Transcript

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to this evening's meeting of Overview and Scrutiny Committee. My name is Councillor Ayas Lam, and I'll be chairing this meeting. Can I remind everyone that this meeting has been filmed for public viewing on the Council's website. Those participating in the meeting will be included in the footage. If there are any technical issues, I will decide if and how the meeting should continue after taking advice from officers. Members should only speak on my direction and ensure to speak clearly into the microphones. Thomas, can you advise the committee whether any apologies have been received? Good evening, Chair. There are no apologies. Just to remind everyone that the post-meeting surveys are still happening. Any questions of that, do let me know. Thank you. The minutes from our meeting on the 14th of January have been circulated. Can members who were present confirm these are true and accurate records? Thank you, Chair. Agreed? Yes, thank you. The action log has been published. Do members have any comments, or would you like me to move on? Move on. Yep, moving on. So, before we move on to our first substantial item, we have a paper on proportionality and allocation of Scrutiny subcommittee membership, which we need to review and agree. Can I invite Matthew Mannion, Head of Democratic Services, to talk us through this? Thank you, Chair. Good evening, everyone. I don't think this, as a report, be unusual, as we've had a few of these recently, various political changes. And as you'll all be aware from full council, in January, there was a report that set out the most recent political proportionality changes. When that happens, certain committees like this one have to look at it, proportionality on the basis of its own subcommittees, as you do that rather than full council, and so that's what this report is here for. It's based purely on the maths, and the changes are set out to the subcommittees in the paper. We've sent notes out to the ungrouped members asking for nominations, and as soon as we get them, we will try and expedite people onto the committees. I don't think I've got anything else to say, but I'm happy to answer any questions. Do we have nomination for this committee from the ungrouped? We do potentially have a nomination. We're just confirming from all the other ungrouped members they're happy with it, and then we will confirm it. So hopefully in the next couple of days we'll have that sorted. Thank you. So our members happy to approve the membership of the three scrutiny subcommittees for the remainder of the year 2024 and 2025 in accordance with the nominations set out in Appendix 1 in the report. Thank you very much. Thank you, Matthew. So our next item is a spotlight with the borough commander. This is our opportunity to hear about the borough commander's delivery challenges, achievements, and priorities. We've also invited our community safety service so we can have a wider discussion on partnership working. Before we hear from the borough commander, we think it's important for us and the borough commander to hear the views of our residents. We have invited the Safer Neighbourhood ward panel chairs to share their views. So if they're in the room... Oh, there you are. Yeah. So I'd like to work... Please take your seats at the front. I'd like to welcome James Olenipikun, chair of Safer Neighbourhood and chair of Mylan Ward, Jonathan Mobley, chair of Weavers Ward, Julia Shanaha, chair of Lansbury Ward, and Tim Lowe, chair of Spiritfields and Bangla Town Ward. Thank you for joining us. And is there a few more missing? Okay. Okay. So is it okay if I give you three minutes to say your piece to the committee and then I'll take some questions if that's all right with you from members? So hi. My name's Dr Julia Shanahan. I'm chair of Lansbury Ward panel. I've been a resident of Lansbury for over 10 years. Prior to that, I was a resident of Bethnal Green. The major issues that we have in the ward revolve around drug dealing and drug use. There are a number of prolific long-term drug users who buy Class A drugs and openly use Class A drugs in the street, and the knock-on effect of that is significant. I think a lot of residents in the ward are nervous about reporting these incidents and this data to the police, and also reluctant because there's a very real concern around what's the point. It's a waste of time. So the reporting that we see online around the issues for drug dealing, drug use, etc., don't represent what we see in the ward. And it's very clearly kind of a recording issue from my point of view of these issues. I've made, personally, thousands of reports around drug dealing and drug use. I know that those reports don't make it to the safe place in the ward. So there's a very clear problem in the area. I can look out of my window, and I can see those who've been buying and using in the area for 10 years or more. They openly use crack. I have to look out of my window, and other residents have complained about the same thing, and slightly nervous. of reporting these incidents. And it seems like there's definitely a reluctance in policing. There needs to be an end-to-end strategic approach to tackling this issue in partnership. I know this isn't a problem solely for the police or solely for the council. I'd also kind of refer back to our Safe for Neighbourhoods team, who we have a very good relationship with, but there's a very clear resourcing issue with abstractions, which we all understand needs to happen, but where there's a loss of two officers, the health system, but other agencies is significant. I think tackling that would be much more effective in a holistic manner rather than constant. Thank you. Can I ask Tim to come in and then? So I haven't prepared anything specifically, but I would say, having been a ward panel chair for a relatively short period of time, that the two big problems, I think, are the intersection between criminal behaviour and antisocial behaviour and the intersection between what is a police matter and what is a matter for the other agencies that exist within the borough, particularly under the council. So I would echo what my colleague has said. I spent an hour yesterday evening clearing up excrement from outside my front door in Princeton Street. I don't think that's a criminal matter, but it's definitely antisocial. We have someone sleeping at the end of the street who's been there for three nights. He's got a full bed. He's got a couple of duvets, six pillows, and he's clearly psychotic. I've contacted Streetline. I've heard nothing back from them. And I think, as my colleague says, the problem is that you get to a point where residents become kind of exhausted by this sort of behaviour and choose to ignore it and hope that somewhere, somewhere within the system, something gets done about it. And I think that's a problem for all concerned because I think everyone's looking over their shoulder at everyone else and thinking, well, someone's going to do something about this. The council's going to do something. Maybe the police are going to do something. Maybe the antisocial behaviour specialists are going to do something. And a lot of the time, I think things really kind of fall through the cracks. I would agree with my colleague that drugs, drug addiction and drug dealing lies at the heart of a lot of the criminal behaviour that we see. Obviously, in Spitalfields and Bangalertown, there's a really strong night economy. There's a lot of theft. And there is a certain amount of vandalism. And I think one of the problems that we have in society right now is we've kind of, again, blurred over the lines of what constitutes vandalism and what's just self-expression. So are you allowed to graffiti someone else's house? Is it okay? Can you tag a local business? I often say in our ward panel meetings that I have significant sympathy with the police. I think they've got a huge job to do with relatively limited resources. Why are we not focusing on making local businesses take responsibility for shoplifting and violence around stores, et cetera? If it's true that Uniqlo in Spitalfields Market loses £10,000 a month to shoplifting, that would pay for several security guards over that month. Why rely on the police to solve that problem? So I do think the root of this is better engagement by all parties concerned. But I think there's a real challenge to create confidence within the community that they can engage with the agencies that are out there in a meaningful way. Thank you, Julie and Tim. I do want to say something before we go to questions, which is thank you for all that you do. I know you do this on a voluntary basis, and it's not easy, and a lot of times there's lots of things in the community that we want to change, but change doesn't happen if people like yourself don't volunteer your time. So thank you so much. And questions from members are going to be about drawing in your expertise about what your experience has been. Members? So I know, James, you put your hands up first. James, Natalie, and then Addy. You've got two questions. Thank you for the roles that you take on and their voluntary roles. And your testimonies, you know, resonate certainly with me as a councillor and as a resident as well. So SNT ward panels are obviously a police initiative and obviously partner with local councillors, councils, the council's offices and other stakeholders. So tell us more, what support do you receive? And what more could be done to encourage people to come forward as chairs? Because in my experience, it's all very dependent on the chair to make it work. The second thing I wanted to pick up was obviously both spoke about reporting methods and so I don't know if you've got any ideas or reflections on what the council can do to help promote them or make them easier to do. Any ideas like that? So those are the two questions. Perhaps a lack of training and understanding in SNT about how to enact that. SNT are super supportive, but again, I think it's a resourcing and it's a training issue to kind of do the best job they can with the resources they have. I think to get people to come forward, I think information, getting information out there about what the portal panel does, what changes it can enact, how it can help people, I think that's key. I think communication is always a challenge. Twitter, X, Facebook, all of those things, multi-chance, they're not that effective. I don't work well. In terms of reporting, I think the biggest challenge is that people are afraid to report a lot of the time and then when they do report, nothing has 500 reports on that, including that vehicle. So there's kind of a black hole that seems to happen and I think that's what people just... I was just going to say, again, I concur with all of that. I think the agencies that are involved inevitably, I think, have a kind of... a bit of an image problem and it's a real shame because actually, as a ward panel chair, you get to meet some really committed people who are doing amazing work. I also think that, you know, there are occasions when I've had to engage with various services under the council and they've been really great. You know, somebody had a rave on Brick Lane backing onto the residential streets around Prince's Street a couple of years ago. The noise team come on at about 8 o'clock, I think, on a Saturday night. I rang the number in desperation. I'd left the message. I thought, let's see what happens now. And amazingly, within 15 minutes, someone was on the phone and then two people turned up and actually were really brave and went into the property and actually stopped it. And it was quite a kind of threatening thing and they were charging money for people to go in and all the rest of it. So, you know, there is some really good work being done, but I think the difficulty is that there's, you know, there's so much aggro out there. It's such a big task that people's view tends to be, well, yeah, you know, I've got a list of council numbers that I could call, but nobody ever answered the phone and, you know, is it even worth it? So, I think, you know, publicity, publicity, publicity and getting in people's faces is really the key. Thank you. Kirsten, let it in. I just wanted to ask, maybe you mentioned that you've not been a chair for it. So, in our local war panel, it's folded at the moment because we don't have a chair. And, yeah, I wonder, do you coordinate, like, the housing, social housing providers and the ASB team and the council as well as the SNT? And then in the SNT, how much of staff is there? So, in terms of turnover, so, although I've been a chair since September, I've actually been working with SNT for many years in kind of a team in the last year, I would say, sorry, last two years, thereabouts, which isn't great for continuity. You know, I can't praise the sergeants and the staff enough. They're super helpful, super engaged, but it's obviously very difficult when you don't have the resources to manage that. in terms of engaging social housing, I've been attempting to do that for quite some time on other matters. Poplar Harker is our kind of main social housing provider. They park because of ASB and threats to their staff, which was understandable. That park's been closed pretty much for six months now. And they didn't, so it's been a unilateral decision to close that park. I've been trying to kind of get to the bottom of that and have the park reopened. It's a public space. But we have had them to the most recent Sofa neighbourhoods, sorry, Lansbury Ward. I can't praise the ASB team enough for the work that they've been doing. Obviously, it's challenging, but they have, you know, really gone above and beyond, particularly for some of the issues that we've faced. About that abstraction, mate, could you talk more about the impact this is happening on tackling the crime issue, especially the drug issue you were talking about, if police are being, well-trained police are being taken out and put on in different areas and kind of redeployed. I think it would be really helpful to hear from you on that. And second, to both of you, I suppose, as a local resident, you're in a unique position to talk about the trust in the police and being conduit, I think, between local residents and the police. Given the amount of work that the police have done, the borough commander and the commissioner around the new MET for London, I wonder if you could briefly both speak about how you've seen residents' engagement about the trust in the police and the MET more generally and what more can be done to rebuild that trust. Thank you. So I don't know a huge amount about abstractions, but SNT is not a 24-7 service, so it's mostly weekdays, set hours, but it has been an ongoing issue with some of the programmes that I know they'd like to run, some of the operations. It's more difficult because they don't have a full team. Responses are quite slow and, yeah, it's a challenge and I think the area kind of notices it because SNT come and do walkabouts, people come and talk to them and they engage and they, you know, they are fully engaged. I think the trust is there. I think it's just resourcing challenges. I think that's exactly right and so my ward is spit and bang as we call it, so I'm getting up to date with the lingo, but in spit and bang, as an example, I took over in September, we're on our third SNT sergeant, so, you know, the turnover is massive. Having said that, I think the PCs that we have and all of the sergeants have been impressive, but the PCs that we have are really committed and actually very, I think, very kind of human in their approach to some of the problems that we have. You know, they really do get it but as you say, I think there's, there is an issue that people think it's a thin, blue line, it's very stretched, you know, what chance have I got of actually getting their attention or getting their consistent attention and actually getting something done and I think, you know, my approach is always with people to, you know, try and work with the agencies that we've got, try and collect the evidence, try and present them with a potential solution. This is what we need you to do rather than put your hands up and say, I need the police here because X, Y and Z has happened. Thank you. I think, you know, we have to be part of the solution. Thank you. Appreciate that. So, Councillor Manan, you're the last speaker. We've got to be rapid now. Thank you, Chair. One question How are you managing and reducing the exploration of children linked drugs and organised crime and... No, Councillor Manan, this is the Safer Neighbourhood Team's Chair. So, I'll come back to you when the barra commander comes in, okay? I'm sorry, okay. Can I just say the neighbourhood? Okay. What is the question? Thank you. Knowing a lot of petty theft like a snatching phone and things like that happening within the like a budget like and DLR station like that as a safe neighbourhood what are we doing to reduce make sure that vulnerable people do not come Let's ask that question to the barra commander as well. That one's not applicable. No, no problem. Can I... I thought that's under the safe neighbourhood isn't it? These are ward panels. These are ward panels. Okay. Okay. All right. Sorry about the confusion. Can I... Julia and Tim can I please please thank you for taking your time out of your evening today to come and do this for us. We've had 50% turnout. There was another 50% that aren't here but thank you and thanks to them as well because I know both Jonathan and Reverend James for the work and thank you for everything that you do. You may wish to leave but if you do want to sit around because the barra commander is next and the first thing I'm going to be asking him is if there's anything he would like to respond to yourself so you might want to listen to that. Yeah, thank you and if the barra commander and the cabinet member want to take their seat at the front. welcome everyone thank you for coming can I first start off with the barra commander James this is your third visit here first time without your uniform I almost didn't recognise you there so what I would ask is before we get into your presentation was there anything you'd like to respond to from what you've heard from our chairs of safer neighbourhood teams panels. Yeah, I mean it's really interesting to hear and it's obviously some of the sentiments consistent with what we hear from other sources of the residents other parts of the borough and I think you know some of that's difficult to hear if people don't feel they're getting the sort of service they want and would expect but I think there's also some really welcome sort of magnanimous comments around the challenges that policing face that the ward chairs were able to articulate probably better than I could even I have to say the I mean on the question of I think this will dominate some of the discussion of I want us probably this evening but the question around drug use is worth just probably making some opening remarks on but I'm more than happy to get into you've got your 10 minutes for your presentation if you want to wrap it up all together then that's fine well I think probably you'll have questions so I'll present what I was asked to present on but it's worth me just sort of framing that that I think you know what we're dealing with there is a complex societal problem and it's not a problem that is purely going to be policed out of you can't arrest your way out of a societal and a public health challenge like drug use there is absolutely a policing role to play there and some of what we'll talk about is the way that policing focuses its energy on the organised crime network element of the drugs markets what is probably most visible to residents is wider spread drug use which is a challenge that sits across a wider panoply of agencies not least primarily a public health challenge and around managing addiction so I think a richer discussion around how as a partnership we tackle complex societal challenges like drug use probably requires a panel of people well beyond policing to discuss but I'm more than happy as we get into Q&As to talk about the policing element there because I think it does tie so much to the points around policing visibility and sort of local war teams and the points that the that award chairs there were making the point was reflected on a couple of times there I think around challenging the policing resources obviously anyone who's read the press recently knows that we're again in a very challenged position as the Met we are probably looking at a reduction in policing numbers across London of several thousand over the course of this year again we're in a position that's consistent with that of many other public sector agencies in facing a very difficult financial situation what we absolutely have been doing and I can talk a little bit probably about some of these structural changes but this will go on throughout 2025 possibly can out of those resources we've got so the pivot towards a restructured safer neighbourhoods teams that reflects the changes the council have also made in the structure and the allocation of resources into the Theo's and another community safety partnership activity is to a large degree sought to meet those challenges which was how with a limited set of resources do we achieve maximum effect out of that so moving to having award officers but award officers operating as part of a cluster with inspectors sitting above that cluster to manage some of those challenges which are larger than a ward issue those clusters tying into a borough level of policing chaired by a superintendent looking over all of the local policing activity on Tower Hamlets and that borough lens feeding up to a BCU layered lens which I sit across as the BCU commander is a really important part of our structure and our delivery against all these challenges because yes our emphasis is if we can deliver locally based ward policing to tackle a challenge at a ward level that will be our preference that's where our policing is closest to our communities but that policing ward team has the ability to scale up and scale up as far as it needs to go so some great examples of you know ward teams identifying what might apparently look to be sort of low level drugs related activity is a great example in over towards the Isle of Dogs recently and actually unpicking that revealed quite significant organised crime network activity in that area and ultimately resulted in a large scale long running operation to tackle that conducted by some of my specialist proactive resources across the BCU so it is true that what might start with those phone calls and those concerns raised to police might end up in quite a very different space in policing than that local ward team delivering it but the design that we've enacted through New Bed for London gives us that scalability so that we can tackle the crime that we can tackle at a ward level and where we can't we can sort of escalate and scale that up to other resources across the map we received a presentation you can trust me when I say we've read it and if you wanted to add anything that will help that's not in the report feel free to present and then what we thought when we do the question because it's all going to be similar questions it will be nice to have both layers answering to some of the questions is that okay absolutely so this is the presentation I believe so yeah so ready for the chat yeah great so and again I'd signal if you'd want to move on but I just thought it'd be helpful to paint a very sort of high level picture of what as we come towards financial year end and that's where we look at quite a lot of our crime data to give an impression of where things have been moving across the borough over the past year what I would say from the start is we talk a lot about stats it's very easy to talk about high level trend lines to have nice big arrow showing sort of improvements or increases or decreases none of that takes away from the experience that some people in our borough will still even we've seen reductions in a crime area will have residents who are still very fearful of those crime aspects and indeed even if we're showing whole borough reductions in a certain crime area there'll be pockets and there'll be certain wards and certain parts of the borough where that won't be the case at a micro level where we will still be seeing rises and real concern so I'll just caveat everything I say here is from a fairly broad brush almost statistical perspective that's to take nothing away from the experience of residents who at various moments and in various places across the borough will still have a very real fear of some of these challenges that we talk about so I wanted to talk a little bit open up around acquistive crime because we faced three primary challenges over the Bastiat from policing perspective one was primarily getting our knife crime and our robbery challenge under control if I was sitting here in May June July period I would be talking about what was probably one of the highest level increases in robbery in the country that had happened here in Tower Hamlets and across Tower Hunt and Hackney so across the two boroughs combined we had around a 50% increase in robbery that was the highest in London and London had the highest robbery increases in the country so I think fairly safe to say we were one of the highest if not the highest in the UK a significant amount of the work by the ward teams by specialist proactive units that work to me by our response officers in their vehicles and on foot and a whole host of specialist support services has focused over this last year on that reduction of robbery what we're really pleased to be able to report on now is what had been a 50% increase in robbery in the first quarter of this financial year has now ended with an 11% reduction in robbery at this year end so a huge amount of volume and yes this is primarily around mobile phone robbery but the difference you'll appreciate between robbery and theft is the level or threat of violence being used so this is not just a theft crime that's attached to it which directly impacts on our public so we're pleased with that of course we'd still rather that reduction was even higher and every robbery is a robbery too many but that has been a large focus of our activity around acquistic crime last year second to that really was maintaining and seeking to maintain what we'd already seen as a modest reduction in burglary from the previous year so again we've managed that reasonably effectively I was hoping for a slightly higher greater reduction by financial year end but we've seen again a 5% reduction in burglary across Tower Hamlets now often in policing terms of the challenge we talked about the resourcing challenges if we want to move resourcing to one crime type we quite often then see another crime type escalating up as we focus on one area so we're pleased overall that we've been able to achieve a reduction in street based robbery but also achieve a long term reduction in burglary as well and indeed some of the other areas of theft for example theft from motor vehicles has reduced by about 3% over this year the big challenges around have been around theft and particularly theft and shoplifting combined and that's true across London so we've seen some eye watering increases in theft and shoplifting some of that linked undoubtedly I suspect at its core to cost of living crisis but also some of it linked to criminal economics so particularly where there's theft of mobile phones the price and value of a second hand mobile phone in Algeria and China has risen exponentially so there is a criminal market for the theft of mobile phones from the UK out to those countries and others besides and so combination of those two factors I think has really given us a difficult challenge around theft we have seen that number reduce back down so although a 23% increase as it currently stands today of theft from persons or an individual having something stolen from them usually on the street is still a startling increase it was actually sitting at around 60% over the summer period so similar with our enforcement against robbery although we've seen the robbery dive and ultimately reduce below last year's level we've also seen a slightly delayed but similar curve off in the level of theft activity across the borough secondly I want to just touch on violence this and this was a second area of priority for us very difficult piece to measure because there's lots of complex different factors which contribute to a sense of whether a borough or an area of London is more or less violent than another across almost all of our measures we're seeing violence reducing so violence where an injury is caused we've seen around a 21% reduction in that over the last year and that's sat on the back of around a 20% reduction the year before so really sustained year on year decreases in violence where injury is caused knife injury offences also reduced by about 8% and if we look at a slightly different measure of that we also measure people injured in violent incidents with knives we measure those under 25 and over 25 to try and gauge an idea where our challenges sit and in both of those areas we're slightly more modest but we've seen reductions in those spaces now there's another measure we look at which is overall knife crime that is still showing a slight increase compared to last year but when we break that down and seek to understand it it's actually the robberies in which a knife is either used or intimated which has largely driven that slight increase if we took away that robbery element which is linked to that challenge I was just talking about a moment ago we actually see even that knife crime measure being at lower levels than last year so it means that I think on the slide I talked about a key message and that is across almost all of our measures we're seeing overall violence reducing and in some cases reducing quite considerably over the last year we've touched on some of this already so I won't dwell too much on this because I think the pre-brief that we heard will probably tee us up for quite a detailed Q&A discussion around this but again as I say the primary focus for policing is on disrupting the organised crime networks which are driving the drugs market for a couple of reasons one because that's the most effective way policing can impact against drugs problem repeatedly arresting drug users on the streets achieves almost nothing there is very little evidence it has any meaningful impact a lot of those young drug dealers on the streets are also children who have been exploited by criminal networks and organised crime networks and are better viewed as vulnerable children at risk of exploitation and so our partnership approach primarily works across three levels the first of which is for policing to enforce against the organised crime networks which are the source of that market and the source of that exploitation the second is for health colleagues to work on reducing the demand for drugs by better treatment and entry point into treatment particularly as we heard about earlier for those who are already involved in levels of criminality and particularly acquisitive crime themselves and the third is managing the exploitation risk around those children working closely with a number of the teams that Steve looks after in safeguarding young people who are getting drawn and exploited either to criminal exploitation or often also accompanied by sexual exploitation and other factors and getting drawn into the drugs market so that remains the thrust of our focus in terms of drugs and serious organised crime activity crime activity just want to touch if I've got time chair on two final areas one is on violence against women and girls and just give a sense of where we stand in that area quite a complicated area to talk about because of course it essentially it describes a whole range of crime types and crime activities where the victim is a woman or a girl if I can I'd just like to draw a particularly look at domestic violence and rape and serious sexual offences we're very careful when we talk about overall volumes in those two areas partly because we know that these are areas which are underreported and so if we're seeing an increase or a decrease in apparent volumes of crime we need to be very careful we don't think that that actually means there's less domestic violence or less rape and serious sexual offences happening it may just be it might be for example when we see news stories about historic events being reported we'll often consequently see an upswing in reporting so I sort of counsel a bit of care taken around the data in this area so we have seen some drops in reporting of domestic violence we've seen some increases quite notable increases in reporting of rape and serious sexual offences over the last year what we focus more on from a sort of performance perspective from policing is how well are we doing in translating those into positive outcomes and results in a criminal justice sense we are leading London and we think still by and large leading the UK in our levels of prosecution of rape and serious sexual offences here in Hackney and Tower Hamlets it's still a long way below where we would like those levels to be but we are performing well comparative in those areas where we've seen some real strong increases over the last year is in our prosecutions and support for victims of domestic violence we've seen both an overall improvement in domestic violence prosecutions but particularly where violence is caused we've seen an increase of about 4.5% or 4% point increase in the level of prosecution domestic violence over the last year which is good it's strong but it still means the overall picture is lower than we'd like what it does is gives us a real platform to build on over the next year and a lot of our work in the VORG space has been also focused in preventative activity particularly around our night time economies working closely with council colleagues looking at our Ask for Angela our training for door staff in order to spot predatory male behaviour in night time economies focus on drink spiking and other horrific crimes which we're seeing occurring in the night time economy and again we've seen some real we think genuinely impressive reductions of some of the of sexual offending within the night time economy spaces which again we're keen to maintain and build finally just touch on two areas of vulnerability and hate crime I won't really dwell on hate crime only because I know there's a separate scrutiny session last night which focused exclusively on that area so we are we have seen I mean overall we have seen a reduction in a level of reported hate crime too as we know again much in common with some of the areas of VORG reporting hate crime remains chronically underreported across the UK so there's no sort of patting ourselves on the back because we've seen that reduction what I think it probably does signify and when we look at the longer term trend data on this is after the events of October 7th and the conflicts and tensions in the Hamas-Israel conflict as a sort of pre-conflict level and it's a little bit early to be certain on that but certainly the sort of level we're currently sitting at and have done over the past couple of months would support that position one area I did want to pick out because I think it's a really powerful reduction which we can't claim any sort of policing contribution to but I think it's useful to understand particularly in Steve's world in the context of child safeguarding which was in quite a notable reduction in both missing people and missing children over the past 12 months so a 21% reduction in the numbers of people being reported missing in Tower Hamlets and within that 12% reduction in the amount of children going missing in Tower Hamlets now lots of complex contributory factors seem to be behind that we need to take care that that's again not evidence of under-reporting but I think particularly where we're also seeing police and social services more effectively dealing with high risk missing children and dealing with the causational factors and often criminal exploitation factors which are driving missing I think it begins to look like quite a healthy statement in ways that we're doing a better job in protecting some of the most vulnerable in Tower Hamlets I'll leave it there I've got the very clear signals that I was running over so I'll pause there but I did want to just try and present you a bit more of a rounded picture on where we stood from it and members will dig in a bit more with their questions and you'll be able to respond can you turn the mic off for one second so can I introduce Councillor Talha Chowdhury who's the cabinet lead for community safety do you want to I know we've got offices here as well but do you want to do a quick presentation any new information away from the presentation we've already been given thanks Councillor and thanks James and the board panel chairs I was thinking earlier should I respond to some of the concerns I think I will if I may you know for the section at the beginning so obviously thank them for their work and the voluntary sort of time that they put to making our borough feel safer James talked about the drug strategy I guess if there's one issue that drives a lot of crime it's drugs so drugs itself isn't an issue but it also fuels other crimes and James talked about our strategy the three pronged attack that we've got towards the enforcement is not the only way as James says and I keep strongly saying that it's one element and then you've got the treatment services so for your information we are redesigning our treatment service the model looking at how we can improve people into treatment and over the past year or so we have significantly improved those numbers so as it stands we have over 2,000 people in treatment but we are looking at that offer and seeing if we can improve it through investment in culturally sensitive treatment centres seeing how we can deliver it differently the services that we have and then the third strand being preventing demand so whether that's investment in new services or some of the other things that we're doing unless the demand goes sadly the supply will always be there even if the police colleagues arrest all the drug dealers top drug dealers into our amulets because the demand is so high you'll get people from outside coming in and we really need to tackle that demand and sadly that's an issue that's not going to be fixed overnight so we are putting a lot of resources into it police colleagues across the community safety partnership but until we can get that demand down I think we will have to manage this very difficult situation in terms of investments I'm not going to go into the investment we had the launch of the anti-crime task force last week I guess more than anything it's a celebration of the partnership that we have with the police I think James has been quite open about the funding challenges within the police equally in the council we have to work in different ways and collectively there's two options that we have and that's why I said last week either we can say we're going to reduce services because sadly we don't have the resources and let people suffer or we say we work differently help one another in different ways and that's exactly what we're doing the example that I wanted to mention was over the past year and correct me if I'm wrong or maybe if not longer we changed how we task our resources so that's police and enforcement resources council resources and I've always had the sort of aspiration if we're putting more growth in enforcement officers and then we've got challenges with police officers either being abstracted or focusing on more serious crime why don't we use enforcement officers why don't we use them to do some of the work that the police do and support them in their investigations and you'll be happy to know that they do a lot of supporting and they are tasked collectively as opposed to separately so council colleagues don't task CLs separately to what James and his colleagues do with the police officers I can go on I'm going to stop here but if officers feel there's anything more to add please do I'll probably wait till we do the questions shall we Simon no thank you I think both you and James have sort of nailed it in terms of where we're at as an authority the investment is incredible but there is a lot of work to do and ONSA has had their spice to how we can improve things which I'm always grateful for so hopefully we can learn something out of this process thank you just very quickly touch on ASP or something mentioned earlier so if colleagues aren't aware it is one of the talent satisfaction measures as part of the new regulator for social housing so we will actually be assessed on how we deal with ASP and as townless homes got insourced we have you know combined the teams the council ASP team with the townless enforcement team sorry ASP team and we're looking at how we can improve that because we will be measured now by this new regulator so here's something that's not just internally monitored we are going to be looked at externally as well good point right so should we get a round of questions in councillor manan first because you used your question in the wrong place and then I'll everyone keep your hands up for everyone else do you want to go councillor manan my question is to the barric commander how are we managing and reducing the exploitation of children linked to drugs and organised crime and how effective are the measures in reducing the child exploitation I'm going to expand on this is plain English what I'm trying to say is I've seen myself drug dealers that are using kids give them chocolates to pass the things and you can't interfere because they're using underage kids and that are aware of it if we are what are we doing to make sure those kids are not exploring that way and they're safe those kids are safe and my second question to councillor Talha is recently been a lot of theft where the high population of people crowd were mobile phone in theft I had a resident this week who was crying come up from the station DLR as soon as they come up they got the phone out to make a phone call to whoever to pick up electric bike comes in and just snatched the phone and just gone and it's just one of the second what are we doing about it do we have a CCTV camera operating on those DLR or training station are we involved with the TFL to make sure we reduce those people it's pretty crime but they affect quite a lot in some of the residents within the barra thank you thanks councillor I mean that that exploitation of children and a recognition that the drugs market not only fuels wider criminality but also fuels exploitation of children and in fact has as part of its economic model the exploitation of some of the most vulnerable in society is precisely why as a partnership we've embarked on a combating drugs partnership which has those three factors at play so police enforcement focused on the organised crime networks which are not only those dealing with drugs but also those parts of the system which are leading to those levels of exploitation and then working very closely with children services with third sector organisations in safeguarding and removing children from those exploitative environments and there's a whole ecosystem of support centring around children safeguarding space which supports in that work there's also that work extends way beyond the BCU itself so whilst I've got teams focused on drugs and gang activity and have a keen eye on identifying and reducing child exploitation in their activity I also have a dedicated exploitation team investigative team sitting within the BCU in my safeguarding space but we also tie into specialised pan-London met resources for example regionally based so in East London we have a team of specialist crime detectives focusing on those same exploitation challenges and teams focusing on what's often referred to as county lines which involves again the exploitation of children to transport drugs out of London to other towns around the UK where some of the drugs gangs based in Tower Hamlets are operating sophisticated supply and demand retail businesses to supply those drugs outside of London so it's not just what's visible and happening at a local ward level there's these different layers of law enforcement which are focusing on that issue but also working really closely with children's services with charities and with other elements of the council to try and reduce that level of exploitation could I just maybe just pinch a little bit of the council's time just to talk about the theft piece because I think a bit of that just fits in the policing space as well I talked about the increase in robbery we had earlier in the year interestingly as we dug into the detail of what drives that increase in robbery and there's a number of different factors the use of high powered electric bikes by organised teams actually linked in many cases to some of those same drugs gangs who are also exploiting children and indeed some of those children who are getting involved in committing robberies are arguably being exploited as well but that was one of the factors we really focused in on in reducing the robbery problem so we brought in a number of police motorbikes because we find it very difficult to catch up with those robbery teams without the police bikes so we've got a couple of those on the BCU with some of my proactive teams who are out there just about every day on those mounting operations specifically focused on the gangs using that type of method where it works really effectively is with the council CCTV enforcement so as we've got used to working together as we've learnt and trained each other on some of the challenges that we're seeing on the streets we're now at a point where council CCTV operators are spotting those gangs maybe starting their drive out or forming up ahead of committing some of those robberies putting that information straight into my proactive teams and we're able to get those bikes down there deployed I think on Tower Hamilton alone with the neighbour teams we've made over about 80 arrests in the last year of robbery suspects not just on bikes but certainly including those situations quite often we're finding those robbery suspects coming off the high power with 8, 9, 10 phones shoved in a jacket so what's happening is the group forming up and committing a whole series of very rapid robberies what we're seeking to do is use CCTV to identify the form up point and go and hit them before that and intervene before that series occur thank you so basically everyone's asking a question so I'm going to go from one side to the other alternate can I get Councillor Ahmed do you want to come in with your question thank you chair my question will be probably as I speak you know you can knock the questions since well I'm a councillor for and it's kind of falls within the city fringe as well as bordering with Hackney as well since you're talking about these petty crimes and larger crimes it involves both boroughs which is bordering the tower on this borderline how do you communicate with neighbouring boroughs to tackle these issues with joint operation that's one of the questions have you got in place to involve the other boroughs the next thing is I know it's very hard to tackle because I've been living in this world for probably nearly 50 years so my life has seen how it's being tackled it is rather hard especially the drug issues one thing I think one of councillor tests which is the children most importantly is to focus on the children that are being addressed by the drug dealers from the school from the neighbouring boundary of the school if it's not within the school but next to the school so that's one of the big issues that I know personally some children because I live in the world I live in school so that's one of the issue to tackle how you are doing it and probably let me just stop the is that it two questions yeah okay all right should we get the answers for those too yeah okay I'm sure your other questions will be covered by other colleagues I'm sure let's distribute let's not yeah let's be fair with the questions don't get long on the mics take your opportunity when you do no both good questions so the cross-border piece so I probably should have set out the structure of policing really at the start so I'm what's now called a BCU commander in the old days you'd have had a borough commander just for Tower Hamlets and I'll look after Tower Hamlets and Hackney so in a sense that border is easy because it's all my policing unit so it's the same proactive resources that deal with the two it is separate neighbourhood teams but we work very very closely so Brittany Clark who's my detective superintendent who looks after Hackney neighbourhood teams and Vicky Tunstall who's my detective superintendent who looks after the Tower Hamlets side both work to me and we operate as a collegiate senior leadership team and things like the tasking meetings we're hearing about which are really brilliant innovation here in Tower Hamlets where local authority and police are sitting down together understanding the crime data that's coming into us understanding where the hot spot problems are and deciding how we collectively tackle that that also happens in Hackney but sitting above that at my level as the BCU commander I chair pan-BCU tasking meetings which look at those problems across Hackney and Tower Hamlets together and also some of those other neighbouring boroughs where the boundaries do cross for policing one is into the city so cross is actually a force boundary because it's the city of London and the other is into particularly I guess there would be into Islington where it would be still part of the Met but into another area so again we coordinate really closely with our Met colleagues in Islington where we spot a particular problem we'll often run a dedicated cross-border joint operation so particularly some of the night-time economy robbery risks we had around Shoreditch on Hackney spilling into bits of Tower Hamlets and also parts of Islington we ran over the earlier part of this winter quite a sustained campaign cross-border operation to tackle the robbery and violence problems there with City of London we actually incorporate them into our tasking processes so we task directly in with them and in fact I've been in some discussions with City of London Police about could we go even further are there elements where we could share some of our joint proactive teams together and work closely but a lot of our crimes will impact directly on those other areas that robbery problem of the young people on bikes committing robberies on the high-powered store and e-bikes primarily is a problem which has its origins in Hackney but the groups will often come down the A10 corridor into Tower Hamlets but also into the City of London so that piece of work in particular was involved not just Tower Hamlets and Hackney but also coordination with the City and other areas the schools point is well made as well one of the things I was concerned about when I arrived at the BCU and others in the Met had similar concerns was the degree to which our involvement with schools had become a bit confused over the last decade so we had schools officers positioned in the schools which was initiative that started some 15 years ago and it somewhat lost its way a little bit so we had officers doing well meaning work delivering input in assemblies or PHSE lessons and things like that and yet we're teachers going out splitting up fights between kids and knife fights on the streets outside and having to don body worn video in order to do that and we got very confused about our two roles here one thing we've done over the last year is to change the way that we engage with schools to remove those officers from being directly positioned in the school creating a team within the neighbour teams that we've heard about who are the link point the officers who are dedicated link point for senior leadership teams within those schools to discuss problems the schools with a solution to support the senior leaders within the school from a policing perspective it allows us to expand our coverage way beyond the small handful of secondary schools that we were covering and expand out across all of the secondary schools and now into the primaries as well with that level of support but the second factor is it allows us to focus much more exclusively on the home to school journey and if I looked at where was the policing responsibility well we have a safe space in home we have a safe space in school we have education who are responsible for maintenance of that safe space in school we have a family and if needs be with other services to support them maintaining that safe space in home it was an operation we call protected corridors which is sitting down with schools understanding what are those high footfall routes that school kids are going on and we all know what they are where you got two three different schools all kicking out those routes between four and six o'clock each day with the aim precisely of tackling those challenges you just talked about can we see can we deter drug gangs from seeking to exploit that situation can we reduce some of the school child robberies which we know are occurring in that space so that has been and will continue to be the thrust a large part of the thrust of our work with schools thank you James and if you could try and make your answer shorter because members won't be happy if I don't get to every single person that's asked to ask a question thank you chair board champions sorry chairs the residents have lost trust in policing could this be a reason why there is a lot of under reporting and what is the Met doing about building that trust and getting people to engage more thank you thanks I mean that goes to the heart of the commissioner's mandate and the new Met for London that he announced when he came in and that is not something we turn around in a year or so I mean we in policing very much see the rebuilding of trust ensuring that people are confident we are dealing with the crime types which they are most impacted by and we have heard that a lot of residents aren't and feel a degree of disconnect the effort we put into rebuilding the neighbourhood teams and investment we put back into neighbourhood policing was the start of that process of rebuilding trust and that has been taking place over the last year or so going forward I think what you'll see from the Met over the coming year or two will be much more of a focus on what we might think of as volume volume crimes large base of crime which includes a lot of that theft activity a lot of those factors which we've been talking about there we know one of the challenges of policing is how do you both put your resources where the threat risk and harm is greatest which is often on crimes which impact only a small number of people increasingly impact on the most of gun crime and at the same time put those resources into that volume at the bottom and that is constant challenge of policing and it goes to the heart of some of those questions of trust because those areas of threat risk and harm are also areas which are largely unseen by large proportions of the population so I think our challenge going forward over the next couple of years is how we achieve probably a better balance between those two areas what we will be looking at closer from a leadership perspective is how can we structure the BCU structure the way we deliver policing to resuppress back in towards that volume space which is impacting on so many of our residents violence focus on knife crimes because we were aware that those were areas that were so denting some of trust and confidence particularly in marginalised communities who were often bearing the brunt within some communities more than others within London in general some of this is also about cleansing the Met I'll be honest and I'm hoping that a lot of people would see what are a depressing series of headlines for the past two years of police officers facing sanction in court rightfully so when they've committed crimes or behaved in a way which doesn't display an adherence with the values that we hold so dear there will sadly be more of that but hopefully what you recognise is that is the attempt by the Met to cleanse itself of those people who should have never worn our uniform shouldn't be in our organisation and that will continue and we'll be relentless in pursuing and seeking to get rid of those people who shouldn't be in the police that was dealt a bit of a blow as people have seen in the last week by a court decision which meant that we can't remove people from the organisation when they fail their vetting and we have concerns about them as an individual the commission has been very vocal keen to take that action we hope that will now be happening and we will get that change which allows us to continue that work and I suppose the last factor I'll just draw on is the long-term piece which is the efforts which we are undertaking to change policing so would it help with so obviously residents and anybody people have expectations just a bit of comms perhaps around that just getting it out to the community just to manage the expectations in a sense I don't want to manage expectations because I think we can do more I'm confident we can do more to address some of those areas of challenge I think the fact that we're seeing those 5% reductions in burglary which might seem small but those are hundreds of burglaries less that are happening now because we focused exclusively on high volume known burglars operating in burglary hotspots so with a limited police resource we've been able to deliver quite a significant effect by using those resources in the right way I'm confident we can look more broadly and use our resource in a better way to reduce some of this crime so I've never counsel I certainly wouldn't counsel that you should not report because there's concern police might not do something about it to pick up because we operate on data driven organisation so I point my resources and I direct my teams to point a resource about problems which we're aware of through intelligence and data and if that's not filtering through that is a big concern because we might be missing something we should be focusing on I strongly encourage reporting because even if we can't deal with that offence there and then it builds up an impression and understanding of data so we focus on robbery patrols where our robbery hotspots are greatest I don't know that's a robbery hotspot unless people are reporting that they've been a victim of robbery so even though that robbery might not be solved there and then we may still deter that same robbery team from operating in the future or together with other offences build up a pattern behaviour which allows not just what we're doing but some of the impact and some of the effect we're having unless you're getting burgled every week and hopefully nobody is you wouldn't notice a 5% or 10% reduction in burglary it's not a felt effect to the public so essentially you don't know that we're having that impact unless we're more effective in communicating that impact and effect and that of course goes to the heart council of your point around trust and confidence because there's a direct relationship I would hope between police effectiveness in those areas and an increase in confidence and our ability my question is following from Halima's question about trust and I take it's a 10 year project and that's what the commission is focusing on one of bits of it there's two parts of the trust point around data from the community safety partnership staff residents who are watching and who are really concerned about stop and search until you get to that 10 year project and how are you making the commitment to do better and change the culture of it that's the first bit but in terms of the community crime part of the wider strategy I take all the points you've been saying about comms and making sure there's better comms from the council and the police especially after an event takes place so I know there was a gun incident in Fish Island area and the armed response came and then not much happened afterwards and I think it's required both the council and the police to do the aftercare of residents and I hear from a lot of residents about the concerns and the issue and it was an acute issue but the aftercare problems is something in the comms point is seriously lackless but the reporting of it and the reporting of ASB has gone down fairly significantly not so much this year but certainly in that first year so I just wanted to ask what you're doing to encourage people to report crime make sure it goes into the same make sure it goes into the right channels and make sure it drives the resources thanks so we're certainly not waiting 10 years to start addressing stop and search and challenges and we know that disproportionality in stop and search is real we see that I see that in the data one of the things I set out when I first arrived as a BC commander not just down but Hackney as well was I wanted to really focus on stop and search because I knew that it was an area that was eroding considerable trust particularly with our black community but other communities as well who impacted but I call out the black community because that's where we see frankly the largest level of disproportionality and it's stark in Hackney it's also stark in Tower Hamlets and we have different very different sort of communities across those two boroughs but one factor is we see it present in both we have been working putting considerable effort into both changing how we think and use stop and search but also how we want our officers to undertake the individual instances of stop and search so how you do stop and search over the past year or so working closely with a number of youth groups across the two boroughs we for start we been producing or helping communities to co-produce know your rights material which we now have a QR code that if we stop any young person we hand out the QR code that guides them towards a range of products which help them understand what their rights are and how police should be engaging with them and interacting with them in that stop and search we are just poised to roll out training across all of our officers both looking at issues of adultification and procedural justice in how they're undertaking those searches drawing some of the points actually you raised there I mean I slightly challenged the notion that 33% positive outcomes is woefully low stop and search is a power based on reasonable suspicion not certainty so by design it is designed to be a power in which I would suggest most of the people it's used against may well turn out to be carrying whatever was suspected we were carrying otherwise the law would have been very clear we had to have belief or certainty rather than mere suspicion on that point what we have seen is increases in that positive outcome I'd have to double check this positive outcome certainly over the last two months across the BCU and I haven't got these figures in my head breaking down to Hamlet's level but we've seen that positive outcome rate increased to 40-45% in part because we've been looking at a managed reduction of stop and search away from a larger volume which is focused on low level drug searches and where I want a greater focus in is on weapons carriers and weapon searches in part because we know whilst stop and search is an effective investigative tool there is very little evidence to support the notion that increased use of stop and search actually reduces drug use whereas there is better evidence to support the notion that targeted use of stop and search in areas where we have high violence and knife carriage is an effective tool for discovery and disruption of knife carriage and weapon carriage so a lot of our thrust over the last going forward into 2025 as well as improving the quality of the encounter and the way in which our officers are interacting with members of the public who are being stopped and searched is also in managing that operational pivot towards greater use in reducing weapons crime and less so as a vehicle for discovery of lower level drugs activity I think my point was 33% of 5908 I think if you asked anybody in the public would probably have a different response than what you've kind of said and it's so I take the point about reasonable but then you bring in the whole point about section 20s and we could get into a debate all day but I think the fundamental point is 33% and somebody smarter than me can probably do the maths but of 6,000 people have been stopped I had a question I mean we're getting to an existential question of the power of stop and search which isn't really I mean that's probably something best addressed to the home office and lawmakers we've been provided with a power which is based on reasonable suspicion and no governments have asked us to use that in a different way what we seek to do then in using that power is using it in the most effective way we can and I do agree I would like to see that positive outcome rate being higher it indicates to me that we're being much more surgical and precise in how we're using that power we have seen it increase considerably it's sitting around 28% two years ago it's now sitting between 40 and 45% across the BCU but I think we have to be realistic stop and search is a power predicated on a reasonable suspicion and so what we're not going to see is stop and search with a positive outcome rate sitting at 80-90% I mean that would be an impractical expectation of a Did you answer Councillor King's question? You might need to remind me Repeat that Reporting What have we been doing around reporting sorry yes boosting reporting so I mean 10 years ago you reported crime by coming into a police station or phoning up 101 I mean the biggest change really in reporting mechanisms has been opening up online reporting and now a significant proportion of our crime reporting comes then through online channels that creates its own challenges we're a bit more vulnerable to the way in which people will input information into an online reporting system than we are if you're reporting directly to an officer so that brings about some of its own challenges which we're constantly looking at also I mean this probably needs to be broken down in certain areas some areas of crime which we know are chronically underreported we also look at opening up third party reporting mechanisms so whether that might be domestic violence through other partners who are able to make third party reports on our behalf or for example in hate crime where we have some really effective charities and third sector organisations who can operate and act as third party mechanisms to report in but our message has been fairly consistent throughout period which is unless we know about the crime unless people are coming in to report the crime essentially we operate semi-blind without that data coming in I mean again I'd like to unpick that point that was made earlier on about how things are reported whether something is reported and recorded as a crime or whether it's reported in as ASB or non-crime ASB or whether police are just notified on a call to the 101 system that I would like police to come and have a look at something we're describing potentially slightly different sort of routes so what we primarily operate off is either information which is translated into intelligence for us to understand the problem or formal reporting of a crime occurring which has to abide by Home Office counting rules has to be quite a set procedural way in which that has to be recorded and reported but also provides us with a really rich set of data which informs quite a lot of our policing decisions Keith I think you wanted to come in do you want to introduce yourself because it's your first meeting thank you chair my name is Keith Stangor I'm the acting director of community safety and I just wanted to back what James was saying up particularly in the relations of council's comments about reporting on ASB and I think it's been registered quite a lot today that under reporting is so significant so a lot of our work that we do to support the policing is out in the community you might have seen our new engagement bus that's been outside the town hall occasionally but we've had that safer surgeries approach for the last I would say two years and it's been out in all the different wards hopefully we've all been invited to different ones but we also deliberately target it to places that the intelligence James has been talking about has either been high crime areas or we know that it's been low confidence in annual resident surveys or elsewhere deliberately so we do two things one is around listening to residents' concerns the second bit is really around that encouraging reporting but also crime prevention and everything else so and there's a lot of joy and up behind the scenes so we make sure that everything that residents tell us where it's appropriate goes across as a safe neighbourhood team so as James said we really really all of our task and everything else is done on that intelligence and information that's coming so but we'd be really pleased to know if there's more areas and we'll work with Julie on that definitely more areas that we need to be at we'll be at again we've got that new engagement bus which is deliberately designed to be out there working on those engagement pieces thank you sorry chair just very quickly we spoke about reporting places yesterday and I think colleagues touched on some opportunities so we are looking at different reporting mechanisms places where people can go so it's currently being reviewed internally too appreciate that thank you councillor Emily and then on this side we'll come to Zahid after Emily thank you I know we've touched on underreporting but I just want to go back briefly I'm aware of the broader trust and confidence piece I worked at City Hall for many years and sat through many police and crime committee with one commissioner and another and Baroness Casey and everyone under the sun so I'm fully aware of the broader piece but I do just want to hear a little bit more about how that translates down on a BCU level so is there have we identified any really localised issues in terms of a lack of trust and confidence in terms of under reporting is there anything we can point to specifically here that maybe isn't happening in other BCUs in other parts of London because there's obviously like I say the broader piece but is there anything specifically going on here that needs different kind of attention that needs different kind of work and then if I could just say really briefly because everybody else has squeezed something in there as well I really appreciate this sort of broader thing about partnership working and I think it's clearly something that's working well and it's something that's going well what I would say I think this partly relates to what Councillor King just said I don't think it's translating as well down to residents who is responsible for what there is almost a daily debate in my emails and whatsapps about this is happening outside my front door who do I go to and one person says it's the police one person says it's the deal somebody says ring 999 somebody says ring 1 there isn't it's almost confusing matters and I think we talked about comms there is something to be done there to actually really simplify it down about who is responsible for what and who people need to go to can I take one more because we are very much running out of time you actually can't take long if you start then they will put their answer together okay I'll try and be as quick as possible thank you chair so I just want to bring draw attention to the committee as well as the panel around serious crimes so organized burglary around a 300 meter radius so residence buildings that are really quite close by within the space of three years Wolesky house has been hit once Arthur Deakin house has been burgled twice at knife knife point by the way these are vulnerable people living alone or with small families small children Magalashian house has been hit three times burgled three times sorry when I say hit I refer to burglary Abbot cottage has been burgled once and two weeks ago nine Arthur Deakin house has been burgled now this is staggering and I know you mentioned that burglary has gone up but has been reduced by 11% yeah 5% okay is isn't there something that the police or the council especially in that 300 and sorry and just one last thing last week somebody came to me and said there were people knocking on their door posing as council workers or some sort of public service workers and asking certain very peculiar questions and luckily they did not open the door but that has been in Maglesian house again so what is the council and the police and I understand the police cannot really do anything after the burglary however there are stats that the police have and the stats that the council have particularly around that area and this is organised crime they know exactly they do surveillance exactly where to hit when to hit and it's daylight it's not at night time and they go after specific family heirlooms that they know people in certain cultures have so what is the council and the police are there any actions or any sort of yeah any sort of action anything that's happening because it's happening quite frequently now we've got two questions thank you chair sorry okay let me try and take them a quick canter I've got the memo that I need to speed up so I think the situation is confused to a degree by design I'll be honest I think the crime disorder act in 1998 created a partnership responsibility for a number of areas particularly in reducing crime disorder and made a number of organisations co-responsible for areas and I think it could well do with tidying up I think that is in part some legislative change that needs to happen at central government I think the role of policing has become too broad if you want to ask my personal opinion I think we've become involved in residency and quality of life issues within communities that go way beyond the law enforcement responsibility and I think it's in some ways possibly even dangerous in societies to have a coercive agency like the police involving themselves in some areas by design that are you know do not necessarily engage criminal or involve crimes certainly certainly where I've tried to focus and where we try and operate here in Tower Hamlets is that of course one of the challenges when you have a challenge on a state or between a couple of us there's a myriad of different issues contributing to that and even in that one micro climate you can't necessarily extract the crime element from some of those other quality elements but the way we seek to operate here is policing's primary job is law enforcement and dealing with the criminal element and certainly my instruction to my ward teams is I want you primarily focused on crime element activity within that antisocial behaviour space the council have a oppressive range of powers to deal with a range of activities that sit outside that criminal aspect some of them engage law some of that activity becomes unlawful that the council enforce against but it's not necessarily a policing responsibility I agree I think we could do a lot better in explaining that difference between the two I know one thing that doesn't help actually is this terminology antisocial behaviour so it actually doesn't mean anything or it means everything at the same time and I think probably a clearer distinction where if you've encountered these challenges go to the police primarily if you've encountered these challenges go to the council primarily and then let us do the joining up behind the scenes I definitely agree interesting and I mean we've seen again with central government using the phrase antisocial behaviour but in quite different context to describe quite different things often so I agree it's something we can probably take away and have a look at particularly websites and things that indicate that I do think it's part of a slightly more national debate about what exactly do we want agencies really focusing on in the Met and we will need increasingly to focus on our core areas of responsibility and we'll still work very much in partnership but we won't necessarily be able to work in the sort of spaces that we've maybe worked in previously and a good example of that was where we had some degree of withdrawal from the mental health space recognising that we weren't the right agency or the most effective agency to be supporting someone in the mental health crisis on the point on the reporting I mean again in detail I'd probably need to sort of write back in to talk about some of the specific elements I mean a great example is where we did a lot of work with Safiya Jama and some of the women's groups in the Somali community because we knew there was an underreporting element particularly for VORG within the Somali community so we reached out ran some workshops and ran some specific events with her organisation and her team talking to that particular community and that demographic within that particular community so it will often be quite localised and specific where we sort of identify particular areas we know that Islamophobic hate crime is underreported as are we think all forms of hate crime so again we have done some good work with council of mosques locally with east London mosques and other institutions to which some of those religious institutions could become third party reporting mechanisms of hate crime for example so it tends to be quite specific on those certain areas but certainly we are looking at across a range of areas where we know underreporting is a factor burglary we do aim to solve burglaries after they have happened not just prevent them happening I mean one of the really effective burglary is one of the few crimes actually where effective understanding of just what you've described linked series of different burglary which might all be responsible the responsibility of the same offender and then going after and targeting that offender and trying to link them to that range of offences is one of the best and it has been our model for getting that 5% reduction in burglary in Tower Hamlets over the past year so we fairly so we look in very great detail at patterns of burglaries whether the same type of method has been utilised by the burglar whether we've got forensic links between different burglaries whether we've got if someone's been seen which is a bit rare in burglary but we might have a description that matches and crucially then look at what the other factor with burglary is burglars often operate within quite a tight geographic range of where they live a factor which is common at that crime time so what we'll focus on is do we have known burglary of people with previous burglary convictions or someone just released from prison for burglary back out in that area where we've seen a bit of a splurge of a burglary crime and then we launch a proactive operation to try and identify and connect that person to those offences if we believe they're a suspect for it so whilst I can't probably comment on that one granular specific case because I haven't come sort of briefed on that that as a question to be able to talk to that particular point that in essence is the thrust of our focus encountering burglary thank you quickly then that area I spoke of is a surveillance blind spot so and those burglars criminals know that that's why they hit the same place again and again and again and again and it's appalling to see that they might even attack go for the same house twice and it has happened so what is a council I think that might be a question because it's specific can I just say because it's specific to an issue that actually affects you because you live in this locality am I right no you don't okay because it's a locality is it okay if we take this up separately please if you don't mind councillor chowdhury councillor khan next so chowdhury thank you thank you chair good evening to you all thank you I think a lot has been asked already first before I start thank the chairs for coming here tonight thank you very much thank you my question I think a lot has been asked already but I will just go how diverse obviously it's a very diverse council that you sort of look after both how diverse is your force I would like to know that thank you not diverse enough and that's the honest truth and we're very clear about that whilst we are putting a lot of effort in recruitment and some great examples of support and a council on trying to recruit more officers and police staff into the Met locally here from Tower Hamlets because we desperately want the Met to reflect the communities that it serves and I'll be honest the Met does not reflect the communities it serves it particularly doesn't reflect the communities it serves in a diverse location like Tower Hamlets diversity representation is improving both in terms of gender representation within policing and on ethnicity basis as well but it is still considerably short of where it would need to be to represent London but a lot of our effort and this isn't something you'll understand which I directly control as a BCU commander so recruitment and HR aspects are dealt with centrally within the Met but a huge amount of work going on centrally to improve representation and reach out into communities and to we had specific dedicated outreach work looking to improve representation and recruitment from our diverse communities in London in part one of the changes that was made in recent years was to make resignments of London residency for people joining the Met traditionally the Met oddly used to recruit quite a lot of white northern men I'm a white northern man and I was sort of recruited down to come in and police London I did live in Tower Hamlets for 16 years after I came down here so I kind of feel I'm a sort of a son of Tower Hamlets in many ways but you know we were an organisation that had a challenge in traditionally recruiting from outside London and a large part of the thrust is to pivot that recruitment drive to within London of course we face the same challenge that many other public sectors do which is a lot of young people can't afford to live in London once they want to live here a lot will move out seeking to live outside or work outside and we have the challenge of a competitive jobs moment market with you know let's be in common with other public sectors we don't necessarily pay as competitively as the private sector does so we have our challenges but a large part of particularly the work under the London Race Action Plan which was launched earlier this year by the Met is focused exclusively on trying to improve that representation within the workforce thank you councillor Khan and then councillor Natli thank you chair giving you an opportunity of asking questions and also the borough commander answering all these questions probably he's tired use some water also committee member coming here with all the officers and for their report my question is very brief and very short I know this has been going for quite a while my question to borough commander how safe people of Tavern are than last year that's the shortest question I can ask the second one is that I get impression from the ward panel chairs that people lost faith on the police and what measure are there to gain their trust thank you thank you and then it was councillor Natli thank you chair thank you this has been honestly been fascinating I just wanted to highlight that I had some similar questions I appreciate your answers to councillor Mohammed's questions around stop and search I won't reopen that for lack of time but yeah also had some concerns about that I guess I just wanted to focus on the staff issue for me there's a huge issue where there's in the safer neighbourhoods team and you're talking about this volume work I've had I think three sergeants since I was elected in 2022 so what are you doing to try and keep staff in those positions where they can build up knowledge of the local area and have you at all looked into using AI to help with the back office stuff which I know that a huge amount of work or time is taken up by back office work with the production and workforce thanks both so the question of how safe is Tower Hamlets I mean I will point to crime stats and say Tower Hamlets is safer now than it was a year ago but equally I know that's meaningless of your experience and your fear of crime is at odds with that so I mean I hope you don't think I'm dodging a question but in a way I'm what I'm interested in is how safe the people of Tower Hamlets feel and all of our effort across policing is directed towards trying to improve that sense and feeling of safety and security the actual crime stats are showing reductions as I say I mean most importantly the most important one for us is that reduction in violence because if we round a clock back four or five years London was facing real significant challenges around violence and we still have challenges present but to see a year on year now 20% and 20% reduction in violence is from a policing perspective but I take nothing away from the fact that there will be those who still feel unsafe we know that from the residence surveys for example women feel more unsafe Tower Hamlets feel more unsafe than some of those who live down to the south of Tower Hamlets and so whilst we will work on reductions of specific crime types that overall feeling of safety and security is what's probably most paramount to us all of that contributes to that building of trust I mean trust comes from I guess policing delivering that sense of security delivering confidence that we can tackle some of those crime types that I've talked about but also demonstrating we can deliver policing fairly and I think that goes to some of the points that we were raising around stop and search in other areas that was central to the strategy that the commissioner laid out in New Metford and it's been central to the mission that I've been given to deliver as a BC commander here and it will continue to be I suspect as I say for the next decade of this organisation in terms of staff moves and rotations I think policing is synonymous even within the partnership as an organisation which sees quite a rotation and movement of staff unfortunately there's one of those elements that is built in to policing as a pan London organisation particularly as we don't tend to retain people in the area where they have worked when they get promoted so we have a policy of moving staff around which has its origins in anti-corruption practice and needs to protect the organisation in part they were the factors as well also needs of the organisation so what you tend to see is a bit more stability around the PCs and we get a bit more movement at the sergeant level certainly where in fact the most stability we tend to aim for is with our PCSOs who we can have a degree of controlling periods of time and we try and avoid moving them our PCs we have tenure requirements moving into neighbourhoods so they give a minimum amount of tenure providing there's no exceptional operational reason to move them but I make every effort to not only keep neighbourhood ward teams staffed to full levels so you can never quite achieve that fully because you'll have retirements and promotions and movements for various reasons people going up to specialisms but we will I think for the past year certainly have hovered between 97-98% capacity in the neighbourhood space in Tower Hamlet so we do keep it staffed but I acknowledge we have recently and in common a number of ranges of ranks in the MET seen quite a lot of churn at sergeant so a slightly lesser degree inspector level they've been a bit more consistent we're hoping that we'll be a little bit calmer over the next year we've gone through quite a lot of turmoil in moving the MET around as we went through a lot of that restructuring in the UMET for London delivery but sadly we can't give a copper bottom guarantee that we won't see some of those officers moving around I think the abstraction point was raised earlier we try incredibly hard to avoid our neighbourhood officers being abstracted for example going to support central London aid ultimately when there's very high aid demand I mean we've seen just an exception I mean something I've never seen in my policing career and I don't think the generations before we saw in their policing career in terms of the level of protest and therefore policing requirement to support that protest over the past two years in London and that has meant larger levels of abstraction than we've probably ever seen before but the MET has also really made strong headway in trying to take those abstractions from places other than the BCUs and other than the war teams and frontline policing so certainly over the last six to nine months we've seen quite considerable reduction in the amount of officers I'm having to support that central London protest so a lot of effort in that space AI yes so we have a team called we have a department called DDAT digital data and technology who are working working to explore a number of areas where AI could assist particularly in some of the slightly more mandronic processes of crime screening crime allocation decision making and other areas I think it's actually more in the space of machine learning than strictly AI that they're looking at but it's we're looking at those areas I'll be brutally honest some of the police technology challenges are much more prosaic than a step towards AI we went through a replacement of our primary technology systems this last year which caused really really big as a vision to completely change your base enterprise technology system creates a lot of turmoil a lot of change a lot of disruption to the organisation as we get used to a new system as our data processes get used to a new system none of the coding that used to extract our data from a previous system worked on the new system so we had to recode all of our analytical ability and this is not just something that's common to the Met the whole of the UK policing has been going through a similar move at different times over the last couple of years we are coming I suppose out of the initial period of that and so some of those areas that looking at can we use technology to better support decision making and free up officer time is absolutely part of DDAT's work that will be hamstrung by those funding challenges we've got so we are if we're getting to the point that we're having to reduce offers and so yeah yeah but our ability even to invest on development of that technology is dependent on having sufficient funding to be able to do so and if we're cutting back on actual officer numbers and shrinking the size of the Met it gives a sense of just quite how difficult it is thank you Keith did you want to quickly I just wanted to add very very quickly because I'm really conscious of the time because the question was about how safe people are and a lot of focus has been on the safe neighbourhoods teams but little to do in mind everybody we're probably the only borough certainly in London probably in the country that still funds our own police here so we've just renewed the contract for when Tareham came back in house we've and the council sort of touched on it joined the anti-social behaviour offer from what was Tareham Homes and our own anti-social behaviour team so now we've got brought together the police team so there's now four sergeants and 24 police officers that are just funded from council funds which boosts on top of what James is talking about as a neighbourhood so while we've got the safe neighbourhoods teams and there are some challenges there as James has reflected on but there's also some strengths they've got the task force as it's now known to go around and work alongside that let alone a big expansion of Theo so we're going up towards the 64 Theo we're on 54 at the moment the last 10 coming through soon we hope and that has been really focused on recruiting from the local community and lots of new people have come in with new skills we've trained up and a lot of them are out on the streets now they work very closely as James said alongside the police because a lot of times residents want someone to talk to and they're great to be out there in the community in the right places and we're just about to recruit into our drug squad which will be a team leader and six which we hope to have up by April which will be really focused on in those drug areas that we've been talking about tonight whereas the Theo's have got all powers to do everything and will concentrate on all crime and ASB areas that are forcing to our remit the drug squad will be very very focused on those drug hot spots that are coming that we know about and take every tool and power we've got and then help the police pick up that intelligence that people have been sharing from tonight the very last thing I wanted to say was on the CCTV not quite on AI front but the bit around there's obviously we've finished the phase of all the upgrades and the CCTVs all 360 cameras upgraded and the control room and now we're looking at phase two which is while we're expanding out onto our estates we're also looking at any other technology and there are some companies out there that we're trying to see if we can broker some partnerships with or certainly some pilots with that might look at the use of amount of technology and amount of images and stills and videos that are captured by our residents by ourselves now we can better use that technology to then pull together some of that work that saves the police a lot of time and effort the very last thing and I'll promise I'll which is back to your point about the the reporting crime and ASB there is definitely some work that we've already started bringing Talhamet's homes in house or it's got people who can report to the to the what was Talhamet's homes report to us as a council report to the police and the SNT so we've already started that customer journey it's part of our improvement pathway I would like to come back at some point and talk to the ONS about that because we're going to do a whole new ASB policy and procedures and everything else so that will be coming quite soon we've got two more questions um council thank you very much thank you chair and thank you and my question to the commander very short and simple two questions the first question is overall what are the main pressure and challenging the police facing the travel crime number one number two why have you removed the police liaison officer for what are you going to replace the one thank you okay so with those questions I'm going to ask one but I'm a bit scared of how long the answer might be so if you can you know be rapid with it um it's for both the met police and the council when it comes to the growth of town the growth of the borough it's unlike others and we're one of the fastest growing boroughs with that how do you plan for the for the influx of the new residents that come and live here especially taking into account when it comes to the drug market and how it's changed over the last few years that people that sell drugs don't have to travel far to sell them because everything can be done in this bar how does that work and how do we plan for it um great so it was a first question what what are our main challenges um so I mean I mean there is a risk I could go on for another hour here um I I think looking forwards moving down to that space of tackling what might be regarded I think incorrectly as as lower level crime or volume crime it will be a a a large focus for us over the coming year I think certainly that challenge around theft uh will remain a focus I think where if we we won't let up on our focus on robbery burger in some of those other areas but where we feel we've at least leveled down and and the reduction there it gives us a little bit of capacity to put into the to the theft space dealing with vulnerability and high risk will always be a challenge and a priority for us so I think we've uh we're in a very different space now working with Steve's teams than we were 10 years ago and how we think about exposure to risk of children and exploitation of children I think that will continue to be both a challenge and a and a focus for us and I think those areas of chronic low trust around vogue sexual offenses and hate crime again will continue to be areas of focus but also challenges for us to overcome as we've debated a number of times here unless we build the trust and people have a confidence to come forward to us we are you know we we we're hamstrung from the outset in in terms of tackling the problem so that will will maintain a focus the decisions around faith officers that's a testament to the difficult choices we're having to make as a bcu I have very real and daily decisions to make as to whether I can provide you ward police officers or dedicated roles such as the faith liaison officers at the moment I can't I need those officers undertaking some different tasks than they were doing as faith liaison officers that's not to say we won't necessarily sort of move them back into those roles but I'm waiting as most of my colleagues are with bated breath and understanding what a financial settlement is for next year to understand whether I can afford to maintain those roles but by and large I would sort of ready all of you for the fact that the MET will have to pull back to its absolute core functions at a time of quite significant and I've got tough choices we're having to make I've also had to remove a team from the Royal London hospital who were world leading arguably in the sort of innovative service they're providing I've got significant numbers of resources away from ward and away from local crime folks in order to deliver that we are living in that era of very very tough choices unfortunately we'll continue to have to make those sorry James can I just come in there where James is talking about the Royal London hospital we have colleagues here too council funded teams and they work quite closely so where we see challenges in the police as a partner we we have picked up some of those issues and we'd like to think you know I think the mayor of London was here last week with a minister to see some of the work that we're doing the hospital and and once again I'm going to bring it back to the partnership where we find you know we may need to pull or they may need to pull in certain areas we're having those conversations and I'm only saying it because you mentioned that example yeah yeah yeah and I think the final question was on sorry yeah yeah yeah I mean so one of our challenges I think is our resourcing picture doesn't keep pace with the growth of population I mean it's interesting when we the I think we generally feel town hallways probably goes about 2.4 percent a year I think is generally accepted through some of the census data interesting is the total notifiable offences and crime increases where we are seeing them aren't aren't to that same level they're often fluctuating a little bit but often below that level but equally what we're not we don't necessarily see is is growth of resources to to deal with that population increase so I mean our strategies are the partnership strategies which we manage through the community safety partnership through the subgroups or whether it's combating drugs partnership whether it's the serious violence duty those are our main strategic vehicles for tackling those problems as they evolve over time whether it's the drugs problem whether it's serious violence none of those are exclusively policing challenges they're all a partnership challenge for council police health sector third sector charities other organisations like probation others all to have a role in but central to that is is the partnership is the main vehicle for delivering those those the sort of longer term strategies and just to add thanks James at the CSP we do have an annual assessment that's done looking back and also looking forward so we do try and anticipate certain trends and certain issues and we do plan for that I think from a council perspective we have put in significant growth so that is in anticipation of potentially you know issues increasing and from a capital point of view the CCTV upgrades in estates is an additional growth which I think if there was an increase in estates that would help manage and another thing that's part of the growth period that maybe a lot of people have missed in the Isle of Dogs we're seeing the biggest population sort of increase and there's all kinds of networks underground that are already available as infrastructure we are connecting to some of those networks for future possible demand in whether it's CCTV or other so there are sort of some capital investments that we're doing as part of the upcoming budget that is looking to capture future opportunities if we don't tap into those networks today then in sort of years to come if we need to put in CCTV let's just say on one street but we're not connected to the infrastructure it will cost us the council a lot more money so we're making decisions now to help us save in the future. Thank you so that's all the question from all our members thank you so much for the time that you've given tonight and for turning up and I think we'll put together some thoughts afterwards for yourselves too and hopefully James if you can read that that would be really grateful for a little overall sum up of what we've discussed tonight and obviously councilor Dalha and team I know you're definitely going to be reading that okay thank you hopefully see you soon. It would be really helpful to address those I think for the community safety partnership because then that's the vehicle that we can discuss that as an audit how we've discussed that within the partnership and then be able to reflect back to you as councillors on the. We're happy to write to the partnership. So it's me and the councillor the two co-chairs so essentially if you write in to us as the community safety partnership and then we can address it within that form. Even better thank you. Lovely thank you. Thank you. So thank you everyone I know it's it took a long time but everyone got to ask their question and that was important so our next item is the workforce to reflect the community strategy which is due to be considered at cabinet tomorrow evening. Do we have the cabinet member? Councilor Saeed Ahmed if not Pauline Shakespeare interim head of corporate human resources and Anne Fintz-Smith senior practitioner for equality diversity inclusion. I'll give you a few seconds to take your seats. Good evening and thank you for waiting I understand you've been very patient about this. We've got the report and you can take it as read but if there's anything else you'd like to add that you think will help that isn't in the report then feel free to. Okay so in short summary the workforce to reflect the community strategy and action plan at 2024 to 26 builds on the great work that we had from 23 to 24 strategy and the actions. It's far more ambitious and is designed to continue that excellent work towards representation but it's also to take us beyond to be a leader in the field of EDI and an example of best practice. I'm going to pass over to Anna who has been working on this for a very long time. It's it's from my view it's absolutely excellent and it is a great step but just the next step on the road for us to have excellence in this area. Okay so thank you I'll just take you through kind of the structure of the strategy what's included in there so it sets out the achievements that we've delivered from the previous version of the strategy 2324 and sets the context for the current work in terms of the insourcing of Tower Hamlets homes and the changes that we've had in senior levels within the council etc and we've refreshed the data so that we we've taken out a bit of the borough population I think we've established that now that that's our baseline from the 2021 census and looked at what the data is showing in the change from 23 to 24 and in appendix three that you've got in your pack there's also just printed a bit larger so you can see them because they are through the strategy but there's also some data that shows the movement from 22 to 24 just to show you where we've moved over the last couple of years around this area so the strategy builds on the eight sections that we had last year so the first eight which were about monitoring and evaluation of the program which is around the data recruitment selection so how we get people into the council entry level which is again looking at things like apprenticeships and the other routes into the council as well as through recruitment and then graduate careers which is looking at the national graduate program and local program and then what we do when we've got people into the council so how do we develop them so something around talent management progression and career development and leadership and management what our pay gaps look like and again the ethnicity pay gap continues to be our biggest pay gap the other pay gaps we've done quite well in terms of closing those that we've got positive pay gaps around sexual orientation and disability obviously we want those as close to zero as we can so there's still work to do there and then increasing representation across the council at senior levels and how we do benchmarking again you'll see in the graphs and charts some data around how we benchmark across London councils how the pay gaps have moved over the last few years since we started reporting and how we do in terms of our key performance indicators the one the main one is top five percent of earners who are black Asian multi-ethnic and we're above target for the last three quarters that's the first time we've actually achieved the target and we're starting to see that kind of maintenance of staying above the target in addition there's five new sections in the strategy this year and this is to address a few things so to address the best value inspection report and some of the things that came out there and feedback from employees and staff networks over the past year of kind of doing the work that we've been doing and those new sections the first one is on culture so again picks up the best value inspection picks up a drop in representation we've seen in terms of women across the council we're still above the borough percentage but we have seen a drop in the workforce as a whole and at senior levels so we put something in there to address that that also covers our anti-racism work and how we take that work on beyond personal interpersonal to systemic and institutional work the next new section is on socio-economic factors we know that socio-economic factors play a big part in people and how we recruit from the borough the next new section is on neurodiversity which again is an area that we're seeing come to prominence in kind of the EDI field and it's something that we've not done much on and we need to be better on then we've got a section on disability which again picks up some of the things in the BVI report around reasonable adjustments and reducing grievances and then the last one is care experience as you'll know we adopted care experience as a protected character that address some of the challenges that those with care experience face so there's been stakeholder engagement with colleagues in the trade unions staff networks through staff through a session we had through innovation month we're getting excited to embed that and we'll be doing that once we once we get it agreed we've also agreed that the monitoring of this will come to various boards with okay so Remy not the end and then yeah mine is super quick um but just to say I think this is I think this is really good stuff I don't think this is easy um and I think you see a lot of people falling into the same kind of traps when it comes to this and it's quite clear that you've undertaken some more like out of the box work so I think that's very good just super briefly though this um there's I think one line in here about the redundancy program um and what possible impact that might have and I was just wondering if you've done any further work on what impact that might have but also the um the fact that the council could be maintaining I think it's a 7.5 vacancy rate going forward have have you looked into how this might affect um your your numbers your stats in this and the work that you're doing come back on that yeah so thank you so yes the redundancy program we did um monitoring of that for the first year and we only saw just under one percent of the workforce leave so overall it didn't have a massive effect um on the workforce to reflect the community on the workforce of makeup where we did see um a reduction is kind of in the older to middle age brand of bands where we have more people leaving which you would expect um from a program that's based on like the service and age um and that has seen we've seen some increase at the lower age bands which again is where we're underrepresented as a result of that so we're keeping an eye on that um as we've got a rolling program at the moment we'll keep an eye on the data and see what that's showing but I don't think it's going to have a massive impact in terms of the the overall it may do for individual services and that's why we need to keep an eye on the data at that level and in terms of the vacancy rate yeah we had a special corporate qualities board where we looked at the equality impact and seeing which areas that may impact on more and seeing what the impact might be we won't know I think until we know where the vacancies are and what the impact is but yeah something that we're aware of thank you um yeah likewise this is really really important and not not easy work um it's a shame that the lead member couldn't be here to kind of ask some of the more strategic questions but I wonder if you could maybe touch on the work that you're doing it's like a really big question but the the fact that we've got um the gender pay gap is down so far is really really great but the disparity with the ethnicity pay gap is um quite disappointing when you see the you know how much progress we made in gender pay gap um so what what are you doing what's what's the plans what the maybe it's too big but maybe it's yeah I don't know just seems very yeah yeah so you're right it's still a big gap it has come down significantly when we first started reporting in 2018 it was think it was 15.66 percent we are down to 7.5 percent so we have seen a decrease year on year um part of that is around um as we've seen the improvement in terms of representation at more senior levels that has an impact on our pay gap the next steps is to look at the data and get under the data and see exactly what's driving the the gap there is something about local government with our salary scales that have different span of column points that people progress which means that if people if we better representation for example we have quite a lot of young bangladeshi staff coming in they will start on the lower point so it will only be in kind of three four years that we'll see some of those gaps close so there's quite a lot of nuance in this and also how the gender pay gap plays into the ethnicity pay gap and the other pay gap so how does all that data interlink so i think there's some work for us to do to pick that a little bit more and also to understand what our true pay gap is because for legislative purposes we have to report a certain way because that's how the legislation is set out but we have to exclude a large number of people is that because you take out people who don't receive pay over a certain period so again it's looking at that and saying actually what is our true pay gap if we include everybody and and what does that look like the next step and then it's about targeted action so what are the things that are going to close that gap as well as the general things that we're doing about improving representation which is having an impact thank you um lastly ethi great thank you chair um i just want to take my question about pay gaps that's fantastic no no no it's fantastic i'm really glad um to say well done i think this is we're ahead of the curve in this council reporting this ethnicity or the pay gaps more generally so it's really great to see so thank you for that um as a request you talk about in recruitment you've undertaken anonymized recruitment pilots and it'd be really good to understand a bit more about that if not now maybe you can write to the committee about that and uh that we can pick up at hr committee i think um in terms of on the pay gap you talk about the ethnicity pay gap and the gender pay gap there's a graph i wonder if you could talk about a trend for disability pay gap um and why that's not included but also just more of a nuanced point a better picture around class as well thank you thank you so yeah in terms of the disability and sexual orientation pay gaps are the other two that we report on and have done since 2018 we also provide the average hourly rate by age band and by religion and belief because there's no comparator for those to do but um disability and sexual orientation pay gaps have always been positive pay gaps from the time that we started reporting and i think there's something driving that around people feeling more comfortable the higher up they're getting the organization to declare so i think there's something around we've got something to plan about declaration rates and trying to improve and get better data on some of this um the disability and sexual orientation pay gaps have stayed around a plus kind of between five and ten percent um over the years as i said you you really want them as close to zero as possible um but they are they're not the as concerning as the ethnicity pay gap and yeah absolutely in terms of class yeah we want to get that data and we're looking at using the social mobility foundation who developed a way to report class pay gap to look at that and use the methodology they've used to to do that yeah sure so yes we did an anonymous recruitment pilot um last year and i actually recruited one of my roles through it and and it was it was good we had some technical issues with the um in in who we we get to do that and taking that forward it's just one of the kind of things that you can use to try and reduce the bias that you have in recruitment um being mindful that we still want to be able to have some equality information so for example as a disability confident we guarantee um an interview for somebody with a disability if they meet the essential criteria so balancing that with having anonymized data as well um and how we make sure that we can do both thank you um can i ask lost i can't see any more hands so i'll did you want to come in okay go before me then go uh thank you for that uh just a quick one uh i sit on the corporate parenting so it's nice to see the figures here care leavers me too nine yes a lot of my colleagues here yeah i've been sitting on there for the last three years uh can we get more from the care leavers side of it we've only got nine i would love to see more figures on that a bit more intake thank you likewise yeah if i can just come back on yes so what we what we found from the kind of the care leavers apprenticeships is that actually we need to probably do a bit more work pre-apprenticeship to get care leavers ready to come into the the world of work so we've slightly tweaked the wording in this year's plan around care lever routes in so not just apprenticeships we we're looking at doing some pre-apprenticeships there's a whole need for pastoral and wraparound care for care leavers when they're in in the organization um so we're kind of going back to look at absolutely that's an area that we're going to grow good yeah it's nice to hear that if you need us to be there because we see them a few times a year or more we're happy to do so thank you thank you cancer sorry could you just repeat that yeah what what plan plan are in place to increase the representation of under representative group in senior roles and how effective have this plan thank you second question on um as i said in the charts and graphs of appendix three and there are two charts that show the second one on page three shows the increases um at 60k plus which is kind of senior levels um since 2022 through to 2024 the biggest increases we've had uh we've had bangladeshi representation increased by eight percent we've had black asian multi-ethnic representation as a whole increased by 10 percent we've had disabled representation increased by 3.5 percent uh gay representation increased by 3.5 percent um 25 to 34 year olds also see that in the in terms of the kpi that i spoke about top five percent earners um black asian multi-ethnic um and we've got some again there are actions within the plan to specifically address that so we introduced something called the step scheme um a couple of years ago now and that was targeted at roles that are great em and above so the kind of senior roles and the idea with that scheme is that if you are recruiting to a role and you haven't got somebody who meets the full criteria at that time but with a bit of development they could do the role they go in um in terms of kind of a probation period for six months and with development and the development plan if at the end of that time they are sufficiently capable in that role to get the job without going through this thank you so uh last question from me i also want to join in with everyone say what great piece of work this is um even though like this is a report that's come today this is decades decades worth of ask request fight for us to get to this point i mean lots of people have done lots of different initiatives over the years um and can't get away without acknowledging that and this is i guess the first time where lots of different strands have been put into one once one report however i do want to also add the fact that you've mentioned the best value inspection report and you've tried to incorporate as much of that as possible um so i just have two things is making sure that actually while we progress moving because really we will see a lot of the fruits for the the hard work for this in years to come hopefully but how do we make sure we get that culture and that good practice in now so that this doesn't turn out to what's supposed to be such a great thing that doesn't turn out the other way around and my other thing is when we're promoting like i've seen some great stuff with the taham's apprentice my son showed me on tick tock um so that means it's working it's reaching the young people but representation is very important so when it comes to disability when it comes to people of color and i don't want this council to represent just the low earning jobs if we even if it's apprentice we should be talking about progress progress to the higher jobs that they can be anything they want so if we're going to do this we have to match this up with aspiration yeah thank you so yeah absolutely agree and i think just taking the second point first it we've got in the plan about embedding workforce planning embedding um career pathways and making sure that they are designed into certain um and again talent management is something that we we need to embed and we need to do and that's how we get the kind of culture and and this work embedded some of this is long term a lot longer and so it is it is continuous and we've already had conversations about whether this plan goes for 24 to 26 but whether we should be extending it and actually making it a longer term plan so we'll start to think about that um for your attendance today and we really appreciate and thank you for all your hard work on this quick question you said you've been working on this for a very long time how long has this been in conception so this i started on this in 2023 and then we did most of the work on an updated version last year into the start of this year so it's been yeah a couple of years yeah thank you so much have a good night thank you thank you yes so our final item is an opportunity for the committee to feed into the development of the local plan so firstly yep sorry chat um i should have made a point at dpis um i don't think it is dpi but i've just checked with matthew and i am a board member on hackney wick and fish island community development trust i've just resigned from it but it's going through the process of it and i know the local plan obviously refers to that so just for complete transparency i want to mention perfect we haven't started discussing it so thank you any other dpis nope yep okay firstly can i say thank you so much for waiting i'm so sorry it's taking this long um to get to you but we are here um so firstly um this is our opportunity uh for the community to uh feed into the development of the local plan and i'm working welcoming david joyce back to this committee who's the corporate director for housing natalie pellet plan making manager and marking film plan making principal do we have marissa online uh oh she is i can see her so we also have marissa ryan uh hernandez head of strategic planning joining us online i've just seen her uh oh is that mark i'm so sorry okay all right hello to marissa anyway she's watching okay so we're going to take the papers as read but please take up to five minutes if you need to talk us through the key elements and how scrutiny can feed into and shape this plan okay okay yeah okay thank you david um so yeah as you said um thank you it's good to be here to provide you that update on the emerging local plan um we won't go through the whole pack of information as you say we'll take it as read um i'm mindful of time as well um the purpose of today's session really is to provide a a bit of a briefing and an update in terms of the progress that we've made on the emerging local plan so as you'll know there's no decision required this evening this is uh really ahead of um getting to the point of uh hopefully full council taking the decision on whether or not to submit the draft plan to the secretary of state for examination so just to provide all of yourselves a bit of an update in terms of that further background um on that um so if we go to um the first slide the next one in terms of the purpose of the session so um touched on this already really but um obviously since the last stage of consultation on the local plan uh we've then been analyzing all of the representations so that's the comments that we received from both the public and statutory stakeholders and developers um in preparing to move towards submission uh of the local plan to the secretary of state so that is an independent examination that happens um with an inspector so it's just worth noting uh the kind of scope and the process and the time scales for moving that forwards um and as we've said the this item is just for information um so if we move to the next slide in terms of the overall time scales that we're working towards so this is set out within our local development scheme and it's the timetable that we're working towards uh in order to progress towards adoption of a new local plan so we've had previous rounds of consultation the most recent one autumn last year and we're working towards submitting um the plan uh later this year appointment um if we then so just as a reminder in terms of why we need a local plan um obviously in the context of uh both uh the housing the pressing housing need within this borough but also in the context of the new national government and the kind of changing emphasis uh especially around affordable housing in particular uh in response to changing uh the national the changing policy context um and changing shifts in terms of the impacts of covid brexit and all of these types of things uh it obviously has to be uh informed by evidence that the the team have prepared or the consultants have prepared for us and another factor that this plan needs to consider is obviously since the lldc area was brought back into uh our power in terms of those planning powers we need to plan for that as well so a range of factors um in developing our local plan we've been balancing a range of considerations so that refers to the evidence base um that i touched upon earlier so there's a very extensive evidence base this is uh fairly normal for local plans so we've got a total of around 77 documents that serve as that kind of um the layer of information that underpins the policies that are within the plan um and the focus specifically on the borough's needs as opposed to say national policy or regional policy at the london level we also have to balance that against the representations so that's the comments that we received through previous rounds of consultations from stakeholders statutory stakeholders the general public um and make sure that that's all done in compliance with the the necessary uh processes um next slide um so as i'm sure you'll all be aware developing a local plan is a fairly lengthy and complex process um it's never straightforward and especially when plans are ambitious um they're not without risk so we've been kind of looking at um ways of ensuring that we're complying with all the procedural requirements making sure uh taking on board those comments and representations uh ensuring that our plan is meeting the legal uh requirements and the tests of soundness and also uh working that it's been suitably assessed through what's known as the integrated impact assessment um which is one of the other requirements so a range of different checks and balances which we've been taking uh internally as officers and then if we move on to the next um and then alongside that we've also been uh seeking advice from external sources so we had a informal advisory visit from a planning inspector at pins in advance of going out to regulation 19 we've sought legal advice from kc so from council and just in sense checking all of that information and we've also been watching other ongoing uh local plan examinations at other london boroughs so enfield being the most recent one that happened um in january lambeth started today and we've got the city of london who have similar challenges starting next month so we're keeping a kind of watching brief on all of these uh kind of other boroughs and the progress that's happening there um so that's the kind of overview of where we've got to date um i guess just the key message to emphasize really is that when this item gets taken to full council there will be an extensive list of appendices that you'll be aware of um including the plan which itself is around 500 pages the 77 evidence-based documents that relate to that and then a number of other reports that summarize all of these um comments that we've received through the consultations and um around that so it's really just to bring this to your attention and provide an opportunity if there's any questions thank you really appreciate that can i start off um this local plan is slightly different it's coming in the context of perhaps future planning reforms from government how i know it's difficult to plan alongside things we don't know for sure but is there any information any sort of anything that you can add to how that affects the local plan here or do you think it doesn't affect affect at all absolutely so um if we start from the kind of national context from the national level um there have been changes to the national planning policy framework a lot of that has been primarily focused around significant changes around greenbelt so obviously that doesn't affect us as a borough um within the wider london context um that could potentially have a bearing and implications for the whole of london and therefore the sort of uh amount of reliance that the mayor of london has to look at um in terms of tower hamlets helping to meet london's need um so there's that level where there's been change and um we're obviously also aware of the fact that the mayor of london is also working towards um developing a new london plan so whilst that is something that we have to consider as we progress this plan because that's not um there's not even a draft of that published yet and even if there is a draft published by the time we submit it won't be kind of adopted so there's only a certain level of kind of weight we can give to that i'm not sure if there's anything to add okay okay thank you uh councillor king and council and afdi thank you um the greater london authority has raised several as a stakeholders raised several um issues with local plan um which the report details you know potential mitigations will view them as well um that's a good question so in terms of the the gla's comments um you'll be aware that historic england also raised similar um points so the work that we've been doing in the team is undertaking uh an additional heritage impact assessment um to understand those impacts to address the concerns raised by those stakeholders um so that work is um in train and uh essentially the process for that is if the findings of that work suggests that there might be modifications that um are deemed to be required to the plan then we will have to look at making suggestions to uh in terms of how we make changes to the plan if that's required i think it's also worth saying that and natalia referred down there to the fact we're watching what's happening in other boroughs and there are neighboring boroughs who have similar issues at stake like city of london and so we'll watch that one carefully but also i think city hall is slightly moving its position on some of these issues because of the government's very pro-growth agenda um so i i don't want to speculate but i sort of think that others will be moving more towards our position on some of these matters but it's a sort of what um i think it was amy next thank you um based on my question but i have another one um just on that this sort of early public engagement consultation i don't want to make a sweeping generalization but often when people engage in the planning any sort of planning process it's because they don't want to see some of the things that we're talking about in this plan particularly to all buildings so how are you meet how are you how do you reconcile what you've present what you're presenting and what you're planning to present with what i'm assuming is some of the public engagement that you've had and will continue to have later down the line so how how are you reconciling that um absolutely so i suppose the key thing to emphasize really with this stage of the plan making process is at regulation 19 there's a very um clear set of considerations that anyone responding to that consultation should be taking account of so it's the four tests of soundness um justified effective positively prepared um so thinking about those and the legal compliance aspects so where um stakeholders or where any respondent whether that's a kind of statually stakeholder or a member of the public or whoever it is is responding we need to um in considering whether changes are needed to the plan we need to balance it against those tests of soundness or assess it against those tests of soundness so um if there are valid kind of planning reasons around why someone might be objecting um for example to the height so it kind of touches on um what other councillors around the table have said then um we can that's a factor that we have to consider but if it's just i'm against development full stop then that's not something that at this stage of the plan making process is something that um sort of thank you um thank you chat um thank you for this um it sounds like and it looks like from presentation a lot of work has gone into this um and you briefly mentioned lldc and obviously they returned their powers in november december i think in terms of the planning powers and given i think following council lee's comments around early engagement how have we ensured there's been lldc jurisdiction when it came to this so i appreciate if they've been able to engage throughout the whole process that's fantastic but if it's not the case how have we ensured the local reservoir just yet making sure there's no safeguards absolutely so um obviously uh that messaging around that transition of powers has has been under um so hopefully stakeholders have been aware that that transition is happening the other thing that we have done so we mailed every we sent out a mailing uh to everyone on our mailing list we sent out a notification that this consultation was happening but we also asked the lldc for gdpr and data protection reasons they couldn't just send us their mailing list but we asked them to make sure that everyone on their mailing list was aware that this consultation was happening so um we also had kind of press notices in the paper um i'm not sure if there's anything else that to add and we also had meetings with some groups within the hacking with fish island area and a creative interest group in hacking with fish island we um actually went to a couple of their you know public meetings um for residents and presented stuff about the local plan especially in the early stages but yeah to be clear that was at the regulation 18 stage rather than this most recent stage of the cloud they were able to engage throughout the whole process of this so just because it was part of ldc from the get-go they've been able to engage with it that's helpful thank you councillor chodri you had a question yeah just a quick one thank you um uh when you when it says affordability affordable housing you know it's hard to explain to our resident even to ourselves i was in a discussion with the school teacher they're both teachers even they can't afford uh so you know you're talking about close to six figure salaries to buy anything into our hamlet and another question is many years ago i remember if you were part of the big construction if you played a big part with construction and build houses you would get a discount is there some sort of policy that we can or is there something in line that we could have see neither one of those questions relate to the local plan no no no so i'm just saying maybe that could be added um i remember a friend of mine was part of that scheme many about 20 years ago so so taking the first question in terms of affordable housing that's obviously there's a very strict definition of that set out both within the mppf and then within at the london level within the london plan so our draft plan essentially uh takes that definition we don't it's we're not at liberty to change that definition um so that's the kind of planning extent to which we can respond to that in terms of the second part of your question i'm not really aware of what that scheme is but can i can i just also come in in the first part of your question which is um you talked about the um the kind of extreme gap between incomes and the house prices and you're quite right and that's one of the reasons that in the local plan we've built the evidence base to really tell the favor the balance in favor of more social rented homes um so and that's one of the areas where we think we've got local justification to go a bit further than the london plan and actually saving 85 percent is um of our affordable homes should be social rented to really reflect the fact that actually some of the sub-market products like shared ownership are just not affordable in a place like tower hamlets they might be in some parts of london but they're not here absolutely uh i i don't know what i'm asking is it going to be related to this or not but when is the local plan and there will be as you mentioned that social housing as well available i just want to know that those social landlord who provide the home for the people affordable home for the people i think so in local plan we should add uh another thing is that they like the parking is a crisis in tower hamlets and all those development going on in tower hamlets underneath their buildings there's a lot of parking space empty it's like uh empty it's not full at all it's not even half i mean less than half parking space they use and left them empty is there in we can use and put that one in effect that those people will be putting in the affordable home they should be provided one car space that's for them okay so um so if i've understood the question correctly you're basically asking that any tenants in affordable housing should be provided with a car parking space under the social homes that are built in this borough should come with the park with a park yeah um so we have uh attempted to add to the wording of the policy and the draft plan um there's a certain there are certain um in terms of looking at the other levels of policy we have to take into consideration the london plan and the mppf and at the london level particularly within inner london there is very much a focus and an emphasis on um looking at more sustainable modes of transport rather than the private vehicles so the effectively the presumption is to be car free in areas with high public transport accessibility levels um what we have done is rather than in our local plans stating so the london plan sets specific amounts of car parking in its policy that are acceptable in different areas of public transport accessibility and for the majority of our borough that is basically the assumption is that new development should be car free completely and it says must not exceed within our draft plan and the policies that we're proposing uh we have slightly uh different wording which says that it must have regard to those london plan um parking standards and the reason being for that exact reason that we recognize that there are affordable or social housing tenants for whom uh that's a kind of important factor so that allows what that does or the intention is for that to then enable when a development management officer is having to make a decision on a case at the point that this plan is adopted to be able to consider all of those factors in the round in coming to an officer recommendation i'm not sure if there's anything to add on that well yeah i suppose just we and the reason we've tried to build this in is because we recognize there are lots of people in social housing who rely on their car particularly for their job and and i think this is a particular characteristic of tower hamlets quite a lot of taxi drivers delivery drivers um who really rely on their cars we recognize there is a need to provide parking in some circumstances and we've tried to enable that but it is worth saying it is an area of contention where we have objections uh from statutory stakeholders who would like us to tighten that up so that's something where it's a good example of where we'll be setting out our local evidence but there will be others who take a different view absolutely okay can i come in again on these issues you need to find a better way to relate it back to the local plan i expect uh that uh yes car free zone we should uh expect that what i'm saying that those people can afford it they can park their current buildings but those people are same building they're living in but those people is like leaseholder or property owner they can have a space underneath the building and they can park their car easily but those people living in the same building but they're living in the affordable rent this is actually look if you're passionate about this let's take this up with highways in public realm it's a public issue this is we're talking about the local plan so this is not quite linking in and i think they've been quite both the officers have been gracious enough to answer the questions but i promise you we'll take it up in an in the right right forum with the right officers this is why because i thought this is not the agenda plan and if it is can be adopted then that we'll put it down for the future when when something in public realm comes up um can i just say thank you very much i think all the councillors have acknowledged all the work that have been put into it and a lot of work by lots of officers over a long period of time i mean this process started when i had a different hat on so that's how long it's taken so thank you so much um appreciate appreciate it and thank you to all our members for their contribution as well thank you good night thank you right to members um so i understand we have received some scrutiny lead updates which have been published and circulated if you're okay um we'll take them as read yeah thank you um apologies chair i missed the deadline uh so i wasn't able to my my scrutiny lead updates were not published um so i chaired the third and final session of my net zero scrutiny review and i followed up with officers regarding my recommendations around flood risk which were approved at our last meeting um and i attended the tower hamlets climate partnership meeting and also briefing about the impact of climate change on tower hamlets thank you and feel free to circulate that if you still want us to see it um right so we haven't received any pre-decision scrutiny questions but is there anyone here that would like me to raise anything in my update tomorrow or do you want to still say nope okay i i take it that committee is happy with that we'll now move on to any forthcoming decisions with the cabinet agenda do members wish to raise anything on this is there anything which members would like added to the committee was work plan um i'm happy to take this to the next i know everyone's tired i can take this to the next committee meeting if that's all right yeah it's just about the forthcoming agenda right so finally is there any other urgent business yes no thank you very much so on that note i just say on the 27th of this month did i miss someone i was couldn't challenge this coming this coming thursday i just wonder there's a lot of councillors willing to to taste food i want to get clarification from the officers before i invite them i want to invite them but am i allowed to invite them i'm not sure yet so this thursday is a acquisition coming up exclusion session yes some of the cancer not on my committee but they did go to the food tester and we're going to discuss that on this thursday so i'll need i'm going to get clarification so those if you do wish to come please do come there's a big session on thursday and then after that there'll be a officer will do the report and publish it will be published in may but there'll be a big session on this coming thursday there were i've never taken five six months on the protocol progress so welcome okay thank you everyone's got your report everyone's seen all the updates well done to all the screwing these for the work you're doing just last thing from me on the 27th of this month we've got our workshop uh you should have a calendar invite and details to follow and then the next or actual uh official ons meeting will be on the 25th of march next month is if there's no other business may i close the meeting thank you very much thank you can i take off the subcommittee sub cabinet committee that was uh i was there last week just to give you an update so thank you you