Transcript

I formally start the meeting I just want to pass on our best wishes to Michelle Brooks who's been clerking this committee for a good number of years and her behind the scenes contributions have been hugely appreciated. She moves on to another role in the authority in the in the communities team and we do wish her the well I'm sure she'll be doing an outstanding job in that team as she has for us as well. So good morning and I'll do the standard preamble for the meeting first so it is only the Executive League members present in the room that are taking the decisions at this meeting others in attendance are here to provide advice there are no planned fire drills today in the event of a fire alarm please follow the fire exit signs and congregate in the car park if anyone present might need assistance in exiting the building then please let one of the democratic services team know so the agenda and papers have been published on the council's website in advance of the meeting and the council recognizes the importance of striking a balance between providing opportunities lead lawful expression of views and any unacceptable behaviors or action that causes disruption can lead to our meetings being adjourned. You have been warned the council will be making a recording of the meeting and this will be published in due course so this is a hybrid format meeting so the Executive League members and key officers are physically present in the John Meikle room here at Dean House in Taunton other elected members and officers may physically or remotely join the meeting and speak on specific agenda items or observe this meeting is being broadcast and therefore other members of the public and partners can observe the meetings remotely. Further highlight good practice for a hybrid meeting could you kindly use the chat function only for the purposes of the meeting primarily to indicate that you wish to speak so my preference is that you would use the hands up function. If you are speaking please say your name before speaking and can I remind you of the importance of turning off microphones and cameras when not speaking. I can see some conversation online just checking are we all good to go with the meeting in terms of its hybrid format excellent in case anyone needs reminding we are in a pre-election period and that does have consequences for how a council operates and I wonder if Mr. Hillard would be able just to run through that for us please. Thank you leader so the calling of the general election does have consequences as we're now into the official pre-election period formerly known as perda which means that the business of council cannot interfere with or influence how our residents will vote on the fourth of July. I'm sure that you'll all be aware we've got to comply with the restrictions outlined in the local government act 1986. In addition there is a code of recommended practice on local authority publicity which makes it clear that particular care should be taken in periods of heightened sensitivity such as the run-up to an election and for example avoid particularly controversial decisions or consultations which could be politically sensitive. Thank you okay thank you for that reminder I'm sure we'll bear that in mind as we go through today's agenda. Apologies for absence I believe Councillor Sarah Wakefield's on and you'll leave and just a reminder that Adam Dance has stepped away from his role as a lead member during the duration of the election campaign. Are there any other apologies not seeing any um just to note uh Duncan Sharkey's been uh asked to step away for and to resolve an issue um to do with the election and um I'm very very pleased to have Jason Vaughan on my right hand side telling me what to do or will it be the other way around I'm never sure um so we've got the minutes of the meeting held on the 8th of may 2024 um could we please note that um there are some confidential items within that if anyone does want to raise the confidential items under the minutes then we have to go into confidential session it's not exciting um so please try not to because it makes life a lot easier um are there any comments or questions on the minutes are we happy to accept them as a true and accurate record can I see a proposal Councillor Shearer seconded Gansler-Wilkins those in favour those against that's clearly carried and are there any declarations of interest no I'm not seeing any and public question time I've not been notified of any public questions or statements in advance just double checking nothing's come in um that I need to be aware of no nothing's come in which moves us on to the executive board plan which I would like to table as written in the papers are there any comments or questions on that again not seeing anything so with that is noted and we are steaming ahead on to item six which is the implementation of the gravity enterprise zone via the gravity local investment plan which is pages 29 to 86 on your papers Councillor Rose White to introduce please thank you chair the paper you have before you needs to be considered with the treasury management paper which will be following it this report is the third stage in a process of delivering the gravity enterprise zone and there were if people remember recommendations which were approved by the executive in March 2024 and the establishment of the executive subcommittee in May this paper focuses on the delivery of the enterprise zone with the proposed investment and this investment in the site is a significant investment for not only in the short term but also in the medium term for the council and you can see in appendix a the amount and quantum of the investment and it's in two phases and you can see within the paper the initial 55 million and then followed by 150 million and this this investment is something which is exciting for the council will deliver huge benefits but also has risks which are within the paper around the 55 million is the gravity locality investment plan and this is actually the project delivery plan of how we're going to specifically look at movement and skills and business opportunities across the council across the county and it is a significant day and we will be taking this in due course if it's approved today to full council this is a significant stage in the development of the gravity enterprise zone and also for the council and I do commend people to have a look at the locality plan the locality investment plan it is really a huge investment by the council into the project to ensure that we can deliver the benefits as outlined in the paper I'll hand over to I think Mickey Green as the executive director on this and I recognize that Paul Hickson who's been the service director is absent at a funeral today thank you but thank hope gladly I'm joined by Kinga as well to answer any tricky questions so as Councillor Wike outlined this is kind of part of the process it has also been through corporate resources scrutiny it doesn't sit in isolation so for the council it sits alongside that treasury management strategy and more widely it is dependent upon finalizing the grant of 55 million from the Department of Business Trade and securing a 10-year extension to the enterprise zone from deduct so detailed negotiations on both are going well and we're expecting an in principle offer letter on the grant having worked with several servants to get those final negotiations on the terms and conditions just across the line just before the dissolution of Parliament and that's crucial to de-risking the final kind of assignee of that after the general election the gravity locality investment plan focuses on several themes which have been identified through close working with the investor and which aims to directly support the delivery of the advanced manufacturing facility make the site more attractive to prospective future occupiers whilst also realizing benefit locally and to the wider Somerset community proposed themes will deliver interventions that improve or deliver necessary infrastructure on or off site address active travel requirements and provide support for the workforce and prospective supply chains it is worth a reminder though that Agritas his own investment in the site is around 4 billion so it is a small proportion of the total investment into Somerset to underpin that plan and the need for public investment in the site the council has commissioned a viability assessment and business case the latter jointly with Agritas the council in the Department of Business and trade are also jointly working on a subsidy control assessment to ensure that any public funding use that support this project complies with the subsidy control at 2022 once those processes are concluded it is expected that funding applications will for individual projects in line with the locality investment plan will be submitted by the investor accompanied by a business case which needs to be compliant with treasuries Green Book all funding applications will be decided in line with the existing financial delegations prescribed in the council's constitution all funding agreements will protect the council's finances by ensuring relevant clawback clauses and monitoring mechanisms are built in through the grant agreed with the Department of Business and trade the cost of borrowing both capital repayment and interest will be covered by external funding ensuring the delivery of the project is cost neutral to the council robust modeling and monitoring arrangements have been put in place to ensure the council is able to draw down money from that grant when it needs it and any cash flow and treasury implications are managed the grant secured from dbt or almost secured from dbt provides funding for core council staff that will be responsible for the implementation of the enterprise though and to ensure that the project can be delivered without negatively impacting on the wider council finances the report summarizes the risks and mitigations relevant to the recommendations before you and is underpinned by a comprehensive program risk register there was a very useful discussion at scrutiny both about how the council's overall approach to risk management was changing and how we ensure that there is clear visibility of the wider set of risks associated with the implementation of this huge program and in the previous decision that Councillor White referred to in terms of setting up that transparent executive subcommittee monitoring risk as well as the flow in of the the community forum were explicit parts of its terms of reference so bringing it for circles into conclusion this isn't just about the 4 000 direct jobs in a green industry of the future it's about how this can act as a catalyst to transform Somerset and most importantly of the people who call Somerset home or will call it home thank you mickey and king of is there anything you wanted to add to no absolutely case anything you wanted to add just to say also the treasury uh management strategy statement the updates to that is a consequence of this decision that also went toward a committee last week okay thank you um i see we've got bob vilma chair of the scrutiny committee that went to you on the 29th of may are there any comments from scrutiny that should be drawn or brought to our attention bob no thank you leader i think the uh the officer mr green has uh has reported the comments that came from scrutiny thank you thanks bob okay open up to uh members lead members and associate league members first of all and uh council dodge um thank you leader it kind of feels like i know that this has been many many years in the making but it actually feels like it's moving quite fast it's kind of speeded up towards the end which which is um wonderful so um it all feels really positive to me i've just got a question on page um 62 with the um investment plan summary about the 45 million for the initial energy connection and infrastructure so i'm just a bit staggered at the amount really for what appears to be a temporary um connection before um the substation is is built so just a bit more detail about that if you can please keith yeah if i give a layman summary and then king i can correct with technical details um it needs two energy connections so i mean one thing that's become crystal clear is if you want to attract this kind of business of the future um plentiful supplies of power are one of the most critical things it's hugely power hungry even if the whole thing was covered by solar panels which i believe is part of agritases invest uh intentions that would only deliver about two percent of the power it needs so the power it needs is bonkers to use a non-technical term um the high energy um the kind of final connection will take a number of years and there's been a lot of work um with the relevant departments that we've been involved in to work out how they can speed that up and de-risk that as much as possible but it won't be ready on time so there's an initial connection uh flowing back to bridge water which provides sufficient power for them to deliver on time that then will once they've once the second connection is in place almost that connection then becomes free for other investors in the site so that kind of links to that point i was making about how the investments are necessary to enable the delivery of this advanced manufacturing facility in an effect or an abnormal cost of development meeting helping meet this kind of subsidy control tests but also how that investment then enables further investment in the site is there anything you need to correct or want to add to that no i think you covered everything thank you um chair um i really welcome this and i'm supportive um of the paper that's being brought forward i think my biggest concern throughout all of this around gravity is the impact on the housing market we already know that we have a housing crisis in summerset and the lack of people to find affordable homes and a huge waiting list um to access um the social housing market i'm just wondering mickey or ros if you can give me an overview only needs to be brief just as to what we're going to do to try and help mitigate the impact of such a wonderful opportunity for summerset that no doubt will have risks to it thank you you're absolutely right challenging housing a challenging the housing issue in summerset this is going to be another contributory factor we're in the discussions as you're aware with the workforce uplift at hinckley and which is again going to be plated into um discussions and also remedial action i don't think at the end of the day we we have got a total solution it's going to be one made up of many elements and i hope that we'll be able to address it we do have a reasonable run-in in terms of the amount of people on site for the first because it will be built in phases and the first one will be 700 and something individuals and we anticipate that we will be having to invest quite significantly in the enabling officers the housing officers all the elements which add to that and also i think it's recognized that the source of them of where the work has come from will be probably wider than hinckley at the moment and there will be a lot more coming up and down the motorway and which is why they're looking very seriously at the motorway junctions and also the potential railway link too so no absolute list but it's it's there and it's been discussed at length about a range of actions and i'm sure your colleagues within the housing team will be very much involved in this thank you and i'll next go on to day one thank you chair um i what i welcome the gravity project and the paper that has been presented to us i'm very proud that summerset council are involved in this significant project um although i fully understand that bridgewater and taunton college due to their proximity to the gravity site and their previous experience considerable experience with the hinckley point c project are the prime location for skill set and employment training i would like to ask for assurances that the council makes every effort to work with agra task to ensure employment and skills opportunities for this game changer for summerset and the uk motor industry are opened up to other colleges schools and training centers across the whole of summerset to take full county-wide advantage of the direct skills and employment and supply chain opportunities offered by the gravity project um mr green i think you're on three thank you yeah i mean happy to offer that assurance if it gives you some comfort you know we chaired a recent meeting uh where we ensured that all the college heads were invited as well as uh amelia it's a it's a yeah you're right it's a it's really significant and there's no way that is why we refer to it being as county-wide and councilor white refers to it as being regional and agritas and the national government would refer to this as being national it's it's a huge challenge so yes there's a kind of local element but it goes way beyond that and it requires the involvement of multiple partners and builds on lots of the experience that we've got in count the predecessor councils in terms of some of the fantastic things that were done in terms of attracting more women into into hinckley so we're having all sorts of those conversations and just linking back to um counselor smith roberts point it's that workforce profile and ensuring that as many of those jobs are filled by by local people there are younger people who might still be in primary school or people people far from the labor market that then impacts on the transport solutions it impacts on the housing solutions we need that clearly there will be coming from people coming from outside but just to reiterate a point which is probably self-evident this is it's massive but it's quite and there's lots of similarities to the hinckley point project but it's very different and these are there's a good quality permanent jobs so the impact on the county is quite different to the kind of the more temporary albeit medium term jobs that come through the hinckley point construction project and gross i'd like to add to that first of all with hinckley and i don't think many people realize that three and over three and a half thousand people on the hinckley side who actually were living in summerset prior to actually taking on the um their employment at hinckley so they're genuine local jobs in that respect the other thing which we have learned a lot of lessons from hinckley is the development of the supply chain and without any doubts we will try to ensure that we are as even more successful in ensuring that there is local significant local opportunities for local organizations and businesses in summerset and keep moving on to this life on thank you chair i just want to make the point of course that the 55 million pound non-repayable grant from government to cover the costs of borrowing until business rates commence is relatively new and i just want to formally thank those officers who worked on that with government officials because that has made a very very significant difference to the way we've been able to approach all the investment in gravity and i also just wanted to make the point chair in addition to colleague federica's point about housing there is of course a point about sufficiency of school places too in that part of summer set because that part has not been affected by the moratorium on housing development because nutrients and so we already have more development in that part of summer set and we will have more again and it is absolutely critical that as well as housing we look at sufficiency of school places as well thank you thanks okay i'm not seeing any other lead members or associate lead members wanting to speak i'm i'm seeing the the news that the camera's not on liz when she's speaking which um i'm sure i'm sure we'll just we'll disappoint many um so i've got the three other members that wish to speak so uh jill slo can you you you won the race so you can go first oh thank you leader thank you um obviously um being a sedge more uh a previous counselor been in this um this has been on our diaries and in our calendar for a long long time so it is a very very important day the thing that i wanted to ask is as what um actually um your deputy just actually said a minute ago about um education and schools but i wanted to actually ask and i have asked agritize this that i think we need to also um forge um links with our secondary schools our um our upper tier secondary schools because i think that's really important but whilst we're talking our colleges are brilliant we need to be actually letting our young people know in their later stages of school life um what exactly is happening and what skills could be for them so they can actually forge ahead to know what what they need to do in colleges and i don't think they'd actually when i spoke to them they'd actually actually gone that route down the school the secondary schools line but i would like to ask if we as a council can keep making sure that we talk to talk to them about that please so i think it's very important uh mickey's pointing at kinger for that one is that is that fair yes yes um yes absolutely we recognize that the four thousand people that will work at gravity or agritus and then additional three thousand uh across the gravity site um ideally they will have to come uh locally and it will take a lot of effort across different partners and different routes to actually get those people uh through the through the education system so absolutely we we recognize the need to start talking to primary schools children of you know six seven eight year olds to get them on the right path follow through secondary schools and then colleges and then beyond colleges talking to adults and people wanting to reskill people wanting to come back on the labour market after taking breaks so absolutely it's going to be a multi-phased project with different approaches and different partners involved if i if i can lead out that that's very reassuring kinger i should have known you were on it thank you very very much thank you thanks for your question jill and uh mark yeah yeah thank you leader um it's very interesting to listen to the executive members and their questions put you know put to the council um i'm very privileged the fact that i'm one of the divisional councillors i've been working with at the time gravity and now agritus since 2017 and i listen to concerns about housing about education etc all i know is over the period of time i've worked with with agritus and gravity they're honorable people they want to work with the local community uh one of their points they made i think it was last week was the fact they want to use local labour to begin with so they're not uh if you like uh displaying some of the concerns about i've got enough housing etc i was encouraged to listen to the the actual way they go in about talking to the schools the you know the the college etc where they want to engage so i think personally the long-term view is i think we've got a really good partner here i think it's good and i listen to the cabinet member executive member talk about it's good for simmerset it's not only good for simmerset it's good for the uk and i think european wide we've put simmerset on the map nationally and internationally thank you not too much of a question observation uh leader thank you uh thank you and until you mentioned europe i thought it was going to be totally non-controversial and then when he mentioned europe get excite some people so we'll try and avoid avoid that one in the pre-election period uh mandy thank you very much chan good morning um committee so i think um we've had um a recent members update online which was very welcome it gave us a lot of information but i think one of the issues there raised from right across the county was actually travel um and getting to and from for work and we've got a lot of rural areas that are not serviced currently uh by any transport actually and really keen that there should be a good travel plan that will engage as many of our uh local workforce in simmerset as it as it can and my second uh question actually um relates to training i know with hinckley point there was many years rolling uh to the upskilling and training of local people so i suppose one of my questions is do we have the time to do that fully locally um and uh sec my last question is around business rates now um the finances are all based on business rates and business rates retention moving forward um we're looking at a 10 sort of 20-year span on the council being supported by this business rates what protections are there for the council should the whole mechanism of business rates and how it's calculated changed during that time don't worry listen listen i just listen to me thank you very much we're enjoying the domestic arrangements soon now sorry sorry sorry but bill you're mute i think hi someone has muted the main feed from the room okay can i just confirm that that's working now yes thank you uh so mickey uh thank you bill i'll take the first two so yeah travel absolutely crucial issue so picked up in a couple of areas really um ldo compliance in terms of travel plan requirements and a robust set of requirements they will have to demonstrate they meet uh to achieve that compliance but you also then see it in terms of the investment plan reflecting the fact that it's a priority area for us in terms of not just meeting the basic needs of the facility but trying to do so in a way that best reflects the needs of the wider county so and an ongoing issue that i would expect is a key feature of the executive subcommittee's role in in scrutinizing how we progress this in terms of training yeah it's a tight time scale but we are where we are and everything on this is tight and they're trying to do everything more quickly the grid connection via anything that that normally is done so it is it is challenging i guess the only point i'd make is it's not that the four thousand workers are all needed on day one it's a kind of phased approach in terms of building one then building two then building three um absolutely live live work and uh before i pass to to jason on business rates just to highlight that the one bit we can control there is around the floor space element so that would where i'm alluded or i won't say where i'm saying kind of will put in um clauses in terms of our funding agreements that is one of the things we we can do to to mitigate that risk but in terms of wider risk mitigation jason yeah thank you so in the paper um you'll see on pages 34 and then on 35 some of the key financial risks and identified there is the risk around business rates um so some of the things we've done around that first of all looking for the 10-year extension in terms of the business rates income in itself that actually makes the funding actually work better and if everything went perfectly this would actually generate quite as significant as in tens of millions of pounds additional income for the somerset economy so that that's a real positive the the risk for the council was then the upfront funding and paying for the investment plan before we actually received the business rates the way in which we've addressed that actually is to get the government grant um i have to say i'm really pleased we managed to more or less land that um because they were very reluctant to do that it's unusual it hasn't happened in any other enterprise zones and they offered us a a loan at the beginning and i think we um pointed out that wasn't very helpful to us we wanted the cash thank you so receiving the grant has de-risked that front end the big risk therefore remains the whole business rate system changes across the country um there's not a lot we can do about that that would be a government policy change the kind of however bit is this is how all enterprise zones are funded across the country and there are quite a few of them so the government would have to put in some sort of transitional mechanisms because this is how they've secured secured economic investment nationally so it is a risk we've highlighted it there's not a lot we can do about that one we have i think managed the other two areas of it thank you 20 years is a long time in terms of any uh any income streams so i welcome response thank you and just to say really welcome the project very exciting for for Somerset um just the last thing with the schools and colleges is obviously we've got the next year's term and intake starting in September which i'm guessing it'll be almost impossible to get things up and running and it's also getting into our schools and colleges and letting them know uh the what is the art of the possible and the new jobs perhaps that our young people haven't thought about before it's getting them at a very young and early age so they can start planning that into their career plans thank you chair uh thank you mandy yeah a lot of work's gone on over the past few years in terms of stem careers in schools anyway because of the hinkley hinkley arrangement particularly in the earlier years um but uh yeah ross do you want to add to that yes um i could give some insurance i'm a governor at um bridgewater and taunton college and the it's been on the agenda it's been thought about quite quite carefully there's been a lot of advanced discussions with agritas as to their training needs and what they need and what the college can provide the college has a breadth of experience from the nuclear college right through to supporting more apprenticeships than anywhere else i believe in terms of further education colleges and it is very much at the table nationally around providing both stem and apprenticeship training in this area so it will rapidly build a esteem if that's the right word i'm sure i've missed my metaphor but it will definitely be responding and we'll see things happening through the summer into the autumn and there is real excitement the there was an open open day at the college where i think 150 odd students already have signed up to want to work there and that thing has now moved to 240 and form will be former students of the college so it's moving and we will make sure that it moves with pace but it won't just be a bridgewater i think there's a real commitment from bridgewater to take some leadership to ensure that all the colleges across somerset further education colleges are party to the training opportunities for our residents thank you thank you okay thank you mandy um moving on to francis nicolson please uh thank you mr chairman um more on more on the same absolutely welcome the 45 million um sorry the 20 million in workforce developments for training local skills enhancements it's absolutely right all the things that have been said are music to my ears there are two groups that i want to make sure um who are more less easy to reach or rather they find us harder to reach um that's we have a care leavers covenant uh to make sure that we are ensuring that uh there is sufficient support and access for our care leavers things like making sure that um there are interviews and so on as we do ourselves in the local authority um and the um the other groups uh particularly uh those who the inclusion service worked so hard with julie young and her teams worked so hard with both um at risk of neat for various reasons but also um children with ehcp and send and uh we do a lot of work in the local authority as of course we're all in charge of um on um making sure that there are supported um internships and so on leading to employment a number of the people that we really need to make sure that we support in summerset to so that they will have productive contributing lives are the ones who need a bit more support now who are not the ones coming eagerly from the colleges who understand uh the the benefits to them and and all of us uh it's so it's making sure that that those parts of are very much in the thinking for the workforce development uh and the only other bit that i had mentioned is um the whole transport thing is clearly going to be tricky uh involve all sorts of different thinking uh where there can be a knock-on benefit either to our education transport um or to um or to general public transport um outside the workforce at times that are not shift changes and so on um that would be a hugely welcome thing for the county and all its population as well as possibly for our budget on school transport if that worked thank you thank you francis for uh council white to respond thank you rosen thank you on the last issue um the um mixed use of um public transport versus um dedicated transport for agritas has already been raised with the company and they are very um uh open to suggestions because i recognize the frustration in rural area of seeing a half empty bus speeding down the road to hinkley and you think it'd be great if i could get a ride on it too um these the main thrust of your question is that yes we do need to address opportunities for a number of um hard to reach groups we've recently received some funding from the dwp around needs um individuals not in education or training um or employment um which we have unfortunately a high proportion in somerset and that work is being actively um worked on the project being actively worked on on the moment and you will be getting a briefing in due course we do need to address um the that group of people quite considerably um the other thing is is of course the recent employment figures which have just been announced show that not only is somerset um beating the national figures but within the southwest again the levels of employment in somerset are higher than anywhere else in terms of the growth of them and being resilient and those numbers have have been highlighted by the national press now we are beating the trend we apply we are providing a range of employment and it's showing in the numbers now thank you okay thank you for the response there and lastly we have claire sully online claire here we go i hope you can hear us now thank you thank you um um i echo what my fellow councillors have been saying this is such a welcome development for local people for somerset and and beyond and for the country i just wondered um if um because obviously um there has been briefings but if we could just remind people listening into this from the local communities about how they register their interest in jobs um and recruitment and what those time scales are um and then the second part is um where will we be detailing the measures of how we are um attracting the different groups of people from different areas and different backgrounds making sure we have a diverse target um that we meet that thank you uh thanks claire uh can you click that yeah um so all the interventions and priority investment priorities listed in the investment plan will be subject to outputs and milestones and regular monitoring and reporting so absolutely those kind of themes once we know individual projects that will be funded and delivered we will obviously put in place the necessary frameworks to make sure that we monitor kind of return on investment and value for money and and how it delivers against the enterprise zone um policies as well okay and councillor roswite would like to add yeah just to remind people there is a website um and people can register now as i indicated earlier i believe the last big i saw was 240 um students from breechwater and taunton college who are leaving um education this summer have already um indicated their interest and but it doesn't mean to say that it's closed it's there and they're looking for not only now but going forward because that'll be part of the training offer as well uh thank you that's um everybody who's indicated so just thank everybody for their contributions obviously we all welcome an investment of this size into into summerset and it's been fantastic piece of work to get that 55 million pound grant almost over the line i think is what we what we're what we're saying at the moment um um we do know that we need to work at pace here that this needs to benefit all of summerset um that there is a risk around housing there there is a potential risk around business rates but that is shared with lots of other authorities and some really good points made about um about how we can make that opportunity available for as many people as possible through making sure that we've got that education and training piece and we make sure that um that uh our corporate parent responsibilities are recognized and and we recognize those people who are at risk of being neat i'd also add to that um i have a number of people in touch with touch with me who are um leaving the armed forces who are now looking at opportunities there as well and would remind of the armed forces covenant responsibilities that are in there it would be great to see that as an opportunity for people to move on so we have recommendations in front of us that we approve the detailed financial government's arrangement set out in the report that we note the gravity locality investment plan is set out in appendix a and agree the investment priorities for the plan uh recommend to full council that the gravity scheme is added to the capital program and that the treasury council's treasury management strategy is updated for this as outlined in appendix b including the adopting of the prudential treasury indicators included in table three of that appendix and delegates authority to the section 151 to make final decisions about the council undertaking borrowing including the quantum and timing to deliver investment in line with the gravity locality investment plan and within the limits set out in the council's treasury management strategy following consultation with the leader executive league member for resources and performance okay are we happy with those recommendations do i have a composer please council roswike seconded by councilor wilkins can i see those lead members in favor please those against that is clearly carried thank you very much okay and on one minute ahead of schedule um so we are moving on to recommendations from the scrutiny committee climate and place meeting on the 26th of april regarding water quality in summerset and i'd like to ask council roswike to introduce the item and highlight any key points this report is inevitably detailed it has a significant amount of um background to it and i think um we will have hopefully a worthwhile discussion about what is something close to all our hearts and that's the water quality in summerset whether you're into world swimming drinking or just um enjoying the countryside so water quality in summerset is fundamental to many of us um i won't spend time talking about the report in detail i think first of all shall we have a look at the slides in place so i welcome um the officers allison long cooper who is the head of planning and kate murdoch who is um i forget your formal title but i regard you as the policy um planning of a manager for the county thank you that's ros um so yeah i'm kate murdoch i'm the service manager for strategic policy and implementation for the council and i'm just going to run you through some slides to support the paper that you've got in front of you in terms of the officers advice following the recommendations from the scrutiny climate and place water quality session so just to remind members that the scrutiny climate and place took place on the 26th of april and it was a special water quality session to focus purely on that matter the purpose was to share with the committee the research that's underway by various partners to understand the nutrient pollution sources on the somerset levels and moors and to outline the roles and actions of key organizations that are taking action to reduce nutrient pollution at the scrutiny committee members were reminded that somerset council does not have a statutory responsibility for water quality and the chair's introduction was very clear that the session was not about revisiting nutrient neutrality and just to remind members that nutrient neutrality is not a policy it's advice from natural england to a national approach and it's supported by case law and it's followed by approximately 70 local planning authorities across the country including call council. So just to take you through the recommendations from the scrutiny session and I will take each of these in order as we work through the presentation. So the first recommendation was to immediately remove the 20% buffer that's included in the somerset phosphate calculator. The second recommendation was to conduct a speedy review of the huge inconsistency between what Dr Clegg said echoed by Wessex water and what the calculator says with how much of the river born phosphorus enters the somerset levels and moors as that calculator is what informs developers as to how much phosphate we are requiring them to offset. The third was to conduct an urgent review of the entire nutrient neutrality policy and again just to remind members it's not a policy it's divided supported by case law in light of the legal advice we have received which makes it clear that headroom exists and that it could be used in the mitigation of new housing development. The fourth recommendation is the climate and place to set up a task and finish group which will report back to the committee on a tight time scale to set out the options available to the council once it is in possession of the correct data and the fifth recommendation was the council looks to work on a land use strategy as part of a local plan. So those are the recommendations made by the committee and I will take each one in turn now to give the officer advice behind it but before that I would just like to remind members of the legal advice that we've received and again same legal advice that the other local authorities are also working with. So Natural England is the statutory nature conservation body and what that means is that basically local planning authorities we are the ultimate decision maker but we are required by law to consult Natural England as part of the habitat assessment and we are required to give Natural England's advice considerable weight and if we want to depart from that legal that that advice we have to provide cogent reasons so clear evidence to support departing from the advice of Natural England. And again the legal advice reminds the in in the council's capacity as the local planning authority that we must adopt a precautionary approach where protected sites might be affected and in the case of Somerset that's the Somerset Levels and Moors and the River Axe and that development can only be consented where there is no reasonable scientific doubt that it will not affect the integrity of the site. So again all of this is supported by case law and it is a it's a very high bar to pass. I just would like to remind members as well that nutrient neutrality is a legal matter. The LPA the local planning authority doesn't need to understand the sources or the quantity of pollutants from the different sources across Somerset. What we the local planning authority needs to ensure is that with each additional resident or dwelling that we're giving planning permission for or the other applications that are sometimes caught by nutrient neutrality was that it will be mitigated i.e. that there will be no additional nutrient loading arising from that one dwelling as a result of the kind of population growth that arises from that. And when nutrient neutrality the advice is that it depends on the wastewater treatment works that that development feeds into and so each wastewater treatment works has its own permit level that's set and agreed as part of their asset management plan program with the environment agency and the environment agency monitor those permit limits and ensure that they're meeting the requirements of their permit limits. And the the technological and nature-based solutions that are being moved forward for nutrient mitigation both the calculations for the quantum of nutrient mitigation that are required and delivered by those nutrient mitigation projects are all approved by Natural England. So it's their role as the statutory conservation body and their expertise that we are taking into account when we have we agree those mitigation measures. So just take take the first recommendation so removing the 20% buffer in the Somerset phosphate calculator. Again the 20% buffer is in all the national calculators utilised by the 70 local planning authorities impacted by nutrient neutrality and it's built in to ensure that the mitigation measures satisfy the precautionary approach and the reasonable scientific certainty because not all of those measures have got absolute conclusions in how much they remove by way of phosphates. So that buffer and again supported by case law is built in to to ensure that we're meeting those legal requirements of taking a precautionary approach and ensuring that we've got reasonable scientific certainty that those mitigation measures will remove the the nutrients or mitigate the impact of the nutrients arising from each dwelling that we give permission for. And local planning authorities are required by law again to give Natural England's advice considerable weight and provide cogent reasons if they want to depart for it. And at the current time there are no cogent reasons to depart from Natural England's advice as far as we're aware but again if evidence comes to light that demonstrates that we can take a different approach we will of course consider that. So the second recommendation is to look at reviewing the quantum of phosphates entering the Somerset levels and walls. And the background to this or all the evidence that's often flagged up to to move this recommendation forward is some research that Dr Clegg has carried out with a number of volunteers on the River Parrot. And officers have met with Dr Clegg and Natural England as well has met with Dr Clegg. And in Natural England to provide provided some comments on the research and that's in Appendix B to the report so you can read them in full. But I will just summarise here in this slide. So the first issue that they've raised is around Dr Clegg's comments on the hydrological connectivity between the Somerset levels and walls and the River Parrot. And what they flagged up is that the River Parrot several several months of the year over tops and will transport phosphates and also the Somerset levels and walls itself is a is often a large flood storage area in the winter which again will transport phosphates in a manner which is very difficult to document and to evidence. They also questioned the sampling size, the time scale and the area covered in that it's just a part of the River Parrot and we've got a number of other river catchments both the River Tone and the River Brew that feed into the Somerset levels and walls. They flagged up the impact of climate change with drier summers and wetter winters and that the flow rates from water to being taken from the River Parrot in the long dry summers will increase phosphorus concentrations and also the mobilisation of phosphorus. And the water flows and movements of course which we all know are complex on the Somerset levels and walls so the water levels are controlled in the winter to help manage flood risk and in the summer to ensure that they meet the conservation needs of the special protection area. And Dr Clegg himself has acknowledged Natural England's feedback. He isn't claiming that his research is something that can be relied upon in a court of law if we were to be legally challenged on taking that approach. He himself has acknowledged that his research was about increasing knowledge in an area where we all acknowledge that there is not enough evidence to fully understand the impact of nutrient pollution and the sources of nutrient pollution on the Somerset levels and walls. But again the council doesn't have the expertise, we don't have the resources and just to remind members we don't either have the statutory responsibility to undertake a research project of this scale and complexity. And again I just take back to what we need to do as the local planning authority which is ensure that each dwelling that we give permission for is sufficiently mitigated taking that precautionary approach of reasonable scientific certainty off the back of the advice of Natural England as the statutory body and that is the approach we've been taking to date. Furthermore the kind of evidence out there from the Rivers Trust flags up a report that they've got and I put the link there that you can read it in in your own time. A key paragraph there from that flags up that there is evidence from published studies that show that spot sampling which is what Dr Clegg has been doing can underestimate phosphorus pollution loads by 60% and that up to 80% of phosphorus pollution loads can enter rivers in just two or three rainfall events. I've got some further slides later that'll explain some of those sources. The Rivers Trust have also published the state of our rivers report in 2024 flagging again that our rivers which we all know it's well documented in the press and very topical issue at the moment are not in a good state of health. They've documented that there's been further decline since their last report in 2021 and they again acknowledge that more data is needed so that we can truly understand the scale of the problems and deploy solutions. This isn't unique to Somerset. There's lots of the other water bodies that are impacted by nutrient neutrality. We've got the River Wye, we've got the Norfolk Braws, the Lake District, the River Avon and the Solon area, all of which again lots of comments to flag up that further evidence is required to fully understand how we resolve this issue in the longer term. So just moving on to the recommendation three which was to conduct an urgent review of the entire nutrient neutrality policy, again reminding members that nutrient neutrality is not a policy. It's advice from the statutory conservation body backed up by case law. In light of the legal advice we have received which makes it clear that headroom exists and that it could be used in the mitigation of new housing development. Again you'll see from the report that this isn't a view that officers agree with, that the legal advice does not allow us to take that interpretation. It does not support this recommendation and 70 local planning authorities are following the same advice including Cornwall despite Cornwall often being flagged up as an area that's taking a different approach. Just to remind members that in the case of Cornwall they took a different approach with one site, the rest of the housing units that are caught by nutrient neutrality are all having to deliver mitigation and that particular site they had evidence from Natural England saying that the upgrades to the wastewater treatment works in that particular case could be counted as mitigation despite the fact that Natural England then subsequently rode back from that advice. Cornwall still took the decision to go forward with that application. And to date to our knowledge there's been no challenge from the development industry. Again despite the fact that nutrient neutrality has been advised from Natural England since 2018, the Somerset area was caught by the advice in 2020 but the Solent region and the River Wye have been dealing with this since about 2018. So the recommendation just to remind members that the legal advice that we've got is very clear that the mitigation for the mitigation to be lawful it must be preventative. So it must stop any net gain in nutrients entering the water and I've put the references there from the legal advice that you've got both in Appendix A and the council's own legal advice in Appendix B. The case law requirements are for practical certainty so that means that we as the local planning authority will not be able to rely on the nutrient reduction plans and strategies from the water industry and I've got some further slides later to explain why that's the case. The legal advice is saying that it doesn't require it doesn't provide the certainty that we need to eliminate reasonable scientific doubt and that's because those plans are not built in to ensure that future housing growth has a neutral impact on those special protection areas. And again our own councils legal advice not for one that's the nationally published one is that Wessex waters upgrades were not provided as mitigation for future development and cannot be relied upon by local planning authorities. Whilst there might be many years of headroom in the flow part of Wessex waters permit and outperformance on the concentration the permit does not alter the fact that additional housing will increase nutrient discharge to rivers and there's a further slide where I can explain this. So the slide before you know it gives an example of a wastewater treatment works that's often flagged up having had significant investment in it. So it's the Taunton wastewater treatment works actually referred to as the Ham wastewater treatment works. It serves Taunton and it also serves a number of the rural villages around Taunton and the chart that you see before you the bar if you take the blue and the orange together it accounts for one milligram per litre of phosphorus and that's the permit limit against which that wastewater treatment works is monitored by the environment agency. So if Wessex water for every litre of treated effluents that they discharge to the river if it exceeds one milligram of phosphorus within that discharge they would incur fines from the environment agency. So they have to make sure that every litre of treated effluents that's discharged to the river doesn't exceed that limit. At the moment on average they are discharging at 0.67 which is the blue element of that bar which indicates that there's headroom of 0.33 milligrams per litre of P and that headroom is built in again to accommodate growth but not to mitigate the growth because for each additional litre that's taken from the wastewater treatment works it increases the overall quantity. So when you when we give planning permission as the local planning authority for a housing unit and a family moves in each one of those family members on average use about a hundred and ten litres per day of phosphates above water sorry and obviously within those litres of water it will contain their sewage element which will contain phosphates and the water itself contains phosphates of our drinking water does it's treated mainly because of the legacy lead piping as I as I understand. So it increases the quantity of wastewater that's going to the treatment works and increases the quantity of discharged effluent but obviously they don't exceed that one milligram per litre. So that headroom is there to ensure that they're not fined by the Environment Agency for exceeding their permit limit. It is not there to ensure that every dwelling we give planning permission for has a neutral impact on the special protection area. And of course this only covers the sewage that makes it to the wastewater treatment works and we know that these wastewater treatment works build in that headroom it's part of their infrastructure upgrades not just unique to Somerset we've got other examples across the country in the Wessex water area where they're caught by nutrient neutrality in both the River Avon where Wessex operate and also parts of the Paul Harbour area. So when I said that doesn't count that only accounts for the sewage that makes it to the wastewater treatment works and of course the vast majority of it does. And this map shows the, it comes from the Rivers Trust. It uses data from the event duration monitoring or these water level sensors that the Environment Agency have at combined sewer overflows. And combined sewer overflows operate across the sewage network across the country and in high rainfall events when the sewage system can't cope with the capacity of rain they are, water companies are allowed to discharge raw sewage into our waterways to prevent it backing up into our homes so they are legally able to do that. However, what the Rivers Trust has flagged up through analysing the event duration monitoring data is that these are supposed to be in exceptional circumstances but are actually happening far more regularly than anticipated. So the bigger the brown dot basically the larger quantity of untreated sewage being discharged to our watercourses. This isn't exactly caught for the Somerset levels and moors catchment area but it largely covers the area that would feed into the Somerset levels and moors. And then going to the example of the Taunton wastewater treatment works that's often flagged up as having significant headroom and therefore being able to take account of nutrient neutrality for the housing growth. These are the brown dots or the quantities of raw sewage that have been pumped into the watercores that should theoretically have gone to the wastewater treatment works at hand. And again you can click on each of these dots and it tells you the time over which raw sewage has been pumped into our watercourses. What it doesn't tell you is the actual quantity so I've followed that up with the Environment Agency. At the moment they only monitor the time scale so the time at which it starts to discharge and the time at which it stops. But we have been informed that we might be able to get some of that from Wessex Water but my understanding is that data isn't comprehensive. So we'll see what we get back but essentially that's only important to the council if we're choosing to take a different approach. If we're following the advice of Natural England and we're making sure that we're putting in mitigation in place for each development that we're permitting we don't need to understand the full extent of that data for nutrient neutrality purposes. Members might want to understand that for other reasons, particularly when we start to look at what work needs to happen for the restoration of the Somerset levels and malls. So just to remind members what the current risks are in taking a different approach. So in following the legal advice that we've got it reduces the risk of legal challenge to the council. It doesn't remove it entirely. There's always a legal risk with planning decisions and Somerset itself is not unknown to legal challenges. The Mendip Local Plan, the former South Somerset Local Plan both were successfully legally challenged and previous planning decisions in South Somerset were also successfully legally challenged. But in following the advice we are minimising that risk and ultimately minimising the risk of costs which are excessive when it comes to pursuing legal challenge. The national water quality debate. Again, there's a high level of scrutiny on water companies at the moment. We've got the 9.6 million funding that we've been awarded by government for delivering mitigation and we're moving forward with many of those measures. At the moment there's significant risk of not being able to deliver that if we keep diverting staff resource onto investigating other matters. So just moving on to recommendation four which was to establish a task and finish group. Just to remind members that Somerset Council does not have a statutory responsibility for water quality. At the moment the resources and the limited staff resource we've got are focused on the statutory roles of the council and delivering the phosphate mitigation. It's critical that we utilise that funding that we've been awarded. We've got a very challenging spend deadline at the end of March 2025 so we've got what, 10 months now to make sure that we're allocating and committing that funding to delivering mitigation. We've got partnerships in place with the Somerset Catchment Partnership and Natural England are now establishing a technical working group for the Somerset Levels and Moors. We've got longer term grant that we, the 9.6 million that in the longer term can be repurposed for the restoration of the Somerset Levels and Moors and officers view is that that is the most appropriate time to look at setting up a task and finish group obviously subject to the resources and capacity at the time. We've also committed to providing an all member briefing alongside the ones we've done regularly previously before as part of reporting to the strategic planning committee in September 2024 where we will be providing an update on the phosphate mitigation delivery strategy and the drawing down spending of the funding that we've been awarded. So just to update everyone on where we are with the mitigation delivery strategy, like I said we've got the funding awarded. We are taking the report back through the committee in September to update. At the present time though we've done significant work to support the third party credit market. Currently over 600 dwellings and other large scale developments have been unlocked with suitable mitigation and there's now sufficient p-credits available to unlock approximately 4,500 dwellings and all of this is referenced in the strategic planning committee report that went on the 21st of March and again all signposted on the council's website so the impacted applicants know where to go to get suitable mitigation if they're unable to deliver it on the site. We've launched our call for sites that was launched on the 20th of May due to close on the 15th. We're seeking nature based solutions to deliver phosphate mitigation but also opportunities for stacking biodiversity net gain. Through that call for sites we're keen to ensure that we can deliver additional public benefits such as natural flood management and nature recovery and where possible public access. We're working with our colleagues in the housing team and the assets team to look at upgrading septic tanks for council properties. We're still progressing the trial with Salinity Solutions and with Miscanthus Nursery to provide strategic scale temporary credits that will assist all developments but also particularly those SMEs that the council's keen to support. We will be updating the phosphate mitigation strategy and we're looking to seek to progress a pre-commencement condition situation so at the moment what's been a big issue is the limited availability of mitigation schemes where developers have had to demonstrate up front. Once we've got a strategic scale approach to mitigation we'll be able to just apply what are called grumpying conditions but I mean think about them as like a pre-commencement condition really so that they don't have to make that commitment up front before they even know they've got planning commission. We can we can do that following once we've got this strategy in place and of course longer term that recycling of the funding will go into the restoration of the Somerset levels of moors. So the fifth recommendation was to prepare a land use strategy as part of the local plan. So a land use strategy is covering much wider areas of land use than the council itself controls. It can can look at carbon sequestration through production and security, tree planting and forestry but the council does not have statutory powers to control some of these land uses. At the moment the government had committed to publishing a land use framework for England by the end of 2023 but as yet that's not been published. We understand that they were likely to provide guidance but obviously with the election that's unlikely at this stage. At the moment we've got limited staff resource available for the local plan and therefore we're suggesting that the local plan takes priority and maybe a land use framework is considered when the government guidance is published and subject to resource constraints. Thank you chair any questions? Thank you Kate for your presentation and you're very clear that lots of work is going on in this area and it's and we're very grateful to the scrutiny committee for raising these issues. Water quality just to remind people is is an issue in the election I don't want to get straight into those areas because that's not appropriate for us in this arena. A couple of questions from me before I move on. First I'm very interested to hear that Natchlingham just set up a technical working group to the Somerset level some more. Can you tell us more detail about that? Are we likely to see more evidence coming from that group in the foreseeable future and who is working with any university partners to be able to reach some conclusions that might help us? At the moment my understanding is they're agreeing the terms of reference of that group but it's it wouldn't be a kind of a it wouldn't be a project that planning colleagues themselves would be involved in. I suspect it will be more the kind of climate team that would be involved in that work but it's very early stages they announced it at the scrutiny meeting on the 26th of April but we can find out further information about the likely time scales for that group being set up. Thank you yeah I'd be really interested to understand that one of the I spent yesterday trying to do lots of homework on this and as you start going into something you end up with more questions and answers and that's where I think I've been I've ended up on this. There was a phrase that you used that was 'accommodate but not mitigate' and I'm just wondering whether that has a different meaning in legal terms and practical terms in terms of this debate. I wonder if you could just expand on that a little bit more. Well I don't know that it's it's a legal matter in so far it's more the evidence that we would need to rely on to say that as the local planning authority if we were choosing to take a different approach we would need to demonstrate that the dwellings that we're giving planning commission are not having an impact on the integrity of the special protection area i.e. the Somerset levels of water for the river acts and the permits they're set are set to ensure that they don't exceed that permit level so they accommodate housing growth so they don't exceed that permit level but the permit level itself is just about ensuring that each litre of water doesn't exceed one milligram of phosphates of course when you increase the quantity of litres of water going into the wastewater treatment works by increasing population growth through further housing you are ultimately at the other end increasing the quantity of discharge of treated effluent so the litres of treated effluent increase but each litre doesn't exceed that one milligram of phosphates but the overall quantity still goes up of phosphates because you're increasing the litres of treated effluent that are coming out the other end so it's they're not exceeding the limit that they're monitored by from the environment agency but the level of nutrients are increasing with each housing that we give permission for which is why we mitigate now the reason that we take the permit limits is because it reduces what a developer might need to mitigate for so if you're a developer building a house in Taunton you only have to offset or mitigate that one milligram per litre from the quantity that's generated from the dwelling that you're giving you're seeking permission for however if you were a developer seeking to build a house in say Fivehead which is an unpermitted wastewater treatment works so they likely have a discharge limit of five milligrams per litre so for each litre they can't exceed five milligrams of phosphates then they have to mitigate much more and this is why the levelling up and regeneration act will make such a difference if I take you back to this slide here that dotted line shows where after the levelling up and regeneration act comes into force with the upgrades in 2013 they'll be mitigating at that much lower level so it reduces the amount of mitigation for a developer in Taunton by 75% it won't reduce it if you're building a house in Fivehead because they won't have a population exceeding 2000 but they will still need to mitigate even that lower level so even the levelling up and regeneration act despite what it's doing nationally it will remove tons of phosphorous developers will still need to mitigate that 0.25 it doesn't remove the requirement for future mitigation it reduces it significantly so in the case of Taunton it will reduce it by about 75% I think I had Councillor Wilkins I think you asked my question I do have others but I will wait till later okay Councillor Sherra thank you very much it is a very complex area and I appreciate I appreciate the work from the scrutiny team or scrutiny group looking at it and I appreciate your presentation this morning I mean I wanted to think about the mitigations that the 9.6 million is going is intended to do so I guess and also the one that you mentioned as well which is around the that change from upfront mitigation requirements to pre-commencement if you like in planning so I'm just thinking those two things what's the sort of time frame by which we might see some results of the 9.6 million for instance and what and what and what how much of an impact will that 9.6 million worth of mitigations do for us and similarly will it be a big or small change around the upfront to pre-commencement it's probably early days to say how much with any great certainty but we've launched the call for sites we've had a number of landowners approach us already before we launched the call for sites wanting to work with us so and the third-party market is really well developed so like I say we've already got sufficient credits to unlock about four and a half thousand homes we'll see what the outcome of the call for sites is and that I suspect will be a large proportion of committing the funding that we've been allocated we're progressing the trial to deliver temporary credits and the temporary credits are required between now and 2030 so what I've just explained to Councillor Evans is that they need to offset quite a lot more until we reach 2030 but those are just temporary credits and that's where we can support the market because it's not really attractive to the private market so the public sector can step in but we will be providing a full update in September to the strategic planning committee who oversee this but I'm confident given the number of landowners that have already approached us and Natural England have signed off a number of schemes that demonstrate there's a significant number of phosphate credits coming forward I think what might undermine that is where the government change approach or seek legal that's what undermined it previously was the uncertainty around the government's approach to nutrient neutrality but we've got a lot of schemes coming forward and there's also lots of other technological improvements that are coming forward that are being tested by the other local planning authorities impacted by nutrient neutrality so we will always ensure we learn from those tests as well. Thank you, Councillor Hayke. Probably to state the obvious but the more phosphate credits are available the cheaper they will come and therefore that will again help with house building for many developers but at the moment there is still a demand at a fairly high level which is why the price hasn't fallen yet but it will fall in due course if we get it right with it adding more to the marketplace. Yeah I just wanted to come back on the pre-commencement condition that was raised by Councillor Sheeran does it say the difference that will make is developers not having to commit and buy the credits up front which at the moment they have to do and to show us reasonable certainty what it will mean is that we can put a condition on so that they only have to have evidence that they have the credits at the point at which they want to start or indeed occupied by the dwellings and just to pick up on the point about the 9.6 million we have to commit those funds by the end of this financial year and the importance of doing so is that that money will be then recycled to use for the long-term restoration of sunset levels and all and until we actually address that underlying problem we're going to continue to be in this cycle and that's got to be our aim is to try and improve and so that it is in a favourable condition because that's what's led to it and we do need to make sure we have got very limited capacity in terms of staff resources we do need to make sure that we ensure that we have the staff resource in place in order for us to deliver on that 9.6 million. Thank you I'm very mindful of that capacity and clearly that at the moment that's where we need that focus to be we're also in a very fluid situation if that's not a pun because I am aware that there is various bits of science going on and there's various alternative legal view that's around that needs to be considered as well so I do appreciate the workload that is and the capacity issues that are going on in this. I'm not seeing any other lead members oh sorry sorry Fed I didn't see you earlier. Apologies that was a last-minute hand while I was just formulating my thoughts apologies Bill. I think for me one of the things that I've learned from this Kate and really welcome the presentation that you've given here that is very a very complex subject very simply is actually I was astounded by that map that you shared on the sewage map in relation to the rivers trust and just the amount of waste that is going into our waters from that and I'm wondering if there is something after reading the recommendations that we've got as a council that when we're out of the pre-election period that we look at something around a letter to government around you know the impact that that is having because I think when I shared this on our social my social media people were astounded just to see the amount of brown dots so there is an education piece here to public for them to be aware of it but I know that probably the pre-election period covers any campaigning but something for post that. Yeah I know I think subsequent to this there are a number of conversations that need to be had at government level but we'll it's difficult to have those conversations at the moment for obvious reasons. Councillor Wake. Thank you if you are looking at the the map with the brown dots and it's interesting they are brown I can I suggest that you go to the source which is the rivers trust where they have information on each of the brown dots because I think that is also a helpful source of information. Thank you. Councillor Harpouse. Good morning Henry. Oh sorry each time I think I'm coming to you another lead member pops up so my apologies Councillor Dodge. Sorry sorry about that yeah I just want to thank officers for it's been a tremendous amount of work it is really complex subject I've heard lots of different kind of perspectives and I find it kind of different to know where I difficult to know where I am I think I'm very aware that there are some members who are digging deep into the phosphates issue the the more you know the more complicated it gets and I know that there are other views and I just want to remind people that the member briefing paper which has been published with these papers on page 133 back along in February when there were kind of in a way challenges about this situation the officers sought further legal advice they have been responsive to those kind of views and will continue to look at that situation so I just want to say this is where we are now it's you know like let's let's kind of hang on to that and continue to look at look at information and where we are thank you. Yeah I think it just underlines the point of the situation being fluid and needing to look at evidence as it comes in which while I was really interested in the technical working group as to when we might see an outcome there but also also very conscious that alternative legal opinion may be available and on that note Councillor Hothouse. Thank you Mr Chairman I have a number of questions and they are very detailed the first question I want to talk about is the habitat regulations we are supposed to go through a full stage look on every planning application and I'm not going to read out the full amount I'm going to read just the beginning so we're supposed to go through a screening which will decide how much phosphate each planning application will produce the second is the assessment and I'll come back to that in a minute the third is the consultation by Natural England and the fourth is the integrity test I have not seen this on any single planning application since the 20th of August and we have to take regard of the habitat regulations in the same way as we have to take regard of the National England's advice and I'm going now to read the case law on the assessment stage which is our responsibility as we are in charge the case law is also clear that the precautionary approach applies at the appropriate assessment stage what this means is that the assessment must be particularly robust to a high standard of investigation based on the best up-to-date scientific knowledge and not based on the bare association of an expert and in my mind that is Natural England because they have no scientific proof on anything that they have advised us to do and mitigation and all of that comes underneath I'm going to finish any scientific certainty should be addressed by applying the precautionary rates to variables and I'm not arguing with anything in all the assessment must have no gaps must contain complete and precise and definite conclusions capable of removing all scientific doubt as to the effects of the proposal on the site and I remind you that the site is in Somerset levels I wish to ask the officers if those rules apply under the habitat regulations and they should have been put in place that's my first question thank you councillor Hobhouse just for those trying to follow on your hymn sheets at home we're on page 109 of the papers it's the legal briefing on the implications of the habitat regulations the local authority decision-making in the context of nutrient neutrality from Nina Pindham and Odette Chalabi which is a briefing though commissioned by the planning advisory service and it's paragraph 19 of that advice just looking for who's likely to respond I would have hoped it was the head planner who was going to give us the response on that thank you yes thank you chair I can assure members that we do screen all applications to see whether or not we have to apply the habitat regulations and we do a carry out the appropriate assessment indeed we have templates on the council website to help facilitate that process for applicants and to provide us with the necessary information that we undertake to do that we also do consult with Natural England we allow them three weeks to come back for feedback with their comments before we make a decision I'm fully confident that was tested in an appeal case on and brought by CG Fry on the Justin farm application and there was no fault found in the way in which we were dealing with those cases okay do you want to add Kate yet the only other thing I wanted to add in terms of the scientific kind of uncertainty point with Natural England is Natural England have published a number of studies that they've had commissioned through Ricardo to evidence what some of these mitigation measures deliver so riparian buffer strips they've published a load of guidance on how how that process is followed and it's the same the septic tank upgrade so a number of the measures that are in place that get again signed off when these mitigation measures are put forward by Natural England are backed up by the scientific evidence that they've commissioned and it's all published and available for for scrutiny if anyone wants to it's on Natural England's website okay thank you very much mr chairman can I come back on that particular question and I'm going to repeat what it says the best up to date some scientific knowledge and at this minute in time Natural England cannot prove to me that if you plant a wood in on land that is grassland and you haven't tested the flow of phosphate from that land how do you know that the woodland if it's deciduous does not increase the mitigation when the leaves fall in the autumn and I can produce you papers by one of the people who were involved in this Tim Stevens that proves that that is the case okay so on the specific point of deciduous woodland being mitigation again I can't comment on the specific case of deciduous woodland but everything that goes through the appropriate assessment in terms of mitigation measures gets signed off and approved by Natural England so and it's backed up by the evidence and research that they've done through the studies that are published on their website there may well be other studies that have been done that might undermine that I don't know but we work off the back of the advice that we get from the statutory conservation body which is Natural England in this case I'm gonna move on mr chairman because this argument's going to go in circles I find it extremely difficult the second question is that we are from polluting the sewage that's going into the rivers with what is going on to the levels and Moore's and the control that the IDB have on what goes on to the level two Moore's is complete and in the winter unless there's an overflow none of the sewage gets on to the levels and Moore's the maps the river maps and I'm going to give you an example on the river can since the first of January to the 30th of April I have had and it's in my division 121 spills of raw sewage that is on average one a day none of that can get on the levels and Moore's all of it has affected the can the EO and the parrot I have issued no swimming advice to my parish councils and no dogs to go in the water for the same reason but the levels and Moore's are not over spilled since January the 1st and have not any none of that sewage has ended up on the levels and Moore's it is a disgrace that it's gone into the river but can we avoid conflicting please between the levels and Moore's and the river structure on report thank you first I've got more. Yep of course we'll take one question at a time it'll be much easier that way do we have comments on on on that point sorry chair I wasn't clear what the question was so my understanding is that the sewage overspill from the events that were taking place on the carry on the river cam with a river cam sorry and and happened that are we what evidence do we have that any of that ends up on the levels and Moore's but I suppose the key thing is what evidence do we have that it doesn't and that's where we need this reasonable scientific we need to be able to eliminate reasonable scientific doubt so if those are hydrologically linked which and this goes back to dr. Clegg's research and the comments that natural England have named when the river parrot over tops in the winter and the Somerset levels and Moore's is a big flood storage area the water will flow you can't measure how it's flowing and where the phosphates are coming from the fact at the moment is that the special protection area or the Rams our sites are in an unfavorable condition due to phosphorus pollution no one can say with any great certainty the exact sources of those phosphorus pollution but because they are internationally designated sites we are caught by the habregs and we have to make sure that anything that will increase nutrient loading will not affect the integrity of the site whilst it's in an unfavorable condition so we don't need to understand how much sewage that gets pumped into any of the rivers actually ends up on the Somerset levels of Moore's whilst it's an unfavorable condition and the sources of those pollution are kind of irrelevant really if you know that you're going to give planning permission for something that's going to increase population and increase sewage you need to mitigate for that point I think Councilor Powers was making was the the water hasn't over topped in this since the first of January well I think the river can is hydrologically linked to the river parrot so the river catchment that we are we are looking at is the river tome the river brew and the river parrot and there's a number of rivers that feed into those but those are the three main river catchments that feed in but to the Somerset levels of Moore's but my understanding is that the level the water from the parrot going onto the levels in the winter it's only through overtopping in the summer it's through the management by the IDB so Councilor Harphouse's point would stand that any pollution going directly into the river in the winter is not going on to the Somerset levels of Moore's because at that time they are certainly not hydrologically linked unless there is overtopping is that not my understanding correct? The only evidence that's suggesting that is the work that Dr Cleggston and in appendix B appendix C I think of the report is the comments that Natural England have provided to say that we can't rely on that as cogent evidence to take a different approach so until there is sufficient evidence that we can say yes we can rely on this in a court of law then the situation doesn't change in terms of what we need to mitigate so again open to evidence if further evidence comes forward and that might be something that comes out of the Natural England technical group I don't know what they're going to be looking at in terms of detail but what's clear here is that there is a lack of evidence to say with any great certainty which is why you take this precautionary approach and you mitigate for the dwellings that you're given permission for what you don't do is get into the scrutiny and detail of how it's all flowing around on Somerset levels of Moore's because we haven't got the certainty and the evidence around that and that's not unique to Somerset that's the same for all the other wetland areas that are called because these water bodies when they're wetlands are the water movements are complex so the only reasonable scientific certainty we've got is knowing that dwelling that we're giving permission for is going to generate X number of phosphates it's going to a wastewater treatment works with that permit so you can offset that and it's the balance that you're mitigating for that's where we get our reasonable scientific certainty for and the precautionary approach that's built in with the buffer so this is where I've on this goes back to my original question on the technical working group which I think will be it would be really interesting to understand more on because that's where I think we need to get that evidence that will will back up or or refute any of the claims that are made that's my understanding some that's for natural England because it's their technical I mean again this goes back to what work might need to happen around the restoration of the Somerset levels of Moore's which we as the council don't have a statutory responsibility for obviously we will be a partner at that table and I would argue that the 9.6 million helps us have probably significant influence in that discussion but yeah until that group set up and the appropriate bodies are part of that we will only be a partner at that in that discussion we don't have a statutory responsibility for restoring the Somerset levels of Moore's or for the water quality inputs from agricultural practices or the wastewater treatment works we can't control those all we can control is our role as the local planning authority in giving permission for applications that might increase nutrient loading that's where our role comes in yeah I appreciate that there is our statutory role there is also our convening role as a leading leading body in Somerset yeah yes absolutely we we are the we are in many ways the custodians and safeguards as a partner organization with natural England and all the myriad organizations that go with that but and we also have a moral responsibility around things like our housing function which are impacted by this at the moment sorry I'm I'm taking over your questioning Councillor Alberts my apologies do you want to move on to your next question can I come back on that please Mr Chairman I'm briefly pleased I wish to read out part of 19 again a high standard of investigation now it is no good the LPA saying we don't have the officers to do the investigation I have an email from Philip Brougham which I'm very happy to share which says that nobody has come on to the levels and actually asked him how much water gets out of the rivers except for Andrew Clegg now we should have investigated this um Philip Brougham would have come and told you that there is no access apart from spill in the winter that's a fact because he controls it now he said that in the scrutiny committee when he was invited to speak we're now being told we have no scientific proof of that statement and we need to please understand that we have to clean up the levels we cannot clean up the levels until we know what the influx is from the rivers which have been changed their normal course since 1100 and they do not directly affect the levels and it's no good people saying to me this is a national policy the River Wye is being directly affected by agriculture the Thames is being directly affected by sewage the Somerset levels are only being affected by what is happening on them directly and the sewage and the agricultural problem in the winter unless the water spills onto them there is no pollution I want to ask why the standard of investigation it's no good coming back to me and saying Natural England have advised you it is your standard of investigation hasn't actually asked this particular question of the IDB. Just to clarify the royal house gaining report did consult the IDBs on the maps they might not have spoken to Philip ruin in particular but the IDBs were consulted and there was extensive discussion around the water flows and that's why the original map we got from Natural England was a much bigger area you can still see it on the catchment map it's a kind of a purple dotted boundary and the boundary was amended but there was engagement with the IDB might not have been with Phillip Bruin but there absolutely was engagement with the IDB on establishing the water flows for that map. You are again coming back to me through Natural England it's not their responsibility. Sorry Henry and Kate can we just come through the chair as we would normally do in a meeting please I appreciate the emotions that are here okay but we need to need to conduct ourselves in a way that's appropriate I appreciate that you're struggling to get the answer that you'd like but the officers are relying on the advice of Natural England in this and the advice of Natural England is we've been told that they have sought that advice from the IDB it may not have been sought specifically from the officer directly that you're referring to and I think we may need to look to double check the communication lines to make sure that that advice it has been based on the evidence of the officer that deals with that directly. Okay so I think there isn't some work here to take place outside the room. I will move on then Chairman. Can we just comment on that please the Royal House Sculling Report was a piece of work that was commissioned by the former Somerset authorities prior to besting day so it was the five authorities and that work was commissioned and conducted and paid for by those authorities it was not a Natural England piece of work it was obviously involved in Natural England they were part of that of developing that work but it was a piece of work commissioned by this authority. Pretty sensible authorities yeah okay you talking about the Royal Haskin report Mr Chairman I've now got to come back again the Royal Haskin report has now been proved to be completely incorrect I'm a pity that Mike Stanton's not here at the moment because he's the one who dug this out the situation as an example on West Sedgemoor is that they said there was an influx of water and there is no influx of water on West Sedgemoor it is all pumped out so they got the direction of flow in the completely the wrong direction I'm not going to go into any more of that and we're going to move on at this point if you don't mind. I think we need to move on thank you. The next particular point is on Wessex Waters on the diagram you have in front of you from Wessex Water I have sent to the officers Wessex Waters figures on their permits which are controlled not by the Natural England but by EA and the permit levels have been lowered and the amount of pollution that is actually coming out below those permits are the figures that we have in front of us are from 21 to 23 the 24 figure is actually 0.3 of a milligram. Now I absolutely accept that we should be having the proportionally approach but we shouldn't be adding the 20% to the permit we should be adding the 20% to the actual pollution that is coming out of the waterways to give you headroom and the fundamental problem here is that we are making the mitigation that much more expensive because we're actually looking at what the Environment Agency permitted Wessex Water to put out from their sewage farms what they're putting out is a completely different figure and that's where the argument comes from about where the 20% should actually be put I'm willing for Mike Rigby to break in if he wishes to talk on this subject a bit more. Councillor Rigby do you want to come in at the invitation I don't wish this to be a tag team event if that's possible. I'll save it till later please chair. Okay thank you and response please. Yep so Henry has Councillor Holbhouse has shared the list of data that he's provided from Wessex Water and we've gone back to clarify with Wessex Water and I sent an email to Councillor Holbhouse about this because those are not the permit limits I think they're the headroom so I think there's there's a slight misunderstanding in the data that's been provided so I've gone back to Wessex to ask them to clarify is it the headroom or is it actual permit limits and also a number of those don't waste water treatment works that have come from Wessex don't actually fall in the Somerset levels and walls catchment area they fall outside of it so I have gone back to clarify that data. In terms of the 20% buffer it's applied to to provide that precautionary approach on the mitigation measures not to so they build that in so that there's a precautionary buffer on the mitigation measure rather than increasing the overall quantum of phosphates but it's done at that end so I can see why it's viewed in that way but it's it's building in the precautionary buffer on the mitigation rather than increasing the quantity of phosphorus. Okay so the response is that we've gone back to Wessex Water to check that data. I've taken that on board yeah the figures that were sent out were for the whole of the Somerset area because they were taken off a screenshot yesterday during a meeting that we were at and sent to me and so they don't they aren't focused on just the Somerset level input if that makes sense but the Taunton figures are absolutely clear that they are doing point three of the figures and they are point seven below the permit level for Taunton. Okay and we've been given the answer that we're double-checking those figures to make sure that we are we are talking about the same thing. No problem. On May the 26th this year Natural England broke the habitat regulations and they have allowed as shown by Kate Murdoch's program that you've had in front of you that the assessment cannot take into account plans or strategies from the water industry or agriculture and on May the 26th this year Natural England have taken into account the plans and strategies of the phosphate removal by Wessex Water into Poole Harbour and the removal of that condition they've left the nitrogen in place means to me that the advice that Natural England are giving having themselves broken the habitat regulations means that we should be questioning why we should not be taken in exactly the same way as they've taken Poole Harbour and that the future plans and structures of the water industry which up until December this year remove another 70 tons should not be taken into account and I want to understand why we are not questioning and I know why we can't now the government's stood down but the actual release on the 24th of May on this particular subject. Are we able to comment on the 24th of May decision from Defra? We've got in contact with colleagues at Dorset Council to understand why they're still caught by nitrogen but no longer caught by phosphorus. My understanding is that salt water in environments for phosphorus and nitrogen are very different from fresh water. Don't fully understand the science behind that again we don't really need to but we will seek clarification from Dorset Council colleagues to understand what's changed that means they no longer need to mitigate the phosphorus they only need to mitigate the nitrogen now. Previously they had to do both and now it's only nitrogen in Poole Harbour. But they're still caught by nutrient neutrality sorry. Thank you so that yeah as I mentioned earlier the situation is fluid and things do change and that was news to me yesterday and I've been trying to understand the announcement but obviously it's very difficult with a with the current position with the government as well. So Henry next question. I wish to come back to Andrew Plague's testing. I have emails from both Mark Taylor and from Paul Bruham saying that this is the only testing that is actually being done. Paul Bruham from the IDB has now purchased the testing equipment that Andrew Plague used and has started to do his own run of IDB testing. The argument about phosphate and phosphorus is extremely complex and I will try and make it as simple as I can. Phosphate is the oxygenated phosphorus and immediately phosphorus gets into the environment if it's warm enough it turns into phosphate. The phosphorus comes from the DNA in all animals and all grassland and all plants and is released when they break down. It is impossible to test for phosphorus unless you do it in the lab through a very complex method of testing. Andrew Clegg is now working with Wessex Waters Labs. His results show considerably more variation than 60%. In places it's over 100% because as we say we can't test the phosphorus on the ground. The problem is that the actual phosphorus is not what is causing the growth in the levels and the phosphate is breaking down. I'm sorry to get even more complicated for those of you who did chemistry A level you will remember ferric and ferrous. Ferric holds three phosphate molecules, ferrous holds two. The breakdown occurs because of lack of oxygen on the levels and it occurs there because the covering stops the plants in the water from producing oxygen. They did an experiment in Australia where they put more oxygen into the river that runs into Perth and they removed all the eutrophication. Now this is part of the problem with this whole complex scenario and I will come on to in a minute the situation with the River Trust operation which I am involved in scientifically and technically. I talked at length to Mark Taylor yesterday on this subject and he does not know how he is ever going to test the levels for what is a sustainable method of keeping the levels as they are for two reasons. Firstly we are getting climate change and the water is getting warmer and the oxygen is being removed and secondly we got absolutely no knowledge because nobody has actually done any of the scientific work on how much of the pollution gets onto the levels from the river catchment areas and we have got to stop talking about the river catchment pollution which is horrendous and we need to cure it but it is not tied into the Somerset levels unless they spill over. I want to understand why we have accepted what Natural England has put us into with no scientific proof. I think Councillor Holthaus has just verified that this is a complex matter and again I will take us back to what our role is as the local planning authority. So whilst we might desperately want to understand how phosphates are causing an issue on the Somerset levels and moors we are caught by the legal that the hab regs is a legal situation. We need more scientific evidence. Nobody is disputing that more scientific evidence is needed and that is the same discussion in all the other areas but at the moment in the absence of that clear scientific evidence we have to be certain that with each dwelling that we are giving planning permission for we are not increasing the nutrient load. It is the integrity of that special protection area. So the rivers do not have a special designation. It is the Somerset levels and moors that has the designation and that is why we are caught by the hab regs. This is why it is a legal issue not a scientific one. There is acknowledgement but we need more evidence to understand how you restore the Somerset levels and moors. No one is disputing that but at the moment we are caught in our capacity as the local planning authority. So as long as we know that each dwelling we are giving permission for is mitigated for then we can continue to grant planning permission. The longer term restoration of the Somerset levels and moors is a much bigger issue. That is not something and if we get wrapped up in that now we won't ever give permission for dwellings. So we need to be careful where we are trying to divert resource because otherwise we are not fulfilling our statutory duty. So insufficient evidence precautionary approach is what I am hearing in effect. Can I just check how many more questions you have Mr Loughhouse? I just want to point out that section 19 gives responsibility for the councils to do the investigation. And it is absolutely clear. It is legally clear. And it needs to be looked at and addressed. It is no good standing hiding behind the fact that we are the LPA because the LPA is in charge. Okay thank you for your points. I think that is taken. So can I go to Councillor Wilkins and then Councillor Wyke and then to Councillor Rigby. Two things really. I was very interested by the pool harbour. I just wonder whether the fact that the levels and moors, rivers and I get your distinction between the levels and moors and the rivers. But I wonder if again we are in a fluid situation. I get that. But whether the tidal, the semi-tidal nature of the levels and moors, rivers would play an interest in whatever happens in with the pool harbour side of things. That is one question. But my main question is that you said that no developers have judicially challenged Natural England's advice. I just wonder why they are considering the deep pockets of developers and actually the advantages of them challenging Natural England and winning presumably. Why you believe that they haven't challenged. Is that right or have I misunderstood what you said. They haven't challenged the neutrality position. They have challenged the government on whether reserve matters applications are caught. And that's the CG Fry case that is the Somerset case. But they are actually legally challenging the government because the government made the decision on the appeal. But yes, as far as we are aware there has been no developer legal challenge on the neutrality advice of Natural England. And I can only assume because they've had the same legal advice that we have. And they are realising that it's not going to carry favour with them. But that's not to say there won't be a legal challenge in the future. But to our knowledge there hasn't been. There have been some resident action groups which have legally challenged Natural England's neutrality advice for not going far enough. And that was in Fairham. It wasn't successful. Natural England's approach was indicated and verified. But to my knowledge there isn't a legal challenge in the development industry with the exception of the CG Fry case. But that's a different matter. That's not neutral neutrality per se. It's the reserve matters element. Just to add to that, there was of course the House Government's Federation did lobby government a lot to try and change the legislation. And by an amendment to the levelling up and regeneration bill as it was then. And that didn't get through the process. So that's where we're left.

OK. And Councillor White. Two things. One is the challenge around the reserve matters was actually taken forward within Somerset Western Taunton. And until it got to the stage where the Secretary of State on the part of the planning inspector became a party to the litigation. We have spent just under 35,000 pounds on Consell cost alone just to take that to the High Court. And that doesn't include officer time. And then of course subsequently what happens at the High Court is being born by the Secretary of State. So just to give a flavour of the sort of monies you're talking about for what is a relatively straightforward matter in some people's eyes. I just wanted to also make the other point because I think it is important. We talk about 17, 18,000 houses being held up. And that's the ones we know in the system and I'm sure there are a lot of planning applications to come. Can I just point out that a lot of the discussions around Wessex Water only refer to settlements with more than 2,000 homes, residents, and vast amounts of Somerset is actually rural. And none of the smaller treatment plants are caught up in any of their plan developments by 2030. And so we do have an underlying assumption that if we sort out the Riverton or whatever, that everything will be hunky-dory. That's not the case. We've got to find an answer for the whole of the county, not just for one or two highly invested in treatment plants. It doesn't help with the issues, but I think it's important that we recognise that. And the other thing I would like to re-emphasise is that if we get the £9.6 million project over the line, we've got £9.6 million to spend on the restoration of the Ramsar sites in due course. And so it's really important that the team do go ahead with that project and go get too many resources diverted because we do want to restore the Ramsar sites and that's a huge contribution to the project. But I know all of this is dependent upon quality of evidence and the quality of evidence is sparse at the moment and I do recognise that. Well I think that also the quantity of evidence is sparse as well as the quality. I've said Councillor Rigby, Councillor Woon and Councillor Leishon, I want to draw a line to it. We have given this considerable airing today and I think we just need to accept that we've got a degree of uncertainty still around, both the legalities and the science at the moment and there are a significant amount of work that will continue to be done over the coming months and years I'm sure. So Councillor Rigby first. Thank you Chair. There are two key issues here. Firstly and most fundamentally, Wessex Water has, through vast investment in infrastructure, stripped out far more phosphate than required by the Environmental Regulator and I emphasise those words not because they're mine but because they're Wessex Water's, far more phosphate than required by the Environmental Regulator. And why have they done this? Because Somerset Councils told Wessex Water how many houses were in their local plans and they invested accordingly. This should not come as a shot. It's literally how the system is supposed to work. It would be bizarre if it operated any differently. This is the issue of headroom. Our policy assumes that there is no headroom and that is the basis of our legal advice. The problem is that the legal advice was based on inaccurate information provided to the Council's KC. We told them that there was no headroom. The problem is that that view is not backed by Wessex Water which specifically invested in excess phosphate stripping capability over and above that required by the Regulator specifically to address population growth. We've heard today that Taunton wastewater treatment works is currently discharging at 0.67 milligrams per litre and that that limits the headroom. This is inaccurate. I've done the job for you. I did the double checking. The 0.29 is correct. It's currently discharging at 0.29 milligrams per litre, not the 0.67 milligrams that we were told today. That provides much greater headroom. I've no doubt that were our KC to be furnished with accurate information agreed with Wessex Water, he would reach the opposite conclusion to the one that he did. Secondly, the calculator that we use to work out how much phosphate needs to be offset per house is fundamentally flawed. It assumes that all of the phosphate discharged from new homes in the catchment makes it onto the protected levels and walls. We know that it doesn't. Uniquely among the other 70 affected areas, Somerset is a man-made environment. The rivers are largely levied and the water that they contain, including treated and untreated effluent, shoots straight out to sea. It never touches the levels which sit in glorious isolation below the level of the rivers. The exceptions are during dry summers when minuscule amounts of water are allowed to flow out of the rivers in order to boost low flows on the levels and also in those winters when heavily diluted river water will carry some phosphate as it floods down the spillways. Testing, however, following flood events shows no resulting spike in phosphates, which is a strong indicator that that diluted water is carrying minimal phosphate onto the levels even during major flood events. Initial investigation suggests that perhaps 1.5% of the river-borne phosphate makes its way onto the levels and walls. Yet we assume in our calculator that 100% of the effluent from new homes gets to the levels and walls, ignoring the fact that the rivers flow past the levels and ignoring the modernised treatment works in between. For example, 93% of the incoming phosphate at Taunton Wastewater Treatment Works is caught and removed before discharging to the tone. And to make the situation worse, we then slap a 20% buffer on top of our 40 calculator for good measure. Now we've heard today that Natural England has agreed that sometimes water floods onto the Somerset levels and walls. This is a tacit acknowledgement by Natural England that not all of the water and therefore the phosphate in the river system makes it onto the levels and walls. We assume in our calculator that 120% of the phosphates from a new home makes it onto the levels and walls. It doesn't and even Natural England now acknowledge this. In reality it's probably less than 1%. The 120% that we use is a gross exaggeration and is a great example of the cogent reasoning required to deviate from the Natural England advice. Councillor Hobhouse has raised today the salient example of what's recently been announced by Natural England in respect of Poole Harbour. I'm slightly troubled that we're only talking to Dorset Council in order to understand this better. Surely we ought to be talking to Defra and Natural England as it's Natural England that has withdrawn its advice. And let's remember that they did so on the promise of future phosphate stripping. Here in Somerset not only do we have a promise of more phosphate stripping but a recent history of upgrades by Wessex Water now removing 160 tonnes of phosphates every year in this catchment. And remember the entirety of the stranded housing 18,000 homes would produce just 3 tonnes of phosphate per year. So to conclude the Executive is being urged today to reject all of the recommendations unanimously passed by a scrutiny committee. That's quite a thing to do. That recommendation comes to you based on information not all of which is accurate. So can I suggest that you in fact make no decision on this today until the considerable factual and legal uncertainties are resolved. Thank you. Thank you. Do we wish to respond to that? There wasn't a question there but if you'd like to respond you may. Yes chair if I could. So firstly Councillor Rigby has flagged up that the Taunton wastewater treatment works isn't discharging at 0.67 it's discharging I think he's saying at 0.29. So if we've got evidence from Wessex Water I'd welcome to see that because that isn't the evidence that we've received from Wessex Water so this is part of the problem. Now the other information. Councillor Rigby after any of the opportunities to speak can you not consistently comment well the response has been given it's not acceptable thank you. Please. The other information that we've been supplied by Wessex is that they have again a permit agreed by the Environment Agency to ship in wastewater from other areas of the catchment to treat at Taunton wastewater treatment works and they have that permit for a population of equivalent of 20,000 so they're already shipping in that's taking up some of that headroom so we will happily go back again to Wessex Water and clarify why there's such a discrepancy between the data they're providing to Councillor Rigby and the data we're providing to us. In terms of the upgrades the wastewater treatment works they are taken into account because the permit limit will drop so the example that I'll give you is Wellington so pre 2025 at the moment if a development is occupied and it's the point of occupation really that you're mitigating because that's when you start to generate irrigation or water usage will be offsetting at two milligrams per litre pre 2025 post 2025 it drops to one milligram the calculator factors that in so where there are upgrades they are built into those calculations and what they are required to mitigate so rest assured that those upgrades are taken into account and like I say it still doesn't factor in the sewage that's discharged into the water courses that never even makes it to the wastewater treatment works and that is where some groups particularly environmental lobby groups are lobbying the government very hard to say that we need to be reducing the quantity of sewage that's discharged to our rivers and obviously having an impact on our special protection areas and I think in the absence of any evidence to the quantity of phosphates that moves across the Somerset levels and moors in the flooding events when the rivers do over top we still have to be caught by that cautionary approach which is what the legal advice is telling us so that's the only thing I wanted to come back on chair thank you. Okay Councillor Gwen. Chair, Kate's actually preempted the question I was going to ask he was about adopting updated evidence as and when it comes in so thanks for doing that and Councillor Lightman. Thank you chair at our recent annual meeting we agreed the list of outside bodies and partnerships and I thank Councillor Hobhouse for drawing my attention to the fact that we had not previously included the Somerset catchment partnership on which Councillor Mike Stanton sits he is of course the chair of the Somerset Rivers Authority board. I wondered chair whether it is worth at this meeting that we request that the appropriate lead member also join that Somerset catchment partnership and that when the technical working group is set up that we ensure we request and ensure that there is representation from Somerset council on that technical working group. Thank you. I don't think that that's that's a proposal as such rather than a request for for a couple of things are we able to follow that up as part of the part of the debate. Thank you chair we've been talking about this for several hours it seems I just wanted to finally say and I think we all should share my thanks to the officers this is being a long and relentless from the day we got the letter from Natural England and they're all really working extremely hard to implement the advice we're getting of reacting to a ongoing stream of changes and I know that we're in pre-elections I can't say too much but I will say that it's not been a changing piece the fluid situation and it will continue to be so and I really do think we need to recognise that it is an remarkably small policy team who are working extremely hard on this and I just want to express my thanks formally to them. Thank you. Thank you. Henry if it's very brief please. It doesn't need to be very long at all. I am on the task group for the rivers authority for the actual checking. Mike Stanton knows that and Andrew Clegg is also involved in the river catchment task force and I've been told by Natural England that they want me on the whatever task force they're creating. We'll look forward to hearing more about it over the coming weeks months and I hope not years but I suspect it may well be. So we have a recommendation on the papers that we've considered and responded to the recommendations of the scrutiny committee climate and place meeting on 26th of April 2024 with the benefit of officer advice set out in this report. Can I just make it really clear what I've said during right at the start that this is a fluid situation and that we are very aware that the precautionary principle we have to apply. We are very aware of the scientific evidence that may not be at the level that we need to come to an alternative position at the moment and we are very aware that legal opinion may well differ as to the position that we're in. So this isn't a chiseled in stone position. This is where we are at the moment and as the evidence comes forward and the legal opinion comes forward that may well change in the future. I'd like to reiterate the thanks that Councillor White has given to the small officer team that work around this area. We know that there is a huge amount going on behind the scenes and thank you for the assurances that the further conversations we'll be having with West Water and with Natural England and with other authorities and with government aid as well because it's a partnership approach that I think we'll see through this. Ultimately we are the custodians of the Somerset levels and Moores as the leading public authority in Somerset. We also have that duty of care towards our residents, many of whom are impacted by the lack of housing that we're able to provide for them and many of our small and medium sized enterprises in the construction industry that are also being impacted by this. So with those words, can I see a proposal for the recommendation please? Councillor White, a seconder please? Councillor Darche, sorry, brain fade there. Proposed Councillor White, seconded Councillor Darche. Those in favour of the recommendation please show those against, thank you very much. Thank you very much Kate and Alison for your time this morning. We move on now to the corporate management report item 8 which is on page 139 to 172 and invite Councillor Liz Leishon to introduce the item and then on to Sarah Cretney for any additional points. Thank you chair. I don't believe this item will engender as much debate but frankly it probably should because this is about the performance of our council. I'm really glad that Sarah Cretney is able to join us online. In the actual report we will have noticed that there are more reds, there are also more greens. One of the areas of concern that I just should highlight at this particular time is in the levels of staff sickness when there is considerable pressure on the council and its staffing and that concern I'm sure is shared by everyone in this room and indeed across the whole council. So the corporate performance framework that is being developed is of great interest to me as is the performance risk and budget board which is now passed the terms of infancy and I would suggest about in its teenage years and making good progress. So I had a really interesting conversation with my colleague Councillor Heather Shearer on the way to Taunton this morning where we talked about internal audit and where that fits into corporate performance reporting and we've since talked about how performance reporting has the pillars of budget monitoring, strategic risk monitoring, internal audit and of course all the performance indicators and how that all sits on a bed of management, political direction and culture of the organisation. So thank you Heather for alerting me to the fact that I am not doing a good enough job at the moment of keeping my lead member colleagues informed of what is happening across audit and scrutiny as well as at executive meetings and so I'm now determined that I'm going to find with help from Sarah a better way that I can demonstrate to my colleagues of exactly how performance monitoring is going on and so I hope I haven't landed another load of work on you Sarah but I'm very willing to play my part in this, I think it's really important. Thank you chair. Thank you. Sarah did you want to add? Thank you chair and thank you Councillor Leishon and my apologies for not being able to be with you in the room in person today. Just to add really that this is the final quarter of the first year of Somerset Council's performance that is contained within the report that you have in front of you today and it follows the interim approach. As Councillor Leishon said we are doing work to make sure that we want to bring a more comprehensive new corporate performance framework, we're bringing together risk and performance. I really like the suggestion around bringing our internal audit into that space as well and alongside our budget monitoring so that we are providing that kind of collective opportunity to look at the overall performance of the council. As Councillor Leishon said you've got the summary table on page two which sets out the overall red, amber and green ratings for that set of operational interim indicators. Section five summarises the key issues from that from each executive director and those are expanded upon in appendix A. What this paper also does is just briefly outline the shape of the corporate performance framework that we are currently developing in and that's in section six and you can see in there that we're looking at kind of strategic performance, strategic risk and our major programmes and projects are focused in on service performance and service risk and then that element of what I've called organisational health which is how are we functioning effectively as an organisation and in there we've got external assessments it looks to me, Councillor Leishon, that that is where we could be putting in our internal audit as well in that space. So that's the overall report and what that shows an appendix A has got the detail associated. Okay thank you Liz and Sarah. First of all can I just ask you on paragraph 23 on page 145 this is the fourth corporate performance management report for Somerset council. Scrutiny arrangements are yet to be confirmed. When will they be confirmed and what might they be? So currently these quarterly performance reports I believe don't go as a matter of course to scrutiny committee. Within the new arrangements of the corporate performance framework what we want to be able to do is to make sure that we're reporting to scrutiny committee as well as executive committee. I'm not I don't know whether Councillor Leishon has any more info on that. I think what I should say is that we are working to address the route through scrutiny to executive and to look at the way we present on performance risk and budget in a quarterly way. I know what I really want it to look like but I do understand that it is a challenge both from the amount of information and also from the calendar of meetings that that is quite a big challenge but we'll keep working towards that and I'm sure my colleagues will let me know when we've improved because we do acknowledge that we need to improve. Thank you yeah it was one of I think the outcomes from the scrutiny chairs was was to make sure that we involved them at an earlier stage so it would be great to see that coming forward thank you. Any other comments and questions from lead members or associate lead members? I've got Heather then Fed and then Dixie. Thank you first of all I don't very rarely have the opportunity to correct Liz but I was never intending to cheer her up for not having done enough to keep us all informed. The comments I've got some general comments and always happy as well to take any questions from from my colleagues obviously. I think I just want to go on because I think it's great I'd love to see the performance monitoring reports I'm really pleased that you're working on improving it for the next time we start to see them in this new year I think that's really good. I love the idea of being able to see some synergy as Liz was saying across budget monitoring strategic risk internal audit and the kind of and the choice of KPIs that we are reporting on and they should all make absolute sense to our services and I'm sure they do so that things can follow back in a very sensible and you know cohesive way. I think the only thing I would say and forgive me if I've missed this point but I think we might you might you might who's doing this work might want to think over time if not immediately to not necessarily do everything in directorates if you think about the way we think about priorities for the next year which I know some of us have been looking at that you know they're often cross directorate and so perhaps not to have them always slavishly around directorate so you know they're going to be cross cutting so just a flag for that and I think then the only other thing I was going to say again in looking at them all quite generally in some of the rationales for why perhaps we've got some reds and this kind of thing in different rooms I sit in I hear a lot about how our digital performance is not where it might be so the kind of the underpinning systems that we use day to day but for some of our colleagues our officers they don't talk to other ones and so there's I think a lot of our success will be enabled by having better systems we've been doing quite a bit in children's around our processes to improve our process management of key things like EHCPs the education healthcare plan assessment applications and a lot of our workarounds and carbuncles and systems we're partners in human factors but some of it's also around working around systems that don't work similarly the JTAR that we just had recently a lot so the joint targeted assessment joint targeted area inspection which looked at partnership working and how we as a partnership across the entire system deliver safety around serious violence with children who are exposed possibly or involved in serious violence a lot of the criticism which is still informal but a lot of the criticisms are around how we share data and how we have access to each other's systems so it's just like a bit of a plea that again if we can look at things thematically perhaps it wouldn't just be saying oh you know the digital team aren't doing very well on IT that's that's kind of not the point it's it's how we do things corporately so just a bit of a plea there to look at things thematically but thanks for the work I really I'm looking forward to seeing the next iteration thank you Federico and thanks Bill again welcome any questions if there's anything on communities in relation to the performance I think for me I'm not sure whether it's a question or a comment because Duncan's not here but whether Alan or others want to pick up on it we obviously look at this report looking backwards and we all know when we sit in this room that we are in a state of flux whether that is because of the financial emergency or because and because of what we've got coming forward so it's I guess for me to understand and maybe it'll link into the paper that's next on the agenda that we are going to go through some really hard times moving forward both in what we as a council look like as we look to achieve our leaner more efficient council we're also going to lose and have lost some great and wonderful staff so for me I think when I look on it and I don't want to predict the future I imagine that we will see more reds on this as we go forward maybe as we go through that hard process which I know that we all feel and so I guess it's an understanding from the executive team as to what that perhaps looked like or whether you want to say Bill that's picked up in the next item but also around how you know from a customer service point of view you can see some of those stats on there maybe there's an onus for us as councillors to make sure that we are educating our residents and for our comms team as to how to log stuff digitally so that we reduce the impact on our frontline services so for those that can serve themselves they do so and it it frees up resources for those that can't. Thank you and Dixie? Yes I've lost the page now but I was interested in looking at the kind of children's KPIs and it's really good to see some of those in green lots of kind of improvements my question really is about this there's a like a kind of a there's a red five percent of school inspections or what have you and I'm just wondering about whether the benchmark figure whether that includes academies or are we just looking at council schools also that the percentage is sort of not very it's not that helpful when you don't know the numbers if you know what I mean so like five percent of what and I guess I'm coming from a point of as an ex-teacher someone who got incredibly stressed by off state inspections like what do you know do we is it part of our role and maybe it isn't to support schools in the preparation for those inspections and also you know if it's not the result that they would want what support is there for them to change and improve? I'm happy to make a start and I know Claire is on that Claire Winter's on the line so if I say something really silly I'm sure she'll jump in and give the real detail to it I can't say for certain whether that that five percent bench the three percent benchmark sorry is is our own only I don't know if I'm honest but I'm sure Claire could tell me I can let you that let you know that but what I want I would like to say is in the few months I've been lead member within Children's I've been massively impressed by the rigor and the work that goes into keeping an eye on the quality of our schools there's about I think about 123 I think it is I think we've only got one or two which is secondary everyone is primary but the we have very regular school improvement panel meeting where the detail goes on like a three tick system there's a there's a real detail around which schools are worrying us which maths and multi-academy trusts are worrying us which in terms of performance and also the pupil referral units so it's a very rigorous thing there's a very dedicated and very committed school team and so yes we're watching all of the time to see who who's performing well and who's not and the and then wrapping around as much support for those schools that we possibly can in the school to help them to improve and you know kind of anecdotally I know that actually we we have really good you have some really good performance coming in now sometimes sometimes I don't dare say it better than some of the academies but it's not a guarantee that all academies are good and all of ours are bad that isn't the way it is so there's a lot of work going on there's we've got a vested interest which of course is you know we don't we don't want a school to go into special measures we don't want them to go in for children starters it's the kids education that matters but there's a horrible financial incentive that if if a school goes into if one of our schools goes into inadequate or you know gets a bad judgment it can then be forced to academies and then and we pick up the cost if there's any deficit in their budget so it's in everyone's interest in the children's interest it's in the health of the school to be able to function properly and keep their deficits low or keep their reserves high and and and good for us as well so I don't know if Claire wanted to come in any more on on schools at all. I can do I can confirm that the percentage of Somerset schools rated in Antiqua is all schools so includes schools that are academies and the reason for that is because to be honest I don't really care what status schools are it's about schools for children in Somerset and all children need an education and whatever school that is needs to be of good quality whether they're in the maintaining sector or the academies sector so we look at it across the picture to make sure that we are moving in the right direction it is red because the national average for schools that are rated inadequate is three percent currently it is actually an improving picture so last year we were at six percent so we have improved and it is continuing to improve as Heather said we do do a lot of work with maintained schools in terms of trying to prepare them for inspection to improve the outcomes for children so that when they get into an inspection window they are in the right place when inspectors arrive we also support schools I think it was Dixie was asking we support schools intensively to make sure that they have the right support from the local authority and that if there are any blips or any issues that are arising during inspection we're there to try and help out pull the right resource the right data the right people around them to make sure they have the very best opportunity to evidence the good work that they're doing. I can't remember if there's any other aspect that was requested I think it was just that. That's really helpful really encouraging thank you very much Claire and Heather. Thank you Claire yeah and also to add to that through the Education for Life board what we are seeing is a significantly improved relationships between our schools and the authority and particularly commend the work of Amelia Walker in leading on that especially because I think that relationship piece is really really important for us to be able to deal with the issues which we are responsible for which is standards but there's also sufficiency at CND and safeguarding as well that we need to make sure all of those issues are addressed where our statutory responsibilities are whatever structure exists in our education market and thank you there was a nervous twitch when you mentioned obstetrics so there we go. Ros. Thank you chair I was looking at appendix A and it's the list of all the key risks and I was looking at the mitigated rating these are the uncontrolled one and I was just really seeking assurance as to how these are determined are these within the department are they always is done by third party risk committee or what because I'm slightly surprised by some of them and it probably just reflects my lack of knowledge of how you do it but I was just like some assurance as to who's involved in the mitigation rating. Did you want me to come in on that chair? I'm sorry I was looking at you and realised that you can't see me. I can't see you, sorry. I'm so sorry that's um that sense of self I'm delighted to see you using the same nail varnish as Mr Green is in the room. So can I just check are you looking at the appendix A for the quarter four performance report or for the improvement transformation program? Oh sorry the microphone's not on I can see that you're talking. Sorry Michael. It's 189. It's 189 and it's the improvement and transformation program but it's really a broader piece as such um how the risk is actually calculated on this. Okay that's on agenda item nine um but if if you just just wish to comment on how risk is calculated um in your paper. So that's how so so the before the quarter four performance report at the moment doesn't include risks but that's okay. So just to say about the um there is a risk scoring matrix um which we use across the whole of the organisation which has recently been reviewed at um audit committee um which gives the indication of whether it's high medium or or low and the and the risk scoring and that those scores are then um depending on the mitigating actions obviously then um affect the the um the the risk after that. Thank you my fault for jumping into the next paper but I do think that we we need to have whether it's high low risk or 8 10 15 we need to have a uniform approach I think to risk but I would say it's the audit committee who are looking at that thank you. Okay I think that was wishful thinking we were further along the agenda than we are um just looking around I can't see any other league members or associate league members uh so I'll go on to Councillor Frothergill in the room and then to uh Mandy online Councillor Frothergill. Uh thank you very much indeed chat I actually have four questions um and with your indulgence I suggest I split them into three because they relate to three different services. Okay so four four questions three services yeah so so so you're going to ask a question of each of three different services okay I get it. So if I take page 156 first um I think I'm very concerned although it's not in red it will be in red next month I'm sure um by the safeguarding risk outcome um proportion of individuals who for whom the risk was reduced or removed following safeguarding intervention so that has got a target of 90 which seems very low in actual fact um and it has been falling over the last few months um and I'm very concerned therefore that we are not resolving safeguarding risks um and we've got a trend there which seems to be worsening I'm not particularly looking for an answer now but it is a major concern if we are exposing our vulnerable and elderly people to safeguarding risks and not mitigating those so that's my first question. Thank you is is the second question yeah second one second on the same issue um and the other one is the total number of overdue care act assessments which seems to be going backwards by the month and I'd just like to understand what is the plan I'm happy to take a written response on this what is the plan to get those down um clearly they do impact people um vulnerable people um and in particular I'd like to understand the number of our residents who unfortunately leave us die um without having that care act assessment uh Mel are you yeah I'm fine yes sure so in terms of the first one safeguarding outcomes um 90 although you don't think it is high is is extraordinarily high and if you compare that with the rest of the council so our our sacra term our safeguarding adults return has just going in for this year um and our number is just above 90 percent for for first quarter of this year so I can see that's or last quarter and into this course so I can see that's going up slightly we are never going to be totally able to reduce or remove a risk of an individual and that could be because the outcome that individual wants and the risk that person has is never going to be uh totally it just doesn't happen you can't ever reduce a hundred percent of the risk we have a risky life that we all live and we choose sometimes if we have capacity to perhaps live with the individual that is presenting that risk and that's just life we can talk to them about doing things differently we can put in systems with individuals if they would like to do things differently but there was always going to remain a risk so we can minimize as much as we can and we do but we can never always remove that that's the way life is and that's the way people choose to live uh but 90 is quite high and I'm more than happy uh outside here to share with you what we do how we take that forward and some of the examples so that you've got a bit more information on that so I can do that after this meeting for you no problem whatsoever in terms of the overdue care act assessments 900 and I can't see the writing in here 64 I think it says on there which is as of today has come down dramatically um for this year but that's old year's court last quarter we have moved um on with that and we've moved on with that because of a lot of the work that we've been doing around process around how we take that forward we take a quarterly risk report to our safeguarding adults board around this and you can see the numbers are coming down we have also at scrutiny coming up got a workshop or a piece of work that they've asked us to do which goes to them which talks about mitigation what we do the process that we go at we undertake and how we are reducing that you will see over the last few months we track this on a weekly daily basis it was going up it has started to reduce it does put people at risks I do not know if I've got the data I'll have to go back and check on those people that have had a had a care act assessment or have requested a care that then aren't still with us I'm not sure about that data often though and one of the risks that we put in place because we manage this and we look at this on a very regular basis we have a really good risk matrix that we look at people on often what one of the triggers for us that we don't necessarily put you at the top of that risk is if others are also working with you so if you're having a multi-agency support and perhaps our health colleagues our district nurses are also working with you it may mean that actually the risk for you is less but what I can do outside here is show that risk register show how we manage the risk what it looks like and show what our mitigations are but it is going to scrutiny shortly and a paper is going there to get scrutinized so again we're happy have a look at those papers when we get there and the numbers definitely come down and I haven't got the latest today but those numbers are coming down thank you I look forward to seeing those numbers when they're available I'm going to move to my next one which is page 164 waste targets I'm not altogether sure what's this what's telling this is telling me first of all we haven't got any targets and second of all we're not measuring them anyway and we're not sure and then it's telling me that they're getting worse so I just wonder if somebody could explain to me what this this table is actually telling me yeah so in the table I'm looking at there are targets so target 56.35 percent I take your point that you know as it explains in the covering report that there is late data which clearly we need to need to rectify happy to take on board how we look at what the explanation is of each of those those are kind of targets that we previously reported through the waste board and I guess there was more narrative around them at that point but given this is a corporate report that tries to cover a lot of areas I guess that the explanation of what those are is is slimmed down I should say we are intending to take a performance report through climate and place scrutiny in July yes sorry if I may it was specifically the five the five performance indicators on page 164 that I'm referring to rather than 163 yeah sorry I was yeah I don't have the same page numbers as you so it's always a bit confusing I was looking at the ones above I'll take that away and come back to you if that's alright thank you can I move to the last one then which is page 162 public papers and which is 162 but let me just try to find the place where it is is the is the one that relates to housing and substandard housing which is still sorry it's one five it's 162 are you referring to homes that do not meet the decent home standard yes yes so if I could just talk to that one oh I've got it now sorry my apologies could I just a couple of questions on this I can see that we've got a green improving direction of travel but it's still five percent of homes that do not meet the decent home standard five percent I think on a ten thousand stock is five hundred homes unless I've got that right wrong so we've got five hundred homes which do not meet the decent home standard I'd just be interested because clearly a lot of health disparities are based upon housing from a very early age I'd like to know how many children actually under the age of eighteen live in those five hundred homes which are currently substandard now Federica um David we'll try and get that information we don't necessarily always know if children are living in our tenancy tenanted properties because we obviously have a tenancy agreement just with the individual and we'll see if we can find any information out on that but we are looking to obviously as you can see reduce the numbers so that we have more meeting the decent home standards and some of it is also based around being able to access the homes to do the work and do the checks if I may just come back I think it's really important if we know where those five hundred homes are we actually know how many children are living in them and I would have thought from a public health and sort of children's protection point of view then we really do need to be paying attention and understanding what the risk is to those very vulnerable young people okay thank you Councillor Fothergill um hi Mandy hello thank you it's just flashed off I've only got five minutes left in the meeting so I hope you're not going to cut everybody off in five minutes um just a couple of questions yes been a long one today for you just a couple of questions really for me um the first one's a slightly strategic one um I had a quick scan through the report and I think there are almost 60 deteriorating direction of travel markers across the whole report and that's to me is a concern you know behind every direction of travel it affects people in our county so um previously on reports there were pie charts at the beginning that just gave that overview of how many are on track off track improving deteriorating and I think it'd be really useful to have something like that just to have that overall view of how the whole uh program is looking so real concern that there's a deterioration in a lot of areas um so my first question is you know at what point will there be any action taken if everything continues to deteriorate and and what areas probably are more will be more given more focus by yourselves as the executive than others um and my second issue actually was around schools and attendance now the secondary school attendance is dropped below ninety percent for me ninety percent you know that's one day off in two weeks for every pupil and also that ninety percent's a really um important mark because once um attendance goes below that I think they're classed as consistently absent and certainly exam results etc will suffer because of it um so um my last comment would be we talked about scrutiny committees personally I I don't like to take huge amount of officers time but I think it'd be relevant to send this report as is to all scrutiny committees so the committee can have a look at it and then just take the time to consider whether there are any uh areas that that scrutiny committee is responsible for they would like to have another look at so I think it'd be really good for them to have oversight and just think about it and whether they need to plan anything uh into their upcoming uh meetings thank you chair thank you and that's that's precisely why I asked the question about scrutiny right at the start um do you manage you want to pick up the first point uh a kind of dashboard approach is an introduction I think this is part of the work we're doing is how we present the work as well as what's happening in the back office so uh it's a good point and uh we see that on the internal audit reports don't we and that is really useful on those reports so take that on board I think on the scrutiny approach we would be needing to look at all five scrutinies not just one wouldn't we and I think that this is part of the challenge that I can see ahead of us off the calendar leading up to executive for each quarterly report but please be assured that we are paying attention and we will do our level best to to get those reports to the right committees at the right time and in the right order um heather do you want to come in yes thank you just on the school attendance I mean that both attendance and also um suspensions uh exclusions part-time timetables authorised absences all of those things are a huge concern to us to actually make sure children we need our children in school it's the safest place it's the best chance of the future we want that to happen and some of the work that we mentioned earlier about getting ready for officer offstead is and that working with our local schools and improving our relationships with schools is is part of our mitigation but there's also um through the education for life board that or life work that um the leader mentioned earlier um we have also um in a sense engaged some of our multi-academy trust um ceos and others as partnership working and they've taken on quite an active role in in helping to find best practice around improving attendance which I think we're really pleased about from a relational point of view it's really good that we're not wagging fingers at schools and saying they should do things differently but we work as a partnership to improve attendance so we're very alert to that um and just want to say that we're actually working on that as a as a as a key part of our strategy to to ensure children are in school for the most of the time and it's quite complex because of the way attendances are often um recorded so if a child for instance has only a part-time timetable of say a couple of days a week but does that 100 that becomes a 100 attendance so we're very aware that the you know the data needs to be really looked at for the quality of education children are getting as well as just the bare numbers but I just wanted to think we we weren't doing anything about it Mandy because um it is very high on our agenda. I know it's a stubborn and persistent problem in Somerset. And Sarah? So um just to provide a little bit of reassurance and to clarify on the on the scrutiny position although we are as Councillor Lighton says working out their schedule of meetings that are um that the quarter the quarterly reports that the one that you're looking at today those are sent as a matter of course to scrutiny chairs so we should have already received them in advance of this session um but that that doesn't um negate the fact that we need to get the scheduling in for scrutiny discussions but I just wanted to reassure um executive and um Councillors that that they do get circulated so scrutiny chairs can um look into these in more detail. Thank you Bill and it was that first question about that overall position you know as an executive you know at what point will you be looking to take further actions if lots of them continue to deteriorate which is certainly the position we're seeing in this report. Thank you I think I think we already are I think is the answer Mandy um we were we were very aware with the consequences of the financial emergency that that would would inevitably have an impact of some on on some if not all of the services that we that we as a council provide and it's absolutely essential that we we got a focus on the unperformance data to be able to mitigate any any unforeseen consequences of where we are um it is it is where we we're aware of the the number of staff that we will be shedding as we decrease the size of the council and that will that will inevitably you would expect to have an impact on performance what we need to mitigate that that impact and that that is precisely what we're doing through these reports um as presented do you want to add to that Liz? I just want to say there's kind of two levels of concern there's a level where we're dropping below the previous quarter but still above the benchmark and those where we're dropping and have dropped below the benchmark so I think we need to bear that in mind no dropping is wanted but there are places where it's of greater concern. Thank you Liz I know you're working hard on it. Thank you and Jill, Councillor Sogan. Thank you thank you leader um um on the adult services the overdue assessments excuse me I just wanted to really put a plea to the executive that we overdue assessments are causing um the NHS millions of pounds every year because the ongoing problems that it occurs the earlier cry for help that when I'm sorry apologize being online was for somebody in that very big state ringing me crying I managed to sort that I've had numerous calls from people and whilst it says the there's if the figure stands at 964 and then it says the figure of the march which is still in march but then it says 386 even 386 is just not good enough we are taking it to scrutiny we are taking it to a workshop but we also will be taking it to the full committee and in a sense we shouldn't need to we shouldn't need to because this is a really serious problem we've got in Somerset for overdue assessments and the plea that I get from people is it's not getting better I know Mel's on it and I know she works hard on it but I'm telling you it's a big big problem and people are being overlooked constantly because of demand because of um not enough staff etc etc but I want you to know that we are taking this absolutely 100% serious and we are going to find out why why this is happening because there's got to be more more to this reasoning than what we're getting on this small small paragraph that you've got in front of you. Yeah absolutely Jill um you'll have heard Mel's response to Councillor Fothergill's question earlier um portfolio holders on annual leave at the moment but just to add reassurance that she's very much on the case and um and is is going to pursue this tenaciously um Liz would like to come in on another point on this point. I just wanted to make the point chair and to the chair of scrutiny that ask you as Sarah Wakefield would if she was here to actually differentiate between those people who are already known to us and waiting for review of their care and those who are new to us and I think those are the sorts of things where we can do much better work if we actually give a bit more detail. Absolutely thank you very much thank you um absolutely and it's not just our assessments it's also the health services continuing health care assessments as well um it it is a bigger picture than than than just this but yeah you're absolutely right to have that uh focus on this and I I'm sure you will pursue it with terrier-like enthusiasm. I will and I will turn my microphone off now leader. Thank you. Not seeing any other comments or questions oh oh yeah I even wrote you down I'm really sorry Francis how can I forget you? I can't imagine um thank you leader um I want to go come back to the the school attendance um the uh exclusions um suspensions um we know that stability of placement is hugely important for children uh they they thrive in a stable placement in a stable school either one goes wrong uh it's it's it's a problem um I also know there's a lot of work that has been happening between uh for the needs of children in terms of housing which Councillor Fothergill has touched on um and and children's services um and I'd like to suggest that something we we might well want to know about um we have a number of a number of households in temporary accommodation at the end of the period and it is getting worse we know it's a major problem um I also know that there is great difficulty for housing officers who are doing their level best to house people anecdotally I'm aware that households with children in temporary accommodation are booted all over the county that it is not the intention of housing officers to be unkind in any way but that is the effect and the the feeling that it is for the family the the impact on the children's attainment on the children's progress on their attendance at school on their likelihood for um for suspension their likelihood for exclusion is immeasurably increased by the instability of their homes now we know things have gone wrong if they're in temporary accommodation we know that I think perhaps we ought to understand more about how unstable temporary accommodation is because it can be a fortnight at a time and you don't know where you're going to be tomorrow I think that perhaps having a closer eye on that might be really helpful and I my question is please can we do so uh Federica um Francis I don't disagree with the comments that you've raised around the instability of children being in temporary accommodation um you heard me speak earlier about the challenges that we face um within the gravity discussion um you know that we are in a housing crisis in Somerset there isn't enough houses to go a lot around we do need to build more um there are challenges around that for multiple different um I guess facets um I think when it comes to temporary accommodation we are keeping a close eye on it and we do know that instability to children can happen trying to make sure that they can access schooling in an already unstable situation is so paramount and important I'm challenging the team with targets um we hope to bring forward some of those ideas in relation to our plan over the next year I guess as an executive and I've spoken to the executive around that and I would love to see an end of use of to temporary accommodation because the cost of it alone alongside all the stability it bring is extortionate um so keep an eye on it for me Francis keep challenging us as an executive because we'll be challenging ourselves alongside you oh yeah absolutely okay um Heather please forgive me I wouldn't take the time up except it is about children accommodation is really important I just want to add to what Federica said um that I am aware that officers are working together across the children's and the housing teams to try to address these things because it is very important and I have no doubt that France you will continue to to ask us about it every opportunity and I'd be really disappointed if you didn't but it's that reassurance that we're trying to look at ways to get through it because it is it is um very disadvantaging uh thank you um if I can move us on to the recommendation we're being asked to endorse the course of for 23 24 performance management reports um which is appendix a for Somerset council and to consider whether proposed actions are adequate and appropriate to address concerns improve performance to the desired level I think we've given that a good airing and thank members for their contribution um to I have a proposal please Councillor Laijean seconded Councillor Shearer those in favour please those against thank you that is clearly carried which brings us on to item nine which is Somerset council improvement and transformation program which are due in updates and Councillor Theoburn will introduce the item and then invite um miss Robin Jones to support thanks very much I'm mindful of time so I'll be brief this is the latest in our updates on the transformation uh and improvement program the improvement and transformation program um which we are committed to bringing back to the executive and indeed to scrutiny on a regular basis this was discussed by the scrutiny committee uh last week and we've taken on board their feedback I'll hand over now to Alan who will be not quite as brief as me thank you thank you chair um not far off though I promise chair um so just in terms of the key items as the summary sets out we wanted to include a very clear update position so you'll see a brief summary on each of the sections set out the premise of each of the core components of the program and then the key activity since the last update to you um that's been considered as part of the overall program what I just wanted to do is make sure that we had covered off some of the feedback from uh scrutiny as part of that update so you can consider that as part of your overall considerations uh in in essence uh scrutiny were particularly concerned and it probably leads very well from Councillor Federico Smith-Roberts question around service level impact um it was clear that there was a concern around making sure that there was an opportunity for scrutiny to understand the service level impacts and have the ability to consider those part of this process so that that has and is built into the program to enable that consultation and engagement to happen on those service impacts but also in change to ensure that executive benefit from that feedback also making sure that we're able to consider the risks and issues that were being raised and that those risks and issues were fully considered the mitigation associated with that could also be considered and that there's an opportunity to challenge those mitigation measures so that really feeds off the point that Councillor Rosweig made around how were those scores uh assessed part of the process is that's the reasonable judgment of the officers involved in each of those activities but clearly with the advice and guidance of scrutiny and ultimately the challenge of executive being able to test and ensure that those mitigations are accurate and that there is sustained activity associated with each of them is a critical part of that process the actual scoring mechanism for that will be influenced by any changes that will come through through the work the audit committee are doing or any wider work around the reviewing of risk score but at the moment it's using the current methodology around the likelihood and the impact associated with some of those risks and issues so chair at that point i think it's probably best that i stop uh because the the report is detailed on terms of some of those key activities and give the opportunity for any key questions uh okay thank you very much on on note that bob the scrutiny chair has has um had to leave for another meeting uh so go straight to lead members and associate league members uh heather it's more of a comment than a question on page 183 on on the the section on localities i've been really interested to see how this you know how this one is is working how the officers are coming to to their ideas about principles around locality working and and uh i see out the five five or so five or six um points in that like a lot of what we're talking about in there or you're talking about in there is the lcn which is almost kind of entirely within our purview we can do that it's my control whereas localities which is the really exciting bit for me which is the top one which is around how we get our service delivery and our partner service delivery as well as voluntary sector and so on in all the areas so i'm really i'm really pleased because it mentions the um summerset board that some sports only on friday so it's like really exciting that we're getting quite close to talking about this so i just i just wanted to kind of phrase that because i just think i i'm looking forward to the next lots of outputs which will talk more about how we deliver you know we we get we get the delivery of our services as close to our people as we can chair it's an excellent point and one of the key things that we found in the development of this work and we're joined by sarah skurt who's taking the leading in corralling some of this information across the service director and executive director cohort but what's really clear is we didn't want to step into that service into that summerset board meeting with a predetermined view because clearly we need to kind of go through that process and set it and work with partners to kind of co-create some of that information so very much winding back from any predetermined principles to test with the board but moreover to illustrate that there are eight different sets of principles that we work to across the system and rather than presenting a new version of those actually presenting a view of what are we trying to achieve and establish a new way of working so that was always the intent of that board but sarah i got sorry i got that wrong no it's absolutely and in the paper it does suggest that we might be um coming up with potential principles we wound back from that approach having reflected on everyone's perspectives so the workshop on friday is really to say we've all got principles we're working to where's the commonality whether we want to move forward so it's not predetermined at all okay thank you um thank you chair um alan i think it builds on my last question but also in relation to page 81 um and the innovation and change program it would be good to see i guess member briefings or updates in how both they as members and residents can kind of self-serve so that we can actually we know that whatever we're going to go through is going to mean that we are having to do more with less and that there will be some things that we really do need residents to serve themselves with we'll use the waistline as an example at the moment where we have put a longer wait time for people to report missed collections on our telephone calls um so because we know that the website has been built to be able to do that and that we want people where possible to do that themselves so it frees up for those that can't to work but they will need to wait longer and three minutes i think is in line you know if you phone british gas as an example i think you're waiting far longer um however i think there is something around educating members how to do it themselves so that they can then be the facilitators to support their residents to do so thank you chair and thank you for the question um it's quite clear that given the number of um employees and the size of the organization that will need to reduce it's inevitable that we continue to do things the way we are doing there will be service impact so it's absolutely critical as part of that service director blueprint work and the work of the design authority and then ultimately the decisions that are taken around those structures that we understand how some of those impacts are going to be mitigated and particularly one of the key aspects will be ensuring that the ability to self-serve as far as reasonably possible but encourage that self-service where appropriate and actually enhance that ability to do that will be part of our mitigation as part of the impact so for example reducing the number of phone calls that we have on on particularly perfunctory items whilst they are incredibly important to our residents and the people that that we serve actually being able to self-serve that at a time that's more appropriate for them as we've demonstrated through some of our other services is going to be critical okay not seeing any other leader associate lead members commenting so i'll go to mandy first online thank you very much um just to say we did have a long debate um at audit also um on this paper that was helpful um i will just raise a couple of points that were raised there because i suppose my concern is that dialogue via audit doesn't come to all of you i know uh Councillor Lachon was there so excuse Liz for a couple of repeated um questions here but i think um they're important one of the issues i raised was actually around risk and we obviously talk a lot about risk at the audit committee and it was that compound risk when you'll get perhaps an area of risk that's a challenge which then interacts with another area and another area and suddenly something that didn't seem very important within one risk reporting line actually is because you've got that sort of build-up effect i think that was acknowledged and i hope that that can be considered moving forwards the second issue was just um sharing that overall vision and view of the council um i don't i still don't think everybody's clear on that my concern is that we are here to serve the people of Somerset um and um we know that we will be looking at a different organization and things will be delivered in a different way for me the missing bit at the moment is what do our residents want what is the most important to them and what do they want our council to look like and i think that interaction with what's going on and the speed it's going on isn't translating perhaps to what our residents want and that sort of consultation with them that's my first two questions thank you um i think that's a very good challenge firstly uh in relation to the risk point um that feedback has been fed back into the program from audits that's been very valuable and ensuring that there is a read across particularly around where there are potential changes to how services are delivered that have then a mutual impact in other areas so so for example again i'll use the call center the contact center sorry is a good example of that we know that the contact center supports the frontline delivery of our adult social set adult social care services so it's been really clear on how we balance those particular challenges so any particular changes that could come through in one service area we need to understand what the consequent impact is we have a very knowledgeable cohort of service directors and service leads that are able to inform us of those types of issues and they are being engaged as part of that process and engagement so that's the first point in relation to vision in relation to the the vision and activity the the work to date has been driven by the original design principles that were set out in december and reaffirmed in february we have said quite clearly that we need to have that clear target operating model as part of the next step so we can articulate what does that look like and effectively setting out how do we do things around here as the chief executive said previously i think the next step is also then carrying out that engagement with our community to understand their priorities their engagement and that's part of that wider plan later in the years we move through both the structural conversations but also the budget proposals as well to mandy's point in particular around that engagement so thank you thank you and just to follow up on that the for me the lack of the operating model my concern is that and i use a word that some members of staff have given to me it feels chaotic and confusing i'll use that phrase and i think at the moment is if we don't know exactly what a service is going to look like we are now entering redundancy phases and my concern is if we don't know exactly what we are going to look like at the end of it are we retaining the right staff and skills that we need or could we be letting go some that we the organization will find really essential moving forwards and if we are looking at delivering in a different way not everything will look the same not every service will look the same and so my concern is again we are shaping the organization and the staff and the hr at the moment because of the financial pressures is is the driving force and the savings yeah i am concerned that they won't it won't give the time and the space to actually really reshape those services and make them something into something new and inspiring that will deliver for summerset thank you chair and and the risk is recognized not only by me but the wider program and activity that's being developed we've been clear that that this the pace of this is going to be much more brutal than ever envisaged as part of this part of this work but the nature of the financial emergency means we have to work at that pace i think our key is to track those risks and issues as they emerge but also communicating those those changes quite clearly we are we have engaged with regular staff engagement programs so that we understand each and every step that we are taking in addition to that the vr proposals that have been agreed they have been assessed and considered by service directors so they have advised on the service level impact associated with any of those decisions and none of them change any of the service standards that we currently operate in so none of those voluntary redundancy agreements make any change to the service standards that we're currently operating in they do require process change with their matters that can be considered within the services so but as we move through that we continue to keep a very close eye on those particular issues and making sure that those impacts are very clearly communicated to members and the community thank you and i suppose my my concerns are confirmed by what you've just said because we are looking at current services and the way things currently are and i think moving forward they will look very very different so thank you for your indulgence chair i'll leave it there thank you i think those concerns are are shared and uh got jill next um uh thank you leader once again um excuse me i just wanted to say about the self-serve um i reach out everything what rubber stamp what mandy's just said i must say um concerns about staff but the self-serve as well i had an issue yesterday um where um on the self-serve for the waste collection unless i got hold of um obviously the excellent portfolio holder who sorted it out for me very carefully well is in the process of doing that and i thank her very much and obviously dixie and and mickey obviously always there and um and and in the past you were able to go on the waste services and be able to explain what you haven't got on the mechanism now is you've got the robotic answer of why your waste was not collected what you don't have on the waste collection is actually that wasn't the case there is no mechanism for a member of public to be able to say that is not correct actually it's this this this i tried several times to do this for a member of the public and i couldn't do it so maybe federico's right maybe we need more training but there is no mechanism in place for changing the the mode you've got a rule there why you can't have it collected why you can't but what you need to do is something on there where a member of the public can say actually that's incorrect actually this happened and i think it would be most helpful because i unfortunately had to uh or fortunately had to contact a portfolio holder which a member of the public can't do so i would ask that we you know you want people to self-serve 50 percent of people can cope with the it the rest of them can't they want a phone call they want to speak to a human being so i don't think we ever must lose the human being value but please make it easier make it easier for people to actually say you're wrong thank you jill um can i can i assure you that um with my mobile phone number on the council's website some remarkable people do think that ringing the leader will get some remarkable things done um um at random intervals um it is it is it is always a pleasure to hear from from our residents about our services firsthand mickey would you be able to take that one up yeah happy to follow up with gel offline on that one there is that functionality we but but it is deliberately there a little bit harder in terms of people have to then make a complaint to follow through we are going to do a training video for counselors though to help them with that but yeah we do have some bars in place to to manage uh the scale of contact and yeah but it's a fine art so yeah yeah i tell you mickey i'm no fool on the it and i tell you what you've got them so well hidden that even i couldn't find them so you know i just but thank you for taking that up because i really appreciate it thank you and thank you for the feedback it's um with the uh without it we can improve could we thank you um and uh councilor thank you very much and i will just support uh councilor slocum there which is i had president's contact me yesterday they tried 40 minutes to get through to register their waste collection having said that i've gone straight to the people that know and it seems to be resolved so thank you very much not the two opposite but certainly others in the organization so been sloppy very quickly um so i've got two points one is my big concern in this is on page 192 193 um it's about an unmotivated workforce because of the volume of change i don't think we should underestimate the impact that it has on the workforce and i'm sure we're not but the mitigations that are listed there do not seem to me to be sufficient to uh to reduce the uh the risk by half which is what it's saying um in particular i note that 192 people applied for voluntary redundancy that haven't been accepted i'd quite like to know how we are helping them to come to terms with what was going to be a life-changing decision for them and also i'd like to know more about how we are keeping the the existing workforce motivated uh it's all right to sort of uh keeping them informed but actually motivation is not about communication it's about more than that so perhaps at some point i could be given more detail on the mitigations that have been taken in that area and then my second point uh bob firmer would say this if he was here he raised the point directly with the chief executive that a lot of members are not aware of maybe they should be and maybe that's because they've not listened in the past are not aware of the extent of the transformation that's currently going through um and therefore thanks to the chief executive for arranging a briefing on monday evening for members which is very much appreciated and certainly i'll be encouraging as many of my group to attend because i do think that there is a lack of understanding a lot lack of knowledge out there amongst members what's uh what's being planned uh and i think this is a good opportunity for them to ask questions so a big thanks to duncan sharky for that okay so your second point didn't require an answer first point does um mr jones thank you chair thank you for the question uh in terms of the mitigation measures i'm very happy to pick this up offline uh and consider what those opportunities are they are developing um so it's not just about what we're doing in terms of supporting those people that are potentially exiting the organization uh but also making sure we're supporting the staff with setting out our visions and values and that target operating model will be key to effectively setting out what we are doing around here so there is a an inevitable uh gap between those two points but it's absolutely the right concern around that that motivated workforce and one of the key items we'll cover i'm happy to pick it up offline but also bring it back to consideration for scrutiny and executive so that you can be assured of that as well okay thank you so item nine we've got the recommendation that the executive notes the progress that has been made across the improvement and transformation program since the previous update into executive in april proposed by council but philip seconded by council wilkins those in favor please those against that's clearly carried um it remains for me to advise you that the chair of the the date of the july executive meeting is now monday the 15th of july um we've um that is right isn't it yeah yeah we needed to change the change the date um on advice regarding the pre-election period so um we look forward to seeing you on the 15th of july and the meeting was supposed to finish at 12 noon according to my notes so conclude the meeting at the 31 minute past one thank you all [BLANK_AUDIO]