Transcript

My name's Councillor Hayes, I'm a Councillor in Clerkenwell Ward, and I'll be chairing tonight's meeting. Unfortunately, Councillor Clark is indisposed this evening. Please note that we're not expecting a fire alarm test this evening. So if the alarm is sounded, please follow my instructions and evacuate the building. Please also remember that this meeting is being broadcast live on the Council's website. So if you could turn your microphone on when you're speaking, and then remember to turn it off again when you've finished, that will ensure that everybody can be heard properly on the broadcast and in the chamber. And if you can, remember to speak clearly and directly into your microphone to assist people who are listening. And I'm going to now ask my fellow members and the officers here to introduce themselves, and I will start on my right. I'm Claire Chief, I'm Councillor in Canberra Ward. Councillor James Potts, Councillor for Junction Ward. Councillor Caroline Russell, Highbury Ward. Karen Sullivan, Director of Planning and Development. Barbara Tamska, Inclusive Design Officer in Planning. Yes, would you like to introduce yourselves? Well, thank you. Evening, Dan Lawson, Assistant Director of Civil Protection. Bill Sinfield, Acting Assistant Director of Street Environment Services. Mark Fontaine, Operation Lead for Street Cleansing. Leon Meredith, Borough Wide Services Manager. Good evening, Eshwin Prabhu, the Council's Head of Transport Strategy and Air Quality. And, yeah, finally, Matt Bonamy, Head of Transport Projects. Thank you very much, everybody. And Councillor Nanda. Oh, Councillor Nanda Hill-Rise Wood. Thank you. We've had apologies, I believe, from Councillor Clarke, Councillor Graham, and Councillor Boshman-Coursey has sent apologies for legumes. She's got a previous commitment, but will be joining us later. I don't believe we've got any substitute members here. And are there any, we've moved to declarations of interest. Any declarations of interest? No, that's lovely. Thank you. The next item are the minutes of our previous meeting in January. Can we agree the minutes of the meeting held on the 14th of January? Great. Great. Lovely. Thank you very much. And just to say, it's always great to have members of the public here. So, after we've had presentations, we will take questions from members, and then we will open up each item to any questions from the public. So, there'll be an opportunity for people at that point. The order of business is unchanged from the published agenda. So, the first item is item B1, which is the scrutiny review on cleaner, greener, more inclusive streets, accessibility, and inclusiveness of Islington streets. So, we'll have a presentation from Barbara Tanzker, the Inclusive Design Officer, and Nikki Guy and Emmanuel Beck from Sight Loss Council. I believe we've also received a statement on behalf of Disability Action in Islington that Barbara is going to read, as they've been unable to make it this evening. So, Barbara, when you're ready, thank you. Thank you very much. So, I will start by presenting on the inclusive design and accessibility of Islington streets, and the ways of sort of working within Islington, planning and transport, and sort of various departments involved in those. And there will be slides that sort of accompany the presentation. So, please do sort of consider what's displaying on the screens, and I will also describe whenever there is sort of imagery on the screens. Yeah. So, thank you very much again. Yeah. So, to reiterate, I'm the London's World-Based Inclusive Design Officer. But before we sort of delve into our ways of working, I wanted to start by sort of elaborating slightly around what we mean by inclusive design, since I appreciate this may be considered a sort of technical or jargon term. So, as per our inclusive design and Islington supplementary planning guidance, our understanding of the term is that inclusive design is an approach to design that by placing people at the heart of the design process enhances the quality of our spaces and places, ensures their continuing relevance, and minimizes the need for awkward, costly, and unsightly alteration in the future. And I would like to highlight that this approach is well established in Islington's planning policy, and that includes the statutory local plan, which is the main planning document for Islington, as well as the three supplementary planning guidance covering inclusive design, which is inclusive design, supplementary planning guidance, inclusive design, sorry, inclusive landscape design guide, and the street book SPD, which specifically covers transport and open spaces. And beyond that, I also wanted to highlight that our local plan establishes inclusivity as one of the four key design principles that sort of apply to all development across the borough. And further, the inclusive design SPD establishes four principles of inclusive design as ease of use and versatility, logic, safety, and legibility, places and spaces that are convenient and enjoyable for all to use, so that is such that sort of remove access barriers within the built environment. And it also acknowledges that inclusive design is affected as much by the management of the built environment as well as its physical form. Okay. And to further expand on what we mean by inclusive, I think it's very crucial to highlight for whom we are actually designing. So we know that the Disability Discrimination Act was to some extent replaced and expanded by Equality Act 2010, which is directly referenced in our policy and in our approaches towards inclusivity. And that sort of our approach that we take towards inclusive design expands beyond disability and actually covers a list of protective characteristics as follows. So it's age, disability, and that includes physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. And now sort of moving on to how I work and contribute to inclusive design and how we work as an organization. So my role specifically would be to advise on accessibility in specific projects, both in terms of design outcomes and processes. So I'm on sort of daily basis. I'm based in the planning department. So most of what I do day to day would be commenting on planning applications and negotiating for design improvements within those, both council applications and private development. But I also work very closely with a number of council teams that are responsible for delivering other types of physical infrastructure. So I work with project managers for estate projects, council offices, updates, parks, local businesses, and also obviously streets and transport infrastructure. So that would be the transport department, as well as the pavement licensing teams, advising on design elements, and also connecting project managers with local organizations. For example, such working with blind and partially sighted people, people with reduced mobility, or older residents. I also advocate for strategic planning for inclusivity. And examples of that would include, for example, working with the new build team around understanding demand for accessible housing around the borough a bit better, based on data. Reguing processes for transport planning, which I will obviously get into in a bit more detail within this presentation. And also I'm one of the engagement leads for community wealth building, so I advise project managers on inclusive engagement processes, and have also worked with participation engagement team to produce guidance on inclusive engagement across the council. So that's in terms of this sort of strategic work on inclusive design. And then I also train officers with relevant teams so that they can think about accessibility and inclusive design from day one in their projects. And in the past few months I've worked with capital delivery teams, so that's again the estate projects, so council office projects, project managers. I've also worked with agentile architects and the new build team to train them on community and commercial development, and we've got an upcoming training session on residential development as well. What Karen was quite keen for me to highlight is that actually across London, across all the boroughs, there is only I believe seven or eight boroughs which specifically employ someone in that role, in the sort of equivalent role to mine, and at other councils that role is usually the officer would be called access or accessibility officer. We sort of work quite keen to incorporate inclusive design approach into the name of that role as well. And the role at Islington is funded from income that comes in via planning. Moving on from, actually one more thing that I actually wanted to highlight, moving on that, because I do believe that this sort of transparency is important with this line of work, is that obviously you'd appreciate that a lot of my work includes working or advocating for the needs of disabled people, so I myself do not identify as disabled. However, I grew up with my brother, a younger brother who's got a genetic condition, and that includes both sort of physical disabilities and cognitive. So sort of perspective of lived experience is quite close to my heart, which you'd appreciate. And moving on from sort of my roles and how I work, I think it's really crucial to say that obviously I advise and I am involved in a lot of projects across the councils, but really who delivers accessibility is all teams across the councils, across the council, and in the case of the different streets and open spaces, that is specifically sort of climate change and transport project managers and engineers, obviously sort of with my support. All right, and sort of delving into a bit more detail in terms of how we actually work together around transport and open spaces. So the most direct way in which I would get involved is project-by-project advice on accessibility and inclusive design, and I do that by sitting on the public realm design review panel. Our favorite name, it rolls off the phone beautifully, but it's a panel of sort of peer experts where, again, officers from across different departments can share advice and expertise on various aspects of projects at different levels or stages of development of projects. So we would usually advise at the concept design stage, early design and detailed design. And the experts include urban design, transportation, highways, traffic engineers, green space, transport strategy, sometimes also to our different offices, depending on who would be the most relevant to the specific project. And in terms of what I sort of pay attention to usually for public ground projects would be how different sort of users of various traffic modes interact, safer crossings, pavement clutter, type of surfacing proposed, changes in levels, boundary treatment for planters, so avoiding trip hazards, for example, lighting, availability of seating, accessible play equipment, and licensed seating for businesses. So it's quite a sort of holistic approach and various sort of aspects of inclusivity that we would be looking at. To give an example of a recent project that I've been involved in sort of developing, one of them would be the Malmö open spaces project, where we've looked at greening and living in open spaces across the Malmö local neighbourhood. So here on the slides we've got a sort of screenshot of proposed drawings for Queen Margaret Grove open space, which was a sort of new open space created in a place where previously was like a sort of open streetscape, where we've improved the crossings, carefully placed the greening, new greening proposed, and again paying attention to boundary treatment and how different users of various transport modes will be moving around the space, across the space. We looked at accessible play opportunities and range of seating opportunities also for people of different ages and seating with arm and backrests, so that we see it sort of provides the best opportunities for rest. And specifically for that project, I've also advised on importance of engagement, especially with local schools and community groups in the area, this specific space is located right next to a school. So we sort of highlighted how important it would be to get the school involved in a conversation around how that space would operate. Okay, and moving on to the sort of more strategic, oh sorry, moving on to more strategic types of work with climate change and transport directorate. I've worked with teams on reviewing and making the local neighbourhoods planning processes more collaborative. And then again, we sort of try to, from very early stages in the process, have as many different officers involved as possible and highlight the need for meaningful engagement and routine projects and lived experience. So I would also sort of help connect project managers for specific projects with local advocacy groups and residents who they've experienced. I've been involved in reviewing the bus bypasses process map. We know that bus bypasses have been a type of infrastructure that can sort of negatively impact certain groups, especially groups of protected characteristics. and we have sort of agreed on a process map where the first step is trying to avoid the bus bypass in the first place, then implement a rigid sort of engagement process for those types of infrastructure. And then if it turns out that the teams would still need to go ahead with the bus bypass, make sure that the design that is implemented meets the most rigid design standards implement, sorry, developed by TfL as a sort of mitigation of those negative impacts. I have also been involved in developing the strategic cycle routes and again sort of here advising on engagement with the key stakeholders in the area, key user groups. And as a sort of wider point, advocating for established processes for meaningful recent engagement with an emphasis on engagement with residents with protected characteristics. Okay, and here will be another sort of quick example of a more strategic level type of work around transport and public rail. So this slide is around the neighborhood analysis for Tafna Park and we've got a little map that establishes key features that have been identified in the process, which I'll get to in a second. But again, that was a process where a multidisciplinary team of officers was involved from day one with inclusive design, urban design, heritage, green space and traffic engineers where we built accessibility into the key project objectives and pavement improvements was sort of identified as one of the key priorities in the area. So we mapped out the key sort of traffic and pedestrian routes across the area, identifying priority locations for improvements. We also mapped out community spaces, religious institutions, key transport hubs and shelter housing facilities and obviously beyond understanding on a conceptual level how people would move around between those. I also advise that those key community facilities would be embedded in the engagement plan for those sort of projects which would then lead to landscaping improvements and open space improvements in the area. Okay, and then I'll move on to my final slide and presentation which is around meeting challenges to delivering accessible streets and open spaces as we definitely recognize that we are on a learning curve. So how we sort of address our meeting those challenges is by sharing knowledge and design expertise within the council to ensure key accessibility concerns are considered from early stage design. So again, bringing different officers from different backgrounds together as well as project managers to ensure that by sharing sort of examples and justifications behind inclusive design recommendations that knowledge is shared could also be some formal training to officers. Beyond that, we know that accessibility features are being incorporated into sort of existing or ongoing projects. However, we acknowledge that budgets remain a significant constraint on delivery and especially on delivery of dedicated accessibility work streams. But with this, I would like to highlight that currently there are plans to restart a borough-wide pavement improvement scheme. I have also been involved in early stages of development of the walking, cycling and accessibility action plan to more strategically consider inclusivity in the built environment in relation to public realm. And with that, there will be opportunities for public realm of highways design to be involved in my lived experience through public consultation and through that sort of more strategic level of engagement. And yeah, the final, final point around meeting those challenges is that there are plans to restart the council forum for engagement with people to protect their characteristics and specifically for disabled residents which has been put on pause. So, yeah, on that note, I will sort of finish the presentation. Thank you very much. And yeah, I'll hand over back to the chair, I guess. I'm not sure if we're taking questions now or later. Thank you. I think it might be best to hear all our speakers in this and then take questions after that, if that's okay. Thank you very much, Barbara. Yeah, I don't know who is going first, but yes, if you'd like to introduce yourself, thank you very much. Hi, everybody. Thank you very much for inviting us to be with you this evening. My name's Nikki Guy and I'm the Senior Engagement Manager for Thomas Popkington Trust. We're a national sight loss charity similar to RNIB and Guide Dogs, the difference being much smaller in size and we're legacy funded so we don't have to go out and have the same constraints on fundraising that our peers do. So, like I said, I'm here tonight representing our North London Sight Loss Council and I'm joined with one of my North London volunteers and Islington resident, Emmanuel Beck, who's sitting on my left-hand side. So, sight loss councils are the engagement arm of Thomas Popkington Trust and in London, we have three sight loss councils currently. We have two in South London, one in North London and we're due to expand to have five in total across London and there's 25 approximately across England. Last year, we launched two sight loss councils, about to be three in Scotland and we're working with partners to launch a sight loss council in Wales this year. So, we're growing quite rapidly and I think that it just demonstrates the real need for the work that we do. So, sight loss councils are led by blind and partially sighted volunteers. So, each sight loss council has an engagement manager who looks after two or three sight loss councils and they all have lived experience with sight loss and then we are made up of our blind and partially sighted volunteers. And, basically, what we do is we share our lived experience. We work with service providers, organisations across local communities, on local projects. We team up and work on national projects. basically, just to improve the quality of access to goods and services. And, I think it's always important people sort of, sometimes would be like, oh, another campaigning group or, you know, sometimes there's negative connotations of advocacy and campaigning. But, we're here to have a positive partnership, a positive collaboration. You guys want to have an inclusive borough. We want your borough to be inclusive. So, we know that the only way to do that is actually to have open, two-way conversations and to make that experience as enjoyable for everybody concerned. So, sight loss councils, like I said, one of our national priority areas is our Streets for All campaign, which is why we've been invited here tonight. In 2022, sight loss councils had a Listening Month campaign and 75% of the people we spoke to across the whole of the country told us that the thing that mattered to them the most was accessible streets. Being able to walk out of their front door and to feel safe, to know that actually they could walk outside of their front door and get to wherever they needed to get to. So, as a result of the Listening Month campaign, sight loss councils are working with their local councils to raise awareness of what some of those issues and challenges are blind and partially sighted that people might face. So, barriers, a lot of them are to be expected. Street clutter, so that could be cafe furniture, advertising boards, bin day. I got a cracking photo the other day when I walked out of my front door and, you know, I had to play hopscotch to get in between the bins. It could be street maintenance if there's lots of uneven paving. It could be overhanging foliage. We had a cut it back campaign last year which was a cut it back campaign for us. Sorry, I think I went off. Poorly parked e-bikes and e-scooters, everybody's favourite. Pavement parking. So, they're the kind of things that we work on in our built environment, streets for all campaign. So, I think it's really important to stress, and I'm sure, and preachers to the converted, that we know that social isolation is really high amongst blind and partially sighted people. And, obviously, some of the challenges that I've mentioned can really impact somebody's confidence. It might make them really frightened and too afraid to leave their front door. It takes away their independence, and we know that this can really impact on somebody's mental health. It also means that, actually, they're unable to engage within their community in a way in which that they once might have done if they're new to sight loss. And, I guess, really, it just means that sometimes it means to some people that they're just existing rather than living. And, again, I don't think anybody in this room wants a world where that's the case. So, I'm going to share a little bit more. I'm aware that we've only got five minutes. I'm going to share a little bit more about how we can inform your work and how we would like to work with you guys in the Slington Council. But, I'd like to invite Emmanuel to share some of his personal experience. He is a Slington resident. I've told him he's got a minute, a minute and a half max. But, yes, I want him just to share a little bit of his personal experience and some of the challenges he faces in the Slington. And, then, I'll come back to you and talk about some of our work. Okay. Thank you. Yes, well, being a Slington resident at times, unfortunately, it's not that easy. Like, going out from the doorstep, it can be, you know, an easy journey or a difficult one, you know, and one of the things that I can say is the, from when the LTNs and the School Streets Project came back in, they were introduced, a lot of disabled people were locked in their houses, let's say, like that, because even with the blue badge, you cannot use those streets or you cannot go to your local community or your local GP or your local church, you know, and apart from that, even when you are, you are, you have things delivered, like from Sainsbury's or Morrison, they tell you they cannot come through that road, you know, so, or even if you have food delivered, like with Uber Eats. So, strictly speaking, our community became more isolated because of these challenges. And, another thing is let's say, that's growing ground. the barra or around London, it's traffic lights or pelican lights, which, unfortunately, until about, let's say, eight years ago or so, most of them, they were, they had the sound bleeping when you can cross, but when they were renewed, these pelican lights, most of them, the bleeping sound was removed, although there isn't any other traffic lights in the area. And, that, it's really, really, a downside of things because, from my point of view, last year, I had an accident, not in Slington, but in Camden, but having said that, it was because one of the pelican lights, they removed the bleeping sound, and I was hit from a car and I ended up at the Whittington and I have two permanent fractures in my knee. So, it's, at times, it can be frightening to go out and to try to do your things independently, which, you know, I really cherish independence, you know, where possible, but unfortunately, at times, how things are turning up, my independence is going slowly. Apart from that, there is the problem that, unfortunately, communication, it's very, very limited with different entities within the council and other organisations. One of them, it is because some streets are managed by TFL and other are managed by the council, so we don't know where to communicate with who to call for this issue or for this issue, you know, sort of. We used to have even a bimonthly meetings, ITEC, it was, if I'm not wrong, the group name, which, about 18 months ago, was stopped and that was the only way that we could communicate with different entities within the council and now, I feel that we are really isolated and our grievances or our suggestions, let's say like that, we cannot bring them forward to the council and different entities within the council. I think, okay, thank you. Okay, so, like I said, I've talked to you about some of the ways that we can work with you. So, one of the most popular ways that we, sightless councils across the country, work with the councils is by our simulation spec walks. We have done them in London, so I recently took over the role last summer, but in November we did a sim spec walk with Bondsworth Council, which was featured on Good Morning Britain. My predecessor did a couple of sim spec walks in Camden with the councillors there. But simulation walks, basically, we'll come in and we'll work with the team, so it could be with the councillors, it could be with the engineering team, it could be with the highway team, the planners, and basically we'll give you sort of a quick snapshot into sight loss and some of the conditions and what that looks like, and then we'll teach you briefly how to do some sighted guiding techniques, which again is a great school just to have generally in day-to-day life, and then we have simulation glasses which simulate ten different sight conditions, so in pairs we take you out for a walk which could be anything from about 40 minutes to an hour on a predetermined route and we will just get you to experience some of those challenges first hand. They're not designed to create sympathy in any way, shape or form, but the only way that I think people within the council or whoever we're working with actually will genuinely understand some of those barriers and challenges by walking in our shoes, and so it's really just to sort of highlight some of those challenges first hand. Sightless councils have some brilliant success stories with this. Some of our sightless councils have had councils changing their policies regarding overhanging foliage, so for example my colleague in Merseyside, one of the councils, I think their standard guidance was if it was allowed to be 50% overhanging, but actually they went out on a simulation walk and they're completely changing their policies around that because they're like, wow, that doesn't make sense, why would we allow it to be like at that level? Some of our sightless councils are developing street charters with their local councils. We have people, volunteers and engagement managers sitting on a whole host of variety of forums that deal with the public realm. In Yorkshire, our sightless councils are working with the council to make sure that the retailers who might have street furniture or advertising boards have actually completed an equality impact assessment and just making sure that actually those impact assessments are being monitored. Reviewing proposals which Barbara touched on earlier for floating bus stops for example and I know Emmanuel and my predecessor Lucy which some of you may have met were did have a few conversations, sort of 23, 24 about floating bus stops and working on a redesign of a road here. So the other big, big thing that has been taking up most of London's focus since I started this role is micromobility, everybody's favourite. So last year one of our volunteers in south-west London spearheaded the development of what we've called our e-bike charter and we know basically that abandoned and poorly parked e-bikes are a growing issue in London. Obviously the popularity is increasing and I think it's fair to say that operators and local authorities are really struggling to keep up with that demand. Even the conversation we're having with the operators themselves will say they never expect it to take off how it's taken off. Obviously we all know there's no regulation currently on e-bikes and we welcome the government's commitment in December, the white paper to empower TfL and others to regulate e-bikes micro-mobility in the capital but obviously that's going to take some time. So whilst we're waiting for this legislation we have developed an e-bike charter because something needs to happen in the interim. It's great that this legislation is going to come through but the next two, three years or however long it's going to take to come through they're still going to grow in popularity, it's still going to be an issue for all sorts of people not just VI people. So we are encouraging operators and boroughs to work with us to improve some of the e-bike issues and just basically the main one would be around appropriate parking and making sure that they're not abandoned. So Lime were our first signatory, they signed up with us last year and spoiler alert we're announcing Forest as our second signatory tomorrow which we're thrilled about. We've got a meeting with TfL later this week and hopefully we'll get them on board. We're looking to work with London councils who are going to become a supporter of our charter and then we're basically going to go out to boroughs across the whole of London and ask the boroughs to sign the charter, be on our website as a signatory and work with us on the issue. I know that you've got a presentation about Lime afterwards so that would be really interesting to listen to. I know that you guys in Islington do follow hybrid policy so we really would, it's something we would be really keen to discuss with Islington further and perhaps you guys could be our first signatory, our first borough signatory, who knows. So we would really love to have more in depth conversations with you outside of this forum. If you've got any questions I can have my details shared, Emma can share my details with you and yeah we'd really really welcome the opportunity to just have a conversation with you, like I said, and work with you guys in a positive way just to actually make sure that the borough is the best it can be. Thank you. Thank you very much to all our speakers and to Emanuel for sharing some of the frustrations and one of the points of this committee should be that we look at how exactly, how we can make sure that things are best that they can be. So I'll take questions. We just have a statement from disability action. Oh, thank you very much Emma. I understand Bob is going to read out the statement from disability action in Islington and then we'll take questions from members. That's right, thank you. So the statement has been submitted by Phil Stevens who is the chair of disability action in Islington. So statement from disability action in Islington to Islington Council Scrutiny Committee ensuring truly inclusive streets and open spaces for disabled people. Disability action in Islington welcomes the opportunity to address the Scrutiny Committee on the urgent issue of accessibility within our borough streets and open spaces. From a disabled person's perspective, our public spaces remain far from inclusive with numerous physical and systemic areas preventing us from moving freely, accessing green spaces and fully participating in community life. Despite some engagement within our community, the social model of disability, which recognises that disability is created by barriers in society rather than individual impairments, is still not meaningfully embedded within Islington Council's approach to planning and policy. Too often, decisions about the built environment are made without disabled people being involved from the outset, leading to spaces that fail to meet our needs and in some cases actively exclude us. While there has been consultation with disabled residents, it is frequently at later stages of decision making, rather than at the beginning, when our lived experiences could help shape and inform inclusive design. Meaningful co-production, where disabled people are equal partners in the planning and design of our streets, parks and public spaces, is still lacking. As a result, significant barriers remain, such as uneven pavements, obstructive street furniture, inadequate step-free access, access to public toilets, changing places and poor wayfinding. If Islington is to be a truly inclusive borough, disabled people must not be an afterthought in planning and development. We urge the Council to commit to embedding the social model of disability across all policies and practices and to ensure that co-production within our community is standard practice in every decision affecting access to public spaces. We call on the scrutiny committee to take these concerns seriously and to work with us to create an Islington that is accessible to all from the outset, not as an afterthought. Phil Stevens' disability action is in there. Is it okay if I sort of very briefly in a way respond to these two sentences or not really? If it's very brief, I'm conscious at the time and then you're not to mention, thank you. So just sort of in relation to the references to the social model of disability which was recalled in this statement. So it is a model that sort of describes barriers to access barriers built into the dangerous environment, the physical infrastructure and I have actually referred back to our policies around it and I must admit that none of our policy explicitly refers to social model of disability. However, all of them, so local plan, inclusive design SPD, inclusive landscape design guide and the street book SPD, all of them very clearly defined access barriers as barriers within the physical environment and the policies very clearly all four of those documents. sort of indicate that the main aim of it is exactly designing out those barriers. So I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. We'll move to questions from members. Councillor Russell. Thank you. And first of all, really amazing to hear that Islington has someone in that accessibility role because I think that's a really important step. And just, so I'm going to start with a question for you, Barbara, and then I've got a question for Emmanuel. So, Barbara, I'm just wondering if you also think about neurodiversity within the sort of spectrum of disabilities that you're looking out for, and my other question had been going to be about co-production and the point at which you're reaching out to disabled Islington residents to be able to contribute to schemes because certainly it's something I've heard over and again, that frustration at being involved too late in the process. So, I just wondered if you could say something about that. And then my question for Emmanuel. There's a rotating cone underneath the push button thing. I know they don't always work and they sometimes get knocked off and there's a process with Transport for London to get them replaced. But I had heard that there was a problem with the audible sound with pedestrian crossings because it can be confusing if there's different bits of the road that need to be crossed, which is why they moved to the rotating cone that was a physical thing that you could feel rather than having the audible sign. And I just wondered if that was, if, yes, if you had any thoughts about that. Do you want to go first and then, yeah. Yes, yes, about the cone, we know about it. The point is this, at times with my white stick to arrive near the pole where there is the push button, it's, you know, it's not easy with people there, et cetera. If it is the bleeping sound, I'm not saying when there is a junction, so there will be different traffic lights which are, you know, going to go in the same way, you know, sort of. It's like, to give an example in Upper Holloway where there is the station, it's just one single traffic lights, you know, that it had the bleeping sound before and, as I said, when it was replaced, they left it off, you know. And then there is another one in Killick Street that is the same, you know. And one of the problems is that when it's, let me talk about Holloway Road, you know, that I know that it's a TFL road, but just to give an example, in the area near Nyxeth where there is Argos and et cetera, you know. what they did is, they did the traffic lights, they don't go straight opposite each other, they just go to the middle of the road and then you go, for example, two meters left or two meters right and you continue to cross, so there will be two sets of lights. Now, perhaps for, you know, beauty, let's say, like that or, you know, to give another sense of navigation for the street, it can be nice, let's say like that, but for visually impaired or blind people, if it is just a straight road, you know, to cross, you know, without going left and right, one, it will be one traffic light. So, you can do the, you can introduce the bleeping back. So, although you have the rolling, as you said, the comb underneath the push button, that's good, but when you leave the pavement, you are on your own without the comb. So, you don't know how many seconds you have to cross the road. At times, I begin to panic, I try to hurry up, but it can come out that, or I am bumping into people, you know, sort of or a pram coming opposite me, you know. So, if there is the bleeping, when I am crossing the street, you know, it's another, you know, sign how much I have to hurry, if it makes so, like, at times the traffic lights, they have the numbers, like countdown numbers, which for me, it's dub and dutch, because I cannot see them, but instead of having the countdown numbers, if there is the bleeping sound, it can help me throughout my journey, let's say, like that. But the problem is that we don't know where to call when something breaks down, even the comb, it's broken or something. Unfortunately, that lack of communication, where we cannot, you know, sort of bring forward our suggestions, is very difficult. I appreciate that all those people that are around the table taking decisions, they do them to the best of their knowledge and they do them to the best of their practice. But when you come, you know, sort of in the wider community, it can be a different, you know, area of understanding, you know. I hope that... Can I just add something? Sorry. I think Emmanuel pretty much covered it. And we're lucky we do have a very good relationship as service counsellors to TfL. And we are, Emmanuel said, obviously some are TfL roads, some are borough roads, which is great. TfL, to your point about changing the crossings because of the junctions and it being confusing, that's the response that TfL also gave us about it. And I guess in the decision making, there has been some sense to that. I think on that, I think it just kind of demonstrates how important it is always to consult with people with the lived experience and to communicate that change because actually, rather than just making that decision, who did people, who did TfL or a borough, not necessarily yourself, but who did they consult with? Did they go and get that lived experience? Did they get a person, and not a sighted person at work to RMIB or dive dogs, but actually somebody who is living with sight loss, and actually ask them what their opinion is. Do they find it confusing if they're crossing a junction and you've got conflicting beeping? I don't think that they probably would. And like, Emmanuel was in really bad shape last year by being hit by this car. And so I think that's the thing. And from our work, the first meeting I ever had with the chap at Wandsworth Council, the first thing he said to me was, he said, every single thing that we do in our engineering team, we go back and be like, what would the sight loss council say about that? Because they went out with the volunteers in south-west London, they tried on some sim specs before we did our walk with them, and things that their guidance, their standard guidance had told them was right, things that they thought were, like the curbs or whatever, whatever it was, things that they thought that they were doing the best thing, as soon as they went out with the volunteers and put on a pair of glasses, they're like, oh no, that's completely wrong. And I think that's just a testament to itself. Thank you. So, yeah, I'll address the question on neurodiversity first. So yes, it is definitely one of the considerations in our project, and I think I'll bring up two examples of that. One will be sort of probably a bit more implicit. So we look at, especially with bigger transport schemes, you would look at activity levels on the street, and try to avoid sort of too much activity and too much pavement pattern, especially around like junctions, which obviously can be causing distractions or, yeah, sort of creating that feeling of less safety or comfort to neurodiverse people. And the other one will probably be a bit more explicit with especially considerations for people with dementia, which I believe does have come under that neurodiversity. So whenever we're considering putting any sort of colourful features on pavements, which some of councillors would have been involved in those discussions about colourful crossings, or even within the school street projects there have been proposals for putting thermoplastics on either the roads or the pavement surfaces, we very clearly sort of review where these are placed, if they're appropriate for the location at all, and we always place them in a way that they are, that nobody's sort of forced to step on them if they are ever put in specific locations to sort of let people avoid either a feeling of they're stepping over something that they're not exactly sure what that might be, either creating a living of level change or an illusion of something sitting, something on a pavement surface when it's not there. So these would be examples of sort of considerations where neurodiversity is relevant to public ground projects. And in terms of the stages at which engagement happens, if that's the right, I might ask colleagues from Transport to actually come in and help sort of provide an answer. So I'm not sure if Mark or Ashwin you'd like to come in, but, yeah. Thank you, Barbara. Just in terms of the transport group that was mentioned, ITAC, that's now with my team, and we're looking into restarting these in the summer. We're just in the process of putting together how to do this and how best to engage, what is best practice. Once we've overcome that, then we hope to be underway and have regular meetings going forward. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there other questions from members? Thank you. Councillor Boston-Courget. Thanks, Chair. I know you quoted in your report, and it's a really good report, by the way, thank you, about the Equality Act and what it defines, et cetera. And I'm just wondering, within your team, are you guys sort of maybe going to look at the cultural side of maybe developing future plans going forward? So I think sometimes the Equality Act is sort of hit and miss a little bit, and I think as a borough, because we've got this equal fairness, I'm just wondering, is there any plans in how you're going to break down that cultural approach to plans coming forward with the scheme? Thank you. I mean, in terms of the sort of more strategic policy updates, I can say that updating our inclusive design policy is definitely on the agenda for the upcoming years at this point, but months as well, when we'll start to look at updating that guidance. And as a part of that project, there will be quite a sort of large-scale engagement process, and even planning that engagement process will include reaching out to various teams across the councils, and across the council they'll definitely be very keen to make sure that we include as many sort of groups following up from practice. Thank you. If I may just ask a question myself. So it was welcome to hear that there's plans to restart a borough-wide pavement improvement scheme. I'm very conscious that in lots of parts of the borough there are some brilliant pavements that have been widened, that are really easy to use, but quite often on the same street there are some which are very, very uneven and very difficult for a whole range of residents to manage. Could you tell us what the timetable for that is? Thank you. Yep, I think I might ask Matt. Hi, Matt Monony, Head of Transport Projects. So in this coming financial year, we will be restarting what we had previously called the People-Friendly Pavements Program, which we have putting together both a strategic program to help prioritise where the locations of most need are, as well as referencing the great work that's been done by the Access Able team. We've done a number of reports across the borough to show us where the key locations are. You know, this includes everything from missed drop curbs to tree subsidence through to, you know, just wobbly pavements, all small but meaningful improvements, which will go a really long way. Our hope is that we will start to see changes happen almost immediately because they are relatively small fixes. We've got some budget put aside for this program in my Transport Projects budget code. So, yeah, hopefully by summer we'd hope to see some small improvements. Obviously we can't do the whole borough instantly. There's a lot to do. So, yeah, hold your breath. It's coming. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Amanda, yeah. Thank you for those presentations. It's really great to hear from all of you about the work that's being done to make work with the council and make this more inclusive. On council policy specifically, just wondering about two things. One, is there anything that we do to link funding and projects to inclusivity? Like, do we look across where the biggest barriers to access are and think about how we can prioritise funding? I'm thinking in particular of access issues that I let out in my world, which is a big issue for accessibility and other similar issues across the same turn. And then secondly, just wondering if you can be placed anything on techniques that you use to engage across the community and make sure you're reaching all groups, including people who don't normally respond to council consultations. Sure. So, in terms of the first question, what sort of employed to ensure that the funding matches the greatest need, I think I will again ask colleagues in Transport to come in in a second. But on sort of my side of things, in terms of ensuring that results or conclusions from engagement of residents is translating, I can sort of reassure that I do report on conclusions from even, you know, individual workshops back to management within planning and then also within transport in the ways that we're working together. On the most sort of structured approach to the transport programme, I think, potentially, I'm not sure if Ashwin or Matthew would be the best place to approach this. In terms of the methodologies for engagement for specific events, I must say that this is definitely a learning curve for the council. But sort of speaking from experience of organising a couple of recent engagement projects, the way we try to go about it is reach out to our obviously existing sort of network of contact and established with groups, advocacy groups, I would reach out to adult social care, who have got their own networks, we would include information in local newsletters, and some recent recommendations that we have also received would be to go directly to, I will also say, at any temperature that comes up, I would look into the sort of most local relevant stakeholders, so like community centres, health centres, but more recently suggestions have been coming up to also try to reach out to reach out to those facilities in person, so bring up posters or leaflets, rather than only try to reach people via email, for example, and I do think that this is probably something we can, we can improve on, but yeah, I'll sort of hand over to transport colleagues. Me again. Yes, I guess the question was specifically, councilor Lander, was around how accessibility and funding is linked, essentially to make the best use of our funds. So, we don't necessarily have a kind of direct equation or algorithm to do this, but what we really do in every opportunity of every project is look for where we can leverage funding to deliver more. So, really good examples of this are when we deliver some of our cycle wave programs, which are funded by TFL, is how can we leverage that funding to get additional improvements that were maybe not necessarily cycling related. So, you know, looking at if we're installing cycle wave, for example, on the C50 corridor up in the north of the borough, we looked at how we could actually pick up a whole range of missing tactiles within that same project, how we could look at changing some of the tree plots to remove some of the subsidence that the trees are creating, all catalyzed by the cycling project and the cycling funding, but actually delivering a lot more wider value than just changes to cycling. So, just one example of how we try to bring more bang to the buck when we can. Thank you. Very, very quick. I've seen one more question as well. I think I just wanted to highlight that, obviously, as I sort of highlighted for the presentation, since inclusive design would feed into the development of specific projects, exactly the process that Matt described will happen when within already identified projects within the transfer program, we try to maximize how inclusive we can make the environment in question. But as I said, I think historically, there's been, sometimes we have struggled to, because of funding, sort of shortages to identify programs specifically centered accessibility and that's, I think that's why it's great that the pavement improvement program will now be restarting. And I also do believe that through restarting the resident group that Eshwin mentioned, there will be more opportunities to actually for inclusive design that will be sort of fed back directly from people of little experience and advocacy groups representing people of little experience. Thank you. Thank you. I've just seen Councillor Champion would like to come in as well. Well, just in relation to Councillor Nanda, I mean, it's also the housing team looks accessibility on and into sort of around housing estates as well. So, it's not just the team here that deliver that, it's also the housing team we're looking at as well. Thank you. Councillor Potts. Thank you, Chair. And just a very brief one from me, I think, actually, Councillor Chamberlain's already hinted at it. So, one of the things that you mentioned was around the training of different council offices and within different teams. I just wondered, kind of, have you been successful in going around all of the sort of, you know, core teams that would interact with this agenda? And obviously, if not, is there any sort of other ones to do? And then sort of thinking more widely in terms of the whole organisation, then I think it's no harm in sort of running a training session for everybody, for example. And then you might get different teams also come along who are interested and then they might also learn something. So, I think just around sort of the wider culture change within the council, I think it's just something that I'm particularly interested in. So, yeah, I think on that would be great. So, I have, even in the recent months, and we sort of tried to make it a bit of a regular sort of training as well, I have worked with offices and planning. So, there will be planning applications teams that are minor applications team. I've also worked with new builds team and Eastington Architects, as well as the capital delivery projects. So, capital delivery are project managers, managing projects, and on estates, parks, council offices, community centres, so community infrastructure. We haven't done specifically training sessions for transport officers at this stage. However, we have been sort of incorporating inclusive design into updating processual guidance and design guidance within those teams. But, yeah, that is still a work in progress. Thank you very much. At this point, I'm going to ask if there's any public questions on this topic. If not, can I thank you very all very much for coming to the committee. I've made a note to myself and our liaises with the clerk and with Councillor Clark on the offer of the simulation walks to see whether that's something that we could take up. So, I'd like to thank everybody for your time. We've spent quite a bit of time on it, but it has been. It's a really important issue, and it was great to hear from everybody. So, thank you very much for your time. Thank you. You're very welcome to stay and listen, if you would like to, to our next topic, which will be Dr. Cycles in Eastington. But if you wouldn't mind moving so that the next round of speakers can come to the front. Thank you very much indeed. So, I think we're starting with Eshwin, I think, and then we will be hearing from Jack from Linebikes and Alex from Forest Bikes. Lovely. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Whenever you're ready, Eshwin, thank you very much. So, yes, we're going to have presentations in order now on Dr. Cycles. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Apologies from David Shammong, who can't make it this evening, so I'm afraid you'll start quickly. Anyway, I will dive straight in. So, I'm here to talk about the council's approach to cycle hire, and I'm delighted that I'm joined with Jack and Alex as well from Linebikes and Forest to present their items as well. So, in terms of what the council is doing, in terms of hire bikes, they form an important part of our transport strategy objectives to encourage active travel and to help contribute reductions in emissions. So, they're part of our policy in terms of how we're making the change over to sustainable transport. But, obviously, the growth, the huge growth in recent years has been quite problematic and led to problems with badly parked bikes. So, I'll come on to that. So, the presentation will also cover our two main solutions for how we're dealing with that, which is the introduction base, and then also strengthening our agreements and the way we work with the operators. And then I'll touch on a little bit about the longer-term solutions, things that are coming up, I think that was mentioned earlier in terms of the legislation that's coming. So, a bit of background, just to set the scene, back in 2010, you'll recall, TFL started a bike hire scheme, hugely popular, really welcomed, and our mailbags pretty much after 2010 were full of people asking when is it going to be expanded, when are we going to get more of this. These docked stations that TFL were delivering were really expensive. We've been recently looking at what it would cost to implement more of them, and they're between £75,000 and £120,000 per bay because they involve kit being installed. So, they are very, very expensive, whereas hire bikes, obviously, they've had a much lighter footprint, and rolling those out has been less expensive. So, the hire bike started in 2018, an app-based hire bike, all legal, but there was no framework around licensing the operation of those hire bike companies. So, they are able to operate, and the borough adopted an approach where we've worked collaboratively with the operators. We've got agreements called memorandums of understanding, along with 18 other boroughs in London, so we're not unique in that respect, to try and understand how we can improve their operation. Just thinking about the policy, hire bikes are a great contributor to our objectives as a council. They help to meet demand, as I've mentioned, from the TFL scheme, that once the opportunity was there for people to start hiring bikes, it really became a much more practical solution for people to use as a form of transport. So, it is a positive in that respect. It helps support active travel. I know that some of these hire bikes are powered, but nevertheless, there's evidence to suggest that the pedalling part of it is a form of activity, and that people do tend to go for longer journeys when they use hire bikes, electric hire bikes. So, there is that element, too. It seems to lead to more active travel. There's a reduction in congestion and emissions contribution that this form makes, which is also our objective in terms of the transport strategy. They're very positive. And as well as our climate action ambitions as well. So, it's really important that we achieve our goals for net zero. And there's an affordable element to this as well, in terms of it being convenient and easy to use and affordable. So, for those on lower incomes, it's an option. However, obviously, the growth has led to issues. I mean, you can see it's quite stark there, really, in the graphic that's up there, the table that's up there, about how quickly this has grown in terms of popularity. We're looking at six million rides this year. It's going to double what it was the year before that, and it seems to be doubling every year. So, this is huge. And, obviously, any issue is then amplified, any issue around bad parking, you know, even if it's a small number of people, is then amplified with a number of journeys that are being made. We're well aware that this has an impact on people's ability to travel independently. That's one of our objectives in the transport strategy as well, that we want to really encourage people to be able to travel independently. So, it's really important that we get on top of this. And, of course, our whole Liveable Neighbourhood Programme as well is helping to kind of persuade people that using bikes and cycling from place to place in Islington is much more easy to do now, and as we roll out more Liveable Neighbourhoods, easier and easier. So, the importance of not having a licensing or legal framework is really crucial in terms of what powers the council has, and what we can do to regulate how hire bikes work. There were plans back in 2019 to bring in a bylaw. That didn't go very far. It involved all 32 London authorities agreeing and getting ministerial approval. That proved to be very difficult. But we're delighted that there's been an announcement in the white paper that legislation will come, and that will give us a framework from which we can work within with TFL. So, we've approached the memorandum of understanding the collaborative approach to work with the operators, and I'll go into a bit more detail about the memorandums and understanding what's in them. And in addition, we have our regular meetings with both the operators and are pretty much in daily contact, really, with their teams when the issues do come up. So, these are the ways that we work with them. Just in terms of the solutions, one of the key things that we've noticed from conversations with other boroughs and seeing what their experience is, that a bay network is really important, a parking bay network is really important if we're going to begin to get on top of the problem of badly parked bikes. These parking bays are places where you can start and complete your ride. So, that means that obviously it's contained within the bay. The other boroughs that we've spoken to have said that this is effective at helping to tackle the problem. It's not a complete solution, but it does go a long way to helping. We rolled out a pilot back in January 2024 of 10 bays just to see as a proof of concept how it might work. It worked well. And since then, we've rolled out another 78 bays. And we have our plans to roll out a network of 250 bays later this year to cover the entire borough and to really start to tackle this issue. Those 250 bays will be rolled out in three stages. And we've started in the south of the borough, in the most busy parts, with some hot spots. And as the year progresses, we'll gradually move northwards to bring in these other bays. They'll be in three phases at the moment. And there may well be needs for us to come back. After we've installed this and monitored how it's working, we may well have to come back and identify gaps and think about how we can build up the network to cover any emerging problems. The other thing that we've been working on is how we can use our agreements with our operators, work collaboratively to strengthen the restrictions on how users use the bikes and how they behave, in effect, what their parking behaviour is. So, for example, in our new strengthened agreements, we've got standards on removals for obstructively parked bikes and now asking our operators to intervene within 90 minutes of being informed of them. We're bringing in proposals to restrict when maintenance and moving the bikes around takes place because those happening in antisocial hours can really disturb residents. And, of course, looking at how we can help deal with the particular influx of bikes on match days around Arsenal or other events. We'll be looking to see what offers we can give to those with lower wages to give them better access and also working with the operators to make sure that London Living Wage applies to their organisations. So, just in terms of the last slide now. So, in the coming months, we're going to see a change in Islington as the new bays are rolled out and as users transition to those bays and realise that they need to start and end their journeys within those bays. So, the next few months, we'll see that change come in. We'll need to keep an eye on those bays, as I've said. We're going to need to monitor them to make sure they're working and see if there are any gaps in the provision. We're going to continue to work with TFL as well. We may have seen an announcement in the media about how TFL's looking at enforcement. We're interested in how they're going to go about working with the operators to look at any issues around stations and around sort of particularly busy areas and hopefully no need for enforcement because there will be plenty of things that the operators can do to make sure that that's well managed. But in the longer term, the London-wide approach, I think, is welcomed for TFL to bring forward some pan-London agreement or arrangement and maybe licensing is the best option. That seems to be the initial indication from the DFT on how this is going to go, which will give us better abilities to regulate the use of the iobates. That is all from me. So thank you. Jack. Thank you very much indeed. As with the previous topic, I think probably for purposes of time it would be best to move to have all our speakers before we open up to questions. So I think it's Jack from LimeBike will be next. Thank you. Thanks, Jack. Can you hear me? I will try not to take too much time so you can ask some questions. Just to come back on three of the points raised, Lime is a London Living Wage Employer and accredited member from there's Good Work Standard. On the Arsenal matchday's point, we recently had a couple of meetings recently that Lime has shared all the data that we have showing how usage works around the Emirates on match days and offered to build appropriate and sufficient parking to manage that and offered to deploy staff to manage that on match days. We're waiting for, ideally, Arsenal to agree to providing some space or space to be provided as part of the parking suspensions. I don't know if Alex will be keen to work. We work collaboratively with event management plans. On the TfL stations point, yeah, all TfL land and TfL stations are now no parking zones. Users can't end their trip there. The impact of that is clear and obvious in that if lots of people are trying to get to the tube, they will park as close as they can to the tube station. That is there for now on Borough land. So people don't change how they get around. They're still cycling because demand has grown expedites, as we've seen. But it's created additional pressure on Borough land. We are working with TfL and offering to fund as much parking as possible on their network. But anything that we can do with yourselves to accelerate that process would be really helpful because the situation is difficult close to big stations due to the demand patterns we're seeing. If we could move to the next slide, please. Oh, is it on me? That one. Thank you. This may be again. There we go. And yeah, basically, as I touched upon a second ago, I want to ensure that we give sufficient time for every question that members might have. I wanted to focus just briefly on three points that they roll out. The issues that we've identified in the improvements that we're making and the London Action Plan that we recently announced a few weeks ago. We're really proud of how much of a contribution we're able to make and it's into your ambitious targets on mode shift and active travel. Recent surveys we've done find one in ten of our users are moving away from cars to use our services and one in five of our users hadn't cycled before in London. Therefore, that's the part that we see ourselves being able to play as part of your transport strategy in addition to the fact that one in three trips are linked to other forms of public transport. So, first and last mile particularly in the north of the borough where there's less density of public transport options. And yet, the issues are well known and clear and we want to be transparent about that. The lack of mandatory parking areas in high usage parts of the borough in contrast to neighbouring boroughs has led to issues with problematic parking and as we've seen the first phase of the bay network is set to go live any day now. We're just waiting for the green light. The demand, I think, the representative from the site lost council has outstripped any projection that we could have made for year on year doubling of growth. Our response to that is to reinvest back in our service. We've just announced a £5 million fund to build more parking in order to match that demand. We want to ensure that a large chunk of that is spent in Islington. We want to work with counter championing teams to push that through. And then thirdly, the enforcement point. Previously, the enforcement was retrospective in the sense that if a user part non-compliantly, the photo that they shared in the GPS at their trip end would, you know, they would be fined retrospectively. We've invested and focused on making that a live system that we're currently rolling out. About a third of London users have it on their app now. It's called Capture. It's an AI system whereby basically if you're trying to end your trip, the photo and the app will say you can't park here or you're parking obstructively and move your bike, go to the nearest parking location, move your bike out of the way, et cetera. So, you know, it's the early days of that rollout and obviously the model will become smarter with the more data and the more usage that it receives. but that's a big shift in addition to the parking bay rollout that we're confident will, you know, really drive some improvements that we need to see. And just briefly on the action plan, we've increased our Islington team by eight. So on any given day, there's between 25 and 30. Staff working in Islington, that's both tidying vehicles and removing them. So through a collection of on-street ranges on foot and on bikes and ranges using cargo bikes and EVANS to redistribute vehicles and the patrols are focused as we've heard in the south of the borough where we see a huge amount of inflows, particularly from commuters in the morning. and so the challenge is redistributing that demand back out, essentially. And that's the same challenge that we have in the City of London and in Camden and in Westminster with the similar uses patterns. We've covered the GPS and the N-trip photo. So in the interest of time and yeah, the £5 million parking infrastructure fund, the total plan investment is £20 million which is, you know, a sizable investment and we're, you know, focused on being a long-term partner. The delivery of the parking infrastructure comes with a significant sort of capital investment. I want to be as open and transparent about that as possible including, you know, direct feedback on any areas in your wards et cetera. You know, please work with us to ensure that that money is going where it's most needed because you're the, you know, the eyes and ears on the ground. And then very finally, you know, Islington is a very, very pro cycling borough and that's why it's so great to, you know, work with officers and councillors here. We're, as part of, you know, trying to promote cycling more generally we've recently announced a quarter of a million pound fund in partnership with London Cycling Campaign. So I guess this is just a bit of a plea. If there are organisations such as the Pedal Power Cycling Club which works with young people in the borough with disabilities, Cycle Sisters, Wheels for Wellbeing, if there are other organisations that are promoting active travel and cycling particularly for, you know, underrepresented groups or people with different access needs, please let me know. We'd be really keen to ensure that we can, you know, reinvest some of the revenue that we're earning through, you know, the popularity of our service back into those sorts of partnerships. But yeah, and let me know there's anything missing or anything more that you need but in the interest of time I will stop talking. Thank you very much and now we're here from Alex. Great, thank you. Hi everyone, I'm Alex Berwyn, I'm the Head of Policy at Forest. There are just a couple of, I'll try and make this brief as well in case you don't know who we are and see where the other Dockers Bike e-bike operator in Islington. Our whole reason for existing is essentially to make cycling accessible to as many people as possible and to make our cities more pleasant and healthier places to live in. Quick snapshot of the team there, obviously you see myself there and Dom next to me we're sort of running the day-to-day engagement with Islington and it's so far having very, very plent of conversations about the next stage of our relationship which is obviously the Bay is going live any day now. Quick snapshot on Forest and why we're different and so essentially we are, we say we're the most affordable and the most sustainable e-bike operator in Islington. We offer all of our users 10 minutes of free cycling every single day and we also are 100% electric. Our entire servicing fleet is electric and it is powered with 100% renewable energy. That 10 minutes free that I mentioned just now it means that just last year alone we gave away over 6 million free minutes of cycling in Islington and that equates to around 1.6 million pounds that we've essentially given away to people in Islington for using our service and just lastly on our sustainability point the real differentiated for us is that we offset all of our scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions so we're keen to not leave a footprint on the city on the planet by operating we're here to make things better not necessarily worse. A little bit more detail on this if you're interested we are B-Course certified where all of our stats are validated we have an annual sustainability report our next version is actually coming out in a few weeks time we'll obviously share that with the committee if that will be of interest which goes into a lot of granular detail around our operations and our emissions and specifically around our scope 3 emissions which is where we see the bulk of our emissions. The really interesting part that we do is we have a big focus on repair and reuse that extends all the way to our operations as well so as you can see there 70% of our components on the bike end up being repaired if we don't throw it away and end up having to order more from overseas which obviously costs time and ends up costing emissions as well and at the bottom there you can see 35% of our riders would have taken a journey on a motor vehicle and that's using data from COMO which is the National Micromobility Representative Body again we can share more details on that after the conversation if that be of interest. Just on Islington specifically like what's been mentioned already we have seen enormous growth in the number of trips being taken on forest in Islington. Islington is actually the first borough we launched in and we are a London based business we are only in London and back in 2021 we launched for the first time in Islington so we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the borough. Similar to the scale that Lyme has we are seeing month-to-month doubling of trips last year reaching record numbers we essentially can't really keep up with the level of demand sometimes in total last year we saw well over a million trips and 93,000 unique users in Islington alone so that is quite remarkable and it's only getting bigger as well we are expecting to see even bigger numbers this year and as a result of that obviously there are issues but we have been focusing and we'll comment a little bit more we are committed to making things better we are seeing a decrease in the percentage of complaints per trip so around about 0.1% of rides end up in a complaint in London in total now still we want that number to come down even further and still not good enough but we are hoping obviously in Islington the move towards this hybrid parking approach will help reduce some of that the level of complaints in the near future a quick snapshot on our users the writing is a little bit small so sorry about that but we are keen for us to eventually reach gender parity amongst our users so at the moment around 30% of our users identify as female we would like to see that at 50% and we are doing a number of initiatives throughout this year and next year to try and meet that target we set ourselves to be our target at the end of 2026 to get gender parity across our users and yeah lastly just on this 63% of our female users when they surveyed said they use e-bikes at least once a week and that actually compares to just 12% of women nationally across the UK so we are seeing Dr C bikes as an enabler as a gateway to getting more women in particular to cycle more which is great to see on our action plan so we've made a number of commitments to make things better in London and specifically in Hissington key things to point out here are we're doubling the number of dedicated guardians which are the on-street operational resource team who go around and essentially tidy up the bikes remove them where they shouldn't be take them back to the warehouse when they're broken or need to be cleaning and we're also doubling the number of vans that are going to be out and about again for people to take the bikes back to the warehouse or move them to other parts of London where they are going to be needed for later in the day or later in the morning and similar to Lime as well we actually also use Captor which is a piece of artificial intelligence which we have inbuilt into our app so it can detect at the end of the ride when you're taking a photo whether that bike is being parked in a way that is irresponsible or should be disruptive to other road users so if it's blocking a dropped curb blocking a door on a double yellow line even it can flag that to the user and nudge them to repark and to park more responsibly and we're also going to be running out a range of behavioural change initiatives so we send already quite a lot of CRM emails to our users to remind them about best ways to use the service highway codes a big focus for us in the coming year actually is reminding people about the highway code and what responsibility that cyclists have to also abide by the laws of the road not jumping red lights things like that and we're also going to be trialling some new technology which will essentially incentivise customers to if there's a bike that is in a parking zone or somewhere that shouldn't be in the red zone on that photo there it will give them discounted pricing so essentially encourage users to go get bikes in areas it shouldn't be and hopefully obviously ride them away to somewhere that they can park that was it sorry that was very quick but I just wanted to leave enough time for questioning thank you all very much indeed and the figures on the increase in use were really I hadn't seen those figures before were very startling and it shows some of the issues I am conscious that we've got another substantive topic but I'm also conscious that this is an issue that a lot of residents raise I'm going to propose to take questions in rounds of three to try and avoid to try and speak up to get as many people in as possible so I'll start this side I can see Councillor Potts Councillor Nanda Hi guys thank you for the presentations and really great to have you here with us today to raise these issues because obviously it is something that has sort of exploded in the last two three years and obviously that's particularly fundamentally a good thing but there are sort of teething issues while we sort of get this right I sort of walk around Archway particularly on match days and there are quite a lot of line bikes and forest bikes started about so there is some positives here in terms of the fact you're working with Arsenal to address those issues that's obviously sort of the music there is of residents and particularly obviously given the previous presentation from sight loss councils it's really important that you are taking those steps to address that which is particularly positive and a few little things for me in terms of the number of bikes that are lost and social behaviour because I know that sometimes the trackers you have do get ripped out of them and you hear them clicking away as they sort of go down the street I'm just curious as to how many of them end up like that and what is your process for recovering them when that does happen and obviously just in terms of the more number of bikes in your fleet what's the percentage increase in that look like and we've talked a lot about trips but how many actual bikes are there because you know if you're increasing them by you know say they've gone from 100 to say 1000 as an illustrative example you're obviously flooding the streets with these bikes but then if there's nowhere to park them that has obviously led to a lot of the issues that residents have raised with us and then a question for Eshwin from the council's perspective just around the understanding of why it came from the south of the borough first I mean you've got two councils for up to things north of the borough but I think a better approach would have been to actually target it on the hotspots so around the tube stations for example and sort of what the process was to why south of the borough great obviously that's where the ridership might be but fundamentally why not archway as well other tube stations everywhere as well on our particular issues if we have that data then to me it might have made more sense to reflect it in that way but if it's going to be a few months down the line that might not be particularly too bad on that sense and then obviously Alex you just mentioned around 0.1% of your trips lead into complaints but we've got a raw number on how many of those actually lead to complaints on that as opposed to the percentage and then yes in terms of again behavioural change on the highway code stuff I mean there's when you plan to sort of little pop up when you start your journey saying please remember to abide by the highway code or have actually copied in there because again residents do that but no some really good positives here just have a few questions around those areas and you know fundamentally getting people cycling as we move towards a higher level of sustainable trips is really really important but I think as I say there's still a few teething issues that people raise with us and in general so yeah they're generally my questions to sort of to chew over thank you guys sorry thank you for the presentation I agree with everything that's been said about abandoned bikes being a huge problem for residents just a couple of things this might be wrong but I've heard that pausing rides and then ending them without restarting is a particular issue with improper parking so just wondering if you can say anything on that specifically are you doing anything to tackle that and then for has there been any analysis done of the move to bay system what impact that might have on ridership and active travel goals and just wondering about the process in terms of evaluating the rollout of bay how will we do that and how will that feed into the development of phase 2 and 3 what are the timelines for us getting information on the potential location surveys and the rest of the borough thank you and was there a question from this side Councillor Boston will show here thank you and thanks for your presentation and they were distinctively different as well which some of the questions have already been answered but maybe I'll start from the council side first it's just about award by award sort of breakdown in terms of what's been used again it's obviously council Australia just asked but I think because it's been a bit of time and we had forest bikes earlier it would be nice to know how much it's been used in the north or in the south and then the second question was about consultation I know the council is in process but in terms of you being here the longest have you still been consulted with local residents because obviously we get casework in box and we can't flood it all to council arena and officers I think it's also I guess a part of your role to make sure you mitigate any issues that our residents have we heard previously from a constituent or someone that lives locally about issues with TFL just again in terms of where the bikes because you're working with the council but how many ward walk about have you done for example I've had one with council arena and I'd like to put on record a thanks to Hal Stevenson who absolutely was a mensch and took time out to come with myself and others to look around the warden system before we start to do the rollout I guess a plea as well as probably more comment though is which council of Potsford is already alluded to is about the complaints because there needs to be a way of how you've got your people that come out to put the bikes in certain spaces but then once they've been left there you won't know whether they've been taken or not and then when they are taken because they've been dumped in a pavement space that we think is free actually it isn't because then what you're doing is people with push chairs visible and invisible disabilities are having a lot of issues and this is not just in the south but also in the north and I'll leave it there because I think I'm just a massive plea because I could film people, others could do that but we don't want to be doing that we have to safeguard your workers but if they are just dumping bikes or they're dumping them you need to be able to take leadership on that not just the council. Thank you gentlemen. Thank you if it's okay I think I'll take all questions from members now and then we'll take questions from public argument and response. Councillor Russell. Thank you first of all really positive to hear that these bays are being rolled out. I've got one practical question which is are all the bays going to be in the road rather than on the pavement. one of the reasons a lot of women use dockless e-bikes is to get a safe door-to-door route home at night. So if people are going to have to park a dockless bike quite a long way away from the street where they live then that takes away that utility as a safe way of getting home. and I just wondered what are you planning to have some streets where you can just park anywhere like on a pavement or somewhere that's just sensible and then more in the hot spot areas you're going to have the bays in the road. So I was just wondering exactly how that was going to work. And then I was also wanting to know whether you've got any stats on collisions. I just saw someone come off a line bike the other morning at a little mini roundabout near Canterbury station. She wasn't hurt, she was badly winded and she kind of caught her ribs but it just came from suddenly the bike went out under her and she fell. And I just wondered, because some people aren't used to riding an e-bike, how are your stats on collisions and safeties? Thank you. I've also got a couple of questions myself. Have you got any questions, Councillor Geeks? Thank you. A lot of the focus has been on parking. Oh, sorry, Councillor Russell, thank you. Quite a lot of the problems that get reported to me and which I experience myself are driving behaviours, particularly people driving on the pavement and crossing red lights when pedestrians are crossing. And I think coming back to our earlier presentation, it is hard enough for people who are visually impaired to cross the road safely if bikes are just coming at you from nowhere that you can't see and you cannot hear. That's a real issue. I was interested both in the point about insurance that was in your presentation, Ashland, and whether that covers not only inappropriately parked and fallen bikes, but what happens if someone gets knocked over by somebody on a bike. And perhaps all the stopmer reminding people of the highway code could remind that the red lights do apply to cyclists and that they should not be cycling on pavements, particularly coming around corners at speed, which happens very frequently. And my other question was really, it's encouraging that the number of complaints are coming down, but how confident are you that that is because there are fewer incidents as opposed to people just thinking it is not worth complaining? And how easy do you think it is, particularly for people who don't have the app because they don't themselves use the bikes to report? Certainly I quite often come home to the entrance of my estate, there's a bike park right in the middle of the doors, which again could easily be a hazard for people coming in the dark who couldn't see it, people who are trying to navigate the wheelchair or luggage, etc. So thank you very much. I think maybe if we start with you, Ashwin, and then we'll take people in turn. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Chair. Okay, I'll try and be as comprehensive as possible, but please do interrupt me if I've not covered this, the ones directed towards the Council. so in terms of the rollout of the bays, I think that was your question around how we went about designing that and why not go to various hotspots or take parts of the borough. When we started with the pilot, that's what we did, we tried to get them, the first ten bays around those hotspot areas, you'll see ones that are hybrid, etc. But our understanding of the ridership was that it was most intense in the south of the borough in the central area, and we felt that we would have the biggest impact if we started in that area. That said, the first wave includes the whole south of the borough and some hotspots around the rest of the borough, so it's not just purely located in the south. So that's our rationale. I think there's a general point about complaints, but I'll deal with that at the end when I cover Councillor Hayes' comment. So Councillor Nanda, you mentioned the move to bays, how that might impact on ridership. We don't know. We haven't done any kind of analysis in terms of that. I think a clue, though, is that the popularity of hire bikes in boroughs where there are bays is growing just as strongly as it is in Islington. So I suspect that we're going to see increased demand year on year, that it's going to continue to rise. In terms of evaluating the rollout, some of this is around levels of complaints and understanding where there are complaints, whether there are gaps in what we deliver. We're going to find that out partly from working with the operators, but also looking at our mailbox, which is regularly full of people's either observations, comments or complaints, and evaluate it that way, but also look at the data and try and get a better understanding based on how riders are using our bays. I think there was another question you asked which I didn't quite capture, something about information on the rollout of the bays. Is this about communication? Okay, so if you're using the app, there's two things. In terms of the users, obviously they're going to know where those bays are, but in terms of where we've placed them, we have a, I think through the consultation, we've got the bays all set out through the consultation materials. We are working with our GIS team to try and gradually introduce layers of information. I can't give you a definitive idea of when that's going to happen, but it's something I can take away to have a look at. So the council is a mapping system. It's like a mapping information system. Okay, and then moving on in terms of you mentioned a usage in the borough. I will let the operators comment on that, but there is more data being provided now in terms of usage from both lime and from forest. So in terms of how that information is being provided, I'll let them give the details on that. I'm pleased to say that we are looking at doing a ward walk about, a number of walkabouts. We'll be raising that with both Jack and Alex as well to see where we can focus on, particularly as these bays get rolled out and they start, you know, coming into use. I think it would be useful for us to get an understanding of how they're working. And then in terms of complaints, you mentioned how much pavement parking impacts those with disabilities and we do hear that regularly. A number of people have written in with some quite serious issues around this, which we work with the operators to try and address and potentially create no parking zones that stop that from happening. it does depend so much on the users, so it is really important that we work with the riders, with the operators to just inform people what the impact of their behaviour is. I'm really pleased that as a council that we roll out cycle training. It's another part of the team that we work with. So we train something like 500 adults this year and we're training hundreds and hundreds every year. over 1,500 children this year are trained and riding bikes and that includes safe riding. So we're trying to reach out to our residents to help them to understand the importance of riding safely for themselves but also for other residents who are more vulnerable. And I know those programmes tend to happen all across London as well. I think Mayor funds these so different boroughs will also be rolling that out. But of course it doesn't reach everyone. So that is I think an important part of what we do. Council Russell you mentioned bays being in the roads rather than the pavements. All of the bays that we're rolling out right now are on the carriageway on the roads. We don't have any plans on the pavements. However we're not rolling it out at this stage because we do need to understand whether there might be locations where it would be sensible for them to be on pavement particularly where there are very very large pavements or if there are problems on roads. So I'd like to take it on a case by case basis. As I mentioned in the presentation we're going to be transitioning so things are going to change and I think they'll change throughout the year as we roll them out across the borough. Can I just comment on that because I think very briefly someone like Newington Green where there's very big pavement you get a lot of people leave bikes there and they book bikes from there. When you get on the bike and you start it and you're on the pavement that kind of sets you off on the pavement and I think it's adding to the pavement cycling. So I do think that for those kind of hot spot areas it is really helpful if the bays are actually in the road so that when you start riding you're in the road when you start and it kind of makes it more logical. That's a really good point and something we'll take away when we're thinking about the design if that happens but we're not at that point just yet. Okay in terms of parking the convenience of parking bays and safety in terms of door-to-door transport the bays are designed to be roughly about 200 metres apart that was the coverage we were going for so there should be a bay quite close by to wherever you end your ride otherwise it's incredibly frustrating for people and of course some issues if you're not that close to where you live. But having said that our roads and streets are quite safe I think in this thing too so it's balancing the convenience as well as making sure our streets are well lived and our safe in general. So I think we've got a good coverage when we look at how it operates as we roll out the bays then we'll get a better idea on whether there are gaps and things that we could fill. And in terms of a really interesting point are there going to be parking bays? Are there going to be some roads where they're parking bays and not parking bays? At this point we committed to users starting and ending their rides within the bays. That's our starting point. Where we end up getting to once we've rolled these out I'm not sure but I think that we should start by having the rides start and end within the bays and take it from there and see how we get along and try and fill any gaps in terms of bay coverage so that people can do that and they can still do that. So that's really one of the driving forces for us going for the bays. I will let colleagues talk about any stats they've got on collisions. You're probably aware that the way that our collisions are recorded in terms of the London-wide statistics they don't tend to differentiate between different types of bikes so it's difficult for us from the data that we're receiving to get that sort of level of detail. And then Councillor Hayes you've mentioned in terms of riding on the pavents, jumping lights, the cycle training scheme is really our way of trying to get to our own residents to highlight how unsafe those practices are and the impacts they can have on other people. But again colleagues will be able to fill you in in terms of how they're communicating with their riders. You made a point in terms of insurance, in terms of fallen bikes, we've been looking at liability for bikes that are falling over. people who might potentially trip over them and injure themselves. But again I'll let colleagues give a bit more detail in terms of that. But yes, as far as we're aware that insurance claims can be made against both Lyme and Forest if that's the case. And then in terms of people giving up complaining, I think was the note I've made. Are complaints still coming in at the same levels? We're still seeing quite a few complaints coming to the council. And they are generally complaining about various sorts of things, which is why we think the bays are going to be so impactful. It doesn't look to me like they're giving up complaining, from what I've seen. But there may well be some fatigue in terms of complaining. But every response that we send out, we are giving the message that we are moving to bays, we're expecting that to have an impact, and we welcome further feedback from us who are writing. Okay, sorry. I've been talking rather a lot, but over to colleagues. Before you hand over to colleagues, I think the council of champion would like to come in. I think a couple of things. I think on the complaints, I think people still do. I think there has been quite a lot of advance in the AI and the fencing that they use. So actually, the app now tells you in a number of instances whether you're parking in the right place or not. So I think that is an advance on the situation. Just extremely quickly, the overwhelming presumption is that we put them on the carriageway, but they may actually be in places where it's a good place to put them through, because actually we can't find enough space on the carriageway, and actually that would be the best option. It doesn't mean that we do it in anywhere where it would impact on people walking. The other point about these sounds, it wasn't just the fact that that's the place where it's the most use and the most complaints. It's also the fact that we thought, well, actually, if we put a network in, we're in the south of the canal, we can actually work out how a network will work, which we can then use to roll out lessons elsewhere as well. And that was the most convenient and easy place to do that. And then just, Leon's been working very, on reporting, Leon's been working very hard with Love Clean Streets to try and get a function on Love Clean Streets where those people who don't have access to the app, or don't use the app, they'll be able to report from Love Clean Streets as well. Thank you very much, Councillor Champion. I'll take Jack and then Alex. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I think I've got 12 points to cover, so I'll be as quick as possible and interrupt or interject. Councillor Potts, thank you. Antisocial behaviour is an issue, I would say, in certain areas, rather than across the borough. Roughly 1 to 2% of our vehicles are down at any one time, i.e. not available to hire because we've taken them offline because of either, because of antisocial behaviour or vandalism, but most usually the battery needs changing or there's an issue with, you know, the brakes, the type, you know, especially in winter, wear and tear, but 98.5% of the fleet is available at any one time and increasing the staff that we have in the borough speeds up the process of retrieving them to the warehouse for fixing. We have run operations in partnership with the police in a few boroughs recently, targeted antisocial behaviour hotspots. We'd be happy to. We haven't done that in any since then. We'd be happy to. And we can provide staff and resources to support that. The fleet cap hasn't changed and that's set by the borough. The issue that we grapple with, particularly in Bunhill and border in the City of London, south of the canal, is the commuter inflows from other boroughs. And that is a, you know, I'm being completely open and transparent, it is a real challenge due to the nature of our users and, you know, people start work at the same time. We're reinvesting in those vans to redistribute the vehicles. That's the challenge that we're facing. But no, the fleet cap is, you know, set by the borough and within that, within the period of the day, we are committed to sticking beneath it. Councilor Nando, your point about pausing rides, that's not something that I'm aware of. A user gets charged during that period, so there's a, you know, a financial penalty and a financial disincentive to do that. However, if a user does do that, we'll end their ride after 10 minutes and then find them. And if you have more details on it, I can try and look into it, but in terms of users abandoning vehicles and just leaving them on the street, that will time out after 10 minutes and they'll get fined and banned if they repeat that behaviour. Councilor Bosman-Courgey, I think I'm actually waiting on a date from you for a walk around in Bunhill. So I didn't want to say that publicly, however. But yeah, and that's an open invitation. We're happy to do that collectively or individually, however, as best for members. We'd be happy to provide a further breakdown of usage. However, we provide monthly data if officers want to adjust that, then let us know we'll try to be as amenable as possible. On the question about deployments, when the bays go in, deployments will only be happening in those bays and we have agreed deployment locations with officers. If there are any cases of anyone deploying vehicles elsewhere, tell the family and that individual will be, you know, warned and sanctioned. If there's a time or a photograph of that activity that you mentioned, then we'll take care of that. If your question was about consultation about locations, that's probably a question for the council. We'd be happy to consult on where is the most appropriate locations, but it's not our decision. If you have local knowledge about where might work them, then I don't know how best to do that. We are really short of time. We've got a whole new presentation to come and we haven't taken public questions yet. Could you take it outside of the meeting? Would that be all right? Maybe details could be shared. Is that okay? Thanks. Thanks, Jeff. Councillor Russell, for some of the reasons that Councillor Champion outlined, we would suggest carriageway bays because you remove the risk of people getting on the pavement or coming off the pavement and we want to disincentivise and stop that behaviour. Secondly, it promotes mode shift because you're actively taking away space from cars, which is ultimately what we all want to achieve. Interestingly, on your point about women's safety, we did a report last year, which I'll send you on women's safety and the number one response that we got from our users and potential users was that safety point about walking out if the bay is the other side of the park, if they have to walk down an unlit street, et cetera, getting home from wherever they are. Steer, an independent transport consultancy, has recommended a parking model that we agree with, which is mandatory parking in high usage, high footfall areas and more flexible parking elsewhere. That's the model that a number of boroughs are following. We'd be keen to explore those options because then you basically get the control and rules that you need and high distance in the station, archway station, as we've talked about, but flexibility and access elsewhere. Collisions and safety. Given the six million trips, the collisions are very, very, very low. 99.9% of our trips end without any kind of report. So that is major or minor collision or, you know, a fault. But we'd be happy to share more data on the main, on the, on the different collision types. Councillor Hayes on rider behavior completely agree. In spring, when we see our usage spike, we'll be invested in quite a large media and communications campaign focused on rider behavior. So through our own channels and apps and emails, but also advertising using the media platform that we have focused on red lights and pavement and riding. Unfortunately, a small proportion of users of lime and forest and other, other things behave inappropriately. But yeah, we take our responsibility to crack down on that insurance. Happy to pick that up. If there are any claims outstanding or any issues, we have a dedicated insurance team that can manage any of those claims. I'm not part of it myself, but I'll make sure the system moves. And in terms of reporting, I can share with the committee, our London operations email, which is after meeting if available. Thank you very much. Thank you. Sorry, I'm, I'm pushing a bit on time because we have got another presentation, but yeah, Alex. That's fine. I mean, if there's anything we've covered, we can pick up separately. I'll just try and add to what Jack said. A lot of his answers have really covered mine. Very, very few numbers of missing bikes and vandalised bikes actually in London, and very, sorry, very small percentage of those actually do go missing. There are a dedicated team who go out to find missing bikes that might have been stolen or misplaced. In terms of the complaints, I can share those numbers with you separately, actually. The numbers around raw numbers and trip numbers and the numbers of complaints and some commercially sensitive data there, along with actually the number of bikes that we have in Islington. We can share that obviously with members, but it's commercially sensitive information at the moment. But like Jack said, maintaining that cap can be tricky. The very nature of Dr Z bikes, unless we have someone standing at the borough boundary, saying, you know, we're one over now, we can't let anyone else in. It will be, it does have its challenges, but obviously we do our absolute best to maintain that number as close to the cap as possible. But throughout the day, it obviously fluctuates during peak periods and things like that. Around Highway Code, we do have regular in-app pop-ups and messages and CRM to remind people about how to use the service. The benefit of Dr Z bikes is that we've had so many new people who've never cycled before, or not cycled since they're really very young, using the service. And actually there is, I think, something more that we need to do around getting people to remind themselves around the Highway Code. Like I mentioned earlier, we are funding in-person cycle training with Typeworks later this year, and that's going to be free. So people can come along and get sort of reminders and tasted on how to cycle and the rules of the road and how to keep themselves safe, actually. We also have a very clear warning, finding and banning process if we do find that people, you know, are, it obviously gets difficult around how we can tell if someone's been pavement riding, but if we get reports of anything like that and we can, you know, have evidence of their photos and things like that, we can warm, fine and ban them. And the pause ride issue, yes, similarly, not aware of anything like that. If you're pausing a ride, you'll be charged the entire time to line 10 minutes, your ride ends and you'll face the fine for doing that. If you believe it's somewhere inappropriate. Consulting with residents, we have a lot of information that we have shared with the borough around best places for parking. We have a lot of data which we have shared with the council around the best places for these parking bays, so that has fed into the decision making. We've not been invited to walk about, I don't think, to come to one if we're invited. Always happy to meet residents and yeah, walk around the borough. So yeah, please send them my way. Similarly, dumping bikes. The guardians are given specific locations where they are allowed to deploy the bikes and they're not allowed to deploy them anywhere else. So if there are cases of them going outside of those zones, they shouldn't be. And outside of hours as well, because that's quite an important point around times of day that they're deploying and attending bays, then they're very strict timescales that they're allowed to do that. We can obviously take action against that. And anything else? Yeah, collisions. Very, very small numbers, thankfully, of numbers of collisions. There's, I think, something around under-reporting. So we do try to make it as easy as possible for people to report if they've been in a collision. I think sometimes think some people don't bother. They just don't think it's worth reporting. But we have a very clear in-app process for you to report any incidents. We have a dedicated customer service team. There's a phone number, live chat, email, Twitter, even X, for people to report anything to us. So that includes users and non-users as well. And obviously, we have a website. And on our website, it's very clear. One of the first things you see is report a missed parked bike or report an issue. And it's super clear for anyone to report an issue with a forest bike. I think that's everything. If there's anything else, please get in touch. Thank you very much indeed. Were there any questions from members of the public? Yes, all right. So it's Barbara Zanska, LVI Inclusive Design Officer. And I think, thank you for the presentation. Obviously, it's a very sort of positive project from an inclusive design perspective as well. I must say, I have been sort of surprised that that aspect of it has not been to a large extent covered in your presentations, even though I am aware that you have been working with the same residents because some of the residents we've been working have told us that they've also directly worked with ourselves. So I think the question for alignment for forest is how have you been engaging with the same residents? And the other bit, I think I would like to encourage you to actually do include this sort of element of the conversation in your future presentations, because it is hugely important. And it is, you know, you are very aware that a lot of advocacy groups find this one of the key matters that they campaign around. And yeah, it's, yeah, just sort of to encourage you to not omit that part of the conversation, especially that, especially with those introduced on the highway rather than on the pavement, it's a massive accessibility improvement as well. So it would be great if we could sort of talk about it a bit more. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, I will take around the gentleman there. Yes. I'm interested to know whether the higher bike companies pay any operating fee in to operate in this borough or other boroughs. That has been mentioned. Thank you. Um, if, if I can have short answers, please, so we can move on to the next presentation, but thank you both for those questions. Uh, yes, we do pay, um, Chair, so that's, that's covered by commercial sensitivity. So we don't disclose that, but the, um, but the payments are made on two basis. So one's a flat fee and the other is a per bay operating charge. So the more bays we have and the more ability that the company has to operate, um, therefore the, the higher the fee to the council. To pick up on, I will be quick. Um, the, the money that we are, um, collecting is helping us pay for the delivery of these bays. Um, so it's, um, it's, it's, it's important that we recoup that money that we've built infrastructure to do, uh, as well as supporting the teams who are responding to complaints. That's it. Thank you. Um, thanks, Chair. Thanks. Yeah. If the council, we want to make sure the council is at least revenue neutral and we want to reinvest back into the borough. Out of that, five million pound parking infrastructure fund, you please submit, uh, you know, request for additional support if required and we'll, we'll ensure that investment is met. We're committed to being a long-term partner. Um, and that means ensuring that, you know, we will, and also we understand the fiscal environment that you, you're operating in. I live in Finsey Park, um, you know, what's going on with services because I, you know, I live in the same services. Um, on the disability point, that's very fair feedback. I think we were trying to, um, squeeze as much as possible into a few slides. We have a, at Lime, we have a disability advisory board and we work with the sight loss council as, um, touched upon the previous presentation. There's always more we can do. Um, I'd be happy to pick up with you directly after the meeting, um, to ensure that the individuals you're working with are invited to, you know, further meetings and we can ensure that that conversation carries on. Um, we agree. It's very important. Yeah. Similarly, um, so we, I think, like Nikki mentioned in the previous presentation, we are, uh, signing up to the e-bike charter, the sight loss council's e-bike charter tomorrow that's, um, being announced. Um, and that commits us to a range of different things, including sharing data, um, and also committing to, um, ensuring that the ways in which people, uh, particularly those with sight loss, um, can get in touch with us. Um, it's, it's as easy as possible and that, um, essentially we are going to be working with sight loss counsellors to review all of our processes to make sure that if there are any gaps, if there are any, um, obvious things that we could be doing to make that, uh, as seamless as possible. We also do go to, uh, across other boroughs and I, I hope, uh, we can do this incident as well. Any sort of local disability groups, um, always happy to come and speak to, uh, local residents, uh, local disability groups. So we can, again, we can learn lessons and see how we can do things better. Um, and I think, I think that's it, but yes, similarly, very happy to, to, uh, talk about any other ideas, um, you might have. Thank you very much. And thank you for, um, some excellent questions and for your time. I, I hope, uh, the rest of the committee has found it as interesting as I have, but I feel like, um, we've learned a lot and it's, it's, uh, covered a lot of ground. So thank you very much. Uh, without further ado, we'll move on to the scrutiny of your, um, the cleaning the streets. And thank you very much. Thank you very much for your patience. Um, and, uh, we look forward now to another vital topic. Thank you. Good evening, Chair. Um, I'm conscious of time. So, um, within the presentation, um, we give, um, we're given a street fencing overview, but within that, we are also giving some explanation around our back office systems and how that will support strength and street cleansing going forward. In addition, um, we are also covering slides on enforcement. So, different colleagues will be chipping in there if that's okay. But if you're happy for us to make a start, thank you. Okay. Just to give you a quick overview, um, um, um, um, um, our mission is for greener, healthier Islington, um, where we can be proud of our neighbourhoods and be greener, active and cleaner, creating individual neighbourhoods which communities can enjoy and feel. Um, I won't go into every detail on, on the slides, as we've been through this before, but if there's anything you want me to stop on, I will, I will stop. Um, our journey, um, we've brought in some new systems to help us, um, identify and tackle street cleansing. Uh, we've got a new back office system called Alloy, which is used to capture issues, uh, and tasks that could be put out to operatives and crews. Um, we use the data for cleansing to drive both reactive and proactive cleansing to improve the aesthetics of the bar. Obviously this is a fairly new system and we're trying to collate all the data to allow us to interrogate and implement more proactive cleansing and targeted enforcement across the bar. Together with Love Clean Streets is an application which allows residents to report any cleansing issues, fly tips, etc. Um, so we can actively remove those and improve the bar. That's our cycle of improving the Clean Healthy Burrow, using the service, using technology to transform the service, using the data to respond to things in an agile way, uh, using our cleansing enforcement to drive behaviour change. The transformation. I'll put this through to, uh, Liam. Yeah, thank you. So, um, I've ended up being the operational project lead for Alloy and Love Clean Streets. Um, so Love Clean Streets we've had in the council for over 10 years. Um, originally we only had five categories on there, um, and it was seen as a by-product to a system that was called Fix My Streets, um, which was actually built by an Islamic resident, um, and is hated by every council I know. Um, because all it does is literally send a generic email to us going, you've got a problem. There's no interaction or anything. Um, a very quick history. Our previous system was called Contender, which was introduced in 2010. Um, and unfortunately it didn't work properly with the council CRM system, um, contact centre system. It was simply open or closed. So if a job came through to us, if we put any notes on it, it closed the job in CRM, but these accesses and tenopters couldn't see what the issue was. So when a resident rang up and said, this hasn't been done, they went, oh, we don't know. Um, and we've had that since 2010 as a problem. Um, it was also paper based. So every single one of our jobs was printed on paper. Um, so if you can imagine every fly tip, et cetera. Um, and on top of that, all the waste schedules had to be printed every day for every crew. So we're probably looking at over 600 sheets of paper a day, um, and associated costs of printing, et cetera. So we did a procurement exercise to look for a new electronic system and causeway alloy were appointed and everything they do is fully electronically based. There's no paper involved at all. And I'll go more into the journey afterwards. The biggest problem we had introducing it was halfway through the project, the council project, sorry, the council decided to get rid of the existing CRM system and move to a new system called Granicus, which broke every single link going and none of the systems could talk to each other, either us or Highways had the same problem. Um, so we very quickly had to come up with a solution. So we approached Love Clean Streets who are an amazing social, um, value company and they went, yeah, we can do everything for you. Um, but so we had to rapidly create all the new categories. And some of you may remember the issue we had with container deliveries that originally it was under report it. So someone had to report, I want a green box. The problem is report it works on coordinates, on GPS coordinates. So if you live on a corner house, we're delivering to your neighbour because the system can't tell us which house it is. So very rapidly they built a new integration called Request It. Um, and this is the first of the type in the country and it meant we could move things like bulky waste collections onto it. So whereas before there were 66 slots across nine teams, one crew could get 66 requests. Um, so the whole process was about the resident journey and how we can improve. So we worked with the resident experience team, um, to introduce sort of everything that works from a user's perspective. Um, it has been extremely challenging. Um, we've got a whole load of waste data. It's over 484,000 lines of waste data and pretty much apart from our wonderful digital services team who did some clever stuff. Um, we've had to go through a lot of that manually line by line and make corrections and make changes because things have changed in the borough. So it's not perfect. It's an ongoing journey. Um, we've got some fantastic residents working with us who were probably the most critical at the beginning. Um, one, one in particular lives in the north of the borough. Um, and he's been the bane of every council officer's life ever. And he's one of now my favorite people because I couldn't set him up in a job role. I can set up a new category. So test that for me. And as a resident, he's now testing it. Um, so he's come on that journey as well. Um, so this is from the resident experience, quickly going back to two of the previous presentations of hire bikes. Um, so one of the biggest things we've got is if we can put an option on there to report an obstruction, but who's it going to? So love clean streets are at the final stages now of using AI. So when you take the photograph, it will recognize it's a line bike or it'll recognize it's a forest bike and it will automatically then send an email to their operational address with the coordinates where the bike is. Um, and this works for things like fly tipping as well. So we've got an issue, something called pops, which is your armchairs and your sofas and they eventually are going to be collected separately. So when someone reports a fly tip, the AI will automatically recognize it's pops in there. So it goes to a different team to collect it as well. So it's becoming very, very clever in what it can do. Um, the biggest announcement, which I can now give is on the 27th, highways are moving into love clean streets. So all things like potholes, um, their pavement issues and things like that will also be through love clean streets. Um, and for us, that's a game changer because we get a lot of potholes reported as dumped waste. And the person puts in their notes, there isn't a category, so I'm reporting. And we're having to manually deal with all those. Um, and for things like gullies, for example, so my team cleans the gullies, highways repairs the gullies. At the moment, if my team go down and the gullies not running, we literally have to type it onto a shared spreadsheet for highways. We then don't know what's happened with it. So four months later, we type the same one and again with the introduction of all the love clean streets and alloy. So a resident reports a block gully. It goes from love clean streets into alloy, creates the job, goes onto the operatives mobile device. They attend the job. They mark it as a non-runner that tells the resident, we've attended this. It's a non-runner. We've reported it to highways. And it automatically reports it in the highway symbology system. So we've mentioned in the resident information that's got back in relation to anything. Yeah. Yeah. So there's notification stages. So we keep talking about the app. Um, there's actually obviously Myeslington as well, um, which if you're a resident and you go onto the council webpage and you go into Myeslington, you're actually in Love Clean Streets. But you don't know you're in Love Clean Streets because it's always LinkedIn branded. And from that, you can sign up for email notifications, app notifications. So at every stage, you get informed what's happening. Um, and so it's more intuitive. And the next stage we're doing as well is so you can reopen a category. Because at the moment, if it's closed, it's closed. And you go, hang on, the mattress is still there. So we're going to have a time scale where you can reopen it and go, actually, I think you're wrong. It's still there. So again, it's just trying to improve this engagement throughout how we go. So I'm conscious of time. Um, the biggest thing it gives us as well is dashboards and hotspots. Um, so we can have very good statistics. Um, we can see for dog fouling, for example, we can have a hotspot map to see where the biggest problems are. And this helps us not only target our cleansing, but allows us to help target enforcement as well. So we can provide them with accurate information rather than, oh, we think we've got a problem here. Um, and these are very intuitive that we can set up very, a lot of different categories to be able to see different data over different amounts of time. Um, so this example of the back office system. So this is your street sweeping. Um, so green is streets that have been swept. Red is still to be swept. Um, so as soon as the operative marks it off as swept, it will turn green. The operative can also report, I think it's on the next slide. I'll jump actually. Yeah. So they can report self-cleaning of dog fouling. So it's all well and good residents telling us where the problem is, but our street sweepers clean it up automatically themselves and we don't have the information. So now there's literally a Boolean button they can tick, say I've cleared up dog fouling. And that'll help us build a more accurate picture. Um, they can report flight tipping. So if the street sweeper sees flight tipping, he can report that via alloy, which then creates the job for one of the area vehicles to go and clear it. Um, so we're improving as well our own reporting process as well as everybody else. Yeah, just the information for the committee, um, all street cleansing staff are issued with a handheld device, mobile device. Um, alloy is uploaded to that device. So obviously that interacts and that provides the information back. Yeah. That's the, that's the screen you actually see. That's our sweeping screen there. Yeah, that's the, uh, areas where the sweeper beats are deployed from. We have 72 sweeper beats covering, covering our, our day shift. And now I'll enter down a little bit on enforcement. Uh, even everyone. I'll be as quick as possible, um, with this. Uh, essentially, um, the, there are two elements to this. So I have a operational team in the council who take part in the enforcement of waste, essentially. Um, the second part is kingdom, um, a kingdom of contractors that were brought over. They now sit under my service, um, since January. They've been moved over to us in civil protection. Um, it still remains a very key, uh, part of the council ambitions of the greener, um, healthier as in turn, as well as a safe place to call home. So there are two elements of that. Um, so if you look at the broken window effects over ASB, the place looks untidy, people tree as such. Um, the first part of the first phase of this was to ensure that waste enforcement was streamlined under one single area, um, which it now is. Um, the second phase is to start simulating kingdom into our council teams, which they've now done. Um, the third phase was to extend the tasks of kingdom into including flight tipping enforcement and previously it was just littering and then on to additional enforcement acts as well. And then the final phase was, um, for me to carry out a wider review of the, uh, waste enforcement provision for kingdom. Um, that's, uh, in terms of what we're doing next, that's the next phase that we're in now. Um, so when you look at, um, the enforcement, um, there has been a recent government change in legislation. Um, so the FBN amounts, um, have risen significantly. Um, we are, um, not outliers in terms of highest or lowest. We're in the middle in terms of, um, what we have raised, raised them to under the government legislation change. Um, to just give you a bit of an overview of that. Um, in the essence of time, I will pass back over, but obviously any questions, I'll have to take them after. Thanks Dan. Again, just a quick overview on the meter reaches, uh, 324,000 meters we clean per day with our 72 sweep of beats. Uh, we have all our main roads tread seven days a week, uh, side and residential streets, so predominantly four times a week while there are some with increased frequency. Uh, we have another further 49 staff delivering the remainder of services. We support our manual sweeping with mechanical sweeping all over the borough. Let's say our sweepers are responsible for dog fouling, clearing street markets, car parks that are owned by council, uh, reporting fly tips and graffiti. We have dedicated cage and dog fouling. They dedicated cage teams that remove fly tips act proactively as well as reactively. Teams with three teams that remove graffiti all over the borough. There are additional resources, uh, supplied outside during the leafing season where we are heavy lethal and we supplement our services with, with extra resources as well as things like winter maintenance if the weather drops to a certain temperature where we may have to go out and do some gritting. Current service costs 3.1 million per annum with 121 ploys delivering street cleansing services. This was a reduction in the last financial year. So we achieved this by going to, uh, four day sweeping on a number of side streets. We did benchmarking against other boroughs, uh, close by us. Most do a one to two day, uh, sweep of side streets where we were doing a frequency up to four days. Our mains are generally the same. That is some benchmarking to show, um, um, how we scored, uh, for litter and detritus and fly post and there are some updated figures which I can supply in the markets. Let's say we use a indicator to measure and score our, our roads, um, our supervisors go around and they look at their roads, score them and report them and we collect, we collate that data for our KPIs. That's just a list of roads that are having increased frequency due to the heavy footfall. There are some initiatives that we're looking at, hopefully we can get off the ground this year. Community weeding where we can engage with our residents who may want to opt out of their roads to be sprayed with, um, weed sprays. Um, and we're looking at trying to pilot something, um, that we actively encourage them to help us to remove invasive weeds, but more be published as soon as we can. Um, right, it's going back to Love Clean Streets, uh, since 2024 residents have been able to request containers, bags and various things through that application. Uh, we're looking at obviously moving to everything where they can order and come through. That will send, uh, uh, a thing into Alloy and then give us some works instruction to deliver. It's just some frequently asked questions about, uh, Street Clinton in terms of what we've already discussed. Okay. I think that's the end. I think that's the end. It's getting up. It's getting up. It's done. Right, we're open to take any questions. Lovely. Thank you very much indeed. And thanks for covering so much ground. Um, and certainly I recall myself trying to order a garden waste bag, um, and going, it's not reporting something. And it's, it's really encouraging to see how it's shifting and how much easier it is to use. And, um, that ability for residents to just know what's happening. So, thank you. Um, questions from councillors. Oh, um, I'll start this side this time. So, uh, Councillor Boss McWalshy, Councillor Russell. Again, I'll take them in groups if that's okay. Um, It's a really good way of chairing. Thank you. Groups. I've got to think big. Okay. Um, um, um, yeah, so, um, um, um, one of my points was about, um, chewing gum and cigarette butts. Um, just in terms of, um, I know it wasn't on the report, but just how much do we know again ward by ward breakdown? And in terms of fines, in terms of the cigarettes, and, um, especially where we've got, like, um, health services. So we've got the GP surgery, hospitals, in the ward that I represent, Barnhill. There's been some issues of that, especially around estates where, um, some private nurseries are, et cetera, you know, just how that space is being used by, um, SMEs, um, that have people coming in to just use their space, and then they drop. So I just want a bit of data on that, and I guess clarity on, um, how we're tackling that, I guess, so I can put residents' minds at ease. Um, second was, um, about, um, pavements and cleansing. I do see it quite a lot, especially on the, on the highways, um, in Angel quite a lot, but again, going back to the ward that I represent, specifically in the South, um, quite a lot of, and I hate to say this, sorry, everyone, I hope you've not eaten or whatever, um, saliva, um, it's becoming quite commonly seen in and around, and, and I know there's a sort of culture that's happening that I'm just wondering how often we're, um, cleaning the streets for that, um, because of post-COVID especially. And then, um, it was about, um, uh, just what you're doing, because it's great work, by the way, and you're a great team, but how we're getting that information offline and more centrally for residents to see it. So newsletters, um, when you're doing things like consultations, um, or there's a process, are the plaques big enough, we've got people with visible and hidden disabilities. So, you know, if you've got, like, um, I don't know if you can freeze the screen sometimes, so that if you're doing something specific, they can also see it, and that, that time frame is kind of left to see that you're doing it, if that makes sense. And the last point is about your team, because I feel that there's a small team in terms of they've got the phone, which is great to see, but the strain on them, so if they're absent, again, who picks up that footfall? Because I think what, you know, the council doesn't want to do is slip back on having these really clean, healthy streets, and they've also got to be safe, but if it's broken glass, and someone's not picking it up, or, um, um, uh, what's it called, um, things that are left, like fly tipping, or people driving by and dumping them, it's, it'll be good to know who's there to pick up when, you know, our team is down one man or one girl. Thank you. Thanks, Chair. Councillor Russell. Um, yeah, really good to see the sort of the way that tech is kind of getting better and better and more and more efficient, um, and that's just, yeah, just really good to see. I wonder, um, what, how people who don't have smartphones are engaging with this, are there, is there any work going on just to check there aren't people who are being left behind? Um, and then just on the littering and enforcement, um, I just wonder what sort of scale of activity the enforcement is, if it's just a little bit of stuff around the edges for really extreme stuff, or whether actually there's quite a lot of people who are being issued for these fines, which I think are, did I see there were, yeah, £100 fine for littering reduced to 80 if it's paid within two weeks. That's quite a lot of money to people in a cost of living crisis, so just, yeah, what's the scale of activity that the council's got going on there? Is this like a sort of an occasional thing where, um, to people who are constantly kind of littering, or, yeah, how much of it is going on? Thank you, Councillor Amanda. Oh, yeah, thanks for the presentations, just a quick question, um, appreciate that leaf fall season is a really stretching time for your team, um, but we have had some feedback from residents saying that they feel that some areas aren't really being cleaned on schedule and don't get clean until they proactively go and report it to the council, which is then frustrating for them, so just wondering if you have any thoughts on that and, like, what's being done to address it? Yeah, thank you chair, um, just a couple of quick ones again, thank you for all the hard work that they do, I see the team out and about regularly daily, so, you know, huge appreciation from us for everything they do on that. Just a couple of quick points on some of the data things, so Love Queen Clean Streets obviously is really, really great, but do we have any data on usage, you know, obviously what do we do to promote it, the number of downloads, that kind of thing, I'll be interested to see how many residents do have it, uh, and obviously, you know, what more we can do to push that there forward. On enforcement, the Kingdom Services contract, as mentioned, no direct costs to the council, but is there any indirect costs and what, you know, what impact on what things does that look like, um, and then just a particular thing on sort of the weeding, uh, community weeding scheme, which sounds good in principle, but sort of what, um, interest has there been thus far, uh, and again, what are you doing to kind of reach out to residents who might be interested in sort of being a part of that? Thank you. Thank you. Did you have any questions, Kat, for Duke? Yeah, I will say that I did download this app ages ago. It didn't work, so I gave up and undownloaded it. So now you're telling me it works, you know what, you'll solve this flipping thing, I'm going to download it and see if it works. So you've done a good job tonight. Thank you very much. There's one more download there. Yeah, there's one more download there too, yeah. Um, I had a question that Councillor Russell has already asked, um, but I also wondered whether we knew in enforcement, not only the numbers, but where there is enforcement, does it lead to behavior change, i.e. does it decline, and do we have any information about whether it's mostly residents or whether it is at spots where there's high volumes of people coming into the borough who may feel less ownership and engagement, but I, I don't know whether we've got, whether it's too early to have data on that. And a quick question on the love quick lane streets, and, um, I couldn't, I did have just a quick look just to see what has changed. It didn't seem that your recycling bin is full was an option. And that is an issue that residents sometimes report. And given that our recycling rates have been a bit static, we'd obviously want to ensure that people don't then put their recycling into the waste if there is space in the waste. But I can see Council Champion might want to come in on that one. So I'll, I'll take Council Champion first, and then perhaps we can go along. Thank you. I was just going to come on a, on a couple of points. I think that one, I think it's very, we've got a miscollection. Um, and if that, if there is miscollection, that's kind of our fault. We go and pick it up. I think it might be quite difficult for people to order sort of almost, um, a collection ad hoc, because obviously that will, that's a cost to us. But I don't, the officers can come back on that. I think just to pick up the point that, um, Council Amanda made, I think we do accept that this leaving season has been very, very challenging. And we are doing a review on that because we don't, none of us here believe that the standards that were, were done during that, that that worked well enough. Um, and sort of of pick up from that, as I said before, I think we're doing a weekly walkabout. So with Mark and Bill, and actually see it's, um, Simon Kaufman from Dan's team. Um, anyone, please do come along. If there's any areas you want to have a particular look at, or you want to come with us, please do let us know. Um, because that's important. And I think the other thing that they, what they kind of things that happen behind the scenes, so if you've seen with, with, um, Alloy, they're very, very proactive as well. So at the moment, we've got a real problem with our mechanization. We've got old, old vehicles which are breaking down and which are taking a lot to recover, but there is no light to light swap. With electrification, there's no light to light swap. So the, the teams, um, Chris, who's head of fleet with Bill, um, and Mark have been really, actually have them to go out and source. Um, vehicles are very hard to get. So they've actually managed to go out to sort of Switzerland and get a prototype, because actually they weren't being able to get anything that they thought was acceptable for the job. Um, I don't, Bill might want to add something on that, but I think it's just to say they are, they are really trying their best to do, to, to do what they can. Thank you very much. Um, Dan, should we start at your end and work, Dan? Thanks. Um, so Councillor Crosby, um, cigarettes and fines and littering and things like that. Um, we do have a breakdown, um, that I've been given for January. Um, the team only come over to me in January. So there's also, and I'll come back to this on a couple of other questions. Some of the data will be skewed because previously we had six staff from Kingdom. That's increased to 10 staff during the day and four in the evenings. So that's, that's to target some of the, um, more complex waste issues from businesses at the end of the day when, um, food waste has been thrown out onto pavements, into carriageways, um, irresponsible, uh, dumping of oil, for example, from businesses as well, things like that. Um, so the two highest wards in January were Holloway and Clerkenwell, um, from the data that we have, um, don't have the specific amounts of that, but I can get them to you for these specific wards, um, in terms of, in terms of that. The second question, Councillor Russell, um, the scanning activity and the enforcement and the high costs. Um, yeah, there is obviously a cost of living crisis, but the cost of the council is, um, in excess of, uh, around two million, so to clean up. So it does need to justify the means of the clean up, the officer time, the officers that are deployed, the teams that are deployed to clean up some of this thing. Um, now for example, fly tipping, that involves an awful lot of investigative work from the officers, um, before it's then cleared away and then removed, um, that work can go on for weeks and months, sometimes results in court cases. Um, sometimes it's not residents of our boroughs, so one of the most recent ones found, um, it was somebody in Ilford who had come in, dumped an awful lot of amount of stuff on one of our estates, um, and that was traced back that it took four months, um, to then prosecute that person. So, it is quite a long process and an awful lot, um, of time and resource that goes into that. Um, as I said to you, Councillor Bojan Kwasi, um, some of that data on the scale of activity. So, as I previously said, there was just six officers. Um, the decision to move them over to my services was based on one of my restructures where we have more officers out on the grounds, part of the neighbourhood engagement team. Um, and that's all around engagement, um, education and enforcement. So, it's not just the enforcement anymore. So, to differentiate during that, Kingdon then increase their staff to ten during the day and four in the evenings. Um, and again, that's very much part of the pilot that is still operating and part of what I'll be reviewing, um, and have started reviewing already. Sorry, just to confirm then, so it's, there is a sort of an education side to it as well as the enforcement side? Yep. So, we have, we have frontlining, uh, neighbourhood engagement officers who are out and they do the full engagement and education as well. Um, Councillor Potts, in terms of the indirect costs and the general costs, um, so there is a, uh, the income only. So, we don't pay for services off Kingdom at all. Um, the only indirect cost there may be is that they share an office with us. Um, um, so there will be a small amount. So, they've recently moved from the Waste Recycling Centre to 2-2 Up Street, where my teams are based. Um, so there'll be a degree of our officer time, um, where they're briefing them now. And we're really moving that to targeting hotspots, as what we'd seen previously. Um, and going back to one of the other questions about is it, uh, residents or visitors. Um, it's very easy to go to, for example, tube stations, where there's a lot of people coming out, throwing their breakfast rubbish down or whatever it may be. Um, but we're actually deploying them to our hotspot areas now. So, using our data to make sure they're targeting the hotspots where we're getting reports from residents. Um, and lastly, Councillor Hayes, um, the enforcement, um, it's very early to say whether it's leading to a decline, because we've changed not only the, the amount of resource in that team and my council team, but also, um, it's, it's within, so for example, the two, two weeks they've been operating, uh, carrying out fly tipping enforcement, uh, there was 22 fly tipping tickets issued, um, in the two weeks. So, um, we have always been aware that we don't have enough resources to tackle the amount of, uh, waste crime that is, um, evident across the borough. Um, and so that is very much a work in progress in terms of that. Um, and the last part of that, in terms of residents and visitors, um, it's, it's quite a mix. So you will see, um, people who are coming into Islington to work here. Um, so particularly down in the areas of, uh, Clarkhamwell, for example, around Farringdon, you'll see very, very high, um, amount of people who are visitors to the borough who work in here, but not residents. So it's very sporadic across the borough. Okay. Okay. We'll cover some of the questions that I've got my way. Um, in terms of, uh, question that Councillor Puzzman-Pawzi, uh, mentioned about what happens when people are absent. We have a bank of agency staff, um, that we call upon, um, to be redeployed if we have any situations where we've got absence. So that, that fills, uh, into positions so we can continue our cleansing schedules. Um, in terms of saliva, which is a very interesting point. Um, now, let's say all our roads and borough clean the minimum four days a week now. Um, main roads five, up to seven days. Um, where the use of technology is going to improve is we're going to be using that data led intelligence. So if we can build up a picture of that type of fouling which is going on, we'll know where to redirect our resources. Um, that's going to evolve over time. I don't think it's an overnight thing, but all the data that comes in, we'll use all that and we'll be able to do hot, hot spot mapping and see where this type of activity is well as get our colleagues from enforcement and chewing gum. Yes. It's a big one. Uh, Where's next? Can I have Marble devices? Yeah, I'll just pick up on a couple of actually chewing gum. We were the pilot authority, um, with keepers and tidy, um, launched the chewing gum initiative. Um, and there's now annual funding, which we've just gone for again. We weren't successful last year, unfortunately, but a year before we were given £25,000 and we did, um, Navigator Square and Archway, next shopping area, um, the high pavement in Islington. I don't know where the fourth place was at the moment, but it was four areas and that included signage as well. So there's a charity we work closely with, um, and we did very bespoke signage about disposing gum and then we spent six months going out with a meter by meter square and measuring areas to see if it made a difference. Um, and this has now led to the chewing gum companies themselves providing annual funding. Um, so we have gone for that again in this year with the hope that we'll be successful. Um, the absence bit I would have explained about covering teams. The other beauty of alloy is reassigning jobs. So whereas before crew went out with a pile of paper and when they came back at the end of the day, they were, we didn't do those. Now, literally within two clicks, you can assign to a different crew. So if a crew says, my vehicle's broken down, we can quickly go click, click, click and it goes to other crews to do. Um, so that again improves that process. Um, people not having smartphones, it's again, so if they can use the web, they can still use their laptops, et cetera, desktops through the council websites. Um, there is obviously still access Islington. Um, we do count them as an unavoidable contact with rather than not tactical access Islington. The beauty we have with them now, there is a dedicated team there to deal with environmental issues. Um, and we also have a shared quality manual, um, which is live shared to any changes made they can see immediately. And we also have a team's channel with them now. Um, so we use Microsoft team. So if there's an immediate problem, they've got a resident on the phone, they can literally send it to a group of us and say, does anyone know what I do about this? Um, and that's been an absolute game changer for us. It used to be just a phone call to me on my mobile. They'd help. Um, now there's a team's channel and there's about six people who can all jump in and redirect people. So I know we've worked quite close to the accessibility team. Um, I know the counter website is the immersive reader on. Um, we are in talks. There is an app now that they can use for partially sighted people, which will allow them to read another app. Um, and I know RNIB's done a lot of work with that. And I know Love Clean Streets is integrated into that as well. Um, so that's probably the bit I can help with. I can just go back to the one for leafy. Uh, you said, uh, Councillor Nader said that some areas will only cleanse upon complaint. Well, we're looking to use our data to try and be ahead of the game there. Uh, as well as our getting our supervision team to be constantly monitoring and looking at their areas. We introduced the use of, uh, leaf blowers and street cleansing, which is, again, we've been down very, very popular with operatives. You know, some said this used to take us seven hours. That was taken an hour. So we're going to up our game. Um, and hopefully those sort of complaints will die off. I'm pretty confident they will. Uh, we're constantly reviewing every year we do leafing here. Look at what we did right, what we did wrong, what we can improve upon, what we can support our service. We, we've obviously not spending no money, which is great. Um, I think that was it. Unless anybody's got any other questions that I haven't covered. Thank you very much. I will just check whether there's any public questions. Thank you very much. Can I thank you very much? Um, a lot of technical information that, um, was really, really helpful to understand. And I think to see the improvements that are being made in the way in which that data is shaping what's possible is really encouraging. And the comparative stats were very, very interesting. And I, yeah, it's a real tribute to the work that is done to see, uh, those levels of, um, performance. So thank you very much for coming. I'm sorry that you were the last. Hopefully next time you come, we'll put you up the agenda. But thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Um, can I ask the committee, uh, to note the work plan? Lovely. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, everybody.