Transcript

Welcome, everyone. I was about to say, I'll offer a particular welcome to Naeem, but I stepped further and gave you a handshake, so how about that? This is an in-person Cabinet meeting taking place at Hackney Town Hall. The meeting is being live-streamed, and we welcome all who are observing this meeting online. Decisions made this evening will be published after the meeting. Is the live-stream on? Yes. Yeah, great. The beautiful music that you just brought to us, Jackie, reminds me of the fun and frolics of our Love Hackney Awards that took place last week, and this is one of those moments where we get to recognise the people that help us the most. The council can only do so much, and it's our community volunteers, the unsung heroes of the borough that step into the space that often we cannot get into, and it was fantastic to celebrate some of our community heroes. I have to say, with 753 nominations, I think we got, and I'm sure we could have got a lot more. It was my instinct to create 753 rewards, and to have an even bigger party, because it's hard to single people out when you're faced with such incredible kindness, generosity, commitment, and dedication to the people who are most in need in our borough. But nonetheless, to celebrate our community was such a positive thing, and also offered an award, a recognition of inspiring achievement to Hackney resident Noah Williams, who is our Olympic medalist, synchro diving with Tom Daley, but also Olympic medalist last year in the Summer Olympics, and quite a figure for some of the young people to acknowledge what a positive award that was. To return to the meeting, apologies for absence, I haven't received any, but I can see Councillor Moema isn't here, if we could know. Oh, Councillor John Thomas is away. That's right. Thank you. Item two, declarations of interest. Do members have any interest they wish to declare, especially in relation to agenda item nine? That's the budget and accounts tax report. No. Item three, urgent and restricted business. There are no urgent items of business. Item four, notice of intention to conduct business in private representations. No representations have been received, and there are no exempt reports or appendices. Item five, questions. No questions were received from members of the public, but I did receive questions from councillors, one of whom is here tonight. Item six, unrestricted minutes of the previous meeting of cabinet. Do cabinet have any comments they wish to make on the unrestricted minutes of the meeting of cabinet held on 27th of January 2025? Can we approve the minutes? Thank you. Item seven, unrestricted minutes of the cabinet procurement and insourcing committee. Councillor Chapman, would you like to share some of the comments? Would you like to share some observations from CPIC? Thank you, Mayor. This set of CPIC minutes provides another example of the wide-ranging activity undertaken by the council delivering service to residents and highlights the important work of the cabinet procurement and insourcing committee in facilitating all of this. This month, a huge range of issues stretching from the voyage utility management provision, which gets council properties back into use quicker and will ensure fairer bills for residents in the utility bills. An amendment to the Greenwich Leisure contract that will save us hundreds of thousands of pounds while maintaining services. And I'm glad to announce a new operator for the cafe in Kissel Park, which will bring it into use. I dare ask shortly. Thank you, Councillor Chapman. I know this is the same operator that was managing a small pop-up stand in Kissel, which was much appreciated by residents. So that's great. Can Cabinet note the unrestricted minutes from CPIC are from 6 January 2025? Item 8, overall financial position report. Evidently, we've seen significant savings made in non-essential spend, but we still face the same rising demand and the costs that come with that, particularly in provision of temporary accommodation and adult social care. We're profoundly aware of how important it is to meet those needs and to retain not only our statutory duty, but the wellbeing of some of our most vulnerable residents. And we will always be committed to doing that in Hackney. We're also profoundly aware of how the cost of living is affecting our residents and how the pressure faced by councils is affecting all of us, including council staff. And I thank everyone for bearing with us and doing the best work they can. I did also want to flag, and I will encourage you to elaborate on the fantastic success of receiving the grant award from the London Estate Regeneration Fund. It's down here as the LERF award, but nobody knows what that is. The London Estate Regeneration Fund. What that means is the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government have given us £10 million to help regenerate our regeneration projects, namely Marion Court and King's Crescent Estate, which is just fantastic. So I encourage you to elaborate on that and to introduce the report. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Can I first of all offer, you know, just point out, probably this is Jackie Moylan's last attendance here at Ebony as a Director of Finance. Although this is not the first, nor it will be the last time that we'll have a chance to express our thanks to her. Nonetheless, I think we should, you know, in recognition of the fantastic sort of service she's given the council, and the immense support she's given to all of us, and me in particular. Thank you. And very best wishes, Mayor. And of course, welcome Naeem Ahmed, who's here as a visitor tonight, and your role as our new Director. Looking forward to working with you and dealing with the challenges that we've got ahead. So, it's been my main, Mayor. There are three main issues in the report tonight. Firstly, it sets out the financial position for the current year. And while there's no material change since our last report, underlying this, I must acknowledge a huge amount of work that my colleagues and council officers are undertaking to contain cost pressures and bear down on these essential spend in order to, you know, help maintain our financial position. Secondly, as has been referred to in your introduction, it asks the Cabinet to, in the absence of a capital update report this month, to approve 880,000 to get the upgrade or replacement of the town centre cameras underway, providing, which provides valuable protection for our residents. And that's an important part of our capital programme and the services we provide. And also, as referred to, it asks for approval to accept the London Estate Regeneration Fund grant of up to 5 million towards, basically, new homes on Marianne Court and King's present estate. And that's, again, really welcome and helps us to deliver our commitment to building homes for Presidents and Hackney and doing our little bit to, you know, tackle the housing crisis. Lastly, it asks you to approve the third list of savings, which will help us present a, albeit with the use of reserves, a balanced budget for 25-6 to Cabinet tonight and to Council on Wednesday. So, I commend the report to Cabinet. Thank you very much. Any questions or comments from Cabinet? Council Nixon? Yeah. Thank you, Mayor Woodley. And thanks, too, to Council Chapman, as well. Both of you kind of trailing the successful London Estates Grant that the Council has achieved to help deliver those housing schemes. But I just wanted to add that, as set out in the report and the numbers of new homes that that investment is now enabling and unlocking, that only last week there was an additional £11.8 million that was unlocked by the Mayor of London to the Housing Regeneration Team in the London Borough of Packney. And that will bring forward also some additional new homes, Fellows Court, Weymouth Terrace, for example, those in the new homes program, Mayor Woodley. And that will bring forward 46 social rent homes, new homes. And they'll be on site in the spring. And already, King's Crescent is underway. And Marion Court to follow on in the coming months. So, this is good work, led by the Council, delivering for administration. And as Council Chapman said, the new homes for tomorrow. That's really, really good news. Obviously, we've got an ambitious target of 1,000 social rent homes. So, it's how do we get there and see that commitment from the new government is extremely heartening. Thank you. Any questions for the questions or comments? If not, can we move? The recommendations is set out in the report. And I'd like a show of hands as well as verbal affirmation, please. Thank you. Item nine, our 25-26 budget and council tax report. So, following 14 years of chronic underfunding from the former government, we, like many councils across the country, are facing severe financial challenges. Naeem had a lovely half an hour with me hearing all about it earlier. The new government has, however, started us on a journey of recovery. And we shouldn't underestimate the importance of the end-of-year settlement commitment that they brought an additional 25 million than we'd anticipated under the former government. We have been able to balance the books, but this has meant utilising our reserves. And we know this is not sustainable, at least not to the level we're having to do it this year. Year on year, we've put in a planned reserve for next year of 10 million. But I would prefer that we were not going into our reserves, that they were shored up to meet emergencies. To have that 25 million has been an extraordinary protection. It is vital that we protect services further for Hackney's most vulnerable residents and get onto a firm financial curtain. And I want to go further again for residents, tacking the housing crisis head-on, addressing the root cause of poverty and inequality, and continuing to lead the way in the fight against climate change. Doing that when budgets are stretched will mean rising to the challenge and doing things differently to deliver on our ambitions. I'll go into the budget in more detail when it comes to for Council. I don't know if Council Chapman, you want to say something now, or I can go to questions. Thank you, Mayor. First of all, I'll just ask forgiveness for a very brief introduction tonight for such an important report. But I think we all accept that tonight is in many ways a dreaded rehearsal for this item at full Council on Wednesday. I would just briefly ask you to note the financial pressures the Council faces. We welcome the £25 million we have received from the Government, over and above that which we could have expected from the last Government. Unfortunately, we are still having to face additional cost pressures in respect of social care and homelessness. Again, as a result of the failure of the last Government to address the care crisis and the housing crisis. To balance the budget for 2025-2026, we must make savings and agree the use of reserves. A position that will not be sustainable beyond the short term and will need us to continue the necessary work to stabilise the financial situation over the longer term. And we must begin that work straight away. Now, well, there's plenty of this budget worth celebrating. After all, we still spend next year about £1.3 billion on revenue and half a billion on capital, huge amounts of money, all spent on providing important services to residents and supporting vulnerable residents and completely in line with the priorities that you've set out. As I said, we can spend more time on this issue on Wednesday. And in the meantime, I would commend the report to Cabinet and recommend that we – or recommend it to Council. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any questions or comments from Cabinet? No? I'd like to invite Councillor Garbutt to ask her question. Thank you. I know we're going to talk more at length about this budget on Wednesday in the context that we find ourselves in, because I, for one, am really fed up with continued austerity. But to pick up on a comment you've just said, Mayor, on addressing root causes of inequality, one of my questions was around the historic inequalities that we've seen in the borough and how the community impact assessment highlights the, you know, the groups that we most impacted are people from black communities as well as families of children with SEND who we know have experienced inequalities for a long time. So the question that I've posed that I'm sure people have seen is around how the Council has taken due consideration of historical impacts in attempting to reduce overall inequalities and how – in what's been prioritised. Thank you, Councillor Garbutt. I mean, in terms of the idea that we are continuing in a government-led position of austerity, I think underestimates the commitment that we've seen to build growth, to support our most vulnerable and to look really seriously at reform. What we saw over those 14 years was a complete reluctance to change the way things were done, just to cut and reduce and diminish public service for the sake of it almost. We're not interested in that as a Labour government here locally or across London or nationally. What we need to do is look at the way to grow the economy. We need to make sure that reform looks after our most vulnerable and that we get it right for the future. That doesn't mean to say we can do away with the punishing loss of 150 million from our budget that we had over that 14-year period and anything otherwise is just naive. In terms of our priorities, as I've said, we're looking at adult social care, children's social care, homelessness, where there's demand has risen and our absolute determination to meet the needs of those most vulnerable. That's why you've seen the cost pressures in the council and the way you have, not just here but across London and beyond, let's face it. So you're asking about how we can bring in mitigations. We've done this in a long-term way already by putting in our poverty reduction framework, by looking at our equality plan, by building our anti-racism commitments. We know that anything we do in terms of cuts and savings pates with it a risk of affecting our most vulnerable. So we've put in place additional support for special educational needs with the additional places that we've put in. You know the work that we've been doing. You've been in this room as we've discussed it, meeting after meeting after meeting. We are absolutely fully committed to continuing to work in partnership to address the needs of our residents. I don't know if anybody else wants to come in. Councillor Walker. Thank you, Mayor Woodley, and thank you, Councillor Garber, for that question. If I can answer this question in relation to the focus of our work on the VCS, which is an extremely important and strategic partnership for us as a council. Our equality plan, including our anti-racist framework objectives, underpins our ongoing engagement with the VCS, which aims to shape a more collaborative approach with the sector, shaping more effective partnerships, and jointly addressing some of the challenges faced by some of our most disadvantaged groups across the borough. This is why we are starting, for example, this week a series of engagement workshops with the sector, ensuring that we are hearing from those organisations that represent and work with groups disproportionately impacted by inequalities in our borough. While we are talking to the whole sector, we do recognise the need to focus on groups, for example, such as the Orthodox Jewish community or those in our borough with no recourse to public funds, as well as other groups that have historically been impacted by poverty and inequality. Taking into account these historical impacts, we will ensure that they are considered in our future financial planning and decision-making processes, and to ensure that we continue the considerable investment in growth that will benefit disadvantaged communities. But the final thing to say, and really through the leadership of Councillor Williams, we are ensuring that our strategies and plans have a stronger focus on equality as they are developed or reviewed. This is currently reflected through our current review of the VCS strategy, and with our strategic plan due for renewal in 2026, this will be a key factor in ensuring we continue to mitigate any impact of budget reductions on our most disadvantaged communities. Thank you. I saw Councillor Williams indicated as well, but I'll ask if you have a supplementary. Yeah, I guess it's picking up on some of the questions from the independents as well, because I know that they have to give last-minute apologies. And one of their questions was, I know you touched on this a bit in your introduction, Mayor Woodley, but around the alternative support and mitigations following that continuation of the equalities point. Thanks. Sorry, I didn't understand. Were you bringing forward the independence question at this point, around the continuous loop as it's been set out? Yeah. So, Councillor Chapman, do you want to come back on that? And I will bring in Councillor Williams towards the end of this. Okay, thank you. I think the question that's notified very much concentrates on the technological impacts of the issues that Councillor Garber raised. And just to point out that in setting the budget for 25-6, I can assure you that we're prioritising investment in technology and making the best use of resources to address the very real issues that are raised. We continue to invest in Better Hackney and I also focus on investment that helps save money in the longer term. In the current year, we've invested about $5 million to improve our ICT systems and plan to invest a further $3 million over the next three years. This investment in technology will help us transform services for our residents and improve value for money. Our savings plan includes initiatives that increase the use of technology to deliver savings without reducing service standards, an example of which is the investment in modernising and upgrading our CCTV networks, which deliver savings of half a million over the next two years. We continue to invest in ensuring residents don't miss out on the benefits they are entitled to. Through our Benefits Service and our Pioneering Here to Help team, we will provide support to make sure that residents get all the help that they are entitled to. Councillor Williams, did you want to come in? Thank you, Chair. I did just want to say on this side of the Chamber, there is amongst us more than 100 years' experience in Hackney Council. When you add the officers to that total, it's even higher. What we have done is bring our experience to bear and completing cumulative impact assessment. It's the first time that I know of any such thing here in Hackney. And what we are doing is robustly challenging our thinking around budget proposals and officers are doing the same. We are taking this incredibly seriously. The appendix sets out all of the work that we are doing to mitigate some of the risks that come along with the budget proposals, including Black History 365, the Windrush Microgrant Supported Internship Programme, and recently the innovative in-house recruitment model of the joint venture. There's a wide range of mitigations that we've been putting in place, and we will continue to monitor budget proposals very seriously. Thank you. Can I move the recommendations as set out in the report? This item requires a recorded vote, so I would invite the government, well, Mark, to carry out a roll call. Thank you, Mayor Woodley. I'll read your names in alphabetical order, and I'll be asking to confirm whether you are for or against the recommendations, or you are abstaining. I will begin with Councillor Bramble. Four. Thank you. Councillor Chapman. Four. Thank you. Councillor Etty. Four. Thank you. Councillor Vajilla-Thomas, answer your apologies. Councillor Kennedy. Four. Thank you. Councillor McKenzie. Four. Thank you. Deputy Mayor Nicholson. Four. Thank you. Councillor Williams. Four. Four. Thank you. Mayor Woodley. Four. Four. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Item 10, the Children and Families Service full year report to members. So this council, as Dr Mayor Bramble knows, will do everything in its power to support children and family services. It is right and just that Hackney works for every child. I want to thank the Chief Executive for her input and support. I want to acknowledge our cabinet in particular, Dr Mayor Bramble, Councillor John Thomas, Councillor Etty and Councillor Williams and Corporate Parenting Board members Councillor Lynch and Councillor Patrick, all of whom champion this service, this cause and ensures this council is doing its best for every child. Dr Mayor Bramble would like to introduce the report. Dr Mayor Bramble would like to introduce the report. Thank you, Mayor Woodley. Thank you, Mayor Woodley. And I'd just like to reiterate those thanks to everyone you thanked in the chamber and to highlight the work that Jackie and her team have done, but equally Diane Benjamin, who stepped up in that space. And we have gone from inquires improvement to good. And that is fantastic. I think it's reassuring for our community to know that we have a good service for our most vulnerable children or even if they don't use the word vulnerable for the children and families that need us the most. I want to highlight what Ofsted said about Dawn, our chief executive, that she is visible and supports the service and note that they said the same thing about me, Mayor Woodley, and I think it's just a testament to that we are all here doing our best. And when you have that external validation, that's reassuring that we're going in the right direction of travel. So just want to acknowledge that. There's been a myriad of achievements and things that we've been working on. One of the things that we've been focusing on is our children family clubs across the borough. And we're going to be moving to the primary model of looking at the eight neighbourhoods. And that includes the work that Mayor Woodley is leading on in SEND. That includes our SEND champion, Councillor Sizer, and looking at how we use our family loves and making sure that all of those interconnections across the borough. We all talk about how we work across directorates and working together. And we're making sure we're quite pragmatic about that because it's a big organisation. It's quite easy to be quite insular in working sometimes. We're really proud of the implementation of the STAR model, which is the systemic traumatic anti-racist model. So it's looking at how we take a trauma informed approach. Yes, but making sure that we are anti-racist in our practice, our thoughts, and then thinking about how, as a result of that, we implement the resources that our children and family need. We resaped our clinical team and looking at the leadership program to make sure that that ties into our work. And I'm pleased to say that under the structure that we have, children don't have a waiting list for our in-house clinical service, because we're just making sure that our children get the support they need as quickly as we can. One of the things that the service has gone through is a restructure. You know, our service is always evolving and changing. We've heard Councillor Chapman and the Mayor speak to the different things that we face as a local authority. One of the things that we've done in the restructure, and you may note that there was an increase in our social workers, our agency. We've used that opportunity where we've had that design restructure, and we've looked at the roles, job descriptions, how we deliver that service. And that's been an opportunity to reconvise the design and strengthen and make sure and build in more resilience within that. And part of that is looking at retention and looking at incentivising staff and making sure that actually the pathway when we have really good social workers, making sure that there's a way for that agency worker to transform to be a full-time member of staff. I want to thank Councillor Essay in particular in the work that we've done around housing, that our young people go on to the housing register at 18 and 21. It was really overwhelming when I got met by a young person the other day, and they said, thank you for that change you made. And you know you kind of want to look like you remember and know everything about the council? No, you don't. I said, you're going to have to tell me what good thing that you're excited about. It really made a difference that you change that we can get on the housing register at 18. It absolutely made my day, because this is exactly why we sit here in this council when it looks like our second home doing all of the different things that we do. We do it because we want to transform and make a difference for our children and young people. I'm going to pause there, Chair, because I find myself getting really excitable to talk about all the different things that we are doing. But I'm going to pause there. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any questions or comments from Cabinet? No? In that case, I'd like to invite Councillor Garbutt to ask her question. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for all the work from the team and the staff on this. It's really great. The only question – well, we put forward a couple of questions, but the one we're asking in the meeting is around the proportion of agency social workers and how that seems to continue to rise and what the plans were to address this. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Garbutt. I think I spoke a little bit about that in the introduction. So I think what we're doing is thinking about how when we had to restructure that service, what Jackie, Diane and the team did is think about use that as a time to review, looking at the increase in social workers and thinking about when we look at the job descriptions, the roles, the delivery of that service. What can we do differently to ensure that we're building resilience within the team? And within that restructure, there's been an opportunity to strengthen the staff team. And it's that pathway as well when we get some, because we do get some really excellent agency staff. And it's what does that pathway look like for them to ensure that they actually, it's less beneficial for them to be agency, but actually they want to be a full time member of staff. So more work has been done along that to be able to think about what that pathway looks like to incentivise less people to want to be agency and more full time for us. Thank you. Thank you. Sarah, supplementary. Not specifically to that, just because that's quite a close question. And thank you for that response. But I just wondered, did you mention the exclusion stuff in your introduction and anything on exclusions? So Chair, it is, although supplementary is meant to technically be about the question, I'm feeling quite generous, Chair. So I'm happy to. So we're doing a big work, a big piece of work around exclusions, actually, and it's Marriott. So we've actually got a board called improving outcomes for young black children and that will target the exclusion rates that we have around black boys. And now we're seeing that more with black girls and black children as a whole. There's a piece of work we're looking with Woodley, and I keep mentioning Council Society as the SEND champion, looking at how we, the provision for our SEND children and what that looks like, making sure that actually, if a child is waiting for assessment, for example, what support we can put in in the interim. I just hosted a roundtable, because it's relying on my memory, and I don't always remember everything, my heart loves everything, my mind doesn't remember everything, my heart loves, recently hosted a roundtable in the Houses of Commons with Diane Abbott, and we had community groups talking about the work they do, and how we can work more closely with the community groups that are delivering the preventative work and early interventions around exclusion. So there's a myriad of work that's going on with, we're also looking at our alternative provision schools at the moment, we're even looking at, Jason's not here to frown, but Jackie is, we're looking at the name change on alternative provisions as well. And I can speak a bit more in detail, but we're looking at that offer, and we want that alternative provisions to be more around coming in for short breaks for our children and young people, looking at the intervention they need, and actually the primary goal to get them back into mainstream provision. And if in that time when they come into alternative provision, if they need more specialised care, then we look at that. But the majority of children can moreover get their needs met in mainstream, and we're looking at how we support, especially the secondary sector, because we have to take some responsibility, because our broader offer around exclusions is more targeted at primary schools, we've looked at secondary provision. I'm going to pause there, because Chair, I'm not looking at you, but I feel you might be looking at me. No, it's good to hear your response. Thank you, Deputy Mayor Bramble. Can I move the recommendations as set out in the report? Can I get a show of hands as well as verbal affirmation? Thank you, everybody. Item 12, urgent to accept business. There are no urgent papers for consideration. So that brings us to the close of the meeting. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you very much.

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