Transcript

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to this meeting of the Finance and Performance Scrutiny Subcommittee. This meeting will be webcast live to the internet. For those who do not wish to be recorded or filmed, you will need to leave the chamber. For members, officers and others speaking at the meeting, it is important that the microphones are used so viewers on the webcast and others in the room may hear you. Would anyone with a mobile phone please switch it to silent mode as they can be distracting. I would like to remind members of, although we have strong opinions on matters under consideration, it is important to treat members, officers and public speakers with respect. Thank you and good evening everyone. All right, move on to the agenda. Item number one, apologies for absence. Thank you Chair. We have no apologies. As I can see. Item number two, declarations of interest to any members have any declarations of a personal, prejudicial interest they wish to declare? Mr. Butcher, I declare an interest as Director of Opportunities. And the same for you Councillor Wayne. That is correct Director. Alright, there we go. Any more? Okay, item number three. Okay, so our quarter three performance report which is coming up to the end of 31st of December. I am right and to introduce we have Gavin, thank you. Thank you Chair and good evening members. This report provides an update on the Council's performance for the third quarter of the 23 24 financial year covering the 1st of October to the 31st of December 2023. The report enables the Council to assess progress against the key performance indicates that arise from the Council's corporate plan. The course of the performance report is set out in front of you in Appendix 1 where performance has not been met. The explanations have been given from the relevant service leads and noted within the report. The report once considered by members this evening will then be presented to Cabinet on the 20th of March. On a separate note, I would like to take the opportunity to update members on the Focused and Community Works Local Development Program at the CLOD. The Focused and Community Works Community Led Local Development Program which was delivered by the Council using EU grant funding ended in September of 2023. The program focuses on supporting businesses and employment growth in Focused in East, Central, Harbour and Broadmead wards and the closure and overall performance of that program was previously reported to Cabinet in June 2023. Following its operational closure of the program, there has been an extensive process to complete its financial close with the Department for leveling up housing and communities. Confirmation has been received from DELEP that financial close has been successfully completed and the feedback included the following commentary. Thank you to all of the team and those projects involved in the success of FCW. This is amply demonstrated in its achievement of 95.89% against the ERDF contracted expenditures target and the output achievement of 81.54% as an average measurement across the five ERDF output indicators. This, when considering the difficult set of circumstances that the FCW experienced during its delivery, this is remarkable so I thought I would just give the opportunity to update members on that as well. I am happy to take any questions on the report. Thank you. Thank you Gavin for that extra information. I open it up to members, do they have anything they wish to raise with regards to the report? Councillor Moochoo, is that half a hand or is that not? Turning it into a full home. Yes, thanks Chair. It was really a question about the quality homes infrastructure, service ambition for and the number of affordable homes and it was really just I suppose to note that when we were in full Council we were hearing about the annual demand for affordable homes, 139 a year and I guess it's kind of recognising the challenge about looking at what we've got at the moment in the report and I guess the question is obviously not going to be answered here but what plans do we have for closing that gap? Thank you. Do you have anything to respond? Thank you for the question Councillor but what I will do is I will go back and speak with housing colleagues on that and obviously provide a common explanation to the committee on that or what we're doing to keep close that gap. I mean I appreciate it. It's a kind of very big, I'm not not looking for a kind of neat answer I suppose it's just wanting to acknowledge that huge amount of good work has gone on and yet there's still that huge challenge that is being unmet. Councillor May I add something to that. If you look in the report it might not be clear but we've got quarterly performance on affordable homes reported so we've actually got 62 delivered against 80 so far target for the year and obviously the demand is going up so as part of the review of targets and performance indicators in the corporate bank going forward we will look to see whether that can be improved but I think we will on track at the moment to achieve that target of 80 by the end of this year. I appreciate that. I guess the point I was making then when you compare it with the need that's been assessed. Just something on a point of clarity and this is affordable homes delivered by the Councillor and its partners which has got green and then aimed to maximise and says brackets off target because it sounded like if it was green that meant it was on target but yes that's probably not clear on there. I think what that means is that we're on target for the year cumulatively at the three quarters point but actually yes that's probably just an error. I'll just sign on that bit there. Thank you. Councillor Thank you Chair. Just the first indicator in terms of priority play areas I'm wondering whether the intention to carry improvements to the coastal park play area is going to be impacted by the land slips that we've seen and I wanted to check just scrolling with the street lighting the conversion to LED it says the remaining 8% of street lighting to be converted has had to be reprogrammed due to increased costs. Officers are investigating whether some of the outstanding 56 assets could be removed from the programme to reduce the final cost. I'm assuming if you take them out of the programme in some way obviously they haven't been upgraded or converted so what does that mean in relation to those particular assets, is that a kind of paper exercise? Why does that leave us in terms of the target? Thanks. Thank you for both those comments on that Councillor Davidson. With regards to the priority play areas I will go back and have a conversation with the engineering buildings team with regards to that specifically on the point you raised with the coastal park and obviously with regards to the street lighting and noting the comments that you've made there I'll be happy to go and have that conversation with the transportation lead specialist on that and have a conversation on where we are in terms of the comments you've raised and as I say I'll provide a response to the committee on that. Councillor interjecting. Thank you Chair. I'll talk a bit about the rough sleepers. It's sad to see we still have a number, well I'm not increasing number of rough sleepers and it talks about the housing team we'll continue to offer service and advice. My first question is, has this been affected by the KCC cutbacks? In the portfolio being cut back and obviously I know the Council do rely on the portfolio quite a bit. Is it being affected by the cutbacks basically? Chair, I'll answer that one. Yeah I don't know the specific answer to that with regard to cutbacks. I think there are a number of issues that affect the rising rough sleepers. The attractiveness of the area for people to cut, we've had seen an increase in people coming to the area and it could also be affected by the cost of living. People are unable to sustain their tendencies. It's something we're monitoring very closely. We have had historically quite low numbers so compared to what we used to these numbers are going up sadly. The way we're monitoring at the moment is these aren't people that have approached us to say that they're homeless. These are the counts that we take on a weekly basis and then we work at an average. But from that we can see that the numbers are going up. But yes some of the agencies we work closely with are aware of the problem and you'll see the effect on that in terms of the numbers of people that we're housing temporarily in TA, temporary accommodation and bed and breakfast that we're looking for solutions for them. But yes it's something that we need to take us close attention to. Continue from that. I know that the BMBs are actually halved in the last year. We like it. Obviously the target is zero and hopefully we're heading that way but it's nice to see that the number is dropping anyway. Thank you. That's mum. Thank you very much. I wasn't sure whether, so some of my comments actually relate to or questions relate to the KPIs themselves. Is that fine? Yeah. So my first one then on page 2021 where we're looking at the food premises. I just wonder whether we've got that at the right level. One of my senses generally when I look at the KPIs is we've got lots of greens which is on the one hand really good news but it makes you wonder whether you've got the threshold at the right level or whether we're monitoring the right things. So I've got a few examples of that as I go through on this one. So we've got quite high percentages of premises that are broadly compliant which is a three racing and above. I personally don't go into, I might misunderstand the criteria but I personally wouldn't go into a restaurant with a three rating. I'd tend to go to one which is four or five. I just wonder whether we've got that set at the right level and whether we should be a bit more ambitious particularly given the fact that we're at 98.9% which seems we've got very good compliance. I think with regards to a thank you Councillor Martin for your question. I think with regards to that particular indicator the criteria that's set there is obviously set in relation to the Food Standards Agency. So it's not something that we directly set. I think it's set by the criteria that's governed by the Food Standards Agency on that one. So yeah that's how it's set. And just on that as it's my partly my sort of day job as well, as you might be aware, food rating is a snapshot in time. Everyone has a bad day and they could get an inspection and get a one or a two and that could be corrected very quickly within a matter of months to back up to a four or five. I think if we tried to raise the limit it might skew the data a little bit in a way that might not be representational of the high quality establishments we have in the district. I think that's fair. And then if I go to this let's have a look at my notes here. So on page 21 when we're looking at community safety events. So obviously that looks really good here. So certainly versus the target and versus the comparison we're holding many more events which is great news. I wondered whether we should have some kind of KPI that looks at what kind of engagement levels we have there. So I know speaking to the team that sometimes these are really well attended and sometimes less so and I think that helps us but we had one in lid recently which is really well attended. That was so off the back of us actually working quite hard to make sure that it was well attended. I know other ones have been significantly less well attended. I just wonder whether it just had a bit more colour if we could bring in an additional KPI just to monitor that. I think engagement is maybe a bit of a challenge for us as a council so it's probably not a bad thing for us to to look at. Okay, let's deal with my thunder a little bit towards the end. I was just going to ask Avon about sort of next steps because they do get reviewed every year. So does any members have any other questions or comments on the on the actual substantial parts of the report? Council butcher? Yeah, I just want to say that our tendency is to zone in on the rates of course and ask questions about that but I think well I suppose building on what Alan's saying you know there's so much kind of positive there and a reminder of just the volume of activity that the council's delivering I think is phenomenal really. I don't know you know full council we're talking about council tax and what the council tax is set out when you kind of look at that in comparison to this huge amount of activity on behalf of our residents I don't know to me feels pretty impressive really. Thank Council butcher. A couple of things from myself. One was the the Romney Marsh business hub obviously we're not sort of looking to make that target and I mean it's good to see that we've had some movement in that in the reporting quarter but obviously it says it's not likely to be met due to the number of applications received so seven approved applications as I understand it for the funds awarded in quarter three so if you have an idea of how many applications are out I've been received outside of that in terms of just that might help sort of get an idea of how how far short we might fall in the financial year. Thanks for the question yeah so it sort of falls under my agreement so yes there is a grant there available and that was mainly there to incentivise people to go into the hub as we were starting to to get that fills up and as a result that's been very successful and we've got I think one vacant office down at the moment so it's been highly successful initiative to get people in there. The fund itself was from a previous one called the Marsh millions and I think the aim now is to stop that fund review it and then see how we can spend that money in the manner that was intended for originally which is in the in the Romney Marsh area so we're looking to do that as part of the Romney Marsh partnerships of work and that's that's the aim. So we're not too worried I think about the target not being met because I don't know we felt we did this job essentially so we wanted to say we've got that money to do some more good within that area. So as a fair to say that KPI won't exist after the review for the next financial year okay and then I guess the the elephant in the room I guess you know our out our data breaches and and again the sort of the figures there and obviously we've had you know reports back to this committee over you know training and all the things that have gone on with with regards to staff and then we still we still keep having you know the comments I guess you know because you can never rule out that that sort of level of human error so I didn't know what the what the thinking was with within the officer team in terms of this KPI and you know are we measuring it in the right way or you know we're never we're never going to see green ticks on those boxes I mean if we do it would be you know I'll go out and I'll buy a tick on the lottery but but yeah it'd be good to sort of get an idea of the thinking just in terms of what these KPI's might look like if there is any change moving forward. So thank you I just wanted to quickly just go back to the point that Councillor Malton raised with regards to the engagement we can look at maybe to put some comments in the report around the levels of engagement to try and make that a little bit clearer going forward just to note on that point in particular with obviously regards to data breaches and I just want to say just really very general in terms of the the process and where we are is you know we have a new team now the governance performance and and risk team so there will be a lot of looking at the processes and training and the performance and how we we do things going forward so that's all been put together into a really concise unit now as a team so there will be greater emphasis and focus on on how we do the managed data breaches going forwards. Thank you anything else from from members? Councillor Martin you want to come back in? It's just relating so on page 24 where you're you're laying out the different sort of warnings sort of issued and so on. I was just wondering whether there's a way of presenting that in the way that you can understand whether it's whether it's a good result or not so you've actually got a red there where you're actually saying there's a there's a target of 10 orders being put out and there's only been one so it shows up as a red but that that could actually be very good news in that there's only one because there haven't been any issues and it's being well dealt with and then sort of on the flip side I mean it looks like there's some superb effort going in because the numbers of notices being raised is increasing but I don't know whether it's possible to benchmark that against the number of complaints that have been received or something so you understand the the context in which that's that's been received. Thank you for your comments on that Councillor Martin yeah that's something we can we can maybe look into again to to what we incorporating into the report I would say I'll note those those comments on that and I agree looking at that it probably doesn't look as clear when you're when you're reviewing that. If I can add to that thanks for the question it's something I noted as well and I think you're absolutely right part of what we might be look might look to do is work more closely with the officers and so they get a better understanding of what where this data goes because we're getting this information from the from the teams but looking exactly at that thing that's what you know this looks like it should be a good good indicator we haven't issued any but we need to look more carefully about how this meets that service ambition and I think part of the review of the corporate plan in the next year will be to look at so what what is the ambition what are we trying to do here is it is it to have better public spaces or issue more notices but if issuing more notices is going to help help us have better spaces then it's a good thing but yeah you're right this is it's difficult we've missed that indicator but that's probably a good thing. Okay and it might be helpful just to sort of if we could have a little outline I guess in terms of the process if you if you've sort of got a thinking of it in terms of the KPIs for the next financial year any possible amendments or changes they'll go to cabinet but the potential for them obviously to either come to this committee or for this committee to feed feed into those I don't know if you've got any sort of anything in the timeline thoughts early thoughts about that sort of process just so we could have an early early heads up on that. I think at the moment I mean as previous chair we we did bring I think you might recall from last time around for the for this current financial year we did bring the KPI amendments back with the annual report which I believe came to this committee in June of last year so we would should have an idea to present something for the for the committee to have a to have a sale and have a comment on before it goes prior to cabinet so at the moment we'll we'll work to those obviously those timescales obviously subject to any other changes or amendments to any future timetables to do with the corporate plan but we will stick with with that for the next subcommittee June. That's very helpful so members you know hopefully we'll have a have an opportunity to to shape I mean I remember we um it was the the charging point so I think it wasn't it we so we had this committee added a KPI into this this current year there wasn't obviously thought about prior because of the decisions that were made from you know from council and budgets and and things like that so hopefully we'll get to have that discussion at a at a at a at a future meeting. Right um so obviously we just need to receive a note the report. Jake did you want proposals and seconders or are you happy for us just to agree if we can just a bit more for me. We'll uh we'll appease Jake in proposed by Councillor Martin thank you seconded by Councillor WING and all in favour noting the report thank you very much and thank you to Gavin and Jonathan and all the team I mean it's one of the one of the best reports in the council in my opinion it just keeps improving and evolving and uh it uh yeah thank you very much. Right um moving on to the next item item number four. It is an update on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund or UK SPF and the Rural England Prosperity Fund our EPF and uh what's going to do could deliver an update on that for us thanks. Thank you Chair. Yes so the report really just outlines the update really on on the performance of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and also the Rural England Prosperity Fund just as a kind of an overview the UK Shared Prosperity Fund was a million pound allocation to the council we had to put together an investment plan which outlined how we wanted to spend that money and it had to be based on need the general consensus was to focus on the cost of living crisis that we had and that's what we've done so we created um three three elements to it which was the home's essential fund the mobile pantry project and then there was a skills element as well uh so that's and that's in for year three so that's the year coming up financial year coming up and that's to focus in on green skills and retrofitting skills uh to to help with the sort of net zero target and we're also focusing on the construction side as well we feel that's that's an area which will benefit the uh the local district area uh the Rural England Prosperity Fund uh that gave us a again similar process and allocation of five hundred and seventy eight thousand pounds um seventy seventy eight or seventy one semantics there okay it was yeah five seven one so not five seven eight essentially that was there uh to do two things um firstly to enable businesses in the rural uh part of the district to improve and enhance what they do so to diversify potentially so that could be a farm that may have some buildings that they want to release for some business use as sort of the grant can be used to help keep that out or conversely uh the business that wants to go in there can help them set up within within that um establishment the other element to was the community as well so where we got community facilities within the district this fund was aimed to try and help them in terms of energy improvements using solar panels and things like that so anything they felt that would benefit the the community uh enhance the community asset that that grants there to enable that to happen as well so the report kind of outlined more detail around those um two initiatives so happy to take questions on that thank you thanks very much Rod um just to try and keep the focus as it sort of it naturally sort of splits into two parts so that we focus on any sort of questions or queries relating to the um the share prosperity fund first and then we we cover the rural fund uh second if that's okay with members um so I open up to members uh for any comments questions or anything relating to the shared prosperity fund element council Davison yeah i mean i'll probably ask the same question in part two but it was just really to get a kind of sense of how it's going from from your perspective um in just really kind of basic terms so that we can we can understand yeah thank you so um the UK share prosperity fund i think is going really well um the food pantry element to it um provided a sort of a mobile um unit if you want for a better description uh with the aim that would go around to different parts of the district um to help with food but also to help with the education of food and cooking and kind of how to do more with less uh using good vegetables good ingredients etc we also had a wrap around service in terms of the financial support as well so where people were finding it difficult in the cost of living crisis and how to budget and deal with certain debt levels we've got sort of a full time person who can also help with that aspect of of the the role as well and and being able to go out to these areas where people might not have um access to transport or or ways to get into into the sort of towns then that obviously helps them as well it's been really well received we're going to different locations we're hoping at one other location um the rainbow center other people who are kind of running the scheme for us they're doing a terrific job um the added benefit of all of this is obviously bringing volunteers into it as well so that has an enormous benefit not only for helping to deliver the service itself but also the the positive effects of social interaction with those that might be sort of on their own and pointing to volunteer etc so there's lots of pluses in that area as well so I think from the food pantry point of view it's going really really well on the other on the other side of the cost of living elements we're obviously putting out some different components so we're we're dealing with um servicing people's boilers so the aim was to really to go out there and help people who are sort of a low-income families who may be home home occupiers uh and have sort of boilers and other sort of white goods that aren't particularly efficient or haven't been serviced properly so therefore they're doing two things really using up more energy which is not great for the co2 side of things but also is costing money as well so the aim was to try and go in there and and help with some of that so there's things called tune-ups are going in and helping people with their with their boilers getting tuned up because that's quite a costly exercise and also replacing boilers where they're beyond their their life really and and kind of replacing them with more efficient ones there's also white goods as well so we're kind of replacing old white goods with some new white goods and there's quite strict criteria as well to meet so it's not just we're not just giving them out to anybody there is a strict criteria they have to go through as well but again that's that's that's going well the boiler replacement I think we can reallocate some of the money because I think next year we're getting a larger tranche of money so the aim is to probably reallocate that money into another initiative so we'll be looking for ideas and would welcome ideas from from the committee here as well as to maybe how we can tick the box in terms of the cost of living sort of criteria that we've decided to to go along so if anybody's got any ideas please put them for but there will be an allocation of money I think there there's the bed project as well and that's really is around the and believe it or not there's lots of families out there who don't have access to beds especially to children so when they go to school their attainment levels are lower because they're not really a good night's sleep so that's been extremely popular and that's through Andrew Hatch's team so when this this project came up and this allocation of money he kind of was really desperate to get older some of the money to enable that to continue so again that that's been very popular and will continue to be popular and that's kind of sad in one respect but good that we are able to to help with that as well so that includes not just beds and mattresses that's also bedding and other things as well just to help with with a good good night's sleep for for those children and those families so I think overall again I think that's going really well the skills element is it's going to come on stream and we're we're quite excited by that and we're looking forward to to moving that forward it's got three sort of tranches as you can see from the report there two of those we're hoping to work with East Kent College to and they have to go to a procurement process so you know they haven't got one the one the the actual commission as yet has to go through a process but they'll be in the mix and they'll be very helpful in developing it and they're aware that they have to be able to compete for that for that work and then there's the element where we're working with local businesses independent businesses to try and see whether their their business can benefit from small upskilling programs that will align to their business need but also may align to the green agenda so they can upskill their members of staff they identify the course and we will essentially pay that but again it's a criteria that will they will have to go through so a long-winded answer to your question Councillor Davison but I think overall it's going very well come back on that chair I mean I found that really helpful thank you and just in terms of the table the targets in the table the project targets versus the accumulative total the project targets across what period of time wasn't quite clear and where there's a quite a significant gap between the target and the total is is that indicative that more work needs to be done in terms of spreading the word about these projects or what's the reason why there hasn't been more progress in terms of those totals is it just the stage of where we're at or that would be helpful to understand yeah as always when you're setting up these projects right at the beginning you're asked to give specifics and on in this particular case targets so you set yourself targets and you're trying to set them thinking about what you're going to do with that project at the time of setting those targets they they were set when we were just giving an outline of what the project might be so it's very difficult to then set them so we we set those and a couple of them are fairly ambitious but we've got plans in place on how to to deal with those I think overall because that that table that you've got there was from September 23 so obviously we're now in in March 24 so that has moved on so we can give you updates on that and I can I can send those through so we are closer to that number but the other element to to to realize as well is that the money that we got from central government doesn't come over come over as a million pounds in that particular case as in UK share prosperity but it doesn't come over in three even tranches so you've got a very small tranche which is about a hundred thousand per year one and there was about 200 per year two and we've got 700,000 coming in for year three so that will obviously show within the targets that we that we meet so we're fairly competent we'll meet that there is one there's about 10,000 but I think I think we're about five thousand and five and a half thousand but we feel fairly competent we'll we'll we'll reach that target that's all we thank you chair starting off with the homes this interest sounds a really good project and it's good work we now suppose if we start talking about double glazing it gets difficult as if it's self your housing because it might cross that we're not allowed to use it for improving our stock and I could understand that that'd be difficult the mobile pantry we might have a hat on I've worked quite closely with the Rainbow Center helping to set this up and it's been really successful and I believe charity and they started operating in charity this week obviously we had TV problems there's always skiing still but it's been really popular and in fact the the um pantry and hive now we've actually shot earlier on the Monday so the volunteers can go at the help of the pantry it's all really helping and it's really working well I just hope the money all comes through we hear about these government schemes and then the money just stops something happens in you know we've got these great plans and it's a fantastic thing and then the money just sort of oh it's not a transfer after all but hopefully can continue it sounds a really good project and well done well explained thank you um from myself just a bit clarification with the the mobile pantry projects and the the outline projects there I mean has there has there been any of the sort of the the add on the cookery classes the education has any of that sort of happened as yet or is that still something to come through in in sort of the the remaining time of the project so there's there's I think there's there's demonstrations as the as the mobile fan van goes out but there's also the work with East Kent College and they're looking to do one in September which is a kind of a course a proper course dedicated course and then there's they're going to do another one I think about January I think 25 but I can come back to you so they've got to doing a pilot one to see how that goes and to pick up you know council wings point is trying to see whether we can come up with a sustainable way to continue because it is a bit of a cliff edge at the moment because we don't know what's going to happen afterwards so if we can come up with a scheme that works and we know it works then there may be opportunities to try and see how we can bring in money to enable that to continue okay yeah thanks for that you know it's gone a bit quiet on that front so I'll I'll make sure I make sure I put that in my diary um and I guess with the um with the with the skills stuff to to happen are you are you envisaging it sort of all the funding sort of being being channeled into other organizations or is there stuff that you expect um the council to sort of do with some of that funding I'm just saying you know some sort of like skills fair or something that's more purely focused on on that green those green skills those green agendas you know to sort of those sort of side events if you like that you know that sort of increase the sort of the buzz and the enthusiasm for those is there any thinking of any of using any of the funding for any of that or is it purely going to be channeled into um into the delivering organizations thank you for the question um yeah I think at the moment it's channeling in about two two elements of it going into an organization um and then the other element is a bit like the um the rural England prosperity funding that we've got a grant program that will set up so there'll be a kind of a criteria how to access it which will be around those those bespoke courses for the for the various businesses within the district and we'll administer all of that and we'll kind of run that in-house but there are opportunities I think through and we're just doing the tendering for the other two elements and we could sort of weave that in potentially and to see whether there's an opportunity to sort of do a bit of a launch event and and we've got the inspired marsh marsh inspires event coming up as well later on this month which again we'll be promoting what we're doing here for this particular initiative as well at that particular event so yeah it will be potentially could organize that going forward I think that's a possibility again depends who wins and how they they structure their their response but I think if you can do some added value elements within the within the actual tender then I think there could be some opportunity that's good to castle butcher and yeah just really really impressive and good to hear about those projects fantastic and I'm you were saying about the reallocation of some of the boiler funding and ideas for that I don't know if this is a bit ambitious but I wonder whether there's any opportunities for some kind of participatory budgeting approach because there's something about offices or members coming up with ideas of what we think the people who need this sort of funding would most benefit from but there'd be something really powerful about working with those groups to discover what they would really find useful that feels more empowering but I know that's kind of an ambitious thing to undertake but maybe worth looking at it okay um we're done on that side of then do members have anything they wish to ask or clarify with regards to the the rural side of the of the of the of the fund of Davidson should I just ask my how's it going question thank you Councillor Davidson again we're we're inundated to believe it or not with applications on this particular scheme both on the community and the business side which which is great we had a panel first panelists were this week is another one June next week and I think we're over subscribed in terms of the amount of money that that could mean that we kind of allocated for this financial year so that's really positive there's there's some both energy efficient grants within there so there's solar panels for some of the the community centers there's some business diversification businesses as well and there's you know there's there's quite a whole whole raft of them I can give you some details in terms of what those those businesses well those those applications are if you're not on the panel you can see those but it's quite a variety and quite a quite a quite a good spread as well in terms of the location within the district obviously it's kind of channeled towards the rural so it generally means that hive and folks and and san data out of the out of the picture on that one but all the other areas are within within the rural the rural area so yeah it's it's going extremely well I think I don't think it'd be long before we have the money spent if I'm honest so we can be quite particular about that to make sure that we choose the right projects to make sure we get that added value and obviously if you can get those added jobs that's what what's about kind of resilience in businesses that's really critical on the business side and also if there's a where they're diversifying their business if they can then demonstrate there's going to be job creation that could be great and there could even be a link to the skills as well somehow if we if we're quite clever with it so yeah we're we're very optimistic and it's been run very well and we and we've got a very good system if you go online you can see the application it's all kind of online and electronic as opposed to the pay performance and we've done what's called an EOI and expression of interest first because very often people spend hours doing an application and then they get rebuffed we felt actually just do an EOI so you're just doing it just an outline of what your project is and we can tell you whether it's a line to the criteria or not and if it's not at that stage we can say you don't bother or if it's good please continue with it so at least it doesn't waste everybody's time so we think that's a really good initiative as well um yeah that's helpful thank you um I don't know if you can say anything about the transport part of it because that'd be useful to know perhaps how that's developing and are the criteria are they were they government set criteria or are they local criteria and how have they been come up with in terms of people applying for the funding um so dealing with the criteria question first there's a bit of both actually um but we've we've learned quite a lot from all other grant applications that we've done through the COVID grants that we did etc so there's a lot of lessons learned on those um so I think that's enabled us to come up with a really good um right level of criteria as well to enable businesses to go in there be quite ambitious but at the same time that you know they have to meet certain key criteria so I think we've got that balance about right I think there but there was a there was a couple of um central government elements that we had to sort of incorporate in uh in terms of the transport project we've got 50,000 allocated for that and that was to allocated really to help with the um kind of a high-speed rural bus from the new Romney area through into the Folkestone or Ashford and there's been lots of discussions going on with um Stagecoach and other bus providers KCC as well to see whether we can unlock something there to make it happen as as you know the the bus um situation is is not great and there's a concern that if we put one service on that might have a knock-on effect to another service so we're very minded of that as well because what we want to do with this particular service is enable people both young um and people who are going for jobs and people who need a hospital to get there quickly rather than going on a bus that might take a couple of hours so we're we're trying to find a fast route that then hopefully opens up opportunities both for training and for job opportunities as well um but there's the balance but we are working harder than the moment so I can't say too much but there are some positive things that are emerging but we've kept the allocation there if we don't get it because again this has to be spent by March 25 if that doesn't look like it's going to be spent then we'll reallocate that probably into the grant program because it's going so well we've got we've got plenty of money I think to uh or plenty of projects that require money to to utilize that fund potentially but we're we're keeping that in there allocated for for the transport and you'll also notice the coastal drive project as well as the other allocation and money from the rural even prosperity fund thanks very much Rod Councillor Wing thank you Chair just a bit of clarification for me really I mean it starts off saying no grants from 3,000 up to 30,000 and obviously the two grants that have been mentioned is well over that is that for the whole course you know is it 30,000 a year or this way it says maximum 30,000 is that per animal or how does that actually work yeah so that's the amount of business can apply for in terms of you know any business can come in here's what I want to do and then they can go from 3,000 to 30,000 generally the higher ones it's got to be quite exceptional but the allocation of money overall is split over the two years of the of the fund running so there's 140 odd thousand for the first year and then the remainder in the second year and that's just for the for the grant allocation so I think overall we've got something like 350k allocated for the grants application process so the other money goes to the coastal drive project which is about 100,000 and then 50k goes towards the transport and there's an element of money I think we were looking at transport just keeping in reserve to see whether we could flex it between whichever one runs well so I don't know if that answers your question yeah so 150 is almost separate to it's 30,000 you're talking about yes there's several things I'm just being fooled I've got to be sure it's done and the other thing is I'm glad you said about other because don't forget there's my my council by the same here I mean the e-lum especially around hall king they also read this report you think or it's all all the money's going to the marsh but it's not in fact it's just why these two people are having to be on the marsh I'm sure there's other money being allocated to place up hall king's and is it been spread out evenly do you have you looked at it do you carefully as well as everything else it's what I'm saying really could you spare with me for two seconds I'll just bring up an email sorry the computers just decide I'll just bear with me I can send I can send around the sort of aliquel that all the projects that are going to be presented at the panel I can send those out so you can see the geographical splits I haven't looked at them in great detail in terms of but I do know there are there are they are all over the the district just bear with me hawkins elm elm uh salinge yeah so yeah it's good good spread there's a good spread there yeah yep yep kind of just asked Rod in terms of the panel or whoever whoever ultimately decides the awarding um is there um is there ward member representation because we have it on the green grounds as well there is okay that's great Councillor butcher um yeah just to certainly my experience you're a microphone Councillor butcher um on the rural grants that's been a really exciting thing for people to hear about we we had a meeting in the North Downs Forum a few weeks back and Councillor Holgate was there so we had shopkeepers and local business owners just talking about the challenges they face and to actually have something that we could say to them well you know this might be something supplicable I think is really really encouraging for people who are at times struggling to be sustainable so I think that's much appreciated and you might have explained this but I don't think I've quite understood so we've got a pot of money that's the rural grants then there are these two the two big projects so what what was the process for settling on the coastal destination projects and the transport project as opposed to anything else I guess in terms of the sort of split I think the coastal destination project I think it was felt it was a really important one for that particular location from a tourism point of view and there's some businesses there as well though hopefully we'll we'll go on site and I think obviously with the struggles in terms of the council budgets and also the fact that costs had gone up in terms of construction costs so when that project was initiated it's taken quite a long time to get to where it is now I think costs had gone up so you wanted to make sure we had a buffer within this particular one because it ticked those boxes really well and that's what that's why we allocate at that level of money and in terms of the transport one again that was a project that's been talked about for a couple of years now and there has been murmurings and people getting quite excited by it but because it's been quite volatile in terms of the bus network and the funding opportunities of the bus networks get I think that's left a bit of ambiguity in terms of what money's out there so there's no decisions that have been made there are schemes within KCC that we've applied for as well to see whether we can try and get something mobilized to get something started up so again I think it's a case it's been quite volatile but we wanted to allocate that 50,000 because that's something that we identified quite early on in that particular project's kind of life cycle and that's how we came up with it and then the remainder was then split into those the rural grants essentially yeah anything else from members Councillor Davidson yeah thank you I think just going back to what you were saying about and if there's potential reallocation and looking for ideas on things I think it would be really helpful if it's possible for all Councillors to have an update on the funds and how they're progressing and as Councillor butcher was saying then to perhaps invite Councillors to have a think about projects that they might be aware of or they could speak with you know projects in their own areas in terms of suggestions to come back that could just make sure that there's that kind of broad knowledge of what's happening and the possibilities that that might be there for people to put forward. I think as Davidson yeah and I suppose sort of linking into that we are a finance subcommittee so I was looking at the numbers so you know just you know in section four of the report mainly with the UK SPF I mean you're sort of looking to use all your allocation in this current year I mean it's done 90,000 two-mid years I don't know I was obviously some time ago so I don't know if there's a more accurate figure to that so you know in terms of getting that that that 218 utilised within year. Yeah I think overall our budget tree allocation is good I think we're going to be about 13,000 under spent being open and honest we could rush it and spend it and we could do it but we don't want to do that and we check with our colleagues at central governments and they're happy for us to roll that over and that's what we want to do to make sure that we don't waste money unnecessarily and that enables us to then still get the release because the way that DLOC runs they release the money when you spend a certain percentage of your allocation they won't release it if you haven't met that so we've done really well we've met that allocation even though there was quite a few delays to start with from central government so and so we're in a good place but we are about 13,000 but think overall under spent this year. Okay that's fine and obviously next year's a very big year for the project isn't it so we look forward to two updates not really to sort of dwell on too much but I think I think it would be good to work to revisit this towards the end of the project with an idea of just looking on the legacy of it and you know and what we as a council might you know might want to take some of the best parts of it and find a way you know if there's no future central government funding but we think it's valuable then to have those discussions like we've done in other projects that we've sort of carried on ourselves outside of central government funding but a conversation for when it comes back to us towards the close of the project perhaps. Anyone else have anything to add? Well thank you very much for the update very informative report and again just to receive a note this is Jake proposed by Councillor Davidson seconded by myself and all in favour of noting the report thank you very much. Right and that's the only two items we have this evening so thanks very much for your time and have a lovely evening.