Transcript

I don't know if officers want to come in, or should I just carry on, should I just carry on? Just carry on. Yep, okay, and then you said about hoops that, you know, some people said that they feel that there's hoops for them to jump through to get things done, but that is just the way it has to be, really. I know that over the years the hoops have got smaller, not smaller, better, less challenging, maybe that's a way to put it, but in comparison to the previous cycle, we've learned from people saying that actually, you know, it's a bit difficult, so we've streamlined it slightly, but as Rita said, when we went to audit, these were things that were identified, and to enable us to get our green ticks and, you know, a fully green slate from audit, there were things that we had to put in place to ensure that the money was being used effectively and that there was proper safeguarding and monitoring, etc, in place. And we also mentioned about people, about equalities and people being time for, and that they may not be able to participate in the way they might like to, but that's the beauty of People Powered Place, is that people can participate in all different ways. They can be working with members, they can be working with members, they can just vote, they can come along to the meetings to hear what's happening in their community, there's all different ways that people can get involved, and with the next cycle, if we're lucky enough to continue with another one, there are different ways that people can get involved, and there are plans, I'm sure you may have read within the paper, about alumni and ways that people can get involved in different ways, because, you know, some people just don't want to put projects forward, some people just want to see their neighbourhoods becoming a better place. It's not a sacred cow, I've just got sacred cow, I think that was Rita, sorry, no, no, no, sorry, no, I think it was Rita that mentioned, Councillor Chadder mentioned about sacred cows, I was scribbling, I was trying to get it down, just for the record check, counts the chugger. It's not a sacred cow. It's not a sacred cow. I'm joking. But yeah, it's not a sacred cow, you know, I know that the mayor said that, you know, you quoted the mayor's fame, but, oh, what was it, I should notice it's said enough, isn't it, that, you know, we're in different times, which is, which is, which is, which is fine. But I think on this one, this is the opportunity for residents, and for the voluntary sector, and residents and young people to actually make a change themselves, to identify something, and to, to make changes. I mean, I think that if it was, if it was for general funds, and I know that all money is, is still money that could be spent on something else, I would completely understand that. I mean, the NCIL part, you think it's over, over 4 million currently, and it grows, you know, as developments happen, it increases. So there's nothing to say that, you know, it could be used for something else in addition, but, you know, it's not, not a sacred cow. But it is something that I think the community values, um, as an opportunity for them to be more involved. Um, yeah. I need to bring the questions, and are you finished with your induction? Yes, yes, I was, I was just, um, responding to that. Okay, I need to bring the question. Thank you. But you said I've got half an hour, Chair. No, everything. Oh, okay. Just seven. Oh, no. I had a question, sir. We don't have just luxury inscrutamine. Um, but I've seen Councillor, um, Garfield and Charger. Thank you. Um, Councillor McClain, before People Power Places was implemented, and its predecessor that had a different name, which I've forgotten. How was SIL money spent by the Council? Was the process by which other projects were implemented? The neighbourhood element of SIL, I don't believe it was, it was, it was spent. It just... Accumulated. Just accumulated, yeah. So, yeah. It was changed in, I think, after the Democracy Commission, it was that, actually, the, the paper from SIL is increased, so it was 15% and now it's 20% of the SIL money is into the neighbourhood of SIL part. Given the number of years it had accumulated for, I imagine, so I ask, was there a study done into how the Council could spend that money most efficiently to deliver the most value for residents? Um, I believe that planning, planning colleagues, in line with legislation, have determined how that money can be spent. I don't know if you want to add anything. Presumably you would have made a decision to spend it this way, rather than another few options that might have been established at the time. You're nodding the numbers as well. Well, at the time, it was, there was no distinct, from my understanding, no distinct way of spending it still, in the way that it was done previously. Um, so, and I think this, it evolved at the back of the, um, this administration's aspirations around people power, um, and trying to address some of the negativities around people not feeling engaged. Um, so the, this was a vehicle, um, that addressed certain, certain issues that, that this administration saw around, it'd be in the heart of, of everything we do at a time. Yeah. Um, and then moving on to building a fair in Newham. So, the concept around, around here was that increasing participation, increasing civic involvement. Um, and, and, and, and, and kind of evolved from, from a literative process around having community assemblies, system assemblies. Um, and then mature programming, that would be quite a moment. So, given that aspiration, were no other options of ways to spend the money explored? Back in 2018. Um, not to my knowledge. Okay. Yeah. So, this was decided from the output, regardless of a comparative study with other, perhaps more efficient ways of expenditure. But it, it grew over time. Okay. And so, it, it grew over time, and it was done in a phased approach, um, considered phased approach, and where, where the amount of money was, was, was far smaller than it is now. And we used that process to learn, and it grew from 25, it grew from 200,000 to 800,000 to, to where we are now. So, we used those different stages to actually evolve and learn. And we had independent, um, evaluators. Yeah. In the, to kind of a, look at the program. Hence, the democracy commission came in and recommended that it should be scaled up. Thank you. Chair, I think perhaps what the committee might be missing, and which would probably benefit the council, is essentially an efficiency graph, an efficiency arrow of how much money goes into the scheme, including officer hours and officer time in setting up these assemblies and establishing these meetings and staffing them. And then the end of the efficiency arrow, how much of the money is spent on actual projects, because my, I suppose my presumption, having participated, is that a great deal of the arrow falls off in administering this scheme. And the argument that it was established for democracy, as opposed to because there was a study that this was the most efficient way of spending the money, perhaps is why we might be where we are at this present time. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Guys with charters and masters. Can I just like to put a clarification before we just move on? Sure. Are you saying in terms of the measurer, in terms of how to measure the impact on the effect on the value of the money for this piece, is that all aid? No. Or can we start for it now? Actual, actual pounds spent. If it's determined by a people of power place initiative and meeting over the course of the year, to spend the money on a community garden, if 20 grand is spent on the garden, how many more pounds did it take to get to that decision, through officer hours, venue hire, and all the effort that goes into it? Thank you. Thank you. So, I noticed, Chorda, Masters, Watson, in that order. Yeah, Dr. Chorda. So, just kind of following up on the finance questions. I think what Councillor Garfield has just highlighted is fundamental to the discussion, which is about the, you've got librarians pretty much, or library staff fronting a lot of this work, is that right? No. Not library staff, no. Not library staff, no. Not library staff, no. It's the neighbourhood offices. Okay, neighbourhood offices. Yeah. So part of their role is about engagement. And are they funded 100% from NCIL? No. So there's actually more money that the council's using, how are those posts funded? This is just part of their core work, so PPP is just another bit of what they do. Okay. So the full cost of NCIL, the full cost of PPP is the 1.6, which is your NCIL money, is that right? Yeah. Plus whatever we're putting in to staffing. There are two offices that are dedicated to the programme. The other offices, they, it's part of their job role, but they, it's used as an engagement tool. So it's, it's, so yeah, so, so I wouldn't quite allocate this. It's still costing us. It's still costing us, whichever way we wrap it. So one of the challenges for this is, and perhaps it wouldn't have come to a calling if we'd been able to see the full unpacking of the finances. It's not just the end product. It is the process, as Councillor Gail Gartham said, up to that, leading up to that. A couple of other quick points as well. In October 2024, the finance review recommended that you have greater alignment to council, council priority deliveries. Did the team do anything about that? Did you look at, that's a cue or that's a prompt, isn't it? Is it not actually look at alternative mechanisms of efficiency of delivery? Did anybody take up that challenge of, of looking at it? Or actually looking at your faces? No, no, no. I'm just trying to absorb the question. So the local priorities were aligned to the corporate priorities. Yeah. So the corporate priorities were set out as, as a framework. And the, the local assemblies, um, were, or people power places, um, were able, from the menu of the, of the priority that set out corporately, to come up with their projects and vote, and vote for their most important priorities for, for their locality. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's not real participatory budgeting then, is it? Because real participatory budgeting, when you look at it around the globe, is a black envelope. It's human centered design. You've already aligned with certain levels of council priorities. The question, the real number, the question is, are we losing efficiencies? And are we wasting time, money and resources and the resources of residents by going through this long, allocated, um, uh, creative approach at a time when maybe we can't spend that? You could do the same thing in a very different way, couldn't you? And I'm just a little bit interested to understand how, why have you settled on this method? Since 2018, you've been going around kind of evolving this, but have you stopped at any point to look at what this is? And I will just also add to that. At several points, you've said in the papers that this has been internationally acclaimed. But I will point out that on one place, you've said that, you know, you're one of your cheerleaders is Go Vocal. Yeah. Who run Newham Create, which I presume is a platform that doesn't come free. There is an administration fee for that platform. Can I just encourage you, and I think this is symptomatic across the council, that we don't mark our own homework, and that if people have kind of said we're good at something, we actually interrogate the source for that. But going back to the original question, why not look at alternative methods? Why are we so stuck in this rut to say we will not look elsewhere? Well, can I, I'll say something, and then Charlene, you may want to. So I do think it is participatory budgeting. The corporate plan creates a framing for it. But then from that point, it's a very genuine conversation about what matters to people. And, you know, having sat in those conversations in neighbourhoods. I think that's a very open conversation. And the journey that people go through through this process is very much a journey of participating collectively in that decision-making process. I think the commitment to this kind of process is, and I guess it goes for me back to the challenge that you made at the beginning, Councilmasters, which is about the strategic nature of it. And I think there's a legitimate, there are different things you can do with strategic content. And the strategic intent here is about involving the community in decision-making. And that's the primary outcome that's being focused on being delivered and the participatory budgeting being the mechanism for doing that. So that's why this is, there are lots of other things we do with other strategic purpose. But the reason this is done is that's the strategic, that's the primary strategic purpose. To increase democracy, to increase engagement. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So, and I'll just put, this will be my final comments at this stage. I will say, I'll push back again on this notion that this is purely participatory budgeting. Because an annual charity that wasn't linked to therapeutic outcomes would not qualify under this program. If it wasn't linked to some sort of environmental or therapeutic outcome, it would not be able to get any money from this program. If its work wasn't within the parameters of the corporate plan. So in which case, that's not participatory budgeting, because you haven't got the freedom to express exactly what you want. It's contained within corporate priorities. And I think we need to move away. There's nothing wrong with being in line to corporate priorities. We would actually encourage that as a safeguard. But the point is, we've got two narratives here. One running that said, this is happy and this is everybody's welcome and stuff. But it's not quite like that. You've only got 2% of the population voting in these outcomes. The actual engagement rate is really low. And I think, you know, I'm sure as a committee, we probably have some recommendations on how you can keep the intent, but you can actually deliver this a lot more efficiently and a lot more effectively. But I think it takes a commitment to actually be prepared to be bold, to be courageous and change the narrative and say, think times evolve. We're in a very different world from 2018. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Masters. I think I wanted to come back on the description that Councillor McLean gave of neighbourhoods still and ways it could be spent. Because I think it perfectly illustrates one of the weaknesses of the current model and an issue that was brought to me by a resident that probably ended up me sort of being on the committee off the back of it. My resident really cared about the neighbourhood she lived in. She wanted to have the local park refurbished. And her argument was, you know, if we've got all these people in temporary accommodation with children, they need decent parks. All she wanted was that park refurbished. Now, a little pot of five grand is not going to get you very far. But if residents have been offered a much bigger choice, like taking that whole 200 grand pot and saying, OK, we could refurbish central park for that, or we could do something totally different with it. But big things that are very, very visual to the residents and they immediately know whether it's something they want or not. They can vote with it. And then in terms of actually delivering, there would be ways for residents to be involved as volunteers. Yes, there is. I mean, what I'm saying is this is another way of doing things that would be so much more strategic, but would still be looking at what residents want to see in their own neighbourhoods. It's just giving one example of why at the moment it fails for so many of my residents. I was going to comment. Yeah, I was thinking, yeah. OK, so I'm. But I take the board. Yes. I'm going to leave off, right? Sorry. OK, you can go. No, you go. No, you go. No, you go. Memphis. No. You waited. Yes. It's a shame you can't reach it. I won't laugh. You don't laugh. No, no. I've been told no for the writing. I've got a couple of questions. The first question is on section 8.1.4, which is small page 15. Big page 25. I just want to check whether that statement is accurate. I'm just trying to get the. Is on the financial implications of the report. Yeah, I assume the report as well. I'm just trying to get the. Is on the financial implications of the report. Yeah, I assume the report as well. Be careful with it. The sort of. The side of the story. But I don't want to get the financial implications. The traditional. There we go. I just want to go on to the accurate. It's a fairly broad question, but you want to clarify part of it that you think is not accurate. could no no i just the question i'm asking is that um in in appendix b options savings options it was about the substitution principle for sill that's what that says to me i'm just i'm really not trying to be unhelpful but i'm just not quite clear what the question is right i've got three bits i think it is accurate and i'm saying that um what this says is that as part of the budget strategy um there was a you were looking at substitute the use of seal as a substitution for actual spend taking place within the council and then the next question i was going to have is on the appendix c it has a list of schemes that you can spend seal on which is in your i haven't read the whole budget but i just happened to um quickly go go through it but i'm not that sad to read that and then my final question is are there any items that you have in your budget that this that the 1.6 million can be used as a substitution for no i see i see where you're going now so just to clarify the report the timing of it matters obviously this report was taken before the report on the budget and therefore the financial indications had to consider the possibility that in the budget this proposal might not be agreed and therefore it was setting out yeah if you like this was sort of setting out what would happen if the budget was agreed as was currently drafted at that point and that's why 8.14 contains what i suppose the hindsight looks like an ambiguity which was relevant at the time so that answer that first part of the question yes okay and then on the second part uh it is of course the case uh the council could choose not to do this you could choose all sorts of things can't you and to use the money for something else if you chose to use it for something that was already provided for elsewhere in the budget then it would reduce the cost of that and therefore there will be a saving to the council so i'm sure this example isn't correct in fact but if you just take it as an illustration we know that there is considerable capital spend on council's roads each year if it is permissible to use ensil for that i'm sure it's not but if you take it as the illustrative point then of course you could do that that would cut the council's borrowing costs and therefore represent a direct saving to the to the council uh so provided you can identify other schemes that were already within the council's budget which ensil could be applied then yes what you're saying is absolutely the case there would be an alternative not to do this to use the funding for those schemes instead and therefore that costs that way yes that's actually true apologies for the way that's okay so my final part of the question is i mean i haven't read the i mean i will at some point over a large bar of chocolate to get me through it but are there any items which are included there that can be that the substitution principle can be applied for the 1.6 million i mean uh you would need to be careful about the sort of specific terms of ensil but my understanding is that that's sort of you know fairly broadly drawn uh and so you know it is i would assume highly likely that there would be alternatives to do to do that obviously there is then a choice as to whether or not one would do so i know the colleagues have done some work for looking at options in though i'm not sure we have planning colleagues in the room but i mean the essential point the essential point you're making is correct yes that is a viable option subject to confirm detail about the application events okay thank you very much sorry all right and is that constantly i'll i'll just i'll just add to that that i'm not saying that that comment's completely wrong but you remember that this is from the ensil so seal monies can be used in in all sorts of different ways without any any you know any many not as many restrictions as ensil so so it says in in the the guidance or in in statute or whatever you want to say that you have to consult upon the use of the the the money so you know we we could plug a gap but we couldn't just say okay well there's something here and it's 1.6 million we can use that for that you have to go through a meaningful meaningful consultation and and i i mean i can quote the the the the actual lines to you um but it does say that it sets a high bar for transparency and engagement investment considerations to go great into 20 minutes so you have to so it's in legislation that you have to have a proper consultation on it so but planning colleagues could obviously explain it better than myself because it's not really mine okay thank you and now it's constantly progress okay thank you chief exec but we're looking at the time now i need to make this point i'm sorry it's okay i don't cut you off in meeting but i'll take it um but in relation to that it's just it's just just to make it just a clarification point so in the budget in c7 you will see that there is some work around savings and optimization of neighborhoods seal in particular from 2627 and 2728 but if approved it will be looking at this bit in terms of and and in consultation with residents so it's just not to miss that point but in relation to there is a significant difference between how neighborhood seal should be used and how high level strategic seal is used and applied i'll keep it that brief and that comment wasn't meant to cut you off it's just that i said it just when you were about to speak um because we only have less than 15 minutes an hour but i'm absolutely far away um thank you chair i just want to ask questions regarding the why we've adopted the direct democracy approach of residents when we have an elected representative democracy and is this because we don't trust elected members to make the decisions for residents um about things that matter to them so for example 20 000 being spent on a garden that's been delivered via residents through a prolonged process that's costing the council officers why cannot that money be spent in the elected process that we have already got um and a elected member make that decision with the same 20 grand and get that done why is it why is it why have we got two systems well we haven't really have we because elected members have been pushed out of that process and that's one for you yeah i mean i would say that elected members haven't been pushed out the process as you you know you have been very involved in the process you've been part of it from the beginning you've been part of the working group um i think i'll go back to the whole consultation aspect of it so if a i suppose could a member ask residents how they would spend the money possibly um but i i i wouldn't really think that that would be as meaningful i mean it's it's it's putting power back into the hands of the the people in a way and are we not trusting politicians no i could throw it back table if you could trust people to you know know what's best in there in their neighborhoods but going back to something that councillor chatter said i think she quoted the two percent two percent of residents um is that does it really justify does it really justify the means i appreciate don't get me wrong i don't disagree with what the work that ppp does because actually it makes a difference in those those residents lives yes as an elected member i am part of that process because we're we're mandated to be but we're not we're not delivering for our residents we're delivering with our residents there's a difference we're part of the conversations we're not the decision makers in that space and it's been made very clear through the audit process that that's not that case so i guess the question is is does the two percent qualify the amount of money that's been spent and can that not be spent in a better way through the elliptic process that we have i mean i i might there are all like loads of different things that we could do to try and activate community and to build community um participation of power and so so this is not a like as councilman said shouldn't yeah neither you said shouldn't be treated as a sacred cow i think when we think about the outcomes of it it's not i think the 10 000 is very impressive by the way i think the discussions the team have with other places um you know that that level of reach i know it's two percent but it's it's it's a lot more it's a kind of significant bit of engagement and involvement i don't think um i think we should see the 10 000 is quite a substantial achievement over over time but i also think the outcomes are very much about the other kinds of participation so the numbers of people in the community are submitting projects the involved in projects in different ways so i think that reaches goes well beyond the 10 000 people who come in and participate just in the kind of the choosing process um if you don't right i am saying um three members now with less than 10 minutes so you'll have to choose your most important question no comment and understand questions all right and may you finish um thank you i hear what you're saying i don't disagree with what you're saying but what we don't what we're not talking about here is the cost it that is incurred to the council to ensure that these projects happen so let me give you an example a wasted space in a garden or in a what was a playground that goes through a bureaucratic process of changing planning permission that takes 16 to 18 months and a project not being delivered but yet still has been given the money for that sat on it hasn't delivered anything for the community we then go into another cycle and that's still not delivered what we're not hearing in this space is the wasted time money effort that has happened that we don't seem to be accounting for and so i i'll ask the question again because if it was an elected member in the space they would be able to say i can't get planning permission for that space i'm really sorry or actually that's owned by housing over here in ha and actually it's over here that you need to be in this space the process could maybe be tightened or there's an opportunity to that would then stop the wasted time effort and money that takes place in in the whole process so i guess that's what i think that's right and i think a lot has been done in the last most recent wave to really tighten up sarja i don't know if you want to say anything about that we've definitely got better processes in face um we if we can see that there's a bit of an issue we do calls projects and look into why and how we can speed up processes we're certainly working more closely across the council with different different directorates we work really closely with our est colleagues our youth empowerment teams across across the organization so that's really unlocked projects and how they can work with our residents and the speed in which they're delivered but there are always going to be a few casualties and i think the one that you're talking about is one of the tricky ones to be honest but it's still happening okay thank you and so we have three members um only one question and one minute and then we are masters and concertada right that's it hot button round how much money does the council spend on local elections every four years four years yeah would you you haven't got a round ballpark figure how much does an election cost i can probably try and find it out but i don't know i don't want to guess let's assume it's a large quantity of money i would i would argue to your point jason that when 30 and 30 isn't the best turnout but it's better than two percent when 30 of the borough turn out to elect councillors and elect the mayor after the council has spent a considerable amount of money to ensure that they can do so for them to then be usurped by two percent of the population who have the time and the resources to attend these meetings and take decisions the agency is actually being robbed of people who turn out to elect councillors who they trust in a representative democracy to take these strategic decisions and spend money wisely if it costs a third of an officer's time in the library or in the neighborhoods team throughout the year to administer this program it costs a third of their salary to spend the money and that's the cost that we're not factoring in which is doing two things is a concern to this committee it's costing money to spend money and creating an elongated bureaucratic process and it's robbing people who vote in our local election of the agency to entrust councillor mcclaine to take the decision when she instead passes it off to two percent of the population to take that decision i don't think that is a system we should praise and the process in and of itself creating the participation you don't make a speech i give you a question okay i'll end it with a question why why is the success of the process that you talk of the the end in and of itself surely the success of the process the success of the whole program should be the projects it's delivered not how many people took part in the decision to deliver the project no i well i don't think i think the primary strategic goal of this work is is about community power and community participation that is you know the the projects we want to absolutely maximize the outcomes whether it's a youth safety project or diabetes or a greening and the cumulative impact of all of those is obviously really important but that those are not the strategic intent of the program the strategic intent is around community power and community participation and i think the other question is more of a political one which yeah i mean i'm not i'm sure um council garfield if you've managed to read the 200 over 250 pages that was part of the cabinet report which included the the theory change the the um evaluation and about the projects and that will give you the information about exactly what the program is about so it's not just about the numbers um and admittedly you know for an election everybody gets a bit paper through their door to say go and vote not everybody does but well actually people per places doesn't go out to everybody like that and actually we've got quite good figures but we won't dwell on the figures because it's more about figures it's more about the the outcomes and the output from this um program and yeah i can give lots of wonderful examples of projects of how people have got involved in their communities and have progressed thank you yeah we must move on and colleagues we always start with the best of intentions we get carried away so if we're going to finish by seven so it's going to be um councillor masters our question sorry um it was just a factual answer to councillor garfield's earlier question the cost of bringing an election a whole election uh is somewhere in the region between eight to nine hundred thousand pounds each time no i just i just don't quite know where we are on resident participation because on the one hand you know we've powered into a new cycle of people powered places uh with no real debate about it going in the face of everything we're meant to be sort of doing finance to address our new financial landscape but by the same token i read in today's cabinet papers that um we're looking to pause the systems assembly process so i i it to me it just feels we we need to pause and we need to review which i think was one of our budget working party recommendations and i'm sticking with that thank you i'm looking at the new statement of community involvement and its reference to neighborhood seal there's nothing in there that stops you consulting in a different way there's no legal impediment to this is there to change you but it's just a requirement around around consultation and how you do it is this is depending on you can frame consultations in many ways and again going back to the budget uh of strategic recommendations we recommended last year probably the year before that and again this year that actually this council does not have a clear understanding of resident engagement or participation or consultation which is why we sometimes end up in the message that we do i would also just say looking you've referred councillor garfield to the theory of change looking at the theory of change what was really noticeable about all of this is it's numerical there is no qualitative data that you're seeking from here so how do you know if residents are even happy even if the two percent that do turn up i wanted to raise a point about this because this comes back to the figures where people involved in the process 85 percent of people involved in the process were happy to be involved in the process well of course they are if they weren't they'd have disappeared off and it's the ones who've disappeared off that we're kind of missing okay okay you're you've not got your point there which you shouldn't have because of course there must and no it's not of it it built on what greece was saying sorry cancer charge so i mean i think you know the the the issue around we don't know what we don't know and i'm i'm actually thinking about it now and reflecting on hearing what you've said as well what we're hearing about this and what we're reading about this don't quite match up and i don't know where the disconnect is coming from um because we're hearing this is a wonderful or singing project we're accepting that there are shortfalls and let's let's be very clear we're not saying it isn't good for those two percent of people that get involved this isn't a criticism of any individual but the point is in this moment there is nothing to stop us doing more with this money still consulting and engaging with people but doing it in a very different way and i think it's really you know it's up to us how we shape some recommendations that help you on your journey and i think also final point i make is that if you read all of these papers and the evaluation report the first evaluation report was the only independent evaluation report the rest are all done internally every single one of those reports reads as if you're going to a destination but none of them actually say where you're going to end up what does success look like for people power places or do you have a percentage of the population that you do want to reach we can have much higher and better figures than we do lots of local authorities have not much better figures same deprivation indices so i think you know there's a lot of work to be done we can't carry on in the same way and that's what this whole call is about thank you for showing that um and now um i need to ask a question in terms of the logistics and the fact that we are here we're here now um there's two things it's calling which will have been hard but we're hearing it now this week because we need to hear it before um council pass the budget well conrad you said um when we spoke sometime last week but this has budgetary implications depends on what happens tonight and i don't know what it is going to be as yet but if um members decided to uphold the call in and make recommendations um i suppose they might and may not have budgetary implications but if they do and the executive does decide to agree with the recommendation what happens okay so let me take that question that's the reason why we arranged the timing as we did and i'm grateful to everyone for sort of flexing to accommodate that following the evidence that you've heard you will now form recommendations or not as you choose and the executive has set uh time aside and scheduled a cabinet meeting for the 24th of february to consider those uh they may of course not agree with those recommendations in which case if they do is unchanged but there are changes that could arise from that in the most extreme case if you were to recommend uh go to the extreme you know the immediate cessation of the uh program and no further expenditure on it on the money until some other purpose was determined uh and the executive then agreed with that the budget going to uh council would then be changed uh in effect to reduce uh 800 000 a year for you going into it so practically uh we have uh if you like sort of worked up the areas of the budget and all the underpinning spreadsheets that would need to be changed to affect such a change or evaluation of it just as we have also done on the second calling to be heard tonight so that in the event that you made such a recommendation and that the executive then agrees with that and amend the proposed budget uh we would issue revised papers for council uh realistically that would have to be on the 25th or perhaps more likely the 26th of february yeah i think one appreciates that that on the face of it would give some members of council a little difficulty into receiving an amendment at such short notice having said that i think the changes would be largely points of detail so if you take the example i've just given it might be the 20 references in the report would need to change but actually be very apparent or concerned that what has happened is this program has been removed from it and we've just made various consequential adjustments to budget tables and so on so i think practically in those circumstances uh we could certainly manage getting out information to enable council to hold a reasonable and plausible meeting uh on the 27th 27th obviously that depends on your deliberations and cabinet's deliberations okay um i just had a lot of clarification chair um so i i don't quite understand how it would affect the figures within the budget as per se with it coming from and they would still rather than um the general fund but i i mean it might just be i mean the point is that the funds could in theory be re-diverted to other programs and that therefore there would be consequential knock-ons to sort of you know capital financing and other calculations certainly uh you know it's a very minimum and again i'm simply illustrating most extreme examples make the point depends what the recommendations are uh the budget uh as currently drafted includes spending money on this program funded by nsil but nonetheless still part of the budget and policy framework which is what council agrees so in the event there is a decision not to do that the budget will have to be mended at least in that respect to make sure such expenditure is no longer within the budget and policy framework regardless of the source you from there thank you thank you thank you thank you okay what um we are going to um be doing now now that we have um heard from both sides and we would um deliberate and we started the declaration we as i said before we decided whether to take no water option or to answer recommendations which we will represent to yourselves i suppose within the first five minutes or so we would then make that determination so and if witnesses um would leave us for that time and we will then make that determination and do you want us to stay around yes just outside yes we need to deliver it um it would just take us for five minutes to determine whether we i'm going to offer all this or i'm not and then what's the question i think we're going to afford that if you don't go into what's the operation with the recommendation you may go you'll get it tomorrow sorry chad just not to get into the operation time um i'm going to prepare the other officers to come down at 7 30. okay okay will somebody just text me yes i need to but um yes sirs don't need to go they said two officers don't need to go and at this um stage we could pause now but then this is just to make the um decide whether we um have all enough to make a decision either way are we only enough because we are yes yes so we are going to uphold we're going to uphold yes okay it's does that um agree to everyone i didn't hear the top of the table i'm so sorry okay yes the question is we can resolve to take no further action or we can decide but we are going to uphold the call in and then now revert to recommendation what say you chair we would be failing in our duty if we didn't uphold this yes okay okay okay and so that seems to be the consensus okay thank you so we are going to communicate can you do as the audience of letting the witnesses know that we are going to be um upholding this quality so we're going to reputation stage now we're going to be doing that yeah they can do it chair yes are we permitted to outline further concerns in addition to what is that like for the call in following the evidence we've heard but yeah this is the thing that we can expand now because based on the evidence this way the recommendation they're coming through your recital everything could be okay are we doing that with the live stream still coming