Transcript

And now, please welcome to Eastbourne Borough Council cabinet a warm welcome to you all, and a welcome particularly to Councillor Williams and Councillor Butcher for attending your first cabinet session in your new roles. Congratulations once again, and I look forward, as always, to working with you closely as we look at seafront heritage and cultural strategy going forwards, and indeed, the finances. So the first item on the agenda is the minutes of the meeting held on the 20th of March. Are you happy for me to sign them as a true copy? Thank you. Any apologies for absence, Simon? No? Okay. The minutes of members' interests. Any questions by members of the public? I believe we've got an item on item number 8, sustainable procurement policy from Serena Stallard, but that's actually item 6, which is the right to address. Okay. Lovely. So there's been no other questions by members of the public, no urgent items of business, and I've already covered item 6, which is, of course, that Mrs Stallard will be talking on item number 8. So before we go to that, let's start with item number 7, which is a social housing regulation update, and Councillor Diplock. Thanks very much, Chair. In a minute, I'll pass over to Oliver Jones, who's going to talk us through some more of the detail of the report. This is a really important piece of work. I'm really pleased that the borough's bringing this forward. It's definitely to be welcomed, because it improves standards for tenants and improves participation as well, resulting in increased transparency and engagement. I'd like to pass my thanks both to Oliver Jones, to Gary Hall and Nicky Wickham and other members of the team who have worked so hard recently to bring this forward, and their work with engaging with the tenants we have here. We did take part in a pilot scheme on this last year, and so it's good to see Eastbourne again on the front foot of things, and taking steps to improve things for tenants and residents. So Oliver, I'll pass over to you. Thanks very much. Thank you, Councillor, and good evening, everybody. Yes, this paper induces some important changes to social housing regulation and provides the regulator social housing with some important new powers. On the back of the introduction of the Social Housing Regulation Act 2010-23, which came into force on the 1st of April, just to run through those changes in brief, it introduces some new objectives to their, consumer objectives to their focus around safety, transparency and energy efficiency, it strengthens the regulator's enforcement powers, importantly removes a test called the serious detriment test, which meant that in the old regulatory world that the regulator had to prove that landlord services were causing serious detriment to tenants before they launched an investigation and inspection, they no longer have to do that. It's extended their powers paving the way for the introduction of four new consumer standards, which I'll touch on in a moment. And it really beats up their powers in terms of allowing them to introduce performance improvement plans, unlimited fines and enforcement notices if regulators failed to comply with any breach of the standards and also to point advisors to assist with the management of local authorities, landlord services. And in the round, it's the biggest change we've seen to social housing regulation in a decade or so. In terms of the new consumer standards introduced, there are four standards around safety and quality, transparency, influence and accountability, the tenancy standard and the neighbourhood and community standards. The majority of the changes to scope of the standards are contained in the first two, so around the safety and quality, and that's really around the health and safety of tenants at homes and the transparency, influence and accountability standard, which is all about listening to tenants and making sure that our services are more accountable. And those changes fall on the back of the inquiries into Grenfell and the tragic death of Wabbie Schecht, who's the young person that died in a damp and mouldy flat in the north of England. The paper goes through each of those standards and introduces the main changes to each, and in terms of the specific expectations on landlords, they've doubled from 39 in the old regime to around 60 under the new, so a real, almost doubling of the expectations of landlords' services. The remainder of the paper goes on to set out the approach we've been taking to tackling the challenge set by this new framework. As Councillor Dipprop mentioned, Eastbourne took part in a pilot inspection, I think it was October 22, so just beyond last year, and works beyond going since then to work up our response to the findings of that mock inspection and then to work on some compliance checking against the new standards which were finally revealed at the end of February this year. We've since gone on to develop action plans against each of the standards that were put in place, the project teams and operators to ensure that work to improve our compliance against the standards is ongoing. I think it's fair to say the compliance check showed that we have a good level of service but that there's room for making sure that we match up against the stronger standards that have been introduced. The remainder of the paper sets out some of the accompanying changes to governance that need to take place to accompany that work and they again are all about making sure that the services we provide to tenants are accountable and that our involved tenant bodies play a greater role in managing, tracking performance and being involved in the shaping of our business plans. I'll leave it there if that's OK. Thank you. Thank you. Oliver, Peter, is there anything else you'd want to add at this stage? Just briefly, Chair, thanks very much, thanks to Oliver for talking us through that. There is a cost to this but it's a worthwhile cost, it's something that can't be avoided. It's worth noting this isn't being extended to the private rented sector, it's only to the social housing registered providers. You can draw your conclusion on that. I think there's room to extend this kind of thing to the PRS if needs be and I know that yesterday I would have loved to have gone to the Tenants' Voice Open Day but I couldn't because of rules around pre-election period but I will go to the next one. Thanks. Don't you love perder? Yeah, absolutely, Peter, thank you for that. I mean, the comment I wanted to make before handing to any other comments or questions is with regards to obviously Eastbourne Homes as being our housing provider and obviously in the past it's been an arm's length organisation and it's now starting that transfer to becoming back as an in-house or more in-house service with the council. Obviously we received some funding through Decent Homes Funding and that was very much of putting our tenants first and the importance of that for good and absolutely justifiable reasons and it's actually brought millions in investment for those homes and those housings which I'm delighted about. Obviously with a lot of that Decent Homes Funding now ceasing or gone it makes more sense to bring it back again in-house and I'm just wondering how that move may affect what we're doing through this paper, Oliver or Ian or someone else. I think it's fair to say that the changes that are being introduced to governance are twofold. They're a) to address that transition from EHL to direct management but also to do so in a way which complies with some of the new requirements of the accountability and transparency standard. So it's twofold in that respect. Thank you, Oliver. Any other questions or comments from partners around the room? No. In which case the recommendations are in the paperwork. Are you happy for us to approve them as is? Lovely. Thank you. So item number 8 and if I can ask Ms Stalard to come to the tables is with regards to the sustainable procurement policy and Serena you have three minutes to ask your question. Thank you. I beg your pardon? I beg your pardon? I'm not asking a question. You're speaking to three minutes. No worries. I'm going to put the speaker device on as well so we can all hear that. Good evening. I have little doubt that the draft policy will be approved but it's always worth listening to the canary in the coal mine which in this instance is me. There are some laudable aims in this document, notably products to last as long as possible, no single use plastics, eliminating waste, using local goods and services but I'm not sure that sustainable applies to much of it. I've spoken before about electric vehicles with which the council fleet will be replaced but many seem unaware of the repercussions. EV production causes some of the worst environmental and human damage imaginable. Cobalt mining, much of which is done by children, is causing rates of cancer and respiratory disease to rise exponentially and babies are being born with soft bones, spina bifida and limb abnormalities. Mine shafts are liable to frequent collapse with much loss of life but as well as the loss of a few African children, as I heard a dedicated eco-warrior put it, the environment is being devastated too with millions of trees cut down in Congo, a critical player in mitigating climate change, landscapes ravaged, water polluted and crops irretrievably contaminated by waste and acid from the mines. We seem to be caught in a familiar cycle of environmental degradation, exploitation and greed, ironically so that we can virtue signal that we're saving the planet. This is not sustainable and it's no good saying it's just a stopgap as we'll soon have hydrogen or something because right now we don't. Right now we're destroying the environment and thousands of lives. Perhaps we'll have solar panels and more wind turbines but these provide just a fraction of the energy we need. They have environmentally costly production methods and pose as yet insurmountable recycling problems. Solar panels are dreadful for biodiversity and wind turbines and no, this is not an urban myth, kill up to 100,000 birds every year according to the BBC. And it's just been announced that the government has put aside a billion pounds to mitigate the adverse effect of wind farms on the RAF's network of early warning radars. This is not sustainable. At the same time we have hundreds of homeless people in Eastbourne, cuts in services and a cost of living crisis. As a council you are the first and last line of defence for every generation for whatever's coming. I understand that orders come from above but this does not mitigate your duty of care to your constituents. Science should never be swallowed whole or from one source. Climate science is a huge subject and until one knows about obliquity and precession, the Dansgard-Ostra event, urban heat islands, why the hockey stick graph is fraudulent and above all – If you can wrap up, please, because that has now been three minutes, if you can finish your comments. Sorry. I've got about 10 seconds left. Absolutely. Thank you. Urban heat islands and why the hockey stick graph is fraudulent and above all the fact that temperatures rise hundreds of years before CO2, one should probably not be installing policies which will make life much worse than it is now. To think that net zero will make our lives better or even save the planet is for the birds. Thank you. Thank you very much for your comments there. Councillor Murray may wish to respond as the climate lead but before doing so I will ask Councillor Butcher to introduce the report. Thank you. Hi. Thank you, Chair. For the purpose of this report, as Peter said earlier, I'd like to thank Hamira and Peter and everyone else who's worked to put this report together. I will be passing it over to Peter Jenion to go into the details, if that's okay. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. Good evening. So, yes, so this report is seeking approval for the sustainable procurement policy which is the appendix to the report. So it's worth noting that this policy would apply both to Eastbourne Borough Council and Lewis District Council and there are three main purposes for doing this policy. The first would be to align our procurement with both Council's environmental plans, in particular ambitions to become carbon neutral by 2030. Also to meet criteria outlined by external climate change assessment organisations such as the climate action scorecard and all their recommendations are included in this policy. The third purpose is to incorporate lessons learned during consultation for the policy, for example around social value, the process of identifying practical projects and monitoring and reporting on social value. So we're understanding sustainable procurement as in line with the local government association's definition which is that it's a process where organisations meet their needs for goods and services in a way that achieves value for money on a whole life basis in terms of generating benefits not only to the organisation but also to society and the economy while minimising damage to the environment. In other words, it's a multi-passaged approach, it includes environmental, economic and social factors and that's how we've structured it in the report and there's more detail in the report which I won't go into at this point, but all those factors should be taken into account during the procurement process and a key part of delivering it will be the interconnected way of taking into account those factors but also engaging with communities and contractors from the outset and during the course of procurement to identify practical opportunities for the council contracts to add value or to mitigate impacts where they might arise if they're environmental or economic or social impacts. So the policy will form an integral part in how the councils evaluate tenders and providers during its procurement process and the councils will provide procurement, legal and contract management training where appropriate so officers understand their responsibilities in relation to this policy when they're purchasing on behalf of the council. And also in terms of reporting, progress will be reported annually as part of the sustainability updates so I'll end there for any questions. Thank you very much Peter. Dan, is there anything else you'd like to add, not that you have to? No more really that isn't covered within the report, I would like to stress the importance that leaving as much as we do have a financial obligation to long-term sustainability is far more important for the sake of leaving this town, the world in a better place than we left it for our children and et cetera so I fully support this. Thank you Dan. Jim, I don't know if you want to respond to any of the comments made earlier on? Just raise a couple of points. In the tragedy front and centre of all the policy that we do within the council so it's one of the first things that we consider whenever we're doing anything within the council. Procurement is obviously part of that as well so we are just making sure that this is part of our policy so that the officers and the members of the public can be aware that we are taking this extremely seriously like we should be. Embodied carbon is always an issue. This is where I keep using the example of the Tesla car. If we drove the Tesla car for 150,000 miles we still wouldn't pay back the carbon that it takes to build the car but when it's in the town it's not producing any carbon so the carbon offsetting is working fine for us here. The embodied carbon is a problem of the new technologies of that and a number of other things that we have within everything that we're trying to do at the moment. Having said that though things are moving forward. We're looking at ways of recycling solar panels now, looking at ways of recycling wind turbine wings. We could recycle AstroTurf so that we can turn that into furniture. There are solutions on the way and things will get better as they always do with these new technologies and it's terrible that some of the companies that are doing this are exploiting third world countries to make their profits above doing it the ethical way. You mentioned also about the fact that we've got other things that we should be considering within the town along our homelessness. Believe me we take that absolutely 100% seriously and everything that we do within the sustainability part of what we do does not affect that funding. Everything that we do from within the sustainability area is funded from outside grants or from working with local community groups. We have to as a council produce data to report to central government and to the local residents so we have a couple of officers who do that for us which we share with Lewis so that the costing for us is very, very minimal, my budget for doing any work for any of this is zero. We have to find everything that we do from outside sources, outside grants and working with our local community, but we still must be doing it. This is such a crucial part of what we should be doing and to back up what Councillor Butcher said we must leave this town in a better place than when we started. Any other comments from partners or colleagues? I think what I wanted to add if I may is the importance of sustainability and indeed procurement in this. One of the items is of course economic factors and the fact that as always we're going to be encouraging small businesses and medium sized businesses and certainly local based businesses as you were referring to just now, Councillor Murray, to actually be working with this council in this authority because actually that's how you spread the wealth around and although our finances are, as I've always said, very difficult and challenging at the moment where we can, I'd prefer us to be working with local partners who are employing local residents and local businesses than large multinational firms and that is something that I know we all share within this room so where possible and where it offers best value but also best social value which is so important as part of this then that's where we should be heading towards because our council can act as an economic driver to the rest of the town and has done with a lot of the activities we're doing such as the theatres, such as the tourism events, such as hospitality obviously and indeed some of the new ways of working that we've introduced over the last year such as the Glasshouse and other venues where we're actually looking at local based companies supporting their growth and their expansion and improving education and skills for all so I think there's a lot to commend into this paper and this report and as Dan has done I'd like to thank the officers who have put this together. With that, unless there's any other comments or queries, can I ask that we approve the recommendations as laid out in the paper? Thank you very much everybody. That is the end of cabinet. It's a little bit shorter because of pre-election rules and various bits and pieces but there'll be a fairly large cabinet report I believe for July and I look forward to seeing you all then. Thank you very much. [BLANK_AUDIO]