for housing deliver socially rented homes and key worker housing to retain social workers in our full-time pay and the lack of that remains a flaw in our capital programme. What else has changed in the last year? Well Lida you said, perhaps on a different subject, but you did indeed say we don't have a calm serene environment but our current climate is more challenging than ever. Will climate change past 1.5 degree globally for the whole of last year for the first time? And that's the number agreed by climate experts representing dangerous climate change with escalating catastrophic global consequences including through droughts, sea level rise, reduced food production and extreme weather events just like we've seen in California with the wildfires last week and this week a three-day storm that dumped over a metre of rainfall in northern Australia. That's a massive amount of surface water flooding. So where is Surrey's commitment to raise its climate delivery ambition and augment the single employee allocated Surrey's climate adaption team? The report put to next week's select committee rings like a clarion call for increased investment and commitment. Now it's not just about what we do on our own estate and our own vehicles but just like our tree planting programme it's about how we can inspire others to act through leadership not within the council but across Surrey. So we need the budget commitment to shift from strategy to delivery in this area not least as the environment agency has just updated their surface water flood maps which clearly show the real rise in risks that not acting on climate change enough represents. Even here we can do and must do more but this budget freezes and cuts our climate budgets at a time when we have the opportunity to lead in more ways in this area in Surrey. So what leader might a prudent budget draw on reserves for? To use for a rainy day when things really get tough? Send? Climate change? No, five million of reserves for a one-off effort to beautify our highways. That looks like a greater priority. Maybe there's election this year or maybe not. Last year's budget increased spending on road lines, gully cleaning and grass cutting following a review to right size the budget to address this. So why is even more needed this year? Why a further five million from reserves to get these basics right? Like cleaning road signs and cutting grass whilst the abandoned blue heart verges that seemed last remaining commitment to our wildlife friendly verges unanimously passed six years ago seems to disappear in the shorter grass. Is it really this not send not climate change that's such a pressing priority for this conservative administration? Well for these reasons I urge the leader and ruling party alongside our other fellow councillors here to accept the relatively small proposals we have proposed to amend this budget. Accept them as with the constructive spirit with which they have been submitted prepared collaboratively as friendly amendments designed to make the budget better. Thank you. We'll now call Robert Evans. Good morning all. I'd like to thank the leader for his presentation and thank all the officers and other councillors who've been involved in the task of putting this budget together. This is now I think the 12th time that I've responded to a budget in this council and the first of course since the change to a Labour government. 14 years of the previous governments conservative and prior to that the the Lib Dems and conservatives together resulted in massive cuts to the funding of Surrey and other similar councils including the boroughs and districts in this county. We've seen in Woking, Spellthorne and elsewhere how councils have got into huge government-funded debt thanks to loans from the Public Works Lending Board, a statutory UK government body since abolished. I know that Labour councillors in Spellthorne were rebuffed when they warned of the consequences and challenged the investments as were their colleagues in Woking. But it is a situation that should never have happened nor been allowed to happen. The leader spoke of completely unsustainable debts and I think Councillor Follows asked what would happen, it may have been Councillor Powell, if these debts were passed on under reform. But these were debts that were voted for by some colleagues here in the boroughs and districts and I wonder if there will be officers and members of those councils held accountable in the future. But looking back at the budget figures over the last 14 years and since the introduction of austerity, the leader spoke over a decade of spending cuts. Well look at comparing with the figures today we can see that there has been, Surrey has faced a huge real termed cut in funding. Had the funding for Surrey continued to keep pace with expectations over the last few years, we might not, would not be in the position we are in now. For example, when I started on Surrey County Council, some will recall here, we had, as Kathleen Powell has spoken of, a fully funded, properly funded youth service. And the impact of the diminished youth service is difficult to quantify, but you have to look around many of the areas that we represent and see the society without a youth service and wonder what might have been. Back then, Surrey better mended its roads and others have spoken this and we could have a whole budget speech on the failures on potholes. But of course, also, there were not the same concerns a few years ago about special educational needs. Catherine Powell mentions shore starts as well. Those have been taken away in most areas. But I don't blame the council entirely for the situation we found ourselves in. Over the past five years, and the leader said the Conservatives are a party of low taxation. But if you look at the figures over the past five years nationally, tax rates have risen from 33% of national income to 36%, meaning the government raised an extra £93 billion more last year than they would have done at 2019 levels. An extra £93 billion. So the last government managed to increase the cost of our system without improving the services delivered, which has impacted on Surrey County Council. Seven months now into the new government and we are seeing, and I think they are finding out, that sorting things out is not proving an easy task. But I welcome the additional investment into local government announced by the Chancellor in her October budget. £69 billion more for local government. A 6.8% increase in real terms. Now, as the leader has spoken, this Surrey budget reflects and includes an increase in council tax of 4.9.9%. Members will be aware of my long-held view that council tax is a flawed and unfair system for collecting local government revenue. There will be amendments discussed later about perhaps making it better. But I looked at your on right move. In Surrey, the highest value property on the market at the moment is in Virginia Water. £24 million, maybe beyond some members of this council. But they will pay, that property pays £4,545 a year, £87 a week, less than 0.2% of the property's value. By contrast, the cheapest property I could find on right move in Surrey was a tiny studio flat in Camberley on a 56-year lease which cost £65,000. The person in that house will pay £1,558 a year compared to the £4,500 in Virginia Water. But that represents 2.4% of the property value. 12 times as much as the Virginia Water Mansion. Now, in the absence of a forthcoming change in system which we hope for, we will have a vote later on on a voluntary ban, which I hope, I proposed it last year, I hope members will look at seriously and support because this could bring in extra revenue to the £55.7 million already being included as an increase proposed in this budget. But the council's 151 officer recognises there is a key risk in introducing £66 million in savings. Should we be taking a budget with a key risk in it? This budget also refers again with talk of the efficiencies. I've long argued that this is a misnomer. Where they are showing better use of money, yes, it can be described as an efficiency. But where it's a cut in services delivered, we should call it out as such. And Surrey has been forced over the last 12 years that I've been on the council to make too many cuts. And do the efficiencies need to better outcomes for voters? Do they improve economic development? Do they address the housing or planning needs of the county? We were told that Surrey taking control of the grass cutting would be an efficiency. But to many it was resident, many residents, it was an unmitigated disaster. Meanwhile, the council proposes holding £121.4 million in reserves or 10% of the budget. But the figures on, and this is probably, somebody can explain this to me, the figures on page 130 speak of £168 million. So that perhaps needs some clarification. But I think many areas that the council has failed over the last year, Councillor Powell and others have referred to SEND, so I won't go into that. And I won't dwell on the Sarah Sharif case because that continues to be a stain on this council's reputation. And it's staggering to me that there have to date been no resignations over that matter. Now, some of our poorest residents have seen their household support cut. Surrey chose to spend £300,000 on the Lyft software, duplicating in many cases information that the boroughs and districts already had. And this has resulted in a negative impact on some of the neediest in our community. Saving assumptions are not guaranteed. And this administration has shown that it cannot deliver on its IT projects. A budget study should not be based on assumptions. Surrey could do additional work on understanding of care savings and look at driving up service quality by providing more in-house services. Now, just on a positive note, I went last week to the Yvonne Arno Theatre to see Jonathan Essex spoke about the situation with Redhill Theatre. But Yvonne Arno Theatre, I think, is a bright spot. The money being spent there on renovation, improvement, and modernizing that with money from your fund, Surrey. Now, in his speech, I don't think the leader overused the no one left behind mantra again this year. But my fear about this budget is one where we should be actually saying we won't have no one kept behind because there are residents being kept behind in Surrey. I hope that local government reform, the devolution of powers, and the national government changing and improving the situation will improve things so that next year or when we have another budget in Surrey or whatever council it comes to, we can say that we've taken things forward. But I don't think this budget is the one that will deliver that properly. Thank you. I now open this for debate. Any speakers? Sorry. I'm aware of two amendments standing in the name of Paul Fallows and Catherine Powell. And these have been circulated to members. See items five little one, pages five to six, and items five little two, pages seven to 14, in the third supplementary agenda published yesterday. Paul Fallows, would you like to move your amendment, please? You have to six minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Many of the issues on this particular subject have been debated here before in this chamber. It was in fact last year. Like many of you, and as Councillor Evans has just mentioned, I've been repeatedly on the record in stating that the council tax system in this country is fundamentally broken. And I was extremely frustrated to see both Labour and the Conservatives rule out doing anything about this during the general election. And I hope the new government revisit this in due course. I have spoken before on the need for such a fund, particularly for early intervention activity that helps residents more effectively on the ground and will likely reduce cost pressures on the core budget elsewhere. Now, I have been working with my colleagues at my borough council to enact this in Waverley, which was the challenge effectively set to me from across the floor this time last year. And it comes into effect for the coming tax year. And the sorts of money that these sorts of funds can generate are evident in many authorities under various different political party control. And at Waverley, we based our scheme on the successful scheme at Westminster, which was set up when it was under Conservative leadership. Setups, costs are minimal, as confirmed by our finance team here as well. And thank you for looking into that, and backed up by my recent experience in getting one of these going in Waverley. Last year when this came up, the critique from the other end of the chamber was twofold. Partly it was the regrettable and slightly willful misunderstanding of the word voluntary. And I hope perhaps we can dispense with that misunderstanding today from the start. The proposal here is voluntary, i.e. a choice that you opt into. The second query was that we'd be better off encouraging residents to support particular charities rather than doing this sort of fund. Now, I haven't seen a great deal of evidence that this council has structurally encouraged that sort of behaviour. If it has, please do tell me. I'd like to see it. I would love to see that evidence. But also, I just want to reflect on the point that across the county, you'll see the charitable sector in many places is at breaking point. I had a recent example in my own area in Godeming, where a long-standing and effective charity, which is one called the Denningberg Centre, effectively ceased, not because it was struggling in any other way financially, but because it could not find trustees in the current environment because of all the obligations that are now based on trustees. And just generally, because most of the people who were involved in the sector, in general, and even a small amount of looking around shows that that's not isolated to places like Godeming, you see it right across the county. And I think it further reinforces the utility of such a scheme here. To address other comments from last year and in the interim, I've also suggested officially here that this be just the band H in phase one while the fund is established and would suggest in the long run that a review, if we have the fund in place, would take place from the second year to look at including other tax bans. Now, this is in line with practice established at many other councils that have these funds and several guidance from those authorities, from guidance that we've had from those authorities that have put them in place. They've done that gradually starting with band H and moving out certainly to G and to others. I certainly wouldn't at all suggest that this is band H exclusively forever. This is just my suggestion for band H this year, well for next budget year. I do genuinely think that this is now a cross-party element I'm trying to bring in here. I'm suggesting that this goes to a cross-party working group to bring forward recommendations. I'm not saying let's just deliver it here from the floor discussion or anything about the scope or other activities. I think actually trying to do that from the floor in council last year was a mistake and so I'm suggesting here that we should take it off to a working group to come back and flesh out proposals and bring it back to council. I think last year though we did miss an opportunity to do that. We could have had that fund ready to go collecting money from this coming tax year and we don't. Well I hope members will see this as a genuinely practical pragmatic and I hope apolitical reach across this house to this chamber here to to come together and bring something that may may bring some benefit for our residents at very little cost and I'll conclude by concluding exactly the same way as I did last time this was discussed in any way. I'm in effort to help some people. Thank you very much Mr Chairman Lance Spencer you're seconding this you wish to speak now. I am indeed can I defer my position and speak at the end please Leader are you minded to accept this? No Chair Amendment is now open for debate Ernest Mallet Ernest Mallet Yes well my view on this is that this is a morally corrupt amendment Note out throughout the world there are people who are starving and people who are suffering disease and there are thousands of charities that many people here including myself support who are working to try and alleviate or correct that matter and to stand up and suggest that a council with a two billion pound turnover and has got legal powers to levy funds from residents to me that's totally immoral and totally unjustified and I think you should be ashamed for putting such a motion to this council That was a remarkable intervention by Councillor Mallet And I'm somewhat I've lost the words which I'm sure some people are being right advised Come on order order But if we are going to talk about moral corruption then let's start Last year some people came to my door They were collecting for the National Deaf Association they were asking for people to set up standing orders Now if I had followed Councillor Mallet's approach I would have said well because I'm already donating to charity It is morally corrupt for you to ask me for money How dare you ask me to consider making an additional contribution? Now to me if I had done that I think they'd have looked at me as though I was stark raving mad Which I think is the only rational reaction to such a bizarre statement We are not talking here about a levy, about an imposition, about an obligation We are simply going to people who are already going to be paying money and saying Whilst you're paying this money would you be willing to make an additional voluntary contribution? Which would go towards helping those in need Similarly when I pay my subs for my local community association I am often asked would you consider making an additional voluntary contribution? To which some years I say yes by all means Some years I think actually no money's a bit tight this month, I won't But when as Councillor Evans has pointed out we have some people in this county Living in properties worth not just millions of pounds but sometimes tens of millions of pounds To suggest that you cannot ask a multi-millionaire to cough up even a pound extra as a voluntary contribution And that doing so is somehow an attack on charitable principles is an absolute disgrace It really is and I cannot believe that anybody has the sheer brass neck and shamelessness to stand up and claim otherwise I am sure this worthy amendment will be rejected by this council By the conservatives of the conservative party and by the conservatives within the so-called residence group However However However Come on come on come on come on last this Yeah, sorry Apologies Mr. Mayor, Mr. Chairman. I had to pause for the interruption However The reality is that there is nothing iniquitous whatsoever about asking those with more to consider voluntarily Giving a little extra if that bastion of socialism Westminster council can manage it But I am sure that we in much more middle of the road, sorry can certainly manage it And more to the point the only reason to pose this is if you yourself are somebody who is so privileged and so terrified of losing privilege That you are convinced that any attempt to ask you for even a little extra is the thin end of a wedge And I would urge anybody to plan to vote against this amendment to question what is driving what is motivating for opposition to such a reasonable common sense and middle of the road approach Thank you Thank you chair and um Whilst i'm sure we we all welcome more investment in the the charitable funds I think it's a bit of an affront to our residents in surrey to say that we need to set up a volunteer fund a voluntary contribution fund Our residents in surrey not only give money, but they give plenty of time our volunteer sector is thriving Our charities rely on them day in day out and they deliver as we saw through covid and since We have these groups in place the community foundation of surrey of which we have a very special Relationship and partnership with do exactly what they are suggesting here. They get Philanthropic investors across surrey who wish to put money back Into our communities they invest that money and then they give it out to our charities they They work with us to look at our Neighbourhoods where money is needed where it would be best used they look at early intervention intervention and they look specifically at children and young people So we have this I don't see we have to set something up to ask for voluntary contributions like in oliver Can we have some more we ask our residents for many things we ask for their time we ask for their council tax Which they pay and as we've seen already from our consultations They understand the pressures the council is under and they understand what we do with our money and how we try to make sure that The vulnerable are not left behind so I ask that our residents continue to do what they do I don't see that we need to sell a voluntary contribution fund They are residents of surrey they care They show they care with their time they show their care with their money and our charitable and volunteer sector do an absolutely fabulous job And it gives me a great opportunity here to say thank you to them and all they do And if people do wish to donate monies to charities I'm sure most councillors here will be able to signpost them to very good causes in the local areas And if they can't then if they'd like to come to me, I will give them a list of many Worthwhile volunteer and charitable organizations who will gratefully receive any further donations Robert king Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman. I think let's get away from the partisan points in this this particular thing I mean as entertaining as that is, it's not really why I turn up for this And so we we can return back to those dark days of the pandemic in runny meads We received many of these types of contributions actually from a virginia water residents Who was there to support not only those who were out of work because of the pandemic, but also because of the conflict in ukraine Remember explicitly a gentleman there who supported with his own money Families that we knew about because we are the local authority who needed shelter from that conflict He would not have been connected with those families because of legislation governing Personal data if it wasn't for the authority This is a perfectly reasonable ask if we cannot come to the table and offer more money for direct service And as councillor newty said once we came oliver came to ask For more it's now we come to oliver to ask for that And I think in this relationship We must really consider what we want to achieve and that's in supporting some very vulnerable individuals And some very decent individuals who may wish to make the choice It is a choice to support them through hardship Chris Townsend I just stand to say to councillor Potter He must stop making stupid remarks about independent RA groups saying about them being conservative I stand as an independent for many many years and I'm very proud to be so For him to try and tarnish us with fly away comments like that is a disgrace chairman and he should be put down Thank you Come on Okay, okay Denise, Turner Stewart, Denise Sorry, Mr. Chairman Mr. Chairman If we've got to the point where people are saying that people should be executed Then could you perhaps try intervening and enforcing the mode to come up to the courtroom as is your job Please, please Denise Thank you, Chairman I mean this motion actually smacks of interference I think one has to be aware of the law of unintended consequences Have you not considered that this could potentially Given that we are one of the most generous counties in the land in terms of as Mark Muty said In terms of time Volunteer hours The generosity that's channeled through the Community Foundation for Surrey And all the individual donations that are given directly To charities All of the organisations that are run by very generous donors Charities that are run by individuals that are highly successful And we're all very aware of all of those in our communities Diverting those funds because of this moral pressure Into a fund that we're then holding Which then could compromise infrastructure Established organisations and groups that we have in our county That would potentially have a less funding Intake due to our interference And also The pressure that you mentioned In terms of this may be filtering down to other council tax bans I know you said this is voluntary But there's a moral pressure and Robert Evans gave a very good example of A difference between a differential between a band H property and a small house in Camberley But actually For this to be coming down the line from H to G to F to E to D to C Where does it stop? And you need to recognise that people are very very able to make their own decisions And to make their own direct donations without being actually Almost pressured into doing that by a motion that is flawed frankly Thank you Ms Townsend Thank you Mr Chairman thank you I strongly support this budget amendment that proposes the creation of a voluntary contribution scheme This amendment represents not only a practical solution to the financial challenges we face as a county But also an opportunity to ensure fairness Inclusivity and transparency in how we generate vital resources for our community First and foremost the intention behind this proposal is to explore A voluntary avenue for residents who are in council tax band age Typically those with the broadest shoulders in our county to contribute if they choose To towards the services and amenities that we all rely on Council tax bands are based on property values Calculated in 1991 and everyone knows things have significantly changed since then As you all know Surrey County Council is responsible for a wide range of essential services And these services require significant funding We must explore innovative ways of securing the necessary resources Even if this means voluntary contributions By introducing this scheme there is no pressure on people It wouldn't be publicly announced it would be a confidential and voluntary contribution Those who can afford to contribute more can do so In addition we are ensuring that this proposal is carefully thought through and designed The establishment of a cross-party working group will bring together diverse perspectives Ensuring the scheme is developed with a broad base of support and thorough consideration This group will not only work to determine the legal structure, governance and scope of the scheme But also to ensure that communication is clear and transparent This is not just a financial proposal It is an opportunity to demonstrate the values that this council holds Fairness, responsibility and community We have a responsibility to our residents Both those who will benefit from this scheme and those who will contribute A successful voluntary contribution scheme will show how councils can balance fiscal responsibility With the needs of their residents in a compassionate and innovative way I urge my fellow council members to support this amendment Thank you Thank you chair We already encourage our citizens our residents to volunteer and to contribute to voluntary organizations In fact I think most of us in our divisions experience very very strong volunteer work A few years ago this administration put in one percent of council tax To community foundation for surrey a really strong voluntary organization overseeing Non-party political body to be spent on young people and mental health And in recent years we've put more money into community foundation for surrey to To absolutely make sure that that the contributions that we give to the voluntary sector are properly distributed by people who know how to do it To create a competition if you like for voluntary people for voluntary Donations would damage in my view the work of the community foundation for surrey Ably led right now by neelam and you know, I think it would be a real shame And I think I said this last time the cost of setting up an organization within the authority to run this kind of voluntary organization and Would would also require something similar to the your fund surrey team to be reproduced to do it Which would cost money you have to pay officials Why would we do that when we already have the community foundation for surrey thank you chair I have two more speakers jane mason Thank you Is it okay if I thank you very much yeah um actually i find it amazing i've been saying for years you all probably know that my division Is half of it is social housing so i don't have any big houses where people can flaunt and do no we don't we have people working hard Trying to pay their rents and everything else far as i'm concerned i've said for years We need a bigger band an age Not voluntarily make age when those people are buying those houses at four million Are we going to say for a mother so sorry but could you put another no They know they're buying houses in an affluent area They are able able to pay this is what gets me if you can afford a four million pound or three million pound house You ain't poor so as far as i'm concerned i think it'd be an insult to my residents who are living on Really low and they've also we've got no now no youth service so i haven't even got anywhere for my Kids to go much but i do pay for one night but at least what i'm trying to say is that I don't want oh do you want to pay or do you want not want to pay No no no it should be an extra band which tells everybody when they buy the house Your house is now in band whatever and you pay that and be done with it We shouldn't be scraping around Pleading and asking people to would they mind so as far as i'm concerned the people who in the poorer end really Not happy with the fact that there's people in bigger homes with lots of money who are paying not much more than they are So get a grip here and be honest about it Leader Thank you chair I have to say i don't understand The conflation of people that live in large houses with their Failure to actually make any contribution financial otherwise to our community and society i do agree with Liz townsend's words which i i i wrote down that we have a responsibility to our residents We have a responsibility to our residents to deliver the best quality services we can and to keep their council tax as low as possible We have 16 000 voluntary and charitable organizations in this county working day in day out to support residents to support the services that we deliver alongside us Helen clack has mentioned the community foundation for surrey they have their philanthropists Those wealthy people apparently in those big houses Put one over a million pounds and two million pounds to match fund the money that we put in For a mental health improvement program they also put in millions of pounds to support the work We were doing to stop children being excluded from school the the issue here Is not it's it's two two issues firstly a reform of the council tax system That's I don't disagree with and that is something that the government must address alongside business rate reform But actually our focus now needs to be on the government funding these services properly Not going out and asking our residents to pay even more than they already do We already have some of the highest council tax in in this country So my my request is actually we focus that energy and time that people have to set up this cross-party working group to help me Support me in my lobbying of the government over the 2026 fair funding review for with for this council There will be even less money for us to spend on those services Lance Your second of the motion Thank you mr. Chair So in 1992 the highest council tax band band H included properties valued at over 320 000 pounds They represented the pinnacle of residential luxury and thus attracted the highest council tax rates the wording from 1992 In May 2023 The property was sold in Surrey at 34 million pounds. So that's a massive increase in a very short period of time This proposal before you today is introduction of an optional voluntary extra tax on properties in band H The initiative is designed to address some of our communities pressing needs whilst ensuring that the burden is shared more equitably Firstly, let me emphasize this tax is entirely voluntary We understand that not all residents in band H may be in a position to contribute and respect that However, for those who can there is an opportunity to make a significant impact on our county's future The level of efficiencies in the budget totaling 66 million pounds in 2526 and 166 million over the medium term Means that a considerable further degradation of services Delivered by this council is realistically inevitable Two examples everyone in this room will have come across i'm sure or something like it In my area of a 30 year old adult who's diagnosed with autism has not left his house for the last five years Can't get any support because his needs are quotes being met A father of a child who's just turning 16 with serious additional need will have to give up work And he claimed he would lose his home so that he could transport his son to school Because the council's removed the transport had his son not had additional new needs He would have been able to use public transport and he could have saved his job Young people coming through the system have had no shield start centres no youth clubs Impacted massively by the covid restrictions and so let down by this council The conservative led westminster city council as i mentioned earlier Introduced a voluntary contribution scheme back in 2018 Some people said then it was a naive scheme that would never work In the first two years it brought in an extra one million pounds and in 2021 brought in half a million pounds Westminster budget uh turnover is about 1.2 billion so very similar to surrey in scale and the type of people who live there Those more affluent householders in westminster said they wanted any money raised to be spent on helping young people Getting rough sleepers off the street and tackling loneliness among the elderly if implemented well Voluntary contributions can foster a stronger sense of unity and shared responsibility When those who more to more choose to give it back it sets a powerful example of generosity and civic pride It sends a message that we're all in this together Only doing that through surrey county council i believe will they get that feeling That they care for the future of surrey and everyone who calls it home I urge you to support this amendment Go on thank you Thank you Someone up please Thank you mr chairman leader nobody here said that people in this county don't step up I also agree with you that the state should fund services properly unfortunately your party and government seem to disagree with both of us We ultimately have a regressive and out-of-date council tax system that needs reform and councillor mason i actually agree with you 100 percent there should be more bans and there should not be a choice For that is not all this council's so what i've proposed here is something that is within this council's power And elsewhere i've taken that debate up and would have done so he'd have been elected to parliament now unintended Unintended consequences That wealthy people who have money may choose to donate more money to other causes is an unintended consequence i am happy to accept Mr king actually made a point that i forgot to mention and that there are times Where a local authority is differently and better place to act from a legal and data protection perspective than some other charities And i think that's actually a point we shouldn't ignore because sometimes local authorities have information and intelligence About the vulnerable residents in our community that allow us to act in ways that other charitable bodies just come Now i cannot accept this myth of mutual exclusivity when it comes to charity I just don't i just don't see how that is a defensible position looking at the westminster model It now funds hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of targeted youth and early years engagement as well as engagement with the homeless in their area All of these things would potentially help to reduce some pressure on our general fund as early intervention Always does as well as itself being part of a fund that is separate from our general fund accounts both legally and physically And therefore not subject to some of its pressures and decision making that we have to do here And so are this matter i mean i have a moral duty to help people i grew up in the deprived area frankly I absolutely think that makes me immoral or corrupt indeed the fact that you think so i think is more a reflection on you than me I try to make this as reasonable and apolitical as possible with the intent of helping vulnerable residents I'm taking as an example a model implemented by a conservative council and to be quite honest The bastion of socialism which i believe was mentioned that is giving from that population It still raised lots of money it hasn't deprived the charitable sector hasn't caused them issues over there In fact sometimes the fund also works with those charitable sectors to prop up areas where they've got gaps Because as i've mentioned and i'm sure all of you experienced the charitable sector is under extreme pressure In the absence of proper council tax reform that's the best i can do thank you mr chairman Regarding the amendments i invite the assistant director of governance and democrat services to take a recorded vote please Thank you chair members you are voting on item five little i the recommendations are on page five of the third supplementary agenda Please clearly states for against or abstain when i call your name maureen atterwell against aisha azad against catherine bart steve backs against john beckett luke bennett against against against against amanda boot abstain dennis booth abstain harry bapari 4 liz bows against natalie bramhall against helen clack against stephen cooksey 4 clare curran claire curran against nick darby 4 fiona davidson 4 paul deech against kevin denis against jonathan essex 4 4 robert evans 4 paul follows 4 matt furnace yeah angela goodwin 4 jeffrey gray 4 tim hall against david harmer against nick harrison 4 edward hawkins against marissa heath against trevor hog against robert hughes against jonathan hulley against sarj hussein against rebecca jennings evans against frank kelly against reasat khan against robert king for eva kington rachel lake against victor lewansky david lewis cobham scott lewis andy lynch against andy mcleod 4 ernest mallet against mikaela martin abstain jan mason steven steven mccormick against cameron mackintosh against julia mcshane 4 shanaid mooney against carla mawson 4 bernie muir against mark newty against john o'reilly against tim oliver against george potter 4 katherine powell 4 penny rivers 4 john robini 4 becky rush against joanne sexton 4 lance spencer 4 leslie steeds against richard tier against ashley tilling 4 chris townsend 4 liz townsend 4 denise turner-stuart against hazel watson 4 jeremy webster against buddie wirasinghi against fiona white 4 keith witham against the result 24 25 4 43 43 against 6 abstention amendments lost item 5 two little two little one is katherine powell would you like to move your amendment please you have six minutes thank you thank you chair thank you all for taking the time to consider this budget amendment and its five recommendations the final one of which has been is going to be a friendly amendment which i will discuss later i agree we are necessary i believe they are necessary because of the uncertain times we are in with more change and risk to come that is not covered by the current proposals still no decision on the timing of lgr no clear strategy on dealing with unserviceable debt and no commitment from this government to properly fund statutory services let alone prevention there are also differing priorities for our residents younger residents wanting a long-term focus which i don't believe this budget fully supports hence the recommendations recommendation one very similar to what we've already debated do i think all much needed early intervention prevention and support services for children and young people should be funded by this council and provided by the voluntary sector where appropriate of course i do do i recognize the very important and much valued work done by the voluntary sector in this county of course i do i'm part of it are the voluntary sector underfunded and struggling with resources absolutely but the council tax system is fundamentally flawed there are exponential increases in the demand for statutory services we aren't funding enough early intervention and prevention and those services will continue to see increased demand recommendation one is an attempt to fund a gap in that budget recommendation two we have a very significant pipeline of your large your fund surrey projects 39 million pounds as of the 7th of january versus a budget of 10 million huge pressures on our capital budget but there's no documented closure strategy for this fund despite the budget task group calling for one in december 2023 the recommendation calls for formal notification that the scheme will be closed to further applications and that those that are in the pipeline are scrutinized under a more rigorous set of criteria recommendation three same as a select committee really place phase three ddrt on hold but this was rejected by the cabinet the recommendation i have put forward and the increased level of information i provided to you separately provides an alternative way of making the meeting the commitments the cabinet has shared but in a different way that also prepares for lgr is more financially sustainable more consistent with the priority objectives of this council and more likely to achieve the overriding purpose of no one left behind i firmly believe we can increase bus usage reduce congestion decrease our carbon emissions and support less people being left behind by using an alternative to expanding the ddrt recommendation four when the 2425 budget was set there were already concerns about the rising costs of the zen capital program with a review ongoing when the review was completed the costs were found to have risen by 40 percent services changed in a new way to find the same number of places with less money however concerns were raised when the detail was released as the places that have been taken out were high needs and the places put in were lower needs there was a commitment to a task and finish group in june 24 still nothing this recommendation is about making that happen recommendation five i'm delighted to advise that there is a friendly amendment to this recommendation which we have now agreed which we'll read as a result of the final local government financial settlement announced yesterday reinstate the 0.5 million into the greener futures team base budget and therefore not implement the 0.5 million proposed efficiency i firmly believe that climate change is not only real but impacting surrey and our residents and our businesses today we have areas that the environment agency flood risk maps last year said we're liable to flooding once every 30 years that we're flooding multiple times just last year no wonder we have a new map to start a new year the agreed additional funding will increase our ability to develop and embed climate adaption policies which are now urgently needed i think these recommendations are considered researched and justified and the information i shared with you yesterday i hope supports your ability to accept these recommendations in the spirit in which they are made which is to try to put us on a sounder footing going forward with a long-term lens thank you jonathan do you want to second it speak now or is that you're right i'd like to second it but i'll reserve my right to speak thank you leader are you um chair we're we are prepared to accept um recommendation five um but not the other recommendations so we needed to pay this amendment is open for debate any speakers rock newty oh sorry denise tennis do you do the first yeah you can go first mark it's just we're writing names in there thank you chair and and thank you councillor power for bringing this amendment forward although i won't be supporting it i do appreciate that there's no political motivation behind this but i did want to just give you some confidence of some of the work that we are doing in and around the areas that you have brought up as concerns as i said earlier we're working very closely with the community foundation of surrey we've invested money into them as have many other residents of surrey and of course what they do try and do is double that money double that investment so for a million pounds that we give them they try and double that up to two million pounds so that money can go further they are investing in sustainability in charities we now give grants or they give grants of up to 75 000 pounds per annum for up to five years so that's giving charities and volunteer groups that confidence and that stability to be able to carry out their work over a longer period of time and build sustainability to raise further grant funding themselves we also are doing a lot of work in and around prevention of disadvantage within our young some of the schemes that we've invested in recently things like surrey care trust with the nurturing through nature schemes courses for young people in secondary schools from be my project the icon charity primary school mental health intervention home start which helps dads with perinatal mental health smith with perinatal health in minority groups and the east surrey domestic abuse where they look at earlier prevention of the young with potential suicide risk there are new rounds coming up which are supporting children and young people with multiple disadvantage and transitioning from services further rounds coming up which will be supporting families with young people and they will be coming up over the next six to 12 months and again this is funding which would and should be able to support charities for up to five years the one big plus with a lot of investment into the community foundation and of course other charities of course tax relief if you were to invest into the council via your council tax i don't believe that you would actually get the tax relief benefits from charity but further than that i think what we are doing our welfare teams are working very closely with the surrey foundation they are looking at our key neighborhoods to make sure the investment is fair and shared across the county equality wherever we can and making sure that our vulnerable residents are looked after as best as possible we will continue that relationship it's growing the investment is growing as more and more people across the county are seeing that that investment is a worthwhile way of actually helping our residents who are in need if they have that extra wealth and they are bringing in investment from outside of the county as well which is obviously supporting charities and helping increase the economy across the county so although i won't be supporting this i can assure you we are doing lots of work with our volunteer and charitable sectors the vcs alliance is increased so i won't be supporting george potter this is an interesting set of amendments um i find it particularly interesting that the the first element of the amendment is to ask for voluntary contributions from residents to be administered via the council uh obviously naturally i am confident i will be supporting this i'm confident my group will be supporting this as well because that is the very same principle that we propose in our amendment just now i will be very interested however to see if your essence councillors who condemned that as morally corrupt will be condemning their own amendment as morally corrupt will they be hypocritically voting for something that they find uh beyond the pale that is proposed by anybody other than themselves i'll wait to find out uh elements two and three of the amendment i do have some sympathy with in terms of on both items they do seem to be suggesting that there these are reasonable things to be suggesting they are looking at ways you can say following recommendations of select committees are there ways to do things better is there other ways to spend money better um however unfortunately i'll be following the example set by so many members of the residence group and spinelessly abstaining and sitting on the fence on this one as they love to do on so many crucial issues uh similarly per se implies on item four i will happily be voting for please can you be courteous give them time to speak listen to the speaker thank you mr mayor i'm sorry mr chairman i'm glad you're doing your job for change no no apologies if you're if we if we're in a situation where the chairman is is quite happy to allow actively can you yes please go to some time i'm keeping my if we have to have a situation where remarks saying that people should be put down as acceptable but i have no qualms about pointing out can you stick to your in relation to part four of the amendment i will be supporting similarly i'll be supporting uh part five of the amendment which i both think are very sensible and reasonable recommendations and i'm glad to see that that even the conservative leader of his council is reasonable enough to accept part five of the amendment andy mcleod thank you chairman i do support all of the recommendations in this motion but the one i'd like to speak to specifically about is recommendation three that the surrey connect dtrt scheme be put on hold and in his opening speech the leader actually spoke about the discretionary spend on school to home a home to school transport and said that he very much regretted having to do this they actually said he had no choice yet i have to contrast this with the fact that we he is very much a choice in continuing the support for the dtrtrtr scheme that this is a scheme actually which has got a lot of good points about it i'd like to see it successful but when it came when the the cost of the scheme came to the select committee i'm a member member of we were actually quite astonished by the costs that were being put forward that on average the the subsidy of the the cost to the council of each year's journey is 30 pounds or more and in fact it would probably be cheaper to actually supply taxes to the residents of using the dtrt scheme so we should be actually focusing and not on rolling out further but in actually making the scheme that they have in existence work actually for some reason it's not working it's not cost effective so it's actually quite foolish to continue and roll it out further and cost the council more money so i think the leader if he if he thinks again in terms of if we can afford if we can't afford supporting the children in their transport how can we afford to continue doing this and if i had to contrast the two i would very much say that the first is a more worthwhile thing than the second thank you chairman denise thank you chairman your fund surrey distance point two has delivered have successfully delivered almost 400 locally driven projects across every community in surrey to date the fund has been regularly scrutinized at the community environment highway select committee and large projects are subject to an experienced cross-party advisory panel who look at detail at applications and have the opportunity to ask questions of the applicants and make recommendations before a decision is taken to award funding the your fund surrey small projects fund has proved extremely popular with members and has enabled surrey county council in conjunction with our councillors to respond directly and swiftly to their community need in every division and borough and district in the county a new lease of life has been given to many dilapidated community buildings in some cases providing a 50-year lifespan legacy through refurbishments and new builds our hard-working and skilled your fund surrey team alongside our legal and finance officers rigorously assess applications using a detailed scoring matrix and to your point catherine these applications are green amber and red rated which would explain the scale of the pipeline there's also a significant dropout rate so they're constantly reviewed the funding available has been reviewed and revised to balance affordability with the need for vital community investment applicants are steered to keep their applications below one million to help to spread the funding across the county i appreciate the interest that you take councillor power in your fund surrey on an annual basis at our budget setting council meeting i would ask how many projects would never have got off the ground how many communities would never have would have been denied much needed facilities and how many unrealized community ambitions there would have been had this fund been wound up as suggested in previous years how many opening ceremonies have you witnessed and attended and been genuinely moved at by the deep appreciation and incredible organization of countless humble hard-working volunteers and community-spirited individuals empowered and enabled by this innovative and responsive fund how many residents have avoided loneliness made new friends benefited from new social and accessible activities on their doorstep and have found a new sense of belonging and purpose thanks to this fund and how many residents have improved their physical and mental health and have managed to avoid seeking medical or social care support due to the preventive and well-being benefits of the opportunities created in our communities i strongly oppose this and all of the elements of this ill thought through other than five of course and this short-sighted budget amendment thank you paul fellows thank you mr chairman and thank you councillor powell for your amendment and recommendations here um obviously i'm going to support item one as it is delivering a very similar thing to what i was talking about a few minutes ago um two i mean obviously i've been a little bit critical of the financial model to which your fund surrey is actually set up and yes it's done lots of good things but those accrued quite a lot of debt for this county um so i will be staying on number two because i think that particular horse has already bolted um in terms of three i've been trying to think about this one long and hard because ddrt has definitely benefited some of the more rural areas of the county i mean speaking as a representative in waverley there are parts of our county our borough that particularly are well off the beaten track when it comes to um public transport routes and i'm particularly talking about cranley which you would have thought that its size would not be so uh can you speak to your microphone my apologies mr jen um but uh just in reflection of council and mccloud's comments um if i were to get a taxi from cranley to godoming and back it would be about 30 pounds each way or more if i could get one so actually there are areas where i think it's quite right for a public body to subsidize things and that sort of transport is one that i i'm actually keen for this authority to to subsidize in this way um and would challenge the private costs of being quite high as well even if you can get the transport so um i am quite comfortable with the council in in the fullness of time looking at how that works um and don't think that it needs to be forced in this way so we'll be abstaining on three as well i'm quite happy to support four and five um and will be encouraging my group to do so um thank you mr chairman thank you councillor powell claire thank you chairman i'd like to speak specifically um on amendment part four about the uh potential review of the send ap capital program and ask members not to commit to allocating an additional 150 000 pounds to resource a review of of this program i am aware that it was the intention of the children and family select committee to have a member task group to look into the capital program and that of course is the property of of the select committee and i welcome the scrutiny and oversight of members in that area although not at a price tag of 150 000 pounds the amendment refers to the update last year of the capital program for send and if i could remind members chairman that that was to ensure that we could deliver within the agreed budget of 189 million pounds all of which is funded from borrowing borrowing by this council and the capital program for send chairman is a delivery program and my goodness has it delivered working in close partnership with land and property teams we have delivered a huge number of projects and we are at the stage now when of the 81 original projects there are now only seven that do not have immediate delivery plans or commitments to start construction and of those seven five are for new secondary resourced provision which are still in debate with with schools i think that we uh need to recognize that all the work that councillor powell is is has described in the amendment is underway it's underway and being driven through now plans to review to update and refresh all of these trajectory planning sufficiency and conformity with the safety valve is underway now being done by our dedicated and specialist teams they're constantly looking to the future and they are in an uncertain area where government is saying that the current system is skewed far towards specialist provision and the direction of reform is inclusive mainstream i think councillor powell needs to be careful she's not swimming against the tide of government pressure and she needs to think about the uncertainty too of local government reform i will not be supporting this amendment mad furnace thank you chair um i will be speaking to um section three uh of this uh seeing as uh item five has been amended i have to say um congratulations my hats off to councillor powell for really going through in significant detail um on this and it's great to see that someone has uh such a passionate interest in buses uh quite like uh idea as well but there's one thing that i can agree in her secondary paper of is that unitarization will bring together a multitude of services into one uh that's the dialer rides uh hopefully the passenger um patient outlet transfers and others which will make everything much more efficient however i'm afraid i cannot support the uh amendment uh because there are a number of fundamental misunderstandings about how service delivery is done not only with public transport but home to school transport and entitled student transport as well which seem to have been muddled together in the workings here um with our buses 30 million passenger journeys are done every year by bus now exceeding the pre-pandemic levels we have half price travel for 21 and under we've got our new hydrogen electric buses on our network and we got 22 bus operators in surrey most areas have only two to four and surrey connect is an initiative which has transported over 84 000 passengers it is expensive at the beginning but as time goes on the costs come down and the figures that were quoted particularly at the select committee where when a new scheme goes in where costs particularly are around 30 pounds after a few years particularly in mont valley they come right down to 14 with increased patronage they'll be going down to about eight so actually in areas where it's not too much viable to run a bus service this is the best way of delivering it if it gives you an example this next phase phase three will cost 4.3 million we will cover over two thirds of the county uh with that with an effective uh bus service that runs six days a week if you wanted to look at the traditional fixed routes it's 1.2 million per route so you can see this is much more efficient and effective as a service as i said i will not be supporting this i would have welcomed a conversation with the uh proposer of this because i think there are a number of misunderstandings it's a shame it's had to come directly as an amendment at this budget meeting but maybe after this we can have a conversation about public transport and home school transport and student transport after the meeting thank you catherine block thank you um specifically i'm speaking about uh proposal five and i'd like to thank you very much for agreeing to reverse the climate change adaptation strategy which as we know is the work to face the coming disruption caused by climate change uh such as increased risk of severe flooding drought wildflowers well sorry wildfires which we cannot um now avoid even in sowing so restoring 500 000 this year to the greener futures team will also allow them to respond to new finance opportunities opening up currently uh around nature-based solutions uh biodiversity net gain and these opportunities obviously to bring external funding into the council plus they will be able to continue their work on supporting green skills which are essential for the economic vitality of the county and uh links addressing links between climate change and health benefits so 500 000 pounds spent this way invest in the future for our residents and i just wanted to say that supporting the future interests of residents is something particularly important to younger people uh those who respond to the budget consultation and um it's especially our younger people who desperately need to hear something positive about their future so as to improving the appearance of highways this election year that that's still going to happen open and i'm very pleased that um i mean there's there's it should be budgeted for routine you know it to address routine ongoing maintenance um and perhaps that can be addressed uh in future future budgetings because um that uh 500 000 uh coming out of reserves is still unallocated so um sorry i'm using a slightly unhelpful laptop here so anyway um i suggest that the ongoing i've done that bit that by reversing the cuts to the green future team we are also showing leadership we're investing in the future for our young people lasting value for sorry so thank you Edward Hawkins and i have two more speakers i'm drawing a line Edward Hawkins thank you chairman um when i first read uh number two on here i did question my mind whether catherine was having a slight swipe at the officers and saying that they weren't up to it um certainly the grants that i put forward i think the the word robust exacting i know that's two words um come to mind when i have to go through the approval now Denise has given a brilliant statement in support of the your fund sorry i'm not going to defend it under any circumstances i'm going to leave that to the residents who have benefited from the improved safety from children the repaired uh community center the better dance floor the church all of these areas where people have worked i've worked across the political spectrum in helping these people working with these people which i have not been able to do if that money through the your fund study was not available and now he's in securing cash on a range of environmental issues and i hope on that uh biodiversity net gain uh that catherine bart mentioned as well that we can begin to look at our planting exercises more effectively in ensuring that we're planting a the right trees and the right flora in areas to survive where we may have uh additional future flooding pressures on the phase through ddrt a previously raised a question to the cabinet member i think we are wrong to have not explored in more depth the franchising option that other authorities have done this is ensured particularly in manchester and birmingham the removal of certain duplication of routes and a much clearer pricing structures for consumers when they come to get on the bus i live in a division where only one of the services benefits from the faircap and has the other service which many more residents actually use because it serves smaller communities does not therefore a franchising model would really begin to simplify what is still an overtly complicated system not only in in buses but in other forms of public transport uh can i thank um others who have spoken on the items and we will support this alternative uh thank you marisa thank you chairman i think i'm the last speaker and i think we're um ending on one of the more positive elements which is the amendment to item five and i'm very pleased of course to support support that amendment we were in the process of rebalancing our greener futures team to ensure we run efficiently but i remain very much of the view that national government needs to recognize the role of local government in climate change and deliver consistent long-term funding this change doesn't change that fact at all on the ask list we were asking for urgent funding for climate adaptation as councillor powell and councillor bart mentioned in particular the crease increased threat of flooding and the ea updated maps have shown that even more last week we also need money to drive our behavior change aligned to the 2050 targets and of course the key role of helping our more vulnerable residents reduce their energy bills and shift to greener energy the greener future team have already set up a one-stop shop i just wanted to use this moment to flag that which is about helping all residents and that's something really positive so work has not stopped in any way we continue to move forward we've been working really hard for the greener futures board and other forums on looking at the arising financial opportunities and we've not been sluggish on that either and of course we continue to work on greener prescribing and access to our countryside which is about the health initiatives aligned to that the 0.5 i just wanted to reiterate the points made by previous speakers should and could be used for a focus on how greener futures is going to benefit our residents swiftly as mentioned the flood prevention is key alongside delivering improvements on the rights of way work that's going through at the moment and ensuring that that clicks in and supports sustainable travel projects as well and of course i don't think there's one resident in the whole of this county maybe there's one or two but certainly very few who wouldn't say that protecting our countryside is of utmost importance and we will be making sure this money helps support that and delivering a leading nature recovery strategy councillor essex and councillor powell and councillor bar actually have been good friends of the greener futures team i look forward to developing the thinking with them i'd like to make the point quickly and i don't have the number at the tip of my fingers but much of the your fun surrey money has been used on greener initiatives and the greener future partnership has worked with that including my area where we haven't spent the money yet but we're working on a sustainable transport hub something community is so behind and really supporting on the point just made on the right trees and right shrubs i can assure you and contrary to the comment that was made in the council meeting earlier about us not delivering trees this was a partnership project with the partners we've delivered close to 600 000 trees now and residents have been engaged with that i don't know if everyone out here has been here planting trees but the opportunities have been there and the surrey team have helped facilitate that we work with the forestry commission national trust surrey wildlife trust to ensure we get it right finally on the money for verge maintenance and weed controlling things this can be done with an environmental perspective as well we're looking at how we get more wild verges and how we ensure that we create access for people so that we can also have the space for nature recovery and for nature to flourish so these things don't have to sit apart they sit together thank you thank you johnson with a second thank you firstly thank you thank you for the commitment that this council effectively is now reaffirming its commitment to the climate emergency and reversing those proposed cuts to the climate budget um investing in climate adaptation rather than i mean what was proposed was to draw and just to be clear half a million of contingency that's not allocated money within the highway improvement reserve but it's good that we can do all that we like rather than having to pick and choose with the more money from government now no budget can be perfect so i just want to speak briefly to the remaining amendments which propose still improvements to the existing budget firstly committing some additional resources for taking a preventative approach to care and children's services funded by those most willing to pay not just a patchwork quilt of charitable endeavors across surrey but the certainty and sustainability that comes when services are commissioned and coordinated by this and future surrey councils such early intervention will improve our communities in the long term secondly to be clear about when your fund surrey will end we welcome the capital spending that's focused on improving community well-being and sustainability initiatives to the states rather than growth growth growth but it is entirely funded from borrowing i guess if a similar program was proposed by a labor chancellor it might suffer far more critique from the conservatives in this case all we're asking is for an end date to be provided thirdly why not pause and review the rollout of digital on-demand responsive transport look to a more joined-up approach to transport which we've proposed here previously follow on the recommendation of the cross-party scrutiny to have a clear agreed strategy make sure the level of subsidy is more financially sustainable going forwards by working together ensure the best balance between bus provision to reach those isolated in rural areas and make sure we've got better buses at the same time for the most deprived communities in surrey which tend to be more urban thus higher density and therefore serve more by fixed route buses fourthly now we have largely addressed the ehcp backlog why do we not do a best value review with councillors to make sure we get that program providing the right number of specialist schools in the right places in the right locations more needs to be done in this this area i i accept claire curran but you know it's great if we can commit to do that without the 150 000 but the last six months it hasn't been forthcoming which is why we after pressuring through the select committee route we bought it as a budget amendment so please support even a reluctancy support or say you're doing things these things are ready and then support each of these amendments so we might agree a council budget that is backed by all parties here today thank you kathleen do you like someone up please thank you chair i stand here as the leader of the ra and independent group we have no whip i encourage research analysis and encourage independent thinking we do not vote on mass councillor potter recommendation one are we really doing all we can and should be doing in terms of early intervention prevention and support the amendment's been raised because i don't think we are is there really no recognition that the children's society report shows that the well-being of our children is decreasing year on year sharply recommendation two your fund surrey i'm not saying there are not benefits from the schemes i'm saying that maybe just maybe right now given where we are one pound spent here one pound more on the capital debt could be spent better somewhere else but irrespective of that we need an exit strategy we need to tell charities and communities that the scheme is going to run out of money at the end of the next financial year ddrt i can assure the cabinet member i have spent many hours talking to the team gone through many different variations of data including me having to completely redo my analysis because the numbers changed the lowest cost for the oldest scheme for ddrt was 12 pounds per passenger journey according to the data given to the select committee the highest was much much higher than that i won't quote a number here the average in december from september to december was 30 pounds 30 pounds the national audit office has told us that in 2018 19 there were 130 000 children in england with the hcps 23 24 that number has jumped to 238 000 our mainstream schools are already doing more with less for sure and the capital program and how the money is spent in that capital program will drive the difference we make to the outcomes of children to the cost of our home to school transport system and most of all the outcomes for parents as well who are currently broken by what is going on i hope that the budget amendments will be supported i fear they will not but i am glad that we have managed to at least agree on the fifth recommendation which i welcome i urge you all to support these amendments it was my intention to take one and four together but given in the debate i think we should take each item separately so you're voting for i'll hand over to the um mickey i'm going to explain the voting okay thank you chair members um first vote you will be placed so first item you're placing a vote on is item five little two recommendation one which is on page seven of the third supplementary agenda please clearly state for against or abstain when i call your name question maureen atterwell it's item one sorry yes recommendation one page seven again it's item five little two members just to be clear we're taking five separate recorded votes one for each recommendation so the first item you'll be voting on is item five little two recommendation one page seven of the third supplementary agenda please clearly state for against or abstain when i call your name maureen atterwell against ayesha azad against katherine bart for steve backs john beckett luke bennett lute bennett against amanda boot dennis booth harry bapari for liz bows against nathalie bramhall against helen clack against stephen cooksey paul paul clare curran against nick darby fiona davidson paul paul deech against kevin denis against jonathan essex for robert evans paul paul follows for matt furnace angela goodwin for jeffrey gray for tim hall against david harmer against nick harrison for edward hawkins against marissa heath against trevor hog against robert hughes against jonathan hully against sarj hussein against rebecca jennings evans against frank kelly against reasat khan against robert king for eba kington rachel lake against victor lewenski against david lewis cobham scott lewis andy lynch andy mcleod ernest mallet against mikhaila martin for jan mason for stephen mccormick enter ram in or Mark Newtie John O'Reilly Tim Oliver George Potter Catherine Powell Penny Rivers John Robini Becky Rush Joanne Sexton Lance Spencer Leslie Steeds Richard Teer Ashley Tilling Chris Townsend Definitely four Liz Townsend Denise Turner-Stewart Hazel Watson Jeremy Webster Budi Wirisingi Fiona White Keith Witham Keith Witham Recommendation 1, 4, 29 Against 41 Abstain 4 So the recommendation is not carried Moving to recommendation 2, item 5, little 2, page 7 of the third supplementary agenda Please clearly state for, against or abstain when I call your name Maureen Atterwell Against Ayesha Azad Against Catherine Barth Steve Bax Against John Beckett I just want you to repeat the same order John Beckett No sorry There's another conversation Yeah Can you make sure there's enough Screenplay I think Yeah So Okay Abstain Abstain, thank you Jordan He's not here Luke Bennett Against Amanda Boot Dennis Booth Abstain Harry Bupari Abstain Liz Bowes Against Natalie Bramhall Against Helen Clack Against Stephen Cooksey String Claire Curran Against Nick Darby Four Fiona Davidson Four Paul Deitch Against Kevin Deanas Against Jonathan Essex Four Robert Evans Four Paul Follows Abstain Abstain Matt Furness Against Angela Goodwin Abstain Jeffrey Gray Abstain Tim Hall Against David Harmer Against Nick Harrison Four Edward Hawkins Against Marissa Heath Marissa Heath Against Trevor Hogg Against Robert Hughes Against Jonathan Hulley Against Sarge Hussain Against Rebecca Jennings-Evans Against Frank Kelly Against Reasat Khan Against Robert King Iba Kington Four Rachel Lake Against Rachel Lake Against Victor Lewanski Against David Lewis Cobham Against David Lewis Cobham Against Scott Lewis Against Andy Lynch Against Andy Andy McLeod Four Ernest Mallet Against Ernest Mallet Against Michaela Martin Abstain Jan Mason Steven McCormick Cameron McIntosh Against Julia McShane Abstain Sinead Mooney Against Carla Mawson Abstain Bernie Muir Against Abstain Bernie Muir Against Mark Newty Against John O'Reilly Against Tim Oliver Against George Potter Abstain Catherine Powell Or Penny Rivers Abstain John Rabbini Abstain Becky Rush Against Against Joanne Sexton Four Lance Spencer Abstain Leslie Steeds Against Richard Teer Against Ashley Tilling Abstain Chris Townsend Four Liz Townsend Abstain Denise Turner-Stewart Against Hazel Watson Against Against Jeremy Webster Against Budi Wirisingi Against Fiona White Abstain Keith Witham Against Against Recommendation 2 15 4 42 Against 17 Abstentions So Thank you Recommendation 3 Moving to Recommendation 3 Item 5 Little 2 Page 7 of the 3rd Supplementary Agenda 4 Against 4 Against 4 Against 4 Against 4 4 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 7 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 11 11 11 11 12 12 13 11 11 12 13 14 14 15 15 Robert Evans, Paul Follows, Matt Furness, Angela Goodwin, Jeffrey Gray, Tim Hall, David Harmer, Nick Harrison, Edward Hawkins, Marissa Heath, Trevor Hogg, Robert Hughes, Jonathan Hulley, Saad Hussain, Rebecca Jennings Evans, Frank Kelly, Riasat Khan, Robert King, Eba Kington, Rachel Lake, Victor Lewinsky, David Lewis Cobham, Scott Lewis, Andy Lynch, Andy McLeod, Ernest Mallet, Mikaela Martin, Jan Mason, Stephen McCormick, Cameron McIntosh, Julia McShane, Sinead Mooney, Carla Mawson, Abstain, Bernie Muir, Against, Mark Newty, Against, John O'Reilly, Against, Tim Oliver, Against, George Potter, Abstain, Catherine Powell, Four, Penny Rivers, Abstain, John Rubini, Abstain, Becky Rush, Against, Joanne Sexton, Four, Lance Spencer, Abstain, Leslie Steeds, Against, Richard Teer, Against, Ashley Tilling, Abstain, Chris Townsend, Four, Liz Townsend, Abstain, Denise Turner-Stewart, Against, Hazel Watson, Against, Jeremy Webster, Against, Budi Wirasinghe, Against, Fiona White, Abstain, Keith Witham, and Against. Recommendation 3, 4, 18, Against, 41, Abstain, 15, Recommendation was carried. The disturbance is, we have little visitors downstairs, that's what the disturbance is, sorry for that. Not carried, yeah, not carried, yeah. Moving to Recommendation 4, Item 5, Little 2, Page 7 of the 3rd Supplementary Agenda. Please clearly state, Four, Against, or Abstain when I call your name. Maureen Atterwell. Against. Ayesha Azad. Against. Catherine Bart. Four. Steve Bucks. Against. John Beckett. Four. Jordan Beach. Sorry, sorry. Luke Bennett. Against. Amanda Boot. Four. Dennis Booth. Four. Harry Bapari. Four. Liz Bowes. Against. Natalie Bramhall. Against. Helen Clack. Against. Stephen Cooksey. Four. Claire Curran. Against. Against. Nick Darby. Four. Fiona Davidson. Four. Paul Deitch. Against. Kevin Deenis. Against. Jonathan Essex. Four. Robert Evans. Four. Paul Follows. Four. Matt Furness. Against. Angela Goodwin. Four. Geoffrey Gray. Four. Tim Hall. Against. David Harmer. Against. Nick Harrison. Four. Edward Hawkins. Against. Marissa Heath. Against. Trevor Hogg. Against. Robert Hughes. Against. Jonathan Hulley. Against. Sarge Hussein. Against. Rebecca Jennings Evans. Against. Frank Kelly. Against. Rearsat Karm. Against. Robert King. Four. Eba Kington. Four. Rachel Lake. Against. Victor Lewanski. Against. David Lewis Cobham. Against. Scott Lewis. Against. Andy Lynch. Against. Andy McLeod. Four. Ernest Mallett. Four. Mackayla Martin. Four. Jan Mason. Four. Stephen McCormick. Four. Cameron McIntosh. Against. Four. Julia McShane. Four. Sinead Mooney. Against. Carla Mawson. Four. Bernie Muir. Against. Mark Newty. Against. John O'Reilly. Against. Tim Oliver. Against. George Potter. Four. Catherine Powell. Four. Penny Rivers. Four. John Robini. Four. Becky Rush. Against. Joanne Sexton. Four. Lance Spencer. Four. Leslie Steeds. Against. Richard Teer. Against. Ashley Tilling. Four. Chris Townsend. Four. Liz Townsend. Four. Denise Turner-Stewart. Against. Hazel Watson. Four. Jeremy Webster. Against. Budi Wirisingi. Against. Fiona White. Four. Keith Witham. Against. Against. Recommendation 4. Four. 34. Against. 40. Abstention. None. Not carried. On recommendation 5. Are we all in agreement to... No, we have to do... Do the recorded rule. Sorry. Are they all agreeing? We have to do a recorded rule. Sorry. Okay. Item 5. Little 2. Recommendation 5. Could I just ask Councillor Powell to confirm the wording so that everybody is aware of what they're voting on? Would you like us to read it, Catherine? Would you like us to read it, Catherine? So, new recommendation 5 should read, As a result of the local government financial settlement announcement yesterday, reinstate the 0.5 million into the Greener Future Team base budget and therefore do not implement the 0.5 million proposed efficiency. Yep. Excellent. Okay. Members, if you are voting for, against or abstain, please clearly state which way you want to vote when I call your name. Maureen Atterwell. Four. Ayesha Azad. Four. Catherine Bart. Four. Steve Bux. Four. John Beckett. Four. Luke Bennett. Four. Amanda Boot. Four. Dennis Booth. Four. Four. Harry Bupari. Four. Liz Bowes. Four. Natalie Bramhall. Four. Helen Clack. Four. Stephen Cooksey. Four. Claire Curran. Four. Nick Darby. Four. Fiona Davidson. Four. Paul Deitch. Four. Kevin Deenis. Four. Jonathan Essex. Four. Robert Evans. Four. Four. Paul Follows. Four. Matt Furness. Four. Angela Goodwin. Four. Jeffrey Gray. Four. Tim Hall. Four. David Harmer. Four. Nick Harrison. Four. Edward Hawkins. Four. Marissa Heath. Four. Trevor Hogg. Definitely four. Robert Hughes. Four. Jonathan Hulley. Four. Sarge Hussein. Four. Rebecca Jennings Evans. Four. Frank Kelly. Four. Ria Sat Khan. Four. Robert King. Four. Eba Kington. Four. Rachel Lake. Four. Victor Lewanski. Four. David Lewis Cobham. Four. Scott Lewis. Four. Andy Lynch. Four. Andy McLeod. Four. Ernest Mallett. Four. Mikaela Martin. Four. Jan Mason. Four. Stephen McCormick. Four. Cameron McIntosh. Four. Julia McShane. Four. Sunaid Mooney. Four. Carla Mawson. Four. Bernie Muir. Four. Mark Newtie. Four. John O'Reilly. Four. Tim Oliver. Four. George Potter. Four. Catherine Powell. Four. Penny Rivers. Four. John Robini. Four. Becky Rush. Four. Joanne Sexton. Four. Lance Spencer. Four. Leslie Steeds. Four. Richard Teer. Four. Ashley Tilling. Four. Chris Townsend. Four. Liz Townsend. Four. Four. Denise Turner-Stewart. Four. Hazel Watson. Four. Jeremy Webster. Four. Budi Wirisingi. Four. Fiona White. Four. Keith Witham. Four. 74. Recommendation 5. 74. 74. Four. Not against. Not abstention. So, recommendation 5 is carried. We now return to the substantive budget debate. Are there any speakers? Hever Kintan. Hever Kintan. There is something about Surrey County Council's budget meeting that, somewhat perversely, always provides me with a sense of security. It's the predictability. It's the predictability. The certainty that comes with knowing what will happen, who will say what, and yes, how we will vote. It starts with Councillor Tim Oliver laying out the challenges, not quite as doom-laden as the Chancellor Exchequer, who managed to send the nation into recession, if not the economy, and moves through his mantra, no one left behind a slogan that only works as long as you don't have SEND needs, youth service needs, or a foster carer, or, in fact, anyone else who remains way under, behind under his administration. And then an array of speeches from group leaders. Councillor Catherine Powell's well-researched and well-argued and well-voted down proposals. The Green Party putting forward their helpful, often small steps towards a more sustainable and less frightening future, and I thank them for that. And the usual speech from the leader of the Labour Group, sadly missing the jokes, although not so funny now that the Chancellor's decision to put up the Employment National Insurance has added 8.4 million costs to this council, and goodness knows how much to Surrey businesses, as well as the rather spiteful pop at our farmers. And, of course, the Liberal Democrats, oh, I did hope Councillor Watson would treat us to another speech as leader of the opposition to the opposition leader, but sadly that didn't happen. And, of course, those supportive and speeches from the Conservative backbench is not too many of those, but I'm sure it's your vote your leader's answer is seeking, not your opinions. But I, too, am going to be predictable. I won't support the budget. I and my colleagues tried to get the administration to select different options and take different paths, and as usual, we failed. I don't have to vote for it anyway. It's the majority group's role to run the council and set a budget, and you have the majority to do that, even if you choose to do it badly. And I'll tell my residents why, too, and hopefully in May they will be able to make a judgment on how I've voted and acted in this council over the last four years. But then again, for many of this chamber elections in May, when you'll be judged on what you have done and what your colleagues have done over the last four years is perhaps something you don't want. Anyway, if that May election doesn't happen, at least I can look forward to, in February 26, another Predictable Budget Council meeting. Thank you. George Potter. Our budget principles say that reserves should not fall below a minimum of 12% as a buffer. But in this budget, the general fund reserve is actually just £50 million out of a budget of £1,264 million, so just 4% level of uncommitted reserves. Instead, what we have in these budget papers is an accounting trick to reach 10%, £71 million of earmarked reserves, that is, reserves which are already spoken for, are being used to fudge the figures in order to pretend that reserves are at 10%. But the reality is that the actual non-earmarked reserves available to this council are a meagre 4% of the budget, far too low to be able to cope with any significant shock. On page 92, paragraphs 5.33 and 5.34, the S151 officer makes it clear that it is only by counting the earmarked reserves in this way that it is possible to reach a below minimum level of 10% of reserves, and it is only on the basis of this accounting exercise that the S151 officer considers this budget to be robust. By comparison, my own borough council, Guildford, had non-earmarked reserves in our budget last year of £8.2 million versus service spending of £16.4 million, so about 50%. And interestingly, that was a figure which Conservative councillors, such as my good friend Councillor Bob Hughes, condemned as being run down, insufficient and dangerously depleted. And indeed, a key risk in this budget is identified as the need to make £66 million of savings this year, more than that £50 million figure of usable reserves. So if the council fails to make those savings, or has unexpected costs, then this council will run out of money in the next financial year. And to be clear, the record of this council in each of the last four years is of consistently failing to make the planned savings. And all of this with a backdrop of a medium-term budget gap of £172 million, so no margin for error. As my group leader, Paul Follis, has mentioned, the medium-term budget relies on an absolutely ludicrous assumption that EPR payments from the government that have been received this year as a one-off will remain at the same level for the next five years, instead of tapering off rapidly as every other council is assuming. So there we have another black hole. This council has cut services for the vulnerable to a bone, overseen a collapse in special education needs provision, bought multiple transformation programmes, overseen fiascos with centralising verge maintenance and on-the-street parking, and can't even manage to get customer services right. Thank you. I cannot support this budget. Steve Becks. Thank you, Chairman. Before I make some remarks, can I just declare a late interest because I've just reminded myself that my wife works for a local authority school in this county, so I should have declared that at the start of the meeting. Apologies. So I just want to say, on a matter in the budget to do with the verges, I'm a bit disappointed here some of the criticism that came from some sections of the chamber about the increase in the grass cutting funding, which I think is entirely positive. From my experience, it's an area of great interest to our residents, great concern also. It's about taking some pride in our county. The five million investment will allow us to deliver six urban cuts and two rural cuts. We will have three gangs able to work out in our boroughs, which is triple what we've seen in the year just gone at the moment. And it will ensure a more efficient and responsive service. And the leader did reference in his remarks earlier about the impact of the climate change on our highways. No question we're seeing a lot more of wet winters. That certainly delayed our programme in the last year. But this year, I'm quite confident, thanks to this budget, that we will be able to take steps to make a strong start, aided by some new contractors, improve working practices and increase resources. Our verges programme will begin in February. And the first of our weed sprays, our two weed sprays will happen in March. And the relining programme also want to mention benefits from this budget, 1.7 million, which represents a massive increase on previous years. And we have relined 940,000 metres of our road network so far this year. And I'm confident we're going to make further progress thanks to the budget in the year to come. Thank you. Fiona White. Fiona Davison, sorry. Actually, we're frequently mixed up. I've had quite a few emails that were destined for Councillor White. Chair, thank you. Members. The Children's Families Lifelong Learning and Culture Select Committee's scrutiny of the budget has been a salutary process. The conflict between, on one hand, a constrained budget, and on the other, increasing demand, increasing need, increasing complexity of need, and increasing costs played out in every aspect of our scrutiny. Although the Children's Families Directorate's budget has increased by 6.4%, which is an increase, you know, it's beyond inflation as it currently exists. Demands for services, needs and costs are increasing significantly more. Despite widespread recognition that early health and preventive services not only improve the wellbeing and life chances of children and young people, but also reduce the demand for expensive statutory services, in an era of tight budgets we're told that statutory services have to be prioritised, with the result that discretionary early health and prevention take the hit. We were reassured to learn that Surrey Nigh has the highest percentage spend on prevention services for children and people between the ages of 0 and 17, by comparison with Hampshire, Essex and Hertfordshire. But while there continue to be huge pressures on statutory services, discretionary services are necessarily going to receive significantly less funding than is commensurate, with making significant inroads to improving the lives of the most disadvantaged families and children in Surrey. And our finances will continue to bear the long-term costs of not having intervened early. It's a vicious circle and we will leave more behind. Another aspect of the budget that concerned the Select Committee was the funding of third sector and especially voluntary and charitable organisations on whom Surrey increasingly relies to provide services. Their sustainability is key to our strategy and we argued that the viability of smaller organisations in particular is significantly undermined without longer-term inflation-proofed funding. These organisations will also be hit by the additional costs of the national living wage and employer national insurance contributions. Although the government has indicated that Surrey County Council will be compensated for these additional costs, there's no compensation for the third sector. Some of our contracts allow for inflationary increases, but it's unlikely the full cost of these increases will be met and service users will be impacted. Of the 29.6 pressures identified in 2526, 10.7 is ascribed to home-to-school transport and 4.7 million to the increasing cost of social care placements. Both these pressures are due in part to the increasing complexity of children's needs and there's little reason to believe these circumstances are likely to improve in the near future. However, with the new schools bill the government has finally signalled its willingness to tackle profiteering in the social care sector. Whether it will be successful or whether it will lead to increasing cost, only time will tell. We remained sceptical over whether the 11.1 million pound of efficiencies can be achieved and we were puzzled that so many of the quality impact assessments provided to the select committee were either out of date or not yet available. Some of the EIAs were signed off in 22 or 23, so seemed inappropriate evidence for the 25-26 budget. We were assured, however, that although cuts to staffing are planned, front-line roles will be protected and will be exempt from recruitment controls. It's hard to see how the challenges of this year's Children and Families budget won't continue for the foreseeable future. Increasing need, complexity of need, increasing demand and increasing costs show few signs of reducing, while increased government funding to address this growth looks equally unlikely. So unless both the Council and Surrey residents have an appetite to change the baseline allocation of resources across the Council, assigning a higher proportion to children's services, next year's budget scrutiny could be even more salutary. Thank you. We will be taking a break off item 9. Bob Hughes. Thank you, Mr Chairman. I want to start by paying tribute to the financial staff that we have, who over a period of more than five months, certainly to the Resources and Performance Committee, have given us fantastic insights and information and explained area, complex areas of the budget and done so very effectively. I also want to say that I think that the amendment and speeches by Catherine Powell are certainly well-meaning and thoughtful. Clearly, she'd done her research and they were designed to address a number of issues. I just want to make two comments about the content of that. I fail to see how a further task and finish group is going to, at quite a high cost, is going to resolve the problems we all know there are with funding special education. And also, your Fund Surrey, most of the money of course has been spent, has been said already. And certainly in my division, it's brought really significant community benefits to people for which they are thrilled and delighted. And I think closing the fund before its finish in March would let down organisations who are bidding to make further improvements in their areas. Whilst there were a lot of thoughtful speeches in this debate, I'm afraid I can't quite say the same thing for Paul Follows. I mean, he said that we were rushing headlong into an uncertain future. Every future is uncertain. So it was just a piece of rhetoric, really. And he talked about transparency, and I don't know how he can bring himself to do so. With the planned merger, which plainly came out of his mind, a merger with Guildford with no plan, no financial analysis, and no transparency to the people of Guildford or Waverley, is hardly in line with what he was trying to say today. But I would say, certainly in Guildford, we should be grateful for one thing, which is that the people of Waverley are currently subsidising Guildford, and we should be grateful whether they are as grateful as another matter. He has a right to speak. He really can't contain himself, can he? There are several reasons why I support this budget in detail. Firstly, if one wants to know about the capital expenditure and the financial analysis ahead, a reading of the Treasury management strategy, which is professional and prudent, and certainly was gone over in detail by the Resources and Performance Committee, will tell you the answers to those things. I think our property portfolio is sensible, and it's profitable, and it's without excessive borrowing. And the reserves, everyone would like reserves. And George Potter thought I might talk about reserves, and he was right for once. Everyone would like more reserves, but they are within what I believe to be sensible, and to be lectured by the Liberal Democrats in Guildford, who, yes, did fritter away the large reserves left to them by the last conservative administration, and they, even worse, and they miscalculated what reserves they got. And they overspent a housing contract for £3.5 million by over £20 million. And instead of lecturing us, they should explain their own lack of financial control. The report produced by a KC into what happened, frankly, is just the beginning, and we will get to the truth. And I just finished by saying, Robert Evans may believe that Rachel from Customer Services will make the extra funds available that he's been asking for for 14 years. And think again. Mr. Potter, stop hollering across. You have a warning now. It's four times you've interfered. One of the other speakers is speaking. Four times in this meeting. Can you please control yourself and listen? You have a warning now. And if I have any more, this is my meeting. Respect others. I started off by saying respect others. You have your opportunity to speak, and you have your say. When others are speaking, you need to listen. Liz Townsend, please. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What this budget is not is a budget for children and families with additional needs. It is a budget that takes some of the most vulnerable members of our community and subjects them to yet more cuts, cloaked in the more palatable phrase of efficiency savings. Let's be clear. These cuts have a human cost. Parents and carers of children with special educational needs and disabilities are already navigating a broken system. They're exhausted, overwhelmed, and living in constant anxiety about whether their children will receive even the most basic support. This budget offers them no relief. Despite the leader acknowledging the growing demand on children's services, this budget falls woefully short. Yes, the cost of delivering services has increased. Yes, years of underfunding from central government have compounded the challenges facing this council, but those truths do not absolve us of our responsibility to act now decisively for these families. The SEND process review has been underway for about 19 months now and has delivered little visible benefit to parents and carers. Their experience remains one of endless delays and systemic failures. And then they see the choice to allocate five million pounds for one-off verge maintenance, weed control, and other visual improvements. Are we really offering neat grass verges while families are in despair? This decision sends a painful and clear message about this council's priorities. We hear heartbreaking stories of children out of education for years, their mental health deteriorating, and their families left to pick up the pieces. Meanwhile, this administration repeats the mantra that no one is left behind, but we know this is not true. Children and families are being left behind. Let's be honest about that, and this budget amplifies that message. The consultation for this budget showed residents prioritising better support for children, particularly those with SEND, not for verge cutting. The Agenda PAC outlines these savings, and to be frank, these efficiency savings for the children and families budget are vague aspirations. Words like explore, review, review, and identify, dominate. These are not concrete plans. They're placeholders. Is it realistic to believe that this budget will work? I have to call on Bob Hughes as well. It's a collaboration, Bob, not a merger. This council must confront the reality that we cannot cut our way to efficiency without causing profound harm. We owe it to children, our families, and our community to do better. I will not be supporting this budget. All right. I have four more speakers, and I'm asking you to summon up. John O'Reilly. Thank you, Chairman. And may I start by saying in an ever-changing world, thank heavens we have the stability and the predictability of Eberkington doing his curmudgeonly old councillor routine. The grand remonstrance followed by, no doubt, the great abstention. You know, all of us, whatever, this is a moment of celebration in otherwise heated but constructive debate. I will be voting for this budget without any reservations at all. I'm not the longest-serving member of this council, but I have been here for eight years. All of us have been here for at least four years. And the improvements, Liz Townsend talked about some of the issues which are really important, very important. But for our residents, most of our residents, the issues that confront them and confront us are to do with the visible facing services of this council, principally highways and libraries, to take two examples. Now, it is possible, Chairman colleagues, that Hersham, singular and unique as it is, is just an island unto itself. But I can tell this council that in terms of the roads resurface, the pavements resurface, better facilities that our residents notice, more has been done in the last five years than has been done in the last 50 years in my patch. Now, as I say, that may not be the experience of York, in which case you should be lobbying harder for your residents. But I'm sure actually what I have said today, what I've just said now, is the experience of all of us. Namely, the services that our residents value most, even though they are a fraction of expenditure, this council has improved substantially, significantly, and will continue to do so. Ditto on the libraries. A massive investment program. No closures of libraries. Invest in libraries. That is a success of this council. And we should all take pride in it. This budget, Chairman, is unglamorous, but it's a manifestation of competence. As Tim Oliver said, this is a very dangerous time, unpredictable time. And therefore, to have the stability, the maturity that this budget presents, is something that I, and I hope others, will wholeheartedly endorse. Claire Curran. Chairman, thank you very much. I just really wanted to emphasize that in this budget, the allocation for the Children, Families and Lifelong Learning Directorate is now exceeding 300 million pounds and is an increase overall of some six percent. It's the single largest area of growth in the whole council budget. I wanted to thank the Chairman of the Select Committee for her comments. I think the scrutiny work that was done by the committee was thoughtful and productive and very supportive for the aspirations of the service. So, this is a budget that I completely, completely, I just wanted to say, in response to some of the comments, being a reference to undefined cuts, and a reference to this being plans and placeholders. That is absolutely not the case for the children's budget. There's very careful, thought-out plans. This is going to enable more spending on the continued improvement of statutory social work and children's social care. It enables the rollout of more and better early health services and it does allow more spending on support for children with additional needs. But could I just remind members that spending for children on additional needs is not coming out of the general fund budget. It is coming out of the high needs block of the designated schools grant. It's referred to in section nine of the appendix, which clearly says there is nine million more pounds from government spending and the one percent transfer from the designated schools grant. That is more spending on high needs, on the high needs block. But of course, it isn't enough. And we know that there isn't enough money for high needs block, but there is, and we can never meet needs fully. But this is a different budget and a different spending source. So while we are spending more to meet our needs in social care and on children's needs, of course, we have to keep our books in order. Of course, we have to seek efficiencies on areas such as the home to school travel assistance. And that is, and we're driving through significant efficiencies there with some difficult, difficult decisions. But it is leading to reductions in our number of looked after children and those who are on statutory plans. Our capital budget is sound. That is driving through savings as well and meeting the needs of children and young people. And this is a budget for children. Thank you, Chairman. John Olley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Councillor Evans did talk earlier of the Labour government getting off to a bad start. And I would suggest that that is the understatement of this debate. But linking that bad start to this budget, I know, we know, that the Chancellor's October budget announced increase to national insurance contributions has not only impacted on direct staff costs to this council, but worse still, will also impact on our suppliers, on our third-party providers of care and support, rising further and impacting us indirectly from April and beyond. Whilst I recognised that the direct impact of the national insurance hike factored into this budget, the reality is that we have had to find an additional £2 million to pay for this tax, increasing the pressures on our budget, which is regrettable. But, Mr. Chairman, I would like to stand to support this budget, our budget, because of what the capital programme contains. An extra £115.4 million investment towards highways and transport, a further £38.2 million on planning and also cost towards our major projects. Mr. Chairman, we are continuing to invest in the resurfacing of our roads, of our pavements, of our bridleways in our rural areas, and on structures across our highways network. That is why I support this budget. Thank you. Helen Clark. Thank you, Chair. So, for well over 20 years, I've represented a very rural part of Surrey, Dorking Rural, a fabulously pretty area made up of small villages, eight parish councils. And the most important thing to them and to my residents has been road safety, road improvements. And I regret hearing people talking about verges as though they're some kind of vanity project. Actually, you know, clearing verges, clearing hedges, keeping the roads clean, which is not always a county responsibility, is important for road safety. I don't have street lights in my area. I don't have very many footways either. People ride and walk their dogs and cycle a lot. And we need to keep our roads well maintained. And I'm absolutely in support of this year's budget and incredibly the fantastic work that the Spring Clean has done over the last few months. I can see a real difference in the way that our hedges have been inflated back. Our roads have been cleaned. Our signs have been cleaned in my area. And I would encourage every member to get engaged with that project that Matt Furness has put forward and make sure that they get their jobs done. This isn't about making my villages look pretty. They look pretty anyway. It's about making sure that they're safe for people to use in our very busy towns and villages. I support this budget. Thank you. David Lewis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If we go back to the beginning of the debate, the leader described the very difficult financial and challenging financial background against which this budget has been set. But again, it's important to reiterate that although we are operating in these difficult circumstances, the financial position of this council remains strong. I'd just like to pick up a couple of points that were made earlier on in the debate. In this budget, our debt is fully provided for in terms of repayment. And that's very different from a number of Surrey, District and borough councils. And also to Councillor Evans' point about the Public Works Loan Board, this board does still exist, but it is now part of the Debt Management Office within the Treasury. References made in the earlier debate on the amendment to the final local government finance settlement, which we only got details of yesterday. It's good news that we've got round about £1.5 million more than we had assumed or had been advised in terms of the provisional settlement. And over the next few weeks, we'll look at the implications of that and the motion before us allows minor changes to be made. As members are aware, we do need to propose a balanced budget. And I support the proposed increase in council tax by 2.99% and the adult social care preset by 2% taking us to 4.99 in total. This actually compares very favourably to, for example, the 8.99% agreed for Windsor and Maidenhead, and the 7.49% increase agreed for Somerset. Both, of course, Liberal Democrat-run councils. Mr Chairman, the net revenue budget for 2526 is £1.264 billion, which is a 4% increase compared with this year's budget. Councillor Townsend is wrong. There haven't been cuts to the children's budget. The children, families and lifelong learning budget is up by 6.48%. The adults budget is up by 3.95% and the place budget is up by 3.62%. These significant increases will enable us to continue to support the delivery of our critical frontline services – services that our residents expect. Mr Chairman, this budget isn't without risk. We continue to see the cost of social care rise and the care needs of our vulnerable adults and children become more complex. Containing the cost of the Home to School Transport Assistance Service is a challenge. And of course, as has been mentioned, we face higher costs as a result of the government's increase in national insurance contribution. These and other risks necessitate the need for efficiencies, many of which will be delivered through our One Council transformation programme. We're also proposing an exciting and ambitious capital programme and it has been reviewed and it is both affordable and deliverable. Next year, the capital budget will be about £344 million and that increases with the capital pipeline to just under £1.4 billion over the MTFS period. This will ensure that we continue to invest in our highways, schools, children's and independent living, accommodation and, of course, our Greener Futures programme. Catherine Powell complains that the capital programme is too large, that it's unaffordable, but then in the same breath she says we're not building enough school places, we're not building enough STEM places. She needs to get her story straight. When we consulted on our budget proposals, residents told us that they wished us to focus both on today's needs and those of the future. And with this in mind, we have reviewed our reserve levels and the budget does ensure that we have a healthy 10% level of reserves. Again, Catherine Powell refers to the reduction in reserves in her speech. But the figure that she quotes includes the high needs block deficit. So these, this expenditure hasn't been used, it hasn't been spent on the planned everyday expenditure that that statement implied. Mr Chairman, when we embarked on the budget setting process, we indicated that it would involve some hard choices. We have not shied away from these choices, but we have produced what I believe is a fair and responsible budget. Mr Chair, I would like to thank the officers for all the work that they have done in helping to prepare this budget. It is an enormous task. You can see from the debate we've had, it's very involved. And I really, really would like to put on record my appreciation to them. But members, I urge you all to give this budget your support. Thank you. Leader, would you like to respond? I would indeed, Chair. It had been my intention to respond point by point to all of those valid comments, or some not so valid, and actually to just walk you through every, or all 15 recommendations in the report. I don't know whether we're intending to have a block vote or an individual vote on all 15, but perhaps, Chair, you can give a ruling on that. Just one point on this, the reserves. I'm not going to go through any detail on the numbers, but if you look at Annex D, what this shows is that in 25-26, or the forecast closing balance, 31st March 20-26 will show reserves of 149.4 million, which is 12% actually, rather than the 10% that has been mentioned earlier. We have to set a budget. Despite what some members here think, you cannot just simply abstain. That is not really in the best interests of our residents. We can, of course, complain about adults. There isn't enough money being spent on particular services, and we all have, perhaps, our sort of specific area that we would advocate for, but we have to balance out the money that is spent on SCND, on adult social care. You know, the biggest challenge in adult social care now are those individuals, working-age adults with learning disabilities. That's where we're seeing the growth growth in demand and in cost. You know, and of course, as John O'Reilly mentions, those customer-facing services around highways and so on. It is almost an impossible task to balance those competing demands. We have a, you know, a limited budget. I have to say, though, that the amendments that were put forward, none of those would have any significant impact on the core budget. There are some tweaks in some areas. You know, and those areas that don't cost money, I'm sure we can take forward outside of this meeting. But, you know, and it is a matter of judgment as to how the money is prioritized. We do rely upon our expert officers, our professional officers. I would, though, just remind you all to reread the CQC latest report on adult social care, the Ofsted review on children's services, and the SEND area review. There is a lot of misinformation that is being put out in the public domain by certain individuals about just how well this council is doing in delivering those services. And I would suggest that people go away and reread those. You know, we are, we are moving forward and we are moving forward at a greater pace, faster pace than the many other councils. Can you mute the... Can you? So, yeah, Chair, I will keep this short because at the end of the day, you know, we have a common enemy, if that's the right word, which is the government. Local government competes with central government. That is why I am very much in favour of devolution, rapid devolution. Give us more control over both the money that we get into this county and indeed more control over the delivery of those services, including looking at bus franchising and an integrated transport system and so on. So, yes, I make no apology for pushing forward. With that, we will see what the government decide, but I hope that they'll support us in delivering what I think will be significant benefits to our residents. And really, my last point is about the investment in prevention. We absolutely get this. The three left shifts that the NHS need to focus on, two of which from illness to prevention, you know, and from hospital to community is absolutely consistent with what we need to be doing here. There is a funding issue. We have to double run those preventative investment costs and also delivery of the day-to-day services. And that is the challenge that officers and members here have to struggle with every single day. But absolutely, if we don't have that shift from the, you know, just simply delivering statutory services with exponential increase in demand, if we don't have that shift to prevention, then not just this council, local government, and quite frankly, the NHS will not survive. Mr. Chair, this is a balanced budget. It is trying to balance out those competing demands. We have delivered year on year a balanced budget. We do have sufficient reserves in there to protect us in the event of a downturn. We are about to go into a significant period of change. I am looking forward to this government, and to be fair to the government, you know, they are not shying away from decisions, whether they are the right ones, does this matter, but they are shying away from those decisions, and particularly around reform of SCND, which is a big issue for this council. It is a big issue nationally. And I very much hope that the report that was prepared in conjunction with the LGA and the CCN, the ISOS report, which set out some really good practical ways in which the whole SCN system can be addressed and can be improved. It is a broken system, and that isn't a reflection of what this council is doing. That is a national issue. So Chair, I think this is a good budget. We will deliver it, and I hope that residents will continue to see the delivery of improved services. Thank you, Leader. For clarification, I intend to take all the recommendations as one recorded vote. This takes into account the already approved recommendation five from Councillor Powell's budget amendment. Can I ask Vicky to explain? Okay. Members, you are voting on item five, the substantive budget, as published in the main agenda, pages 61 to 63, recommendations 1 to 15. Please clearly state 4 against or abstain when I call your name. Maureen Atterwell. 4. Ayesha Azad. 4. Catherine Barth. Against. Steve Bax. 4. John Beckett. 4. Luke Bennett. 4. Amanda Boot. 4. Dennis Booth. Against. Harry Bapari. 4. Liz Booth. 4. Natalie Bramhall. 4. Helen Clack. 4. Stephen Cooksey. Against. Claire Curran. 4. Nick Darby. 4. Fiona Davidson. 4. Paul Deitch. 4. Kevin Denas. 4.

1. Jonathan Essex. 4. Jonathan Essex. Against. Robert Evans. Yes. Paul Follows. Against. Matt Furness.
2. Angela Goodwin. Against. Geoffrey Gray. Against. Tim Hall. 4. David Harmer. 4. Nick Harrison. Abstain. Edward Hawkins. 4. Edward Hawkins. 4. Marissa Heath. 4. Trevor Hogg. 4. Robert Hughes. 4. Jonathan Hulley. 4.
3. Sarge Hussain. 4. Rebecca Jennings Evans. 4. Frank Kelly. 4. Riasat Khan. 4. Robert King. Against. Iba Kington. 4. Rachel Lake. 4. Victor Lewanski. 4. David Lewis Cobham. 4. Scott Lewis. 4. Andy Lynch. 4. Andy McLeod. 4.
4. Ernest Mallet. 4. Michael Martin. 5. Jan Mason. 5. Stephen McCormick. 5. Cameron McIntosh. 5. Julia McShane.
5. against. Sinead Mooney. 5. Carla Mawson. 5. against. Bernie Muir. 5. Mark Nooty. 5. Mark Nooty. 6.
6. John O'Reilly. 4. Tim Oliver. 4. George Potter. 4. George Potter. 5. against. Catherine Powell. 5. against. Penny Rivers. 5. Penny Rivers. 5. against. John Robini. 5. against. Becky Rush. 4.
7. Joanne Sexton. 5. against. Lance Spencer. 5. against. Leslie Steeds. 4. Richard Teer. 4.
8. Ashley Tilling. 4. Ashley Tilling. 4. against. Chris Townsend. 4. Liz Townsend. 5. against. Denise Turner-Stewart. 4. Hazel Watson. 5. against. Jeremy Webster. 4. Buddy Wirasinghi. 4. Fiona White. 5. against. Keith Witham. 4. The result. 43. 4. 25. Against. 6. Abstention. So the budget is carried. I'd now like to take this opportunity and I think it's probably time to call for a break. Can we be back by 2 o'clock please? Lunch. Lunch is provided. Who ordered a lunch in the committee room? Thank you. 1 to 202 of the agenda. The recommendation is on page 201 of your agenda and is that Councillor David Lewis-Campbell-A-West continues to be absent from meeting until March 2025.
9. For reason of ill health. The Council looks forward to welcoming him back in due course. Are we agreed? Please raise your hand. I'm agreed. Thank you. Item 7. Appointments of committee. Pages of the agenda. Frontsheet. The recommendation on pages 5 of the agenda. Frontsheet and is Council asked to note the leader's appointment of David Lewis Cobham as the chairman of the strategic investment board. Are we agreed? Agreed. Members allow us annual adjustment pages 203 to 222. The report can be found on pages 203 to 223. There is the recommendation is on pages 204 of your agenda and is Council has asked to approve the updated member's allowance. Annex A. Are we agreed? Agreed. Item 9 is updated health governance arrangements. Pages 23 to 254 of the agenda. The report can be found on pages 223 to 254. The recommendations are on pages 224 of your agenda. And are A. The Council North Sea Memorandum of Understanding between Surrey County Council Surrey Heartland's integrated health partnership set out in Annex A. B. That the Council approves the revised health and well-being board terms of reference set out in Annex A, Appendix 2. Are we agreed? Please raise your hands. Agreed. Agreed. Item 10 is members' question time. It's on the second supplementary and we have 20 questions. There will be five minutes per question for supplementary. Please be brief. Our supplementary questions must be framed as questions, not statements. It must be relevant to the original question. Question time will be limited to 45 minutes, at which point I will have finished the question which we are on, and close the item. Any questions not covered during the 45 minutes, a written answer has been tabled and members can, of course, follow up with the relevant member outside the meeting. Moving on to the questions, Tim Hall, Leatherhead, asked Matt Furness, do you have a supplementary? No, I just have to thank the cabinet member for a very full and interesting answer which explains many things. Question two is from Fianna Davison to Natalie Bramwell. Fianna, do you have a supplementary? I do, thank you. I'd like to thank the cabinet member for her question. Can I ask, in the admittedly unlikely event that a community asset may be chosen by a community group, maybe they want to purchase it, what would we do? Would we, for instance, handle it in the way that we handle commercial property and look for best value, which would seem to potentially be at odds with what we would ideally want to do? So I think I'm wondering what would happen in the unlikely event of a community group identifying a community asset they'd like to bid for. Thank you. Any other supplementary? Thank you, Councillor Davison. As you know, we don't have a policy on community asset transfer. And as most of our buildings are operational buildings, fire stations, mortuaries, salt barns, I think generally it will be quite strange for the community to wish to have one of those. However, we're duty-bound under Section 123 of the Local Government Act that we have to obtain best value for our sites. So best value means it goes out on the open market. We have done a transaction recently with Tandridge Council where they purchased the asset from us at a reduced value, but it wasn't hugely reduced. And nowadays, most of our assets are purchased. If they're big care homes or ex-children's homes, they're purchased and in many cases they may move over to residential. And as you know, residential sites are of high value. But I'll ask officers if they can sort of have a look at it in the unlikely event that something might come forward. Thank you. Thank you. Can I just ask? We've had a supplementary. I did ask anybody else any supplementary. I just wait, yes. I probably... Can I have the supplementary? Thank you. Does a cabinet member agree that the community asset transfer, that's the transfer and management of ownership at less than market value, is also an entirely legal process and is a power that is used in many local authorities today? And would she also agree that if... And it can be used for land, of course, not just buildings. And would she also agree that if a member approached by their residents comes forward with a proposal for a community asset transfer for one of the council's, say, properties or land ownership, that this should be considered by the council or by the officers or by the cabinet member? Thank you. Jonathan, did you have a supplementary for this as well? No, thanks. Thank you, Councillor Kington. I understand you're talking about the land at Worcester Park, the old Grafton stables, as you seem to have been emailing land and property officers rather frequently. You need to understand that one of the reasons why this property, this land, was brought forward was under the Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment, the Schlar, for Epsom and Yule. In 2017, they identified this site for 40 residential properties. You're saying they didn't? They didn't? It's not coming to the local plan. It can't be done. Take this out for the meeting, then. Take this out for the meeting. I think this is a very specific point. Thank you. And I'm happy to pick it up with officers and yourself. Question three is from Chris Townsend to Natalie Bramble. Chris Townsend, do you have a supplementary? Yes, thank you. The question is really, why can't we have this information now? Why do we have to wait for a meeting that's two months away for information that we asked for months back, well into 2024? Meetings that have been set up, one was out of time, was too quick, not enough time, another was in half term. We've now brought it back to the end of March. So we're two months away. This information should be available. Why is it not available so that we can actually understand what is going on here? Why do we have to wait two months to find out? I was actually going to ask the leader if he agreed with me. Jonathan Essex. Thank you. For my reading of the question, it's about the current use. My reading of the answer, it's about the future use. Is it possible to answer the current question about the current use and then come back to an answer about the future use at future times? Can you say your question again? Yes. Oh, I'll say again. Thank you very much. So the question asks about the current use of these buildings. My reading of the answer is it says the current use can't be disclosed because of future plans and future use. Is it not possible to answer the question which is about current use and then come back with the further details promised in the answer at a later date? Thank you. We have Mark Sugden, who would like to go on to ask a question. Mark, you're on. Yes, thank you, Chairman. And I'd like to thank Chris Townsend for asking the question. And I have a very similar question to him. This was brought to the Children's Select Committee in July of last year. We're now eight months down the line. The response seems to be that we can't give you any answers. And the difficulty is that until a well-organised youth club, and I would say that the Claygate Youth and Community Hub is, can get a guarantee of a lease extension, it is very difficult for them to motivate new volunteers to join. Secondly, to raise money from external sources. And that includes also applying for a Youth and Surrey small community grant, although I would like to thank the Cabinet Member and Deputy Cabinet Minister for unblocking that. Mark, question, please. My question is, it says the process will be completed by the end of Q1 2025. And will we get to know the answers to the questions? Maureen Atwell. Thank you, Chair. Happy to take this question. Council of Townsend, you will be aware that this meeting is for the meeting that Council of Townsend referred to and asked a question. It's proved difficult to hold. Some felt it was too short notice, but there was notice for the meeting. Is this to do with the question supplementary? Is this a supplementary? Yes, Councillor Townsend supplementary, yes. He's asked that could they have this information? Why is it so long? The question is not to yourself. The question is to Natalie Bremble. Oh, is it? Yes, yes. I don't really mind who answers it as long as I give an answer to the question. And I think I'm not alone. Let me take the supplementaries first and you can decide who answers it. Yeah. Let me take the supplementaries as well. Yeah. Nick Harrison. Thank you, Chair. Could I ask the purpose of the review? Are we looking at how acceptable the work has been? And have we set some criteria on how we might use these in future and bolster youth work? Thank you. Robert King. Thank you, Chair. Following on to Councillor Harrison's excellent question there. If we had to look at terminating the use of any buildings, can the Cabinet member confirm any revenue savings will be ring-fenced for actual youth work rather than buildings? George Porter. Thank you. Would the Cabinet member be able to confirm that the information requested in the original questions, namely which organisation has the least for each building and what their current status is, is information which both public and the councillors have a right to know under FOI and therefore would the Cabinet member be able to make it available as the question asks originally? I'll answer all of those in one go, okay? We can't let you have the information, Councillor Townsend, because of GDPR. That's what I've been told. If you're not happy with that, pick it up with the officers. And you have to understand, and I think I've said this more than once in this chamber, land and property operate on behalf of the service. We wait for direction from the service. If the service says they do not want to operate those properties anymore, they will then tell us we don't want them. We will then offer them to any other services. If then, and at that stage, and only then, and sometimes this takes months if not years, only then do we move into the next process on declaring its surplus and offering it to open market. So I really do think you should direct your question more to the service than to land and property. Thank you. Question four is from Catherine Powell to Met Furness. Catherine, do you have a supplementary? Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I'd really like to thank the Cabinet Member for his response and for confirming that the work that was done by the HGV Community Watch in Farnham, particularly in my division, was successful in justifying the need for enforcement cameras. However, I really would like to understand what more the community can do, because we're still getting very large numbers of HGVs come through. They're getting larger and larger. We're getting double-deckers, all sorts, coming through a very, very narrow area. I understand he's willing to consider contributions towards setting up enforcement cameras, and I'd like to understand how that consideration can be taken forward along with what the community can do. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Councillor Powell, for your supplementary question. I think it's difficult to say. I would like to actually, if the community could just bear some patience while we do these other measures as we go through. I know that's a difficult thing to ask, but as I say, these things are filtered through the system, particularly with the satellite navigation companies, as they start to demarcate and say that HGVs aren't allowed, as well as our sort of diversion route through Hampshire. I am meeting my counterparts from Hampshire this week, so I will raise this again and ask that they do prioritize any requests from highways officers. In regards to the contribution, the officers are currently looking at the legalities around that, because, as you can imagine, with cameras, they're very heavily regulated under law, and they can only be used in certain circumstances. Once we get a legal answer on that, on whether a contribution can be done, usually it's by another authority rather than individual residents, so town council, potentially. That could potentially be a route rather than direct contributions from residents. Thank you, Chair. Next question is to the leader. He's yet to step out. Could you wind waiting until he comes back with a supplementary? I'm more than happy to do, but since he wishes to raise me from PBDC, raising from the council as well might be a part of the plan. Thank you. Question six is to Joanne Saxton to Matt Furness. Do you have a supplementary? Unfortunately, she does give her apologies. She has another meeting. If I might have a supplementary question, which she's asked me to raise. She says that, unfortunately, the answer received is not to the specific questions that she asks. Can I ask that the cabinet member just review the questions and the answers and provide her with answers that more align to the information she was requesting? Thank you, Chair, and thank you for that supplementary question in your absence, Councillor Sexton. I have actually answered this question before a number of times, so I feel if you're seeking a different answer, if you want to feed this back, you're not going to get one. The problem with the Pothole Pro is it doesn't work for us operationally. We've got three depots across our county in which we actually operate out of. The Pothole Pro is designed and has been tested in areas which have multiple depots, up to 12, so the distance is much shorter for getting the equipment back and forth. In addition, we are investing in a resurfacing programme, not a fixed programme, after it becomes an issue. We've moved away from that. We are no longer in a managed decline. We are investing in our highway network. We've done over 500 miles of roads and pavements in the past few years and I continue to do that and make sure that we don't have the Pothole issue in the first place. And as you can see, because of what we've done, Potholes are going down by 40% and repairs are going up in speed by 10%. So it's the correct method to be doing it rather than just getting a big flashy bit of kit that we can do photo ops outside of. Question seven is from Robert Evans to Claire Curran. Do you have a supplementary, sir? Thank you very much, Chair, and I'd like to thank the Cabinet Member for her lengthy response on the New Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Three-quarters of the way through her response, she says, we have long lobbied Government for the requirement to register all children who are home-educated, which I welcome. Will she share the correspondence she's had with Government over the last few years, this long lobbied, and any responses so we can all better understand how families and the system can be improved? Any other supplementaries? Claire? Yes, I'd be happy to do that. Thank you, Chair. Question eight is from Catherine Bart to Matt Furness. Catherine Bart, do you have a supplementary? I do, thank you very much. One second. Yes, I would like to know. Yes, can you confirm that the conventional or unconventional oil extraction in the Horse Hill has ceased and that's it, no more oil extraction from Horse Hill at all going on? Thank you. Thank you. Is that your question? Edward Hawkins. Thank you, Chairman. I'm not getting involved in that last question, but I will phrase my comment as a question. Is the Cabinet Member aware that the legislation and recent decisions have placed potential onus on the Planning Application or Planning and Regulatory Committee members, and we are examining ways in which we can increase and improve the training of those members to deal with any subsequent applications for that nature of use as and when they come forward? Thank you, Chairman. Any other supplementary? Councillor Furness? Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councillor Bart, for your supplementary question. I did anticipate this one coming, so I did get all the facts checked. So, commercial production ceased on the 25th of October 2024. This was confirmed by a visit by Planning Officers on the 31st of October 2024. A minimum maintenance flow was kept in place by the operator until the 15th of November. An inspection on the 28th of November 2024. The pump is now non-operational, confirming that extraction is no longer practically possible. And in response, Councillor Hawkins, yes, we will do everything we can. It was an interesting ruling by the High Court, and I think it's one that a number of authorities are going to have to find their way on with particular guidance. Question 9 is from Jonathan Essex to Dr. Furness. Jonathan, do you have a supplementary? No, but I'd like to thank the Cabinet Member's response. Thank you. Robert King. Thank you, Chair. So, given the Council will have to report any subsidised service in its scope to emissions, how do we propose to do that if we don't hold a comparative greenhouse gas analysis for the use of hydrogen? Any other supplementary? Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councillor King, for your supplementary. We will be requesting from the operators any data that is required as part of any reporting that we do. We do not specify to the operators what buses they need to use or what fuel, so it is purely a choice for them. They will have to pass that data on as well. Question 10 is from Ashley Tilling to Matt Furness. Ashley Tilling, do you have a supplementary? Yes, thank you, Chair, and thank you for the response. Just to frame my question, in November 23, I stood outside the largest primary school in Surrey, which is in my division, with six officers to look at road safety. Significant recommendations were put forward, and here we are over a year later, and those have yet to be funded and yet to be installed. So, my question is, is the portfolio holder convinced that a sufficient priority is afforded to spending and installation on these safety outside school schemes? Are they given the priority they deserve, because they are, after all, aimed at protecting vulnerable children from road traffic accidents? Any other supplementary? Jonathan? Thank you. I just wanted to ask whether the 3 million, together with a further 2 million, is sufficient to deal with all of the backlog and to right-size the budget going forward? Thank you. Matt? Thank you, Chair. Thank you, gentlemen, for your supplementary questions. The simple answer is yes. It is a programme. It's more around capacity and delivery on our road space. That is the challenge. We are committed, as you can see, we have continued a significant amount of capital funding for road safety outside schools. Originally, we were doing 50 projects. Some of them are rolling into the next financial year for delivery as well. But it is purely around capacity. And as you can imagine, as soon as one school sees an improvement outside, you get the next six in the area asking for an improvement also. So we will have a continuous work stream on this. And I hope in future that all members are willing to support a budget which can fund road safety outside schools. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Lars, do you have a supplementary? I do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to the Cabinet Member for his response. So is the Cabinet Member confident that the various meetings and activities that have been described in the answer will address the issue going forward? Any other supplementary? Thank you, Chair. I think I can say that during the nature of a lot of these major schemes, we can only work together. There have been difficulties and I would say particularly with Junction 10 where the scheme as originally fought has changed throughout the process of construction. So all I can say is it will always be a moving feast and we will always just have to continue having those open lines of communication to minimize disruption on residents. Let's not forget we have about 90 interventions in the highway a day by utilities alone. We have over 100,000 interventions a year on our busy network of 3,000 miles of road. So if you do think about this, we do our best to manage the situation. But I can't promise that it will be absolutely perfect and congestion free. Question 12 is from George Potter to Matt Furness. George Potter, do you have a supplementary? Yes, I do. Thank you. Thank you to the Cabinet Member for his answer. It does appear to have addressed the more funding by Active Travel England rather than my broader question which was in terms of what is the overall level of spending the Council has made in supporting Active Travel as a whole. I do know the answer gives an example of other activities which can support those objectives. But I was just wondering if the Cabinet Member could provide some figures for the total overall spending on supporting Active Travel beyond the Active Travel England funding schemes, please. Thank you. Any other supplementary? I'll provide a written answer, Chair. Question 13 is from Liz Townsend to Claire Curran. Liz, do you have a supplementary? I do. Thank you, Mr. Shannon. After the Cabinet meeting, several families have contacted me with regard to the feedback from the task group and they feel that it's been misrepresented. They believe that the focus of the evidence was solely based on parents' experience with the Educational Health and Care Plan process and that it should not be incorrectly framed as feedback on the panel process. The families who have reached out to me are advocating for greater involvement in panel meetings, a request that I clearly defined in my motion to the Cabinet. However, it's still clear to me that despite what feedback has been represented and that has been in the answer from the Cabinet Member, that the parents want to explore their role in panel meetings further. And can I therefore ask the Cabinet Member to confirm that these concerns about panel meetings and about the role of the parent will be thoroughly and transparently addressed through new task groups and other formal evidence gathering measures aimed at seeking input from a larger number of respondents and focused on, as I said, the panel process. This will ensure that parents' feedback is genuinely heard and used to inform meaningful changes that they need and then they need to be implemented. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Shannon. Any other supplementary? This is the Clerk. Thank you, Chairman. Yes, I hear what the Councillor says. But I would like to point out much of this work is done in partnership with Family Voice, who are our official parent-carer forum and it is through Family Voice that we do much of this work. But we do continue or the service and in working through the end-to-end review continues to work with parents and families. They are committed to co-production and so that these conversations will continue. But what I would like to say is that not all parents share the same view and I can't guarantee, of course, that parents who are consulted will be necessarily in agreement with those who are communicating with councillors in this chamber. It is very difficult to please all the people all the time, but obviously those discussions do continue. Thank you, Chair. Question 14 is from Robert Evans to Matt Furness. Robert, do you have a... Thank you, Chair. I'd like to thank the Cabinet member. He notes that the Council has received £32.5 million more additional funding for roads and that's £3 million more than was expected. So will the Cabinet member join me in welcoming this and warmly thanking the Government? Any other supplementary? Thank you, Chair. Well, it could be better, I would say, Councillor Evans, another £3 million. If I say that figure has been pretty static for the past ten years. So I would say what I would urge him and his colleagues to do is have a multi-year settlement rather than these one-off settlements. I welcome any mixture of money. But I would emphasise that this Council has had to borrow to deliver the bulk of the capital funding that has been going into our roads for the past few years. That has seen these significant improvements. So if the Government is willing to match that, I will be very happy and will be welcoming. Question 15 from Catherine Bard to Matt Furness. Catherine Bard, do you have a supplementary? I do. Thank you very much for the answer. I have no idea that it was so complex. And would the Cabinet member agree that this seems like an area to be sorted out as part of local government reorganisation? Any other supplementary? Thank you, Chair, thank you. Yes, I couldn't agree more. Question 16 is from Ashley Tilling to Dennis Stewart. Tilling, to you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the response. I share the Cabinet members' enthusiasm for the Your Fund Surrey scheme, as she told us this morning. And I think it's a shame that the Small Project Fund scheme is coming to an end, but I can understand why with all the budget pressures that we have. But could you just confirm that applications can be made until the end of March? Because I understood from officers that all applications had to be made by the end of January. Any other supplementary? Thank you, Councillor Tilling. I mean, this is really a courtesy to the officers, because they always experience a glut of applications come in at the end, then obviously they're going to be overwhelmed. So there was a sort of advisory deadline for the end of December to allow those applications to flow through. But, you know, ask everybody to make sure they get their applications in as soon as possible. I know some members do have some very complex applications, and they've been supportive with officers for those. But just, if you could just get them in as soon as possible, that'd be great. Thank you. Question 17 from Lawrence Spencer to Claire Curran. Lawrence, do you have a supplementary? I don't. Thank you. Any other supplementary? Johnson Essex? Thank you. Thank you. The very end of the answer has a stupendously long sentence that's almost a paragraph long, saying what's happening. I wonder if it would be possible to arrange an all-councillor briefing so Mindworks can come and explain to councillors what they're doing. And perhaps that could be followed up by something coming to scrutiny, because at the moment, this is not acceptable. It's been going a long time, and it seems to be getting worse rather than better. Claire? Thank you, Chairman. I'm sure that the member is aware that there have been two scrutiny meetings held with the leadership from SABP about the Mindworks Transformation Plan. The first was definitely a joint meeting between the Adults and Health Committee and the Children, Family and Lifelong Learning Committee. I think the second meeting, though I could stand to be corrected, was purely in the Adults and Health Committee. But I would say that all members are entitled to attend those meetings if they are so interested or so willing to be there. I understand there is another meeting, another joint select committee meeting in the diary, which I believe to be in March. If I can't look to the chairman of the committee, and I hope that that will be a joint meeting between the two select committees and that any members will be able to challenge any of the leadership team from SABP who have kindly agreed to make themselves available and to take questions. Thank you. Question 18 is from Catherine Bart to Natalie Bremble. Catherine, do you have a supplementary? I don't. Thank you for the... Any other supplementary? Question 19 is from Lawrence Spencer to David Lewis. Lawrence, do you have a supplementary? I do indeed. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank his cabinet member for his response. So I note from his response that 50% of the council's borrowings are on, or just under 50%, are on long-term fixed interest rates. It seems very good. But that does mean that over 50% is on short-term rates. And that leads us to the need for borrowing of $928 million up to March 2027. So the question is, is the Public Works Loan Board the only source of funding on that scale, so nearly a billion pound that will need to be borrowed? And what happens if they're not willing or minded to lend the council the money? Robert King? Thank you, Chair. With some of our PWLB loans, we've successfully secured a lower repayment given the interest rate difference when we have received capital receipts. Has the cabinet member done a review into all our financing arrangement, particularly with PWLB, to see whether there was any revenue gains on paying loans earlier from any capital receipts now or in the future? Chairman member? Yeah, thank you, Chair. In terms of the first question, as the answer says, we strive between internal borrowing and borrowing externally from the PWLB. So to answer your question, I mean, it's not the only source of borrowing that we have going forward. We will be looking at the mix, and I think this came out in the member development session that we had about Treasury management. We will look at the mix between the short-term and the long-term borrowing. As you quite rightly say, we have a fairly high level of short-term borrowing at the moment. I think as interest rates come down, we will be looking at perhaps changing that mix. But that's something that our Treasury advisers, Arlene Close, will give us advice on. We'll consider other information and make decisions going forward based on what happens with interest rates. We do anticipate interest rates coming down, although the advice we've had from Arlene Close is that probably they won't come down as quickly as we anticipated, or originally anticipated. But we do think over the next 18 months we'll see a reduction. In terms of all the financing arrangements, Councillor King, again, you know, we are advised by Arlene Close in terms of what the exact best way of financing our loans. It's not the only source of advice we get, but I think I'm confident that we look at all the different options and make our decisions accordingly. Thank you. Question 20 is from Lance Spencer to David Lewis. Lance, do you have a supplementary? I do. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to the Cabinet Member for the response. So this is just for clarity, really. So when the scheme closes, we will have loaned or sort of paid out £43 million for various York on Surrey schemes. But the repayments on that will be spread over the next 50 years, totaling about £80 million, so about £1.5 million per year out of revenue for 50 years. Is that correct? Any other supplementary? David? I'm not quite certain whether I've got the question. You're asking about repayment of the money that's been borrowed for the Orphan Surrey scheme. Yeah. Well, that money, of course, is part of our overall treasury management programme. So we don't hypothecate particular borrowing for particular schemes. It goes into the total requirement, our borrowing requirement. So in terms of looking at the length of the borrowing, I mean, for that amount of money, it would probably take whatever we said, 40 or 50 years for the repayment. But it's not specifically for your funds, sorry, it's part of our overall borrowing requirements. And as I said in the previous answer, we are constantly looking at the mix in terms of what the best way of doing that borrowing is. We now go back to question five from Ivo Kintan as a leader. Ivo, do you have a supplementary? Will Councillor Oliver confirm that one agreed topic for the work stream of the local government, sorry, the local government reform working group with boroughs and districts is HR issues? And those will start before we've settled on the mail footprint and the number of unitary councils in Surrey. And does he therefore agree with me that denying members of PPDC the opportunity to understand the director's thinking in regard to staffing, whilst at the same time sharing councillors' HR information and plans with boroughs and districts, is not only undermining the scrutiny of this council, but shows a worrying disdain for councillors who do not have an executive role in this council? Any other supplementary leader? Thank you, Chair. Apologies for having stepped out. No information has been shared with the district and boroughs that I'm aware of. I say that at officer level. I'm not sure it has been officer level. I don't think it has. But of course workforce is an absolutely key issue in any reorganisation of the 12 councils that will be abolished as part of that reorganisation. It is premature to try and give any guidance or any kind of reassurance to staff at this stage in terms of what that looks like. It will be part of the modelling around how we're going to continue to support those vulnerable adults and children in our communities. So there is work underway through the district leaders' grouping and indeed I have set up something internally here for the select committee chairs and so on. So I will ask our director of people and change to give a verbal update at PPDC on the 18th of February by which time I hope that we will at least have a decision from the government as to what is going to happen around our application to go on the accelerator programme. So I hope that will be sufficient at this stage. I think that's all we can do at this stage. The work is being done in terms of identifying the issues. It is complicated because we also have transformation programmes underway and restructuring in teams and so on. But I hope for Councillor Kingston's benefit that update will be useful. The next item is item 11, stated by the members on local issues. I have received notice of no statements from members. Item 11A, original motion, understanding order 11.6, on pages 2 of the second supplementary agenda front sheet. I have received notice of one original motion, understanding order 11.6 and at my discretion I have chosen to accept this. Motion standing in the name of Paul follows. Understanding order 12.3, Council has to decide if it wishes to debate this motion today. Does the Council wish to debate this motion now? Councillor Lewis? Councillor Lewis? Yeah, thank you Chair. I propose that the motion is referred to the Audit and Governance Committee for the purpose of consideration. Now we give to our two followers. Four followers, you have two minutes to... Thank you very much Mr Chairman and thank you particularly for using your discretion to allow this motion to be heard at all. I had of course hoped to bring this as an amendment to the budget itself as I would have been as a result more willing to consider support for today's budget in its current state had I had clear assurances of some external scrutiny in the way that I'm proposing here. Members, I won't repeat the core of my budget comments but I will say in the two minutes that I have that both consultancy options presented here are free. These have been confirmed to be the case by the finance team here. Local partnerships is of course a joint venture of the LGA and HM Treasury and Solace again has proven very capable in assessing finance and governance processes in other authorities here in Surrey. Both at no cost and with tangible benefits and improvement initiatives that have saved public money. And as members have articulated throughout the course of the day there is a clear desire across parties to explore efficiencies and continued improvement both of which I think these processes would bring. I would obviously like this to be debated here and agreed here but of course recognise that not only the position I am in this afternoon but also that you've been here a very, very long time. And I will of course speak to the item when it is referred to the Audit and Governments Committee. Thank you Mr Chairman. David Lewis? Two minutes as well. Well thank you Chair. I think, I think Captain Apollo is saying that he agrees with the referral. So, I don't know if there's any need to debate. Are we agreed? Do we need to? Agreed. Item 12 is the report of the Cabinet pages 5 to 16 of the First Amendment Agenda. I call the Leader to present the report of the meetings of the Cabinet held on the 17th December 8th January 22 extraordinary and 28th January 2025. Thank you Chair. I beg to move the reports of Cabinet held on the 17th December 8th January and 28th January 2025. Thank you. Paragraph A. Final Budget recommendations have already been approved under Item 5. Paragraph B. Admission, Arrangements, Service, Community and Voluntary Control Schools for September 26th and Surrey's relevant area as set out in the Cabinet report from 28th January 2025. The Cabinet recommendations that the County Council approves recommendation 1 to 6 as published. Are we agreed? Agreed. I call paragraph C to E. Paragraph D. Paragraph E. I call paragraph F. Paragraph G to J. I call paragraph G again. I call paragraph H. Paragraph I. Paragraph J. The Cabinet recommends that the County Council note that there has been one urgent decision since the last Cabinet report to the Council. The motion is that the report of the meeting of the Cabinet held on the 17th December 2024, 8th January 2025 extraordinary and 28th January 2025 be adopted. Are we agreed? Agreed. Item 13 is the minutes of the Cabinet meeting which are on the pages 255 to 272 of the Agenda and pages 17 to 233 of the first of the Agenda. I now turn to the final item of the Agenda today and no notification to make statement or question on the Minutes has been received. That concludes the meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Transcript