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Transcript

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Good evening. And welcome to the first executive of the 24-25 municipal year. Rather a lot has happened since we last met as an executive. Obviously we've had the local elections and the council meeting following that. And then of course with a couple of weeks respite from the elections, we've got another set of elections coming up which is obviously having an impact on everybody here, both the councillors and officers as the organization plans and prepares for another election. We've got a full agenda before us this evening, picking up on a number of things. It's March since we met, so there's quite a few pieces to pick up on. So I'll move straight on to the agenda. Item one is apologies for absence and no apologies have been received. Item two is in relation to the interest declared for council appointed directorships of companies in which the council has an interest and they're listed in the schedule attached to the agenda. Does anyone have any further interest to declare? Thank you. We'd like to go on then to approve the minutes of the meeting of the executive that we held on the 21st of March 2024. Does the executive approve the minutes? Thank you. And there are no items of urgent business to report. Item five is questions to the executive and we have received a question this evening from Mr. Bradyn Lay regarding Shearwater. A copy of the question together with the reply has been published online. Mr. Lay isn't able to attend tonight's meeting, so we will send Mr. Lay a copy of the reply to his question. What I will do now is read out Mr. Lay's question and the portfolio holder will then reply to that question. So everybody can hear that for the meeting. Okay, so the question from Mr. Lay was when will the remaining properties be sold off in Shearwater for redevelopment and when will the roads be improved? The residents are feeling left in the dark and forgotten about once again. It would be in your best interests financially to expedite this. Please also consider the height and density for any new developments so that good urban design is upheld and the roads can tolerate the increased vehicular and foot traffic. Currently, they do not. So that's the question and the portfolio holder, Councillor Johnson, is going to respond to that question. Thank you, Madam Chairman. My reply is that last year, following public consultation, the council agreed a new plan for the Shearwater regeneration. This will see Thamesway completing the phases currently being constructed. Over 100 council homes being refurbished and three large land parcels being sold and redeveloped by third parties. The council recently appointed a firm of consultant surveyors to assist the authority in bringing the surplus sites to the market for redevelopment. We are in the process of agreeing the precise timescales, but anticipate that the marketing process will commence in July. Each disposal will require a new planning application to agree the exact form of development. The published guidance will ensure there is detailed consideration of the height and density of any new development and that good urban design is at the forefront of any application. This will include a revised approach to the highways issues. In the shorter term, there are various section 278 and section 38 applications. These are highways improvement and adoption agreements being considered by or awaiting start dates from Surrey County Council in relation to the current phases completed or under construction by Thamesway. These works will include resurfacing parts of Dartmouth Avenue and Bunyard Drive, refreshing road markings and signage and some footway improvements. Thamesway are aiming to complete all of these works by the end of 2024. A solution is also currently being explored with Surrey County Council to reconnect Blackmore Crescent with Devonshire Avenue. We understand that the ongoing construction works continue to be an inconvenience for residents in Shearwater and are committed to progressing the project as swiftly as possible. Thank you, Councillor Johnson and thank you again to Mr. Lay for your questions. As I always say at these meetings, we do very much welcome questions from residents. You can put up to three questions to an executive meeting and the next meeting will be in July, so do feel free to do that. If you look on the website, it will tell you where to send those questions and the deadline, which is seven days before the next executive committee meeting. We move on now to matters for determination on tonight's agenda, so that's matters that the executive can decide without reference to Council. The first of these relates to an update on our climate change strategy. That's item six on the agenda and I'm going to hand over to the new portfolio holder for this area, Councillor Forster, to introduce the item. Thank you, Chairman. I'm happy to introduce this and, as you highlighted, I'm the new portfolio holder. Clearly, as we did at the full Council, pay tribute to Peter, who there feels a gap in the executive. It's our first meeting without him. He was such a strong advocate for everything greeny-woking over the last couple of years that we'll be sorry to miss him. But I know as my portfolio, we were slowly making me redundant as we were stopping key projects and other things. I took this on, but as a portfolio, it's been in very good hands for so long that it's nice to take that over and I've enjoyed working with Bev and others in the meantime. But this paper is about climate change and how we're going to prioritise this going forward. Now, I'm going to start with a nice headline that shows that this Council's got a long history, cross-party, attacking climate change. Over a decade ago, this Council embarked on trying to be a leader on climate change and I think that is something to be applauded. And recently, we were rated as the best Council in Surrey for action on climate change and we want to keep up that proud record. And this strategy and this paper seeks to do that but prioritise the key works based on getting our own house in order and get the best bang for our buck and target the most polluting activities we as a Council need to sort out. So in 2023, the Council consulted on an ambitious climate change strategy, Woking Net Zero. And that was following the Woking 2025 strategy that was adopted in 2015. So you're starting to get these strategies are really out of date now. So this report seeks to get executive approval to refresh this and prioritise it based on what our resources allow and focus on the most important things first. I think we can be a leading advocate for our residents and businesses at getting them to lower their emissions. But to do that, we really need to get our own house in order. And by reviewing the strategy, this should do that. We do want to work with partners. Surrey County Council has quite a sizeable environmental and climate change team. And you can't be surprised that we take 12% of residents' Council tax. Surrey takes over 70%. There is clearly a lot of money at the County Council and they're big economies of scale by us working with them. So we're going to work with partners as well. So this report seeks to get the Woking Net Zero climate change strategy reshaped and amended. So that we can focus on how the Council will get our own house in order and influence and steer the actions and activities of others through Council strategies, policies and plans. And the second decision is within that context, a revised version of Woking Net Zero will be presented to members in the autumn for consideration and adoption. I would hope it would be early autumn, but it clearly depends on resources. But certainly in the very foreseeable future, our officers will work hard to revamp this and then members can go in detail to agree it. So members, I hope you can agree this paper. Thank you, Councillor Forster. Would any members of the Executive like to comment? Councillor Nicholson. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councillor Forster. I have a couple of questions and I hope they're not too tricky. Bearing in mind you've just taken over the portfolio. In point 4.4, it says obviously subject to the views of the Executive and the new proposed strategy. And there's a couple of phrases in there. It says optimizing energy efficiency and decarbonizing energy supplies. Are we talking insulation and those type of things there? Just for clarification, I assume, yeah. The second one was the conserving resources by continuing to move away from unsustainable consumptions. Are we talking recycling and promoting our recycling, I assume? Is that correct? It's just slightly woolly wording in there that I wanted clarified. If I may, so partly we do want to encourage recycling as much as possible. But it's also, if you think of the waste hierarchy, which I can bore you with, I will not do the acronyms that Peter used to do. But it's reuse as well and it's actually a lot of people buy things they do not need. And that's why food waste bins were such an important invention. Partly it's so that the food waste can be decomposted or go in anaerobic digesters and that creates energy. But physically separating your food waste once a week, putting it in a separate small green bin and you realizing, oh my God, I have spent so much money on this food. Food prices have gone up and I'm wasting it. And that physical separation is really important. So we actually want to stop some of the consumerism that then means we as a waste authority have to collect it in the first place. So there is going to be an advocate for that. And I know I've got a joint waste solutions meeting next week in my diary that you need to work in partnership to see what we can do for cultural changes as well. Thank you, Councillor Nicholson. Any other speakers from the executive? I just wanted to add, just to reiterate really what Councillor Forster has already said that climate change does remain a firm priority for this council. It has been something we have led on in the past. Things like the Thamesway initiatives for example and our own energy generation I think highlight that. And we really must continue our work to tackle climate change and move to a net zero council and ultimately a net zero borough. But given the position that we are in financially and the resources we now have available to us as a council, we do need to find new ways to meet our ambition given these financial circumstances. So we're not going to forget it, but we're just looking for different ways, as with many things. We're looking for mitigations, we're looking for new options, we're looking for innovative ideas to move things forward. But we're not going to forget our commitment in this area. Did you have anything else to say, Councillor Forster? No? Okay. Is the executive then happy to accept the resolution, the recommendation set out before us? Thank you. I'll take us on then to item seven, which is related to the previous item. And that's from Woking Environment Action, or WE Act, and that's their recommendations and responses. So this is their feedback on some of our environmental initiatives. And again, the portfolio holder, Councillor Forster, is going to introduce this item. Thank you, Chairman. So as you said, Woking Environment Action, WE Act, as it's sort of affectionately known, they presented to overview and scrutiny back in February 2023, which feels a lifetime away now. But they did, and a lot of their work got fed into the climate change strategy that was then consulted upon. This council, because of government interventions, has not been able to action their comments as quickly as possible. But we wanted to present this report and effectively attach it to the previous item so that officers can work on refreshing net zero based on prioritising what we believe is right, but what WE Act have recommended as well. And as we're trying to work in an open and transparent way, we wanted to publish that here. So it's just a simple highlighting of that. I do want to say how important WE Act are to us. I don't think we will be able to do as much as we could do without WE Act. So I visited them at, in your ward, Chairman Andy's Repair Cafe, which is a WE Act sponsored event. So, and that was on Saturday. It's the first anniversary of that group being set up. Now, this group has repaired almost 600 items over the last year that has stopped it going to landfill. It has saved people money in the cost of living crisis. And they've taught some invaluable skills and got people a real community spirit going there. So that's just one of the things that they do, which is brilliant. And that enthusiasm has been fed into this report, and hopefully we can attach this. Officers will come back with what they think is the most important environmental saving actions we can do for the autumn. Members, I hope you agree to this report as well. Thank you, Councillor Forster. Do you have any speakers from the Executive? No? Okay, thank you. And again, really, I think I would just like to add and to reiterate the important role of WE Act. I think of them as our green conscience, really. They're kind of there on your shoulder. Are you doing this? Have you thought about this? Is this still happening? It's a really important role to have, that they're there to remind us and make sure we don't forget. We won't, but I think it's good to have them there. And they do provide advice and support to both the Council, to local people and local organisations. So really appreciate all that they're doing. They've still got some Green Week activities going on this week. They often have a display in the library, and I know I've popped along there and had a chat with them when they've run particular events on a Saturday morning. And as Councillor Forster has said, the Repair Cafe has just been so successful. And it travels around the borough as well, so it was Andy's Cafe. It's also been in Halsall. It's been in Shearwater. It travels around to lots of different areas across the borough. So everyone's got somewhere local where they can bring items to get fixed. And they've got a fantastic voluntary group that do all of that repair work. It really is an amazing initiative. So the recommendation that we have is to note the recommendations from WE Act and that their suggested next steps or actions as part of the climate change strategy update that we've just agreed in the previous paper. Are we all happy to accept and agree that recommendation? Thank you. We'll move on now then to Item 8, which is in relation to the future of Brock Hill. And the portfolio holder, Councillor Nicholson, will introduce this item. No, Councillor Johnson. Sorry, my paper says the wrong thing. I thought it was. Apologies. Councillor Johnson, thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm dealing with this this evening. And as you know, Council made the difficult decision back in February to close the Brock Hill Extra Care Housing Scheme following consultation with residents. We all know that Brock Hill is much lower scheme by residents, community and staff. But the building requires immediate capital expenditure of close to 3 million on fire safety remedial works and a new heating system. And in the longer term, it's expected to need around 5.8 million of capital investment, which is simply unviable for a building of this age and size. Furthermore, adult social care colleagues in Surrey County Council have told us that Brock Hill no longer meets modern standards of best practice in terms of design and layout for extra care schemes. Now, we understand that this is a difficult, distressing time for affected residents. To them, Brock Hill is more than bricks and mortar. It's somewhere they can call home. And we've always borne that in mind. And indeed, we've been dealing with the residents on a very careful basis ever since the decision was originally taken back in February so that no one felt isolated, left alone, and always had options to talk to our staff and also the advocates. I'm pleased to update the executive on the positive progress that's been made in rehousing residents, again, in close consultation with families, advocates, adult social care. And since that decision in February, occupancy has reduced from 24 to nine, with a further four residents of that nine having accepted offers of further alternative accommodation. With such low numbers of residents remaining, a number of services and activities at Brock Hill have had to stop due to lack of demand. For example, the dining rooms closed so tenants receive community meals in their flats or make their own arrangements. The building's starting to feel, as you'd expect, fairly empty and no longer the social environment it used to be. And the remaining residents do need clarity around the future of the scheme. Last week, officers and ward members met with remaining residents to brief them on this report that's here tonight. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the ward members for going along with those that could, and also officers for taking the trouble to spend so much time with the residents to go through it, which I understand was quite a lengthy discussion with them. The ongoing safety concerns at the very low occupancy levels mean that tonight's report recommends a target date, and I stress the word target, the 30th September, 24, to fully close Brock Hill. So we'd like that to be agreed tonight. And where possible, residents will only be asked to move once, but we do need to acknowledge that in a very small number of cases a temporary move may be needed. Whilst this is far from ideal, we need to balance residents' safety with meeting residents' long-term accommodation choices. So if the long-term accommodation choice that a resident has isn't yet available but may be in due course, we may have to just move them temporarily, with their agreement of course, to as best we can, so that they will eventually get the move that they wanted to take. The other area of this report covers the long-term future of the site. Now, I've been asked a few times, and I'm sure other members have as well, what you're going to do with the site. Well, we genuinely had not discussed that at all because we fully understood that the main issue for us was the fire safety, looking after the people that live there, their homes, and we've done that as best we possibly can. But now we can start to consider having discussed the closure already as to what we're going to do about the site. We don't want a large building left empty for an extended period, and therefore the proposal in this paper is to start the sales process of the Brockhill site for redevelopment. In line with policy CS13 of the core strategy, some form of specialist accommodation, such as sheltered or a care home, is likely to be the favoured redevelopment option from a planning perspective, and any development will need to reflect the local character of the area. The site will be disposed of for best consideration, and the capital receipt used to reinvest in our other council homes. The council will look to demolish the current building as soon as possible, following vacant possession being achieved. I don't think there's anything else I need to add at this point, and I hope members understand exactly where we're coming from on this. It's not been an easy choice for the council members, or for me, or for Councillor Nicholson at all, but it's essential that we take these steps to ensure that people are properly looked after, and that we deal with the property for future generations and get something better there in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Johnson. Do I have any other speakers from the Executive Council? Can I just give my thanks to Councillor Johnson, who's just outlined the proposal for Brockhill. As he said, it's really not an easy decision, and we absolutely understand the distress that that's caused for the residents there, but I am heartened that we only have nine residents left in situ at Brockhill, with four with offers, and obviously that we're still supporting the residents to look for new accommodation through adult social care and the council officers. So thank you, Councillor Johnson. It really is a difficult decision to have to make, and we've successfully supported many residents from Brockhill to move to different accommodation, but we don't by any means underestimate the distress that it's caused to the residents who are actually there, and I think that's always important to keep that in mind, that these are people's lives that we're actually dealing with. So thank you, Councillor Johnson. I don't think I had a question. It was more a statement, actually. Thank you very much, Councillor Nicholson. Anybody else want to speak? I just wanted to say a few words. Obviously, this is something. Brockhill is located in my ward of Goldsworth Park. It's a much-loved-care facility there. It really is. It's at the heart of the community, and people either know someone who's lived there in the past or lives there now or has a relation who's been there or a neighbour or friend, so it really is quite integral. A lot of the people locally have gone in there. That's where it's drawn its residents from. But we did have to sadly establish the principle back in February that we couldn't continue to provide extra care there for the reasons that Councillor Johnson has outlined. There was the huge investment that was needed, and then the fact that even if that was done, there'd be more because it needs to meet modern requirements. And sorry, Councillor, Councillor told us that. We talked with them and they might like to run it, but they couldn't do it either. So with just those few residents that are left, so five people, we really need to find them a place that's really important, but we need to look towards a closure date and stressing how important it is to find the right place that works for the people who are still there, but we can't just keep pouring the costs in or leaving those people there to a place that has very little of what you'd expect as extra care in there anymore, although the care needs are met. There's nothing else there really because it can't be done for five or even fewer people, I guess, going forwards. I know beyond the residents of Brock Hill, there's also been concern from people living in the local area, so it's good to hear the reassurance that planning will be looking for something that is like a home or a location for accommodation for older people, and it should be something that's in keeping with the area, which I think is going to be very important to residents as well. So it's a very difficult decision, but I think it was almost inevitable given the earlier decision that we had to make. So I'd just like to propose to the Executive now that we support the recommendation before us on the closure of Brock Hill. That's agreed. Thank you. This takes us to Item 9, which is Strategic Parking Objectives. This will be introduced by the portfolio holder, Councillor Roberts. Thank you, Chair. The paper for our approval this evening is a framework that sets out the principles on which the Council can in future set daily parking tariffs and permit prices. It's not a paper about tariffs and prices. The intent of the framework is to simplify and rationalise the numerous options that exist today whilst ensuring that they better align to Woking's overall corporate policies. The current fee structure is overly complex. It's difficult to understand and difficult for us to set as a council, and it isn't always helpful to our residents either. Additionally, consistent and justifiable commercial decisions should not be made without the principles being established and agreed by this Executive first. The paper, and therefore the framework, is intended to reflect national changes in town centre usage. Woking, like many other towns, is no longer primarily a retail destination. It's emerging into a place to live, to work and spend leisure time. That changes the needs of visitors to our town centre as it relates to parking. It's also intended to reflect local changes. Significant investment has been made in town centre regeneration, and Woking has seen an increase in cafes, leisure options such as the gym group, bowling and the newly opened escape rooms. Finally, the paper recommends that the all-day daily tariff should be used as an anchor for setting discounts for parking permits in a way that ensures alignment across tariffs and permits. It's also a mechanism that can be consistently applied over time to changes to car parking pricing when we review them as part of our annual review of fees and charges. The paper includes guidance from the British Parking Association, the BPA. It includes this trend for longer stays. In fact, a recent BPA report found that one in five visitors to town centres nationally wanted to stay longer but were unable to because of parking time limits. This echoes what we're seeing in Woking. The report also highlights that Carpathark users place a premium on ease of use and are expecting the technology that we've recently introduced that allows the use of apps such as Just Park and ZAP Permit as payment options. The principles in this paper should reflect that the approach we take to pricing is fair, equitable, affordable and socially responsible. Fair, the pricing should be fair to residents and should be comparable to other similar facilities in statistically similar boroughs. Equitable, fees should not show fear or favour to one group of residents such as car owners over another. Affordable, Council makes significant investments into its car parking estate to make sure that they're safe and easy to use and they should deliver a reasonable return to the Council and therefore to Council taxpayers. And they should be socially responsible. The Council has a responsibility to encourage positive social behaviours that overall creates positive outcomes for the whole of our borough. For example, we would still want to incentivise low-remission vehicles. So, that's it. The paper provides context, framework and principles for future price setting. Thank you, Chair. I'll open for comments. Thank you, Councillor Roberts. Do we have any comments from the Executive? Councillor Johnson. Thank you, Madam Chairman. It's all very sensible work and a good framework for the future. I accept that. I'm drawn, as I always am, to the technology side of these things. Partly because I'm not terribly brilliant at technology and I certainly don't use a parking app on my phone because I don't use my bank card in case my phone is stolen rightly or wrongly. That's how it is. And I just don't want people to be left behind and it applies to all our services in the Council. It's all very well this progress towards the technological achievement and getting things done, all to some technological nightmare. But I do think we need to remember that not everybody uses high-tech stuff to get Council services, which parking is one. And I just think we need to make sure that we don't leave people behind, that don't have those skills or facilities, and make sure that we can still do for them, provide the service for them that we would provide for people who do have the skills, and we don't discriminate against people who don't. Thank you. Any other comments? Councillor Lyons. Thank you, Chairman. I really welcome this paper. It's good to have a policy set out as we go forwards rather than just sticking our finger in the air and hoping for the best, which I think there was a little bit of in the past. And I welcome also Councillor Roberts' suggestion that this may, in the long run, simplify the parking strategy that we have because it is pretty complex. And unless you're somebody who deals with it every day, it is quite hard to get your head around. So, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Lyons. Yeah, and I think I just wanted to add it. It's great just that we have got these principles, that we had some work done. There was a report provided, some research done on our behalf by specialists in the field. We've looked at those broader principles as to how we best meet car parking needs, and it isn't just a policy which is what we had before. I think we've just said, oh, car parking will go up by X amount every year, and no one had gone back and looked at the broader offer of car parking, which is, you know, what we very much have needed to do. We've been looking to do this for a while. There were some delays in getting the work done, but now we're here with it and we can set these principles down, which stands us in good stead to move forward for future plans in a kind of post-COVID world, really, as things have changed since then. Did you want to pick up on Councillor Johnson's points, Councillor Roberts? Thank you, Chair, and I agree with you. And Councillor Lyons, this is, you know, it's much overdue, I think. Every organisation should have sound principles on which it makes its commercial decisions, and it doesn't just make these fair, equitable, affordable and socially responsible, but also justifiable. And so I think it's absolutely important. Thank you, Councillor Johnson. Those concerns are completely understandable. As we roll out technology, I've been doing this for a long time in my private sector career. We, you know, we're very often doing it digitally first. And we're doing that, but for the vast, not necessarily the vast, but for the majority of people, that means through technology, they will get access to a service that's easy. And at the same time, it reduces costs for the organisation, in this case, the council. The other effect of that is, and this is true of our resident services programme, the other effect of that is that we can then, we have some space in the organisation for those people that have additional needs or don't have access to technology, notwithstanding that we need to think about digital inclusion too. And I think that's the case here. There remains today and there will remain cash options for those that either can't or choose not to take the digital option. I hope that gives you some assurances, Councillor Johnson. Thank you, Councillor Roberts. Are we happy to resolve the recommendations set out before us on strategic parking principles, parking charging principles? Yes, thank you very much. The next items are two applications for funding under the neighbourhood sill provision. The first of those relates to refurbishment work at Weechie playground in Horsell, and I'm going to hand over to Councillor Lyons, the portfolio holder, to introduce this item. Thank you very much. The first thing I would say about sill funding is that the pots of sill monies that have been collected around the borough are available for spending, so I would encourage applications from ward councillors and, where appropriate, neighbourhood forums as well. So, just in case there's any doubt on that, the money is there and available. Please apply for it and use it. The first application, the first of the two is in Weechie common, which is the playground in Weechie common has been out of action for a little while now because the rubber safety matting has shrunk a little bit and where it shrunk it's created gaps along the outside. A proposal brought forward by one of the Horsell ward councillors to tap into sill funds for canal side ward. It has to be canal side ward because although it's Weechie common and you would think of it as being Horsell, it's actually just inside the canal side ward for £27,000, but it is supported by the ward councillors of canal side and it can only be a good thing, I think. So, the pot of money available is £300,000, I think, so there's more than enough in this and it's been costed out to make sure it meets the requirements of end sill applications. So, I welcome the application. I thank Councillor Morley for bringing it forward and I hope we can agree this evening. Thank you, Councillor Lyons. Do you have any speakers? Councillor Nicholson. Thank you, Councillor Lyons. So, as the portfolio holder for the green spaces, I absolutely welcome this application as well. As you know, we wanted to actually bring it to Council earlier in the year and it was unfortunate the timing didn't quite work, so hence it's come to this particular meeting in June. The Weechie playground is a well-loved playground and it's out of action at the moment and we would like to get it back into action as fast as possible, so I would welcome this application. Thank you. It's well used by lots of people who live in the town centre as well. It's probably the closest place. If you live certainly north, that's probably the closest place that you would go to. Perhaps you'd go to Woking Park if you lived in the south. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you. Now the speakers, are we all happy to resolve that that sill funding application is agreed? Thank you. Now we'll move on then to our second ill sill application. This one comes from the Heathlands Ward and it's in relation to surface improvements to footpaths in Hooke Heath. Councillor Lyons. Thank you very much. This application was brought forward by former Councillor Davies when he was still on the council. To improve some footpaths, there's some photos in the report. You can see why he might suggest that that be done. It's falling apart, it's pretty craggy, perhaps dangerous if you aren't very sure footed. Along a footpath which is used quite a lot in that part of Hooke Heath. So the application has been properly costed in accordance with the rules for in sill funding. It comes in at £24,000 and that comes out of a total pot available in the ward of £73,000. And it has the support of all three ward councillors and indeed the county councillor. I'd urge you to support it this evening. Thank you Councillor Lyons. Any speakers at all? Councillor Forster. The portfolio mentioned £73,000 available in the ward. Is that the neighbourhood area or is that the ward? So Heathlands has several neighbourhood areas and then which they control their spending. All their spending is limited to their areas and it's controlled by the neighbourhood forums and the ward councillors. Is that whole ward funding, do you know? I suppose what I'm asking is, I think this funding was raised in the Hooke Heath area and is being spent in the Hooke Heath area. Rather than spent in some part of the ward and being spent elsewhere. And that's how I read the paper. I'll find the chunk in there. Would you mind if I defer to Ms Kouchar for a response on this, though she's making the same face I am. If you look at the last line of the executive. Yeah. In paragraph 11 it confirms that, thank you. I thought I read that somewhere. It was that reassurance. So thank you for confirming that. So obviously because we have neighbourhood forums it does throw that issue and I just wanted to confirm that. Whereas myself, leader, the head of finance, we don't have that issue and neither do you in Mount Hermon. So I just wanted to confirm that. You're quite right to clarify it, vice chairman, and it is indeed the neighbourhood area. Okay. So thank you everyone for getting that clarified and sorted out. And I note actually in the resolution that Councillor Rice, one of the current councillors for the Heathlands ward, is going to oversee this project given that Councillor Davis is no longer here on the council. In that detail, are the executive happy to accept that application? Agreed. Thank you. We will move on then to risk management and business continuity. This is the annual report for this area. This is my portfolio area so I will be introducing it. So we've done a lot of work as a council since 2022 to strengthen governance and accountability. We now have a strategic risk register which didn't exist before. And there's a quarterly assurance meeting where senior directors of the council assess and review risks that go beyond where the council would want them to be derived from that risk register. To further embed the element of risk and the importance of risk into the council as a whole, the next level down in the council's leadership are the heads of service and the senior managers are going to be involved in workshops and some training in the months ahead to ensure that they fully understand and we embed risk principles across the council. Now if I just highlight to you what some of the key risks are to us as a council and some of those areas where perhaps we are going beyond currently our risk appetite. We've made a few changes to the wording on the list of risks. Just reflecting I think changing circumstances, doing things that are more appropriate. So previously in relation to our budgets we were looking to fill a nine and a half million pound gap. We now have a key risk for the year ahead of just setting a balanced budget. You can imagine given both our own challenges and the challenges of government finance that one really is absolutely key. We've brought in a risk around guarding against fraud and that's not to say that there has been any identification of fraud but it means that with a council as with any council with large sums of money being around we need to make sure that principles and processes are in place to guard the organisation against fraud. Similarly we need to be guarding against cyber attack as well and councils we've just seen health bodies in London and some of the NHS trusts have been affected by cyber attacks and the huge impact that has had on their operation. It's not something we need as a council so it is very important. It's a huge risk to us that we are guarding against any cyber attacks. Coming back to some of our more day to day operation we've got a huge number of assets. We need to sell those assets to reduce where we can the huge level of debt that this council holds but we need to try and get the best value for money from them that we can. We know that the majority of those assets are worth less now than when they were purchased but we still need to get the best out of them that we can to deliver the best return to the public purse. And whilst we're doing this sort of work, selling assets, dealing with property and those sorts of areas of work we do need to make sure there's a huge risk that we could lose our focus on the core services we need to deliver as a council. And we really need to make sure that we continue to do that. We need to be rebuilding our reputation as a council. We all know what people's response is when we talk about woking or talk about the council. That reputation is tarnished and needs to be rebuilt. We've already talked about the risk management embedding. We've also got to have our emergency response, the same as for any council. If we do have an emergency event we've got to make sure we can respond appropriately to that. We've got to think about the ongoing demands that the cost of living crisis places on woking council because people being affected by that does mean that they may place more demands on the council, demands that we don't have the resource to meet potentially. And then looking at housing, we know we've got some issues in that area but there is a risk of us not getting our houses to the standards that are required following our self-referral to the housing ombudsman last year. And without investment there is a risk that our housing stock will deteriorate. So there's a huge number of risks there that sit at the heart of what this council does and is here for as a local authority. We need to keep clear track on these and they're set out in this annual report and dealt with regularly as the corporate leadership team of the council will review them. Portfolio holders are obviously input into those and keep track on those as they go along as well. Really important stuff, really key that we keep a focus on this and I would recommend that each of the portfolio holders keeps track on what's happening in their individual areas to ensure we're all focused on that risk and ensuring that we're mitigating where we can. Anybody else want to speak on this paper at all? Okay, thank you. So our recommendation is simply to note that report. Are we agreed? Thank you. We'll go now to the performance management items on today's agenda. The first of those items is item 13 and this is the performance management report. This covers the period of quarter 4/23/24 so that's quarter 4 of the municipal year running up to the end of April of this year. So it's a snapshot really of where the council performance got to at that stage and obviously we started building this performance management report. It's a newish report for the council that we've been doing for a number of months now. But we've also got the historic data now as well so we can see how things may change or stay the same over time. If you are interested in how the council is doing, where it's doing well and where there are still much areas to be worked on then it's certainly worth a look through all of that data. I'd just like to highlight a couple of points that I thought actually come out as good given the circumstances that we're in. And that's really thanking staff for all that they're doing in these challenging times. So our sickness rates as a council, although they may have increased slightly, remain below those of the local government average. So do a number of other statistics in relation to staff performance. So it's difficult times. Things probably aren't as good as they were but still our staff are kind of sticking in there and turning up day after day and doing a job and delivering for the residents of Woking so I think that's very positive. We're getting complaints. The LGBT council gets complaints but we are dealing with those complaints in a timely fashion. We are turning them around and getting back to people and working on those complaints so that people do feel heard and do feel that's being done. On a negative side though, we've got figures that just don't look so good when it comes to housing. We've got large numbers of family who are having to live in temporary or bed and breakfast accommodation and that's all part of the economic situation that we find ourselves in, the financial situation. Beyond Woking's issues, it's where we are in terms of the high level of rents in the southeast in particular and in towns like Woking with such good connections, it's very expensive to rent here. Many people who've rented in past from landlords, perhaps a very small portfolio, just renting out one or two properties, are finding those landlords now can't meet their mortgage payments so that means they're either increasing their rents or they're deciding instead to sell a property and therefore no longer to rent. So the rental market is contracting and we just don't have the places for people. There aren't the council homes sadly for people. We've lost a lot of stock to right to buy, it's been difficult to build new council homes. We've done what we can in terms of looking for other options. So a let's rent scheme for example where private owners can actually rent out their homes through the council. We've obviously used Thamesway to provide homes as well but we still don't have those homes available. So there is really so much there that we could still be doing. Obviously the finances bring huge issues as we all know and there is still much work to be done there. We are making progress but it's a very long way to go. We've had some issues in the past in terms of planning applications and the resource matters of getting those decided. We are picking up on that so we've been showing some good progress in that area. We've fallen behind a little in inspecting food premises on environmental health but in fact we've got to almost target 99% of the target of obviously 100% by the end of the year. So we are inspecting all of the local food premises and making sure that that work is done. So there's some positive progress in there. We've got money in the SIL fund. We need to encourage our councillors and our communities to spend that money. It is now fully available to everybody as we've seen tonight. There's two applications gone through making a real difference to communities and it's really important that everybody looks at actually spending that money and using it to the benefit of their community. Particularly when we don't have money directly from the council coffers. This is money that is freely available which is I think very, very, very positive going forwards. There's still some work to do on this. There's still some data we don't have available to us. So this report will continue to grow on the future report as you will see. But yeah, it's a good report. I think it's becoming better as time goes on and we can have more trust and feeling more secure in the accuracy of the data that is being provided here. It really helps us to manage and to understand what's going well and where there's still much work to be needed. Do any members of the Executive want to comment on the performance management report? Councillor Roberts. Thank you, Chair. I think this and the previous item, the introduction, the strategic updates to the Strategic Risk Register illustrate a bit of a pattern, don't they? You know, the Strategic Risk Register was introduced last year and already it's been reviewed. Additional risks identified with new performance monitoring in place which I think we'd all agree is a huge improvement on what was called the green book. And you've observed yourself, Councillor Barker, that that's part of an ongoing process. There will be further work. And so I think it's worth observing that the improvement journey that we're on is probably never ending. It's continuous. And whilst there's much to be done, I really want to thank senior officers here this evening and officers in the Council for all the work they've done because we are starting to see, I think, the sort of green shoots of that improvement journey. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councillor Roberts. Any other speakers? Councillor Johnson. Yeah, I like this report because it almost gives a position paper as to where we've got to go forward. It does look back but it shows trends as well. It is only quarters, of course, going back a year, but it is helpful. We've had an awful lot happen in the last year. I mean, housing, as you know, is difficult and you mention that, which is a function partly of the Planning Committee. If they don't approve plans for affordable housing, we don't get them in here eventually in two years' time. So things like that are important. It's not just the fact that we have more people who need somewhere to live. It's the fact that we've nowhere to put them anyway. And that's the issue for me anyway. But there are lots of good things happening. There's lots of challenges in here as well. But what I like about it is the opportunity to see at a glance what we need to be focusing on, certainly in communities and housing in my case. And I appreciate work that's gone into putting all this together. Keeping it up today is a challenge because it needs people to do it with the time to do it. And time is precious for all our staff who are busy doing things, not just ticking boxes and whatever. We need people doing things. And the problem with reports is the more we have, the less time they are doing things. So, except we need everything available to us, but it is a challenge to do both, I think, sometimes. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Johnson. No further speakers. Are we happy to receive the performance management report for quarter four? Thank you. I shall hand over now to Councillor Roberts for item 14 on the agenda. The budget monitoring for Q4 and the draft out-turn for the 23-24 year. Just to note anyone who's following this, there is a supplementary pack. This paper was added later. It's not in the main pack on the website. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Again, there's a bit of a trend here, I think, isn't there? You know, we're talking about monitoring, budget monitoring, reporting, risk registers. And Councillor Johnson is quite right. You know, we have a strategic risk register so we can prepare mitigations. We have our monitoring report so that we can put in place improvements. We have our budget monitoring so we can put in place mitigations for those. And so it is with the paper that's in front of you this evening. The budget monitoring report monitors spending against budget each month, reporting to the executive on a quarterly basis, and it's for us to note this evening. It relates to the general fund capital spend and the housing revenue account or HRA for the last year, 2023-24. As it relates to the general fund, the draft position is a projected spend of $27.2 million and overspend of $2.7 million. In terms of the capital spend, the draft position is $79.7 million and underspend of $15.3 million. The total housing revenue account, HRA, is $24.6 million and overspend of $2.6 million. In terms of revenue, a total of $27.2 million revenue spend, $2.7 million over, the key variances were in property services where we're working through a number of legacy issues, including housing options, customer services, and finance. This has for the most part been mitigated by borrowing less than budgeted due to underspends on the capital program. And over the coming year, 2024-25, my point about monitoring sounds rather passive, doesn't it? But this report isn't. It's very much about tighter internal processes in our organization. It's very much about our finance team finally partnering with the rest of the organization so that we continue to keep budgets under control. So over this coming year, there will be a strengthening of this budget monitoring process, tightening management and review process, processes such as the financial control panel to improve our position as it relates to spend against budget and variances. In terms of capital, there's that underspend of $15.3 million. Again, it reflects on projects where we're not spending against the original budget, but in so doing, it has helped the revenue position. On the HRA, overspent by $2.6 million. There are a range, again, of legacy issues as there are with the general fund, and we've instructed officers to investigate and make recommendations on those legacy issues, prepare a medium-term financial strategy, an MTFS for the HRA, and also continue their work on the 30-year business plan that sets the journey for housing in the future. Just a few words in conclusion on this report. When we took control of the council, we inherited, didn't we, a chronic financial position without many of the processes and controls required of any professionally run organization, and Councillor Barker mentioned the work that's been done and is ongoing in the strategic risk register earlier. There was no budget monitoring, it seems astounding to me now. There was no quarterly expenditure review, no regular variance analysis, no routine reporting to support officers so that they could take corrective actions throughout the year. And so I'm delighted that we've completed a full year of this process. There's much more work to be done. That process needs to be improved, but I'm really pleased with the progress made so far. Transparent budget monitoring is part of a range of actions designed to normalize the financial situation, better support the council's offering to the residents of Woking. And whilst there is much more work to be done, and we will be further developing the report over time, I am really pleased that this is getting the focus now that it's never had before. I request that the executive note the report. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councillor Roberts. Do I have any speakers from the executive? No? Okay, thank you. Yeah, I think it's an absolutely key report. We do need to know on a regular basis where we are, and clearly where we are at the end of the year, the more detail we can have so we can track it so there's no sort of unexpected surprises coming along on this as well. You know, we know there are issues. We know there are problems. We know there are going to be overspends in some areas, but we need to know about them. We need the best information we can have to come up with a balanced budget for the year ahead, living within our own means, which is what we're looking to do on those day-to-day budgets. Are the executives happy to note the report? Thank you. Okay, that takes us on then to item 15 on the agenda, which is the project monitoring report. This is my portfolio, so I'll be introducing it. And it's a simple report. It pops up every so often to summarise the current Council projects. I think it's always still very notable that there are so many fewer projects on here now than there were in the past. There is so much greater clarity onto which projects are in progress, yet to start, and completed. We've got a few issues of outstanding projects on there where things haven't been completed, but I think in every case there are some mitigating circumstances there. We're usually waiting for others to finalise things or have a piece of work to complete. So I believe, overall, the position on ongoing projects is a positive one. We're on top of what we're doing. They are being managed well in terms of the timing and the processes. So I have nothing further to say on that unless any other members of the executive have any questions or would like to make any comment. Are we happy to note that report? Thank you. That then brings us to the end of the public part of tonight's meeting. I now move that the press and public be excluded from the meeting for the consideration of Agenda Item 17 on the basis that, if there were to remain, there would be disclosure to them of exempt information. I'm happy to second that, Chairman. Thank you, Councillor Forster. We will now move to Part 2 of the agenda and the webcast will end.