Corporate Resources and Economy Scrutiny Committee - Thursday, 12th September, 2024 7.30 pm

September 12, 2024 View on council website

Transcript

We're not expecting a firearm test this evening. So if the alarm is sounded, please evacuate the building. I'll begin by asking my fellow members and the officers to introduce themselves. Starting well, right?

Hello, good evening. I'm Councillor Ruling-Kundukur, Vice Chair of the Committee. Oh, I didn't put it on. Should I repeat that? (laughs) Good evening, I'm Councillor Ruling-Kundukur, Vice Chair of the Committee.
I'm Councillor Jason Jackson, I'm Councillor for Holloway Ward and Chair of Homes and Communities.
Hello, I'm Councillor Saika Pandor, St. Mary's and St. James' Ward.
Evening, I'm Councillor Nestor Zagorovas-Armstrong for Highbury Ward.
Hi, I'm Councillor Kai Combs-Warts, legal representing council.
Hi, I'm Victoria Lawson, I'm the Chief Executive.
Hi, Councillor Koolshan-Ostermy, I'm Chair of Children's and Young People.
Evening, Councillor Angelo Weeks for Margaret May Ward and Chair of Licensing Committee.
Councillor Sarah Hyde, Caledonian Ward, backbench member.
Councillor Heather Staff, Lacock Ward.
Samanay Richardson, Democratic Services Officer.
Thank you all, apologies for--
Sorry, I was late. I'm Councillor Tricia Clark, Tufnell Park Ward, Chair of Environment and Region, Chair of the Environment, Climate Change and Transport Committee, thanks.
We've had, I don't think any apologies for absence. I've had apologies for lateness from Councillor Ibrahim and I know that Councillor Chaudry hopes to join us at some point tonight, but he's sent apologies if that isn't possible. There are no substitute members. Any declarations of interest? No declarations of interest. Can we agree the minutes of the previous meeting?
Agreed. - Thank you all. First item, Chair's report. The working group met to discuss the committee's approach to monitoring performance on the 13th of August. Myself, Councillor Kondoka, Hyde, Chagoras, Armstrong, all contributed in various ways to that meeting. We will be continuing the work of the group over the next couple of weeks and will report back on the next occasion. I am going to use my position as Chair just to make a comment about the papers for this meeting and going forward. There is, and I understand this, an obvious desire to minimize duplication of work and to provide this committee with as much information as possible. But this committee is different from, for example, an operational board or even the executive in that the people around this table are not full-time councillors. They are not as familiar with the language of the council. And many on this committee have either full-time day jobs, full-time personal commitments, full-time caring commitments. And in order for this committee to function effectively, we have to have papers that mean something to us that we can pick up and follow. And what will really assist going forward is if papers and presentations that have gone to other boards are going to be recycled for this committee, that there are executive summaries, no more than two or three pages, that highlight the key points that the paper is making, direct us to the essential reading and the further reading. Because it is a real challenge for members of this committee to wade through pages and pages of detail without a guide. We only have a few days to assimilate the information. So it's really a plea from me that for this committee to function properly, there have to be papers presented in a way that are intelligible for this committee. And I'm more than happy to sit down with the key officers preparing papers for this committee to provide what assistance I can in what will help this committee perform their really important function as the overview and scrutiny committee for this council. Just a word about public questions. Members of the public will have an opportunity to ask questions following each agenda item, but I stress this is a meeting of the council in public. It's not a public meeting. There are no items for calling, which bring us to the annual presentation of the leader of the council. Councillor Comer Swartz, you've prepared a presentation. Can you aim for about 10 minutes for the presentation? And what I'd like to do is allow every member of the committee at least the opportunity to ask one question once up to entry. We'll see how we go, but I've allocated about an hour for this item.
Thank you, chair. And I know that the committee have had the presentation in advance, so I won't do them the disservice of raising the presentation to them. So if we move on to the first slide, please. Oh, there's, wow, look at this. (laughs) Thank you. So I truly believe that Islington Council is one of the best councils in the country, and we have a hell of a lot to be exceptionally proud of. And just going through our five mission areas and drawing out some of those things that we should be really proud of. Our system to support looked-after children has seen now a reduction of looked-after children. I think this is really important because it means that we're getting the early intervention right, we're keeping families together, and giving those families the support that they need. Our educational outcomes continue to be positive, and increasingly so. That's reflected as well in the quality of our schools. We know that the majority of our schools in Islington are good or outstanding. Similarly, I know that I talk about this too often, but it's still brilliant that we've just had our youth justice service rated outstanding. I have to say, when I was executive member for children, I went to visit youth court, and it was sitting for three days. And now it's sitting for half a day across Camden and Islington. It means that the investment that we have taken over a decade has made a real impact for the most vulnerable children in our boroughs. So we should be exceptionally proud. And I'm so thankful to the officers, but also the counselors for continuing to recognize the importance of the work and investing in that. And it's great that that's now been recognized. Similarly, in the early intervention space, making sure that our youth services in the community continue to reach as many children as possible, and that we have the right support around our children with additional needs or disabilities, and also making sure that access to employment and education continues to deliver for our young people. We'll move on to the next slide. Similarly, in our community wealth building, background, I think as we continue to strive to be a council that prioritizes equality, it's been great that we've worked with London Met, not only to say that we want to prioritize certain communities, but to have the data to really show where exactly those communities are, who they are, and what would work best for them. And that's resulted in us getting over 1,000 people from minoritized backgrounds into work. Our LIFT program is something to be amazingly, like it's something that we have really spearheaded. It's a tech program, getting people into the tech industry. We work with seven other boroughs to do that. But it's really about not letting the industries come to London and not serve our residents. So that's another great thing to highlight as well. Our IMAX team, that I know a lot of you know about, is another thing that, given the cost of living crisis, I'm internally grateful for. It literally puts millions of pounds back into the pockets of our residents. With our affordable work spaces, this is something that we've been talking a lot about across the country because it's essential to the way we approach planning in our borough. And we should, as members of the planning committee know, we should be really proud of that. We've got a decade's worth of experience in this area, which shows that you can deliver real social value for residents out of our planning and procurement system. Go on to the next slide. Similarly, making sure that all our residents are able to thrive and be empowered by the services that they give them. And this is really across all our services, our early intervention advice services, our engagement services, our voluntary sector. I know that many other boroughs can't invest because of their financials in the voluntary sector, but we continue to. We have a ring-fence grant for them, and I think that this really has enabled some amazing work in the borough in partnership with them. So I'm really proud of that. Also, our engagement work that we started with Let's Talk Islington has created a kind of ethos in the council around how we do engagement differently and properly with residents really listening to what they have to say. And that we've asked and residents have responded in literally their thousands. So that's a really positive pilot that's working well. And we delivered our first community panel on climate change and climate, it's not climate change, it's climate resilience, sorry. That was my typo there. And participatory budgeting. And I have to say that evidence from that has been really compelling. I've had people come up to me outside of Moss saying that they were involved and they've loved it. And people who've talked about not only the subject, but also the connection that they made through doing that work with us. And obviously, housing must always be, and will always be probably our greatest priority as a council. We are, you know, I'll talk about TA probably a bit later, but being able to buy so many right to buy properties and being able to use them for TA is not only the right thing to do for our residents. We all know people come to our surgeries that, you know, the worst thing we could imagine is them not being able to have a home in the borough, having children away from school, sleeping in hotels. That's not what we want for our, so being able to buy our properties back and put people, you know, keep them in our borough is something we should be exceptionally proud of. Similarly, our work with the homelessness team. I know a lot of us around the table have been out with our homelessness team. They're a service to be really, and they, like, they're just brilliant how they treat people with dignity and respect and really wrap around people to make sure that our homelessness is as reduced in the borough as possible. And also, I have to say that given the recent report on Grenfell, how proud I am, it's not a small thing that we are 100% compliant on all our building safety work. It's really something that Councillor Halland has been fastidious about, and we should be relieved, but we must never be complacent in that area. Okay, and similarly, on our environmental work, being able to get four years in a row with the Healthy Street Scorecard, which is a really competitive, really robust, qualitative process, it's something we also should be really proud of. Also, we continue to develop and deliver on our liveable neighbourhoods. I'm really proud of the progression that we've had in that, from when they started to where they are, really a much more engaging process with our residents that are delivering for the environment more collaboratively. Similarly, you know, I think that how our borough looks is important to all of us. So having a clean borough is also really good, so having such high satisfaction rates in that area is also important. Oh, sorry, Victoria, before we, I just, I thought that it's really important as we move to greener infrastructure that we have the infrastructure to do that. It's not fair for us to say to residents we want them to be greener and not be there alongside that. So I wanted just to highlight the statistic at the end about how many electric vehicle charging points we're putting in, and we will continue to do that. Thank you. Also, in our health area, you know, being able to have the health determinant research investment has enabled us to really understand the borough in a way that we've never been able to before, and that's leading to some really interesting work looking at, you know, health and housing and other areas. Similarly, on adult social care, I think we've got our inspection coming up and looking through our self-assessment, like we did the other day, Councillor Chaudry. We have a hell of a lot to be proud of, and we're on a journey, but we're really moving forward in a positive way in that area. And also, you know, for me, I know I talk a lot about early intervention, but it's the only way to support people. So our public health team doing real targeted work on access to treatment on drugs and alcohol cessation is really, really possible. So, on to the more difficult areas. Obviously, we are a brilliant council, but, you know, there are contextual issues that bring us challenges, and we all know that temporary accommodation is one of those we have unprecedented demand. It's going up, not down in that area. Same with adult social care and children's services. And whilst I said looked after children were going down, I think it's important to realise that the complexity of cases that we are seeing is going up and therefore causing greater pressures on those services. Also, it would be remiss of me not to talk about our finances. We know how deeply challenging those are. You know, we've made prudent decisions year on year for over a decade now that has mean that we're not in the position that some other councils find themselves of being close to putting in a one by one notice. However, that doesn't mean that we don't have significant gaps and that's outlined there. We are seeing some hopeful soundings from government. We've seen the extension of the household supports fund and some really positive noises coming about the right to buy receipts, which will give us greater flexibility and enable us to build more homes. However, I will never stop talking. I don't think about local government finances and loudly to the current government because it's what we need to be able to deliver for our residents. And amidst all of that, rightly our residents have real high expectations for us to get the basics right for them. You know, we wanna make sure that we're getting it right in terms of repairs. We wanna make sure that we're getting it right in terms of bin collections. That's the things that, you know, make everyday life easier for people. So we wanna do that. So quickly, I'll go through the missions and the challenges there. As I said, complexity of cases in our children's social counts, send areas and send transport is always an ongoing issue. We all know that across London, we have declining birth rates and a myriad of reasons why there are less children now in London and that's left us to make some really difficult decisions around schools because we want the best education for our children and creating a strategy around that is really important. We won't shy away from those difficult decisions because it was needed for those children to provide. But also, once those kids are in those schools, we need to make sure that we're supporting them pastorally, educationally, to make sure they stay there. And the school absence thing is something that I know Councillor Safi and Gongo is really, it's a complex picture, but it's something that I know they should be working with the scrutiny committee to really get a handle on and improve because we need to improve in that area. Community wealth building, obviously the challenges of building new homes, giving the financials in those and the inflation rates around construction is complicated. And also tackling poverty. This is something that as someone who has been a Councillor for over a decade in this borough and has grown up and lived here all my life is something that I continue to think about often. We have some of the greatest services, we have always prioritised the most vulnerable in our borough and still we continue to see high rates of child poverty and high rates of elder poverty. And we're gonna do some round tables in the next few months about the complexity of that and how do we look at that in a borough that cares so much about these people and get it right for them and make sure the resident voice is at the heart of that. Also, I know that one of the reasons I've lived here all my life is because it is a place that as a black woman I feel safe. However, I don't think at the start of the summer, I know that a lot of us around this table from minoritised communities did not feel safe with what was happening up and down the country. And we can never be complacent in that area. So, Councillor Chapman is working with us and partners to work out how we do more about community cohesion. We know that we're a borough that's had a terrorist attack, so we can never be complacent about it. And we don't wanna say, oh, nothing happened here, so it's okay. We want to have a community that really understands each other and feels safe around each other. We need to do further joining up. I was in Southport Council a couple of weeks ago, so I know that every council talks about siloisation, but we can never give up on it as a challenge. And especially as we wanna get early into, we wanna live up to the mantle of being an early intervention council. So, getting those systems right. And similarly, we know that homelessness is rising. We know some of the complexity and reason for that, but we know that we have good services in that area. So, how do we maximise that and go further? And also, whilst we're building a lot of new homes and we have a lot of developments in the pipeline, we also know that we have a lot of people on our waiting list. And I know that councils around the table join me in our surgeries where we hear time and time again of people in the wrong housing. So, we need a lot more money for housing. And it's great that the current government is talking about housing in a way that I have never heard before, but we need that to deliver for Islington, not just places that have green belts. Yeah, we know that we're a borough that is likely to be... Sorry, am I doing okay on time and timing? (audience member speaks off mic) Oh! (audience member speaks off mic) Okay. (audience member speaks off mic) Okay, I'm so sorry. Yes. Well, yes. So, we need to do more on climate adaptation. We need to boost our recycling rates. You'll see the campaign we've got at the moment on food waste, that's a key part of that. I wanna bring public health into everything we do, literally have it in our equality impact assessment. Is this decision-making our borough healthy? If not, why are we doing it? And also, adult social care, we know how detrimental that is, and we want the people of all ages to be able to thrive and have independent lives in our borough, and social care should be an enabler of that, not a disabler of that. Thank you.
Thank you. I think my question is around temporary accommodation. It's an obvious issue in Islington, but I think just most recently, it's become more obvious across all kind of services, including housing, children's, and the corporate parenting. I think yesterday, statistics came to corporate parenting board about children who are being moved more than 20 miles out of the borough, and also how that affects children who are persistently absent as well. Not only are looked after children. So I guess my question is, do we need to do a deeper dive working across, officers across the services, whether it's a working group task and finish, because it's not gonna get any better. We can see it's worsening, and I feel like we've got to explore more options to really get kind of a grip of the issue.
Yeah, I mean, what I will say is, we have just got a report in from an external auditor into our temporary accommodation, because it is one of our greatest risk areas. So we didn't wanna be marking our own homework in that area. We've got someone to come in and look at how we do TA, and can we be doing it differently and better. So I think that that's a good starting point, but I take your point as well about actually, even it's great to look at as a system, but who are we prioritizing in that, and children and young people, especially our children and young people as corporate parents need their voice really heard in that. So I think it's a really good note for me when we bring that paper to executive, that we really make sure that our children's voices are centric to that.
So yeah, just to build on that, I think it's also really important to contextualize where Islington is. So if I just share some figures with you. So at the moment, one in 50 Londoners are in temporary accommodation. There was a report in the news this morning that that is costing London 90 million pounds a month. What I would say is the work that Islington has done around temporary accommodation over the long term, around purchasing homes, securing funding from the GLA and the MHCLG, which is about a million pound, 100 million. We've also got 100 million from the public loan and works board has meant that you've been able to buy a significant number of homes. So whilst we might have the seventh highest presentation of TA, we actually have no residents in B&B, none in leased accommodation, and people are in TA for 64 weeks compared to the sub-regional average of five years. So whilst it is tough and it is creating a budget pressure of 1.6 million over the year for Islington, you also have to recognize what an absolute credit the work that you've already done and commissioned is for our residents. I take your point about how do we work across the system. The same report that the leader spoke about came to the corporate management team. I definitely think there's more space to do in that, but I do think we've got some of the lowest numbers of children in TA, but we're also incredibly mindful the disruption of TA and what the importance of a stable home is. So I'll take that away as well, leader, to talk to the management team about how we do that.
Just a short note, I think because I've just recently got some data from the housing team in terms of how many families with children were out of the borough, and that figure was, I think it's more than 1,000. So it's the children that are out of the borough probably leaving schools, moving schools, so I just wanted to include that in this as well.
Thank you for your presentation. My question is, I'm really, really concerned about the SEND. A lot of the residents I'm supporting at the moment are the children of four years old, and there's clearly something wrong, but there's no assessment, they're going into school, they have no special person to look after them. It's rising, and children are suffering, parents are suffering, hence mental health, poor mental health. So I know we don't have the money, but we have to find the money. How are we gonna, what is the procedure? What are we going to do?
I mean, Councillor Pendle, I completely share your concern in this area. We have, the EHCP system to me has been so detrimental to children with additional needs. You know, you've got a system that instead of, is about including every child in education, is about proving how badly you need support. And you know, to have waiting times to even get that assessment of over two years is unacceptable. You know, we're putting a lot of support into our schools, you know, to preempt these kind of things, and you know, working with great nurseries, like Newington Green Nurseries that have SEND specialism, working with organisations like Place to Be in primary schools to hold children. But it's a system that, as you say, it's got nowhere near the resource it needs. And I think we need to continue pushing our new government to really look at this area, and for us to be funded. But it's, at the moment, it's also in a really invidious situation of being kind of our responsibility, the school's responsibility, and the health system's responsibility. And we need to get that joined up a lot better as well.
I can't see. Okay, let's bring it over here. Okay, oh yeah, thanks. So, under successes empowering people, there's an item about the two access Islington hubs. I went to the launch of the first hubs, the one at Upper Street. And the third one is due to be open in September. I'd like to know how that's progressing. But also, in this note, it mentions that 9,356, 50 residents have been through the first two hubs. I think it would be good to know how successful these hubs are in people's satisfaction. Because the idea of them was that there would be like a one-stop shop and people would be dealt with. They wouldn't be passed from pillar to post, but there's nothing here that really elaborates on how successful they are. The number of people going through is quite large, but how happy are they with the service with this access Islington hub?
Thank you, Tricia. I mean, yes, we measured the number of visits, but we also measured the resolutions in cases brought through the hubs and the satisfaction rates to them. And I wanted to chair whether it might be worth bringing a separate, deeper dive into that as, you know, 'cause we have the data. I don't have all the data with us tonight, but so that I can show you the impact and those, maybe give you some case studies about how it has resolved things. But also, I will say, I don't think we should shy away from learning in this council. So it's been great that we've had the two current hubs in place. But as we move to our northern hub, what's brilliant about where our northern hub will be will be that it's placed in manor gardens. So we have a new opportunity to work with the voluntary sector in a way that we haven't in the previous hubs. We have also looked at the budget of that new hub. Councillor Chapman's done a brilliant job of working with offices to reduce that by a quarter of the previous budget. So we're making a lot of positive changes in that and also working with the libraries, the manor garden library. So there's a lot of positivity going into that. And I think it's really an illustration of, like, learning. So the south hub has a particular flavour because it's with the housing office there, and obviously 222 has a different flavour because it's with our council services. But I think the northern hub as well will be another opportunity working with voluntary sector to see how we can support residents to get it right the first time. Just building on that, internally within the council, Councillor, we've also got our resident experience programme. That's mentioned in the delivery plan because we want to make sure that when our residents contact us, they're satisfied. And our ambition is around 85% levels of satisfaction because I know, when I've been sharing this message with the organisation all week, that when people contact us, that gives a very strong indication about how satisfied they are as a council overall. And it's really important that wherever any resident makes contact with us, whether that's someone walking the street or in one of our Islington hubs, that they get the right support and we're signposting and we're supporting. So the resident experience is going to do a number of different things. It's going to improve our online offer. So those residents who are confident and capable of going online do, because then what it means is the space, this continued space in our access Islington hubs to deal with more vulnerable residents, whether they're going to need much closer support and discussion around what they need. And one of the other things the team do do is understand why people are coming in. And again, that can influence where we might change some of our offers that we're dealing with, enquiries more quickly where it's appropriate to do so.
Yeah, I'd like to take up, Councillor Colm Schwartz's offer for more information. That'd be great.
Certainly.
Councillor Wayne, if I may, so the team do regular performance reports. I'm confident we can do both of those things. We can give you an update so you understand the position now and we can give them a follow-up date this time next year.
Thank you, Chair. May I please also just refer back to perhaps the first question and the first responses to acknowledge on the work of the council officers and just to give our gratitude to that. My question, thank you so much for the presentation. It's so lovely to see the amazing things that have been achieved in Islington and of course the unfortunate challenges that we are presented with. However, going back to perhaps something that you've mentioned, Chair, that the portfolio of the leader, I was thinking what I've not seen and what I've not heard today is really what's that strategic approach of delivering the leader's portfolio and what is it that the leader does and their team does that leads to the delivery of these amazing things and how are you able to measure that you are having an impact on these things and it's not, for example, those in the community or something by chance is happening and a lot of what is mentioned here are actually pieces of work that are underneath other executive members. So it's hard to then identify what's their work versus the leader's work. So I guess my question is, can you give us detail about the strategic approach that the leader and their team take to deliver their portfolio that leads to what we're seeing in this delivery and showcase also what are their KPIs to be able to measure that they are delivering something?
Yeah, thank you. Yes, I mean, I suppose I see my role as under the portfolio of kind of overall management is making sure that I'm supporting all the executive members. We have monthly one-to-ones where we discuss all of the portfolio areas and we talk about kind of their vision and how they wanna take that forward and through leadership meetings that we have weekly, we talk as a team about how we think that will work and how we shape that and the priorities of that. And I think one of the things that we've done more recently is the delivery plan that's also outlined in this paper because I really want us to be a council that has pace and grip in delivery. We have huge ambitions and that's brilliant but they're not really worth anything if they're not being delivered and delivered with residents at their heart. So making sure that we have that action plan that's gone through the executive but also for a long time, I've been passionate that we know the impact that we're having. So reviewing the KPIs as a council and making sure that we have a performance dashboard that actually doesn't, as we were talking about, about the access hubs, doesn't just talk about how many things we do but actually are they making a difference to those residents and also showing prioritisation and leadership is an illustration of that.
Just to build on the point about performance and KPIs, so supporting the delivery plan will be a short performance report that will come to the executive that will hold myself and the corporate management team to account in terms of its delivery. It'll both be a sort of a narrative on the impact. So if we'd done what we said we would in the same way, wouldn't you, as the leader said, what's the impact against outcomes? And then of course, all of you, as chairs of scrutiny, have an opportunity to really deep dive into any aspects of the delivery plan and the work that's happening. I think it's a really important moment and the leader was very clear to me when I started. Victoria's on YouTube, she said, we want you to be able to show delivery through the organisation of the ambition that the administration and the executive have set out. I really think that delivery plan is the first important marker to do that because it shows the focus and the prioritisation on the top 33 things. It's not to take away from all of the other things that the organisation does that we think will deliver on the Islington Together 2030 vision and help to try and move and address some of the challenges that our residents experience.
Still, I think the answer doesn't capture all of the leader's portfolio, for example, comms.
Yeah, absolutely. I think we're actually, I'm bringing forward a comms strategy in the next couple of months. I think we've been on a real journey with our communications. It's been a little slower than I would have liked, but that may be because I'm generally an impatient person, but getting a corporate director who's kind of took in the whole comms team, restructured it. I feel like we used to do comms in a very traditional way. It was all about press releases and quotes to our local papers. That continues to be a section, but we've expanded a lot in terms of internal comms, in terms of digital comms, and also in terms of engagement. I think that that's really what we've heard from residents that they want doing the Let's Talk Islington piece of work we did. What came back really strongly through that is that residents want to be heard and residents want to be engaged on the stuff that we do. So having an engagement facility within the communications team has really helped. But also, I think, and I know that this is a foible of many councils, but we do brilliant work and we don't often talk about it. So we've now got a public affairs function as a council, which also, given that we are in the brilliant position of being a Labour council with a Labour mayor and the Labour government, we have such an opportunity now to change things for our residents. And having a public affairs team that can put together evidence from across the council to influence select committees, to give us, today I used a pact from the public affairs team to talk to one of our local MPs about what they can do for us for a change. All of my other briefings, I've been like, here's a briefing on what we're doing as a council. But now we have an opportunity to say, these are our priorities. In your conversation with ministers and things, how do you help us deliver for residents? So that's exciting.
Thank you, Chen. I would ask the first questions if I get a chance. If it goes around, then I'll, absolutely. My question is really around the current budget constraints that we have. As leader, the box still stops reaching. And I'm inclined to know how much of an input do you have with some conversation around our current budget constraint? Especially overspent. And I'm sure there's something that must be important. I might be jumping into some other agenda that we're dealing with. But I'm intrigued to understand your positioning in terms of how you engage in, either the exec members around this, or even the officers around this, especially under overspent. Are you demanding that there's something is done? Or are you just accepting it as something that is totally, firstly, I know about the national constraint, but I mean, overspent is internal in-house positioning. We've put ourselves there. So if you can just elaborate a little bit on that, that'd be great.
Thank you. Yes, and I think given how you framed the question, I think you know that we do look at our pressures in all our departments regularly. So I'm very clear with our executive team that they all have a role in their budget, that they should be in their monthly PLMs talking about their budget and not going forward as what, we were in a cycle of just looking at our budget previously as kind of what's your savings going to be next year and how's that gonna be. But now we ask executive members to look at the current budget and the pressures and what's being done to manage that. But we also, I think, bimonthly come together as a leadership team and Dave Hodgkinson, our Director of Finance, comes to those meetings and literally goes through with all of us the pressures, why the pressures are there. Are they, why the contextual pressures, as you mentioned, Councillor Jackson, or are they specific to Islington? Is there something corporately that we're not managing quite right that needs to be changed? And also not only understanding what the issue is, but what is being done to manage that. And then the next one will come back and executive challenge about, okay, but you mentioned that the problem last time was this, how has that moved on? And I've really seen that as part of the, I know we're talking a lot about TAs this evening, but part of the thing that we really challenged on was we all know we have a TA policy, we all know that it's a difficult area, but actually what are we doing in the other areas around that to reduce that? So we know some of the, you know, sadly reasons why people are forced into TA, domestic violence, you know, private rented sector. So what are we doing in our landlord licensing schemes about that? What are we doing in our board team about that to minimise it? So, and that's a long-winded way of saying yes, we hold the budget as a team on the executive. And I know that Councillor Ward does an amazing job at holding it, you know, in his portfolio, but I think it's incumbent on all of us and offices to manage day-to-day.
Just to add to that Councillor Cowan, as the chief executive for the management and day-to-day budget management of our organisation, I'll candidly say it's one of my objectives as the chief executive that the leader has set me to make sure that we have robust financial management. I know we'll come on to it, but at the moment our expected budget pressure at the end of this final course of things like TA, adult social care, we have mitigations for each. And I have a set of governance structures within the officer structure that again, holds corporate directors to account, their leadership teams to account.
I guess, I'm intrigued to find out how are you, are there anything that you feel like you would have liked to see us do, but where we are at the moment, we might not be able to achieve them.
Are you saying, sorry, Councillor Jackson, that, you know, if the money floodgates come forth, what would we do?
If it doesn't.
What would we not do?
Yeah, are there anything, a flagship, part of what piece of work that you would have liked us to do as a council that we are probably already doing, but looking at where we are at this point, we might not be able to do that because we might have to make big bold decisions.
Yeah, okay, sorry, Councillor Jackson, I'm with you now. Yes, and that really worries me. I have to say, I know we have a lot of work to do, but it really worries me, I have to say, I know we've got really difficult decisions coming forward with our budget, you know, I outlined a gap. There is, we have been stewards of our budgets for over a decade now, making difficult, difficult decisions, and I know we set a collective budget, so I know all of you around the table have been with us in that, but there are no little decisions anymore. There is no, you know, lessening of stationery anymore. We don't do that anymore, you know. We are now looking at big decisions, really hard decisions, and I think in that, we need to keep our residents that need us most prioritised and we need to think about actually our long-term ambition for our residents, and I think we need to do that in a way that's sensitive. So one of my major worries is that we do something that only stores up issues for us later on, but that's going to be difficult. We're gonna have real difficult choices ahead. And yeah, I know that a lot of other local authorities who are in a lot worse financial position than we are have already taken those decisions, but also I think there's also peer learning in that, like what did they, when kind of forced at the edge of the cliff, what did they do and how, and can we learn from that when we're nowhere near that to do things differently and better, but yes.
Thank you, Chair. I love what I've heard about in terms of urgency and pace and getting on with the work, and that's why it really frustrates me that our recycling rate in Islington has plateaued for the last decade around 30% at best. I believe there have been numerous communication strategies, some investment in capital in terms of business as well, but is it time now for a big decision, like fortnightly household recycling?
Thank you. Yes, I mean, what I will say about our recycling rate is contextually more complicated in Islington than it is other places. We don't like someone I know who's a Councillor in Merton who was like, oh yeah, we have great recycling rates 'cause they all have gardens. And you can, you know, there's rates and how you measure those and there are things in that. So we have to understand that we're never gonna reach those kind of rates because we don't have places with huge garden, we're a very constrained borough. But I think it's also really important. Yes, we have had a lot of communications previously. And I know Matthew Bunce from the team is really brilliant and really passionate about the work, but I don't think we've held it corporately in the same way as we're holding it now. So you'll see from the food waste communications that we're doing at the moment, it's not, we've done a lot. You'll see at the next Islington Life that writ large, but also what we're doing in a way that we haven't done previously and Councillor Clark has been a real advocate of this, is actually we're gonna have for the first time people going door to door and talking to people about food waste recycling. We've got some funding to do that. I think previously, you know, Councillor North told me that on his estate some bins were put on his estate, but no information about what they were and what they were. So we're taking a real proactive approach at the moment to get those rates up, because we know how important it is.
Chair, just to say, I think Councillor Colm Schwartz means Matthew Homer, not Matthew Bunch.
Thank you.
That's really encouraging to hear, but also I don't think that the council or the executive holding the recycling can actually increase those rates. I think it's important to go to the people as part of the portfolio through consultations, potentially seeing what the appetite in this little community is to move to something that will save council money and also increase recycling rates, as we have seen across London with almost any other borough in London doing so.
Yeah, thank you. And I have to say that I don't think we change any system in a borough slightly. And I know that people's bin collection is the one thing in the whole borough that every resident receives. So we need to do that with real investigation. And I have to say, we do look at it really regularly. You know, we're looking at it currently again. And I think, you know, there are a lot of other boroughs that do it, but the results have been really inconsistent from those about how, if they have actually increased the recycling rates, if they have actually reduced the money. And I don't wanna take a ginormous decision, a huge step change in the borough without being reassured that it is going to see the results that we want it to see.
And just to add to that also, when the leader referred to public affairs, some of the work that we've also been doing is trying to push the previous government now, the new government to be really clear about what their national approach to waste and resources strategy is. I know members on the Environment Committee probably know this, but there's been delays to extended producer responsibility, delays to deposit return schemes. These are really important things that we need to come into play to really help, I guess, the whole national waste and resources system be better than what it is now. And I also think it needs to have a much stronger focus on reducing carbon emissions because actually our attention around waste would be on things like textiles and food waste. So it's right at the moment that we're running our gold campaign around food waste 'cause it's a good opportunity also into sort of the festive period about why that produces more opportunities for recycling as well. So we're trying to come at it from a number of different avenues as well.
Thank you, thanks very much for this. I just wanted to build on some things that have been said around communication and delivery. So it was really good to hear that you're working on that communication strategy. We know that you can't deliver appropriately or properly without effective awareness and without effective comms. So I'm glad to see there's a point in here about the IMAX team securing the additional income. A lot of my ward surgeries is taken up with people coming to us about benefits or access to that. They just don't know about the IMAX team. And we love them, we know what they do, and I know we've tried to get this message out. But the question is how do we keep improving around those costs? And similarly within that as well, and please take this in the spirit that this question is 'cause I do generally like some of the work we've done around refurbishment, but things around our hubs, and again, thank you for saying you bring this back, but places like where there has been a big refurbishment, how do we then justify to residents that come to ask us about those costs, particularly when we're having to make really difficult budget choices and having problems with overspends as well? So how would you address those two issues?
Okay, so on the, sorry, the issue of communication for blank bags. Yeah, IMAX, yes, you're absolutely right. It's a great team, and we have been trying a myriad of ways to communicate what they do. You know, we've had cost of living leaflets. We've had huge campaigns. You know, you will have seen the posters we had all up and down upper street to kind of maximise the knowledge of income maximisation. But we can always do more. And I think what I would say, if you allow me, Councillor Staff, is to say as key advocates for residents in the borough, what do you think we should be doing differently in this space? Because it is something that, you know, I'm so deeply passionate about. People getting the money that they're entitled to. It's not like we're giving them a handout. This is money that they're entitled to. So any reflection from any council is about, you know, where you think we're missing. Are we missing certain communities? You know, what could we be doing differently? Like, I know Councillor Hyde said something the other day about, you know, a simple leaflet with a QR code might be, you know, the answer to something around community safety. So please do feed in if you think there's more ways that we could be reaching people with like brilliant services like that. And then the second question was, sorry, TTT. What I will say is, and as I said previously, Councillor Chapman is doing a really good job on the new hub to make sure that that's, you know, the spend on that is already reduced by 25%. But what I will say is two things, that those hubs were budgeted for, they didn't go over. But also I think it's about dignity and respect. And why should you have a really difficult conversation about what's going on in your life in a place that feels like it's, you know. I think previously we had little cubby rooms and having a horrible conversation in a horrible atmosphere does not make you feel any more dignified. You've already had to come to someone to ask for help and that's a big step for a lot of people. So I think, you know, and we have staff in there doing amazing work, but having really hard conversation and holding people, why should they feel like their job is devalued and have that in a really kind of grotty space? We shouldn't. You should come in, you should feel relaxed, you should be able to have someone on your side in a nice environment say, oh, we're glad you're here, we wanna help you as much as we can. And so I don't, I get that sometimes, but you know, PWC would never, ever have a shoddy office, right, and we don't have that kind of money, but if we can give people a bit of dignity and respect, why not?
Thank you, sorry, for going sort of last in the question because much has been said around delivery now, you know, as a backbench council, I'm not going to make this mild-made specific, but you know, I was proud to sort of stand on a manifesto in 2020 to continue to be proud about all that we deliver, you know, but for me, my question is around capital delivery and how, so for example, we as councillors and backbench councillors can reassure our residents that we are going to deliver on our commitments because in the sort of three years I've been elected, but two years in this sort of term, I've been a bit concerned about, you know, the pace at which we deliver large projects, but also small projects. Now, I note the delivery plan, which was presented at executive in July, and you know, I've had conversations previously, but I would like to know what I can do to reassure residents that we will move at pace to deliver large and small capital projects. I note that there is a process which is, you know, initiate, design, refine, deliver, but I want to know how long is going to be spent on the delivery phase of that because you know, we have the projects that we need to deliver, so we don't need to initiate, we just need to deliver, and I would like to know what the council are going to do within the next two years to deliver. Thank you.
Yeah, it's a really good point, and it sort of comes back to one of the first conversations that the leader had with me, and it might have been on my first day, delivery is so important, and so the delivery plan is one part of it. What I do know around capital delivery as an organisation does well broadly, but actually when I've been out with board councillors, you've expressed sort of individual frustration, so one of the areas of improvement that we've started to implement is around how we programme and project manage capital delivery. Are we being really clear when we're setting out a clear milestone so that can be clear to me as the chief executive, that can be clear to you as members, as board councillors about delivering. The other part of that is for me to hold my senior management team and for them to hold other offices to account for that delivery because there'll always be exceptions where things will get delayed if there's challenges in planning or whatever, but actually what we need to get into is a much stronger rhythm, so I would say it's still a work in progress, Councillor Weeks, but one of my top priorities that we get much more swift. The other thing that we're doing that will help, I think, is actually some of our constitutional changes around the work with the constitutional working group, we're taking decisions at the right level, and I've also been talking to officers about the importance, all week, 'cause I've been talking to them all week about the delivery plan, about the importance of delivering on time and getting things like the basics done right. A part of that is also keeping you up to date as board councillors. It doesn't take a lot to drop you a line and just say, just to let you know this is still on track, just say, yeah, this has gone a little bit off, I'm gonna phone you and work it through, so I think there's a cultural piece as well as some work around system and process.
Well, and when we got elected successfully in 2020, to Ukraine was, unfortunately, still a new event. Inflation was going up, and after residents needed increase, I'm almost at, yeah, and then sort of levels of cost of living support. Unfortunately, these things are now business as usual. I think you have a safer inflation which may come down, but how is the council looking at, say, Ukraine now and cost of living support going up and factoring that into the plans, because that's what people can look at, yeah. So those three events were what affected projects two years ago, but it still can't in two years' time.
Sorry, Councillor Weeks, can I just clarify, are you asking about individual residence budgets supporting them for that, or do you mean the council's budgets on things like housing and?
For me, those events that I just listed were the reasons given for slowing down projects. Now, those events should now be treated as business as usual, and then after my question is, are those business as usual events now being affected into our project delivery? Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor Weeks. I'll start, but if Victoria has more operational details, then that would be really helpful.
I think overall, yes, and we have adapted to that. So I think one of the things we've done, for example, on energy is we previously had a system where we were on our own in terms of buying energy. And when Ukraine happened, we really looked at that and about the best way of adding, like getting actually better value in that. And we've now part of a regional consortium to buy energy as a grouping. So it's making structural long-term changes that do that. But also on our housing, I think we've learned a lot because of this spike in actually who are we commissioning? How are we commissioning? And actually Caroline Wilson's here. He's running a huge piece of work for us to make us in line with the new procurement legislation, which is something that's huge and arduous and challenging. But actually, I think there's a lot of opportunity for us in that to get more, more social value, better and long-term contracts so that we're not, this is an example, not a reality, but we're not commissioning every playground equipment individually, but we have one framework to do that annually and getting a longer term view in commissioning that enables us to manage some of those fluctuations and get better benefit out of it.
Yeah, so just some, I'll just add to that. So there's a number of ways in which we try to understand those different risks. So the executive in March considered the viability of the new build programme as a whole, as a result of some of those inflationary costs that we'd seen. Also, some of them are driven by building safety, the need for two staircases. I get updated regularly on the percentage increase in cost of cement. But we also have things like our principal risk register, which sets out some of our principal risks that we consider. We have a monthly discussion as the corporate management team about risk. Where's that playing into our organisation? It gives us information that we feed through to the executive about where we might want to apply contingency for our whole organisation. But every project that we will run will have a contingency and they will think about where those individual risks for projects may apply. I appreciate it's incredibly challenging at the moment 'cause very global things feel very local very quickly. And it can change the dynamic of local government very quickly. Thank you for that question.
Thanks. Thanks for asking about SCN children. I could also ask about adult social care or drug and alcohol services. I'm gonna ask about violence against women and girls 'cause that's not covered in this report. And we all know about the COVID pandemic, but one of the other pandemics we face as a society is the ongoing escalating rates in different ways as things move online in every part of society that we as a council respond to violence against women and girls, that it isn't just a police matter. It's very much on our radar too. So I just wanted to ask about where we're up to with that, early intervention with that or future plans for that.
Yeah, and it is a area of work that we have worked, I think, diligently for a long time. And I think one of the best things that we do as a council is recognize where we can support victims and where our voluntary sector can support victims. So the Violence Against Women and Girls Board is co-chaired with the voluntary sector and Councillor Wolf. And we really look at the services that we commission, but also the outcomes of that commission service. We have gone from, I remember when I was on that board, arguing with health about whether we could afford it was or not to having a well-networked team of it was in the voluntary sector, in statutory services, in hospitals, in lots of touch points. So that, you know, when those moments arise and we know that, you know, it can be, I think it's the average six times that someone can come in contact with services and not disclose. So we need as many opportunities for victims to be able to be heard. So I'm really proud of the work that we're doing in that. We have daily merits on domestic violence, which is reviewing our most complex and high risk cases around domestic violence. What I've challenged Councillor Wolf to think about is, 'cause it is going up, is what are we seeing in that? Like we do children's services, are we seeing repeats? You know, we're saying it's complex and high risk. So, you know, what are we doing in the early intervention space perhaps to get that right first time? So it's something that I'm deeply passionate about. It's something that I really challenge Councillor Wolf to continue. I think that we know that we have a good service in place. We know that we work with amazing partners in place, but we know that it is a societal issue that is increasing and we need to be on the front foot and really challenging ourselves in delivering in that area.
Just to add to that, just to build it back into the earlier conversation around temporary accommodation. So we have seen over a hundred percent increase in people who are suffering from domestic violence going into TA, around that domestic abuse alliance accreditation through housing. I have to just build on what the leader said. The daily MARAC meetings, I've sat in on one of those. I've never seen that organisation. It's a fantastic service that we provide.
Sorry, Che, can I add one more thing? And I'll be very quick about it. Also, I think we all recognise around this table that domestic violence is not a women's issue, primarily. I mean, I know that there's caveats in that, but we also commission and fund a lot of work with perpetrators. And I think that that's really something. You know, when I first started doing this work, that was seen as quite difficult, but I've had people from now, previous female-led organisations say they're so grateful that we have done it and they really get why we do it now, because we have to turn off the tap and any opportunity we can to work with men to change their behaviours, we must take up. So I'm really proud that we commissioned that work as well.
Thank you, Che. Thank you, Kaia and Victoria, to hear. Just a question. The question is that Councillor Jackson already mentioned the budget here. And within the budget, adult social care is one of the biggest killer of the budget. And this year, within this adult social care, we are scrutinising older people home, because this is a wonder, and there is so many elements there. But the main focus is on the older people, their population is increasing. You can't cut the service, because if you cut, like if you reduce the social worker, that means our vulnerable people face difficulty in everything, you can't do it. This is a political choice, I think, rather than more, and I think our director and everything is doing a fantastic job to do something. But as a leader, you know this is an issue of our present level government here. If they are not saying anything to give extra money or anything yet, what are you doing your leader level to let our government know that we needed money for adult social care to otherwise our council, not only our council, other council will bust very soon. And this is a political issue and political issue, this is one of my question. And one more question with that one is, I understood that because our 95% case work is housing, and since 2006 to still now, we can't limit this one. I feel this government will give us a target to build house, but Islington hasn't got place to build house. What is your plan, if we are given the target to build more house, where are you gonna build, what is your plan? Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor Choudry. First of all, on adult social care, I'm really proud that I'm the Labour lead on the Local Government Association of Health and Adult Social Care. So I very, very regularly talk to the government about adult social care and the complexity of the current system and how broken it is currently, whether that be employment rights for carers, whether that be dignity and respect for people receiving care, and also having the funding to deliver on all of those priorities and get health and social care correct for people receiving it. It's one that has to be one of our greatest priorities, and as you said, it is a huge part of the reason that local government is at risk of falling over, so we have to get it right. And I know that the new government is looking at whether to get a royal commission in this space, whether they're talking about a 10-year plan to create a national care service like the National NHS, but we've been very clear with them through the LGA that we think that the home for that is local government, not the NHS. So I'm very strident in this area because we have to get it right because it's, yes, it's a huge financial risk, but it's also people's lives. And we talk about adult social care, and that's from a young person of working age with learning difficulties, rights is someone who's going into palliative care at the end of their life. So we must, you know, it's a huge section of our society that we have to support. We're all going to be touched by adult social care in our lives. So it's something I'm really passionate about, keep on pushing to get correct. And then on housing, yes, yeah. Well, what I will say is we've always, and with Councillor Ward in the room, you know, we've always been really passionate about new building and building new homes. And we know that the government is now very passionate about that too. But we also know in Islington that the solution in housing cannot be held in new build alone. We know, especially as one of the biggest landlords of social housing, that it has to be about money for our current stock. You know, we need to bring back decent home standards, funding, it has to be about the wider system of private rented sector regulation and rent regulation and landlord responsibilities, TA that we've talked about a lot this evening, homelessness, supported accommodation, the whole system. And Victoria was pointing at this, which is a brilliant report that we've worked on with South ex, taking the lead on this, on securing the future of council housing. But it's really, it's really brilliant because it talks about all of those issues that I've just mentioned. It doesn't just talk about new build. And it talks about the complexity of building in London, that we are really constrained. So there's more building we can do. And we know we're very innovative, but also what I would say is, and I know I've talked about money a lot this evening, but if we got more money for housing, we have schemes ready to go, oven ready. I should, oh God, that's an awful thing to say. (muffled speaking) Yeah, I know, I know. But you know, literally leadership has gone through a number of schemes that are really ready to go. And I know that a lot of us have talked about those in our wards already. So, you know, we are ready for when the government are ready to give us money.
So I'm gonna take final question from me. Sorry, Bash, but we, I think, need to move on. We received at the last committee as part of the performance update, some very worrying statistics about both the volume of complaints in 23/24 and the number of complaints that were being upheld. What do you think is driving these numbers? And what are you as a leader going to be doing to ensure that both the volume and numbers of complaints fall in the forthcoming years?
Yeah, thank you, Councillor Wayne. Yes, it's something that me and Victoria talked about repeatedly in our one to ones. It's something that, you know, we've both done personal kind of deep dives into the nature of those complaints. And I know Councillor Ward has talked to you a lot about the resident experience work that he's doing. And that's the reason that that work is such a priority for us. About getting those systems in place. Having, you know, being invested in getting those systems in place that mean that whatever the issue is, that we're getting it right first time. And having, like, also talking to the call centre staff. They, of course, want to do a great job on our behalf. But, you know, do they have the tech to do that? Do they have the connections with the service? Like last time we had a meeting with the unions, they were saying, actually, things like turn of offices internally is a challenge for them. So actually, how are we equipping them with that information? So it's something that, and I'm sure Victoria will add, it's something that we are definitely not complaining about. We really want to reduce that down. As Victoria said earlier, you know, we should be able to, the way that our residents interact with us is really a test of our service and how we're delivering for them.
Yeah, I would also say on complaints, I think some of the volume is related to the volume of in-house services here in Islington, but also the size of your housing stock. So if you've got 36,000 people in homes, there are always going to be issues. I think it's recognising as well that the organisation does about 120,000 repairs a year. So we're not always going to get everything right. I think the key thing is, how do we learn from it? How do we apologise and how do we reduce the likelihood of that happening again? And we've seen a lot of learning in the organisation from when we had the special report from the LGI around housing. We've very much been able to deliver on all of the actions so that we are now, if I could put it this way, of no particular interest to the housing ombudsman at this moment in time, because they are pleased with the progress. I think there's always things that we can do about where we learn from complaints, particularly when things are escalating from a stage one complaint to a stage two. So what's driving that? Because it's okay, I think, for people to give us feedback where we need to be better, we need to listen to that. But what is it between stage one and stage two where we're not getting that right and we're not getting that right first time? And that's where we've been spending a lot of time. And if I give you an example, we've got a complaints board that meets very regularly to look at that, but we've also seen housing where they get some of the highest volume of our complaints where they're looking at that escalation and they do that deep dive audit on a really regular basis to try and stay alive to the issues and then also how we can fix it. But I have to say, some of the reasons we will get complaints are some of the reasons that the leaders outlined about why we want to lobby government for a different way of funding and securing housing, because some of the challenges we will face over the long term in terms of our investment into our homes cannot be solved unless there are some changes nationally to either the local housing allowance, to right to buy, that gives us more flexibility and investment that we can put back into tenants' homes.
Some residents would say that before we build new homes, we put our own existing homes in order. As leader, do you think at the moment we've got the balance right between maintaining our current housing stock and building new homes?
Balance, right, okay. I mean, what I would say is I do think we invest a lot in our current stock. We do, you know, as I've mentioned before, we're compliant in all of our risk areas. We've done a hell of a lot investing in areas that we know are key concerns, like damp and mould, really revolutionise how we're approaching that. What I don't think we do enough is talk about how much we invest in our current stock. Once again, we do regular capital works, cyclical works, and we do that and we do it well and never mention it to anyone, and that is our investing in our stock. We have some really, you know, some of the first social housing ever in the country, so they're really old stock, they're difficult, and we know all of us will have an estate in our thing with a particular peculiarity that we know is intrinsic to how difficult that stock is, so it's going to be an ongoing challenge. If we had more money, I'd definitely do more in that area, but we know also that investing in new homes is really important because of things like the environmental impact of those new homes is just of a completely different standard. You know, we know that actually the configuration of homes is completely different to, you know, when that Victorian stock was built, so it is a balance, and we know that also, like, you know, the number of rooms, it is a balance, and I know also that another thing I do, if, you know, the money came forward, is do a hell of a lot of retrofitting because we know that we could, we did that study with UCL, we know how we could do it, but we need the money to be able to do that, and it's something I also regularly lobby on.
Yeah, and if I just add a few more things to that, so, you know, this year, the Organised Aid, we've spent 50 million in capital into homes, so at the moment, about 97% of our homes are considered decent, I think that's why, in the delivery plan, one of the things that we've put in there is about tenant satisfaction, because you're right, Councilwoman, hearing the voices of our tenants and how they feel about the place that they live is important, and we're wanting, and our expectation is that they are all upper quartile. So, again, you'll be able to hold me to account, and the leader to account this time next year on that matter.
Thank you, I'm extremely grateful to the leader and the chief exec, because we've extended this session, albeit that that was as a result of the discussion that we had at the pre-meeting, that we really wanted to prioritise this tonight, because it's really our annual opportunity to quiz the leader, so extremely grateful to the leader and the chief executive for coming, and I think we'll see you again in a few months' time to discuss the progress with the five corporate missions that we have. We're going to move on now to the next topic, because we spent-- - Yes, but very sorry to interrupt, and I appreciate you wanted to end it. I did see that Councillor Jackson--
Sorry, Chair, I thought this was just for a prop. We currently do not have a director for the environment sector, so just before you go, can you just clarify, that's been for a long time now, and that department is also overspending, so, Chair, I just thought it's, sorry, what's going on?
Very, very quickly, Chair, I promise you. Both the corporate director for environment and the corporate director for housing is now being advertised. Please help us. It's on LinkedIn. Please share widely.
So we will now move on to the scrutiny review and the presentation. Just, Caroline, we need to give you a steer, and to give those that will be coming on the budget monitoring. What we decided was, because we have quite regular budget monitoring, that if something had to be squeezed a little bit in terms of time, it would be the budget monitoring and the MTFS. So, Caroline, probably in terms of timing, about 40 minutes in total for this session, and if, in terms of the presentations, we can keep them to, I think, five minutes each, that will be great. We've all read the documentation. It'd be great to prioritise the questions. Hopefully that's a helpful steer.
Thank you very much, Chair. And your feedback at the start of the meeting was very helpful, and I thought it might be useful just to kind of go back a little bit on what the Progressive Procurement Strategy is. We've given you an update on where we've got to, but I thought maybe just a little bit of context on what that is. The Progressive Procurement Strategy was written in 2020. It was an opportunity to really look at how we pull the lever of our buying and purchasing power within the council. It was written within the context of COVID, and so it very much has that recovery language throughout it. And we really focused on embedding social value into the organisation. It was a journey that the organisation had been on, and the Progressive Procurement Strategy was really an opportunity to capture it at that point. The focus in social value was really around jobs, apprenticeships, work experience. We looked at things like London Living Wage and career progression in terms of those contracts that were being outsourced. We also looked at kind of what our definition of insourcing was and kind of the focus on that. We also looked at, within the Progressive Procurement Strategy, around leadership in things like climate emergency and looking at supply chains and how we look at employee-owned supply chains within our supply chains. So there are three themes within the Progressive Procurement Strategy. One is around active leadership, and really the actions under that are in relation to the role of counsellors and to executive members in terms of the leadership that we show around the progressive use of our purchasing power and senior managers, but also then how we collaborate with people like there are anchor institutions across the borough. And the second area was around progressive supply partnerships, and that was really looking at kind of the business of procurement and really looking at contract management, but also how we can incentivise innovation within our purchasing and commissioning practices. And the final chapter or the final action theme was around community benefits and really looking at how, as an organisation, we could be pioneers in that and really looking at how we bring more SME, small and medium businesses into our supply chain, as well as the voluntary community sector. So within the presentation, there was a bit of an update in terms of some of the actions that we've done. So active leadership, you'll be aware that we have established the anchors network, but some of the work that we remain to do over the next period, the next three years, is around co-design and really looking at how we embed that resident's voice within our commissioning practice. Under the supply partnerships, we looked at, we have published in sourcing guidance for officers, so it's very clear when they come to commissioning a contract that that's one of the first conversations they have is around, is there an opportunity to deliver this directly ourselves? One of the pieces, and Councillor Comer Sports mentioned it around the Procurement Act, is around contract management and how we get better at that and really look at how we squeeze contracts for commerciality within the organisation. And then the final piece was around social value and making sure that we had 20% embedded throughout the processes and I think many of the commissions or many of the procurement bids coming to our board didn't have social value at the very start, but very much now do and we really challenge them and make sure that we can get as much social value as possible. The next part of our journey is really looking at how we mainstream that and capture that additional value within the organisation. So the Procurement Act, we just had an announcement today, it was due to be launched on the 28th of October. It's now being launched at the end of February, so it gives us a couple of extra months to do the implementation of that. But I think that's a really good opportunity for the organisation to kind of refresh its approach to contract management, to social value and to really embedding some of the principles that we set out in the original progressive procurement strategy, but take them to the next level and see what we can do next. I'm not sure, Councillor Bell Balfour, is there anything you would add?
Just got it at the time, so I think I'll leave it.
Start by asking this as far as the new act is concerned. As Morrissey might say, what difference does it make? What, as a result of this act, are we able to do as a council in terms of maximising social value that we weren't able to do previously? And does the act make it harder in any way for us to maximise social value? And in answering the question, I think the focus has got to be not so much on the operational, but on the principle of what can we do? What can we get out of a contract that we couldn't get out of a contractor before?
So I think the first thing to keep in mind is that the act, that the primary reason for the act is not to kind of help us get social value, but really it's because I think it comes from kind of a Tory belief that, like, local government's always wasting money. So it's what really undergirds is about transparency and ability. And I think there's big changes in there about how much we have to report. We have to report all the time at all stages, the levels of transparency, the ability for private companies to kind of take us to court where they think they've been, for address, where they think there's been an issue or they haven't been tended to the same way, which we didn't have before. So I think there's kind of big acts like that, and that's kind of the main drive of it. And then obviously within that, there is kind of more, again, another Tory push, although it's something we believe in, but I think it doesn't go as far enough around kind of involving small to medium enterprises. So I think if you look at opportunities from a new act, I think the main things are they want to see the actors to reduce the barriers for small to medium enterprises kind of enter the supply chain. Ways of doing that are everything from making it, how we advertise those, the contracts, our ability to break down big contracts into smaller contracts. So if you have a 200 million pound care contract, only the largest providers can bid for it. Now we've got the tools and the ability and also the kind of impetus to break those down into smaller contracts like care co-ops or kind of care companies that service a specific kind of group within your community can now kind of bid for those, we've got the tools to do that. The ability for us, that there's like a central digital register now where you can kind of put all those contracts in one place and for providers to put themselves on, which makes it easier for us to find them and then for them to find our contracts. And I think there's a lot more kind of market warming and lead in time to contracts coming online. I think that's an issue I've always had in the council is that we're not always clear when big contracts are coming up and if that's true for us and we're in the council, what does that mean for businesses? So now we've got to publish kind of a year, I think it's a year in advance when contracts are coming up. So that gives a year for businesses to kind of say, okay, here's what I've got to do internally to get myself ready to be in a place where I can legally bid for these contracts. So I think those are the big things. It's less about social value and more about opening the door for smaller and medium sized businesses to kind of get through the door and kind of bid for those contracts. I'm missing anything, Carol.
No, I think that's...
Similar to Councilor Nick's question, just in terms of visualizing what this might look like once the council has plans to implement it. Are there kind of clear examples of what the council wants to see from certain contracts in terms of specifically social value? So is there kind of the council knows exactly what areas they want to see more social value, how that looks, is it very tailored across the service or are we kind of relying on those who bid to kind of tell us what the social value is? 'Cause I think obviously it needs to be the other way round. This is our community, we know it. And secondly, have we prepared the ground for attractive bids? 'Cause I know previously, I think it's probably the same providers bidding and this goes for the smaller contracts as much as the much bigger ones. And what are we doing to prepare the ground to attract attractive bids so we can maximize the social value? Let's start with first, you take the attractive bids. So I think the thing about what we get from social value, so there's like the bread and butter, which we always get, which is like employment or like literally pots of money to run programs, which is fine, I think always beneficial. I think in terms of what we actually want to see, I think the same priorities we have as a council, it's about kind of improving workers' rights, which you kind of see through, like asking for like the living wage, which that's standard as contracts now, but it used to be social value. Just things like with the care contract where we had sick pay being added as a social value, now we have 70% of our providers providing it without us having to kind of fund it through our contract. There's things like workers' rights. But I think for me, a big thing is about, coming back to your point, Councillor Osmary, about who's kind of leading who. I think what we don't have is the ability for flexibility in contracts. So I think a good example is that we recently had a parking contract go out for tender and they came back to us and said, As social value, we'd love to give you free parking and you're in Islington. Like it's just kind of like a gift as part of social value in certain spaces. We then wanted to give that to a VCS organisation. The amount of effort it took to take something that's kind of outside the usual bounds of what we see as social value to make it then happen was, well, Caroline did it, so it's actually the amount of effort she did. But I think we're not set up to kind of be flexible when organisations come to us with things outside of just like money or employment. And I think when you're getting to that point where we were getting large contracts, often there are kind of like greater opportunities if you think about the contract we have with Film Fixer, which they manage all the kind of filming contracts we have. We could get money and jobs from them, but they also came to us and said, Actually, we'd love to have like an intro to filmmaking course as well. And that's kind of outside the scope we usually did. We ran that, I think one of Finn's children went on the course, they said they loved it. But I think it's that. So I think one of the things is, I think we're very good at kind of getting the bread and butter. What we're not very good at is when, is kind of work out contracts by contract, where it's like a specific area and they have like unique benefits they can provide. Us being in a place where we can say, yes, we can take the unique benefit and immediately do it and do it with kind of working outside of the usual panels that my portfolio covers.
So yes, so in terms of something additional that comes through the act, which I think answers some of your question is around pre-market engagement. So as officers and commissioners, we understand market engagement, that you've written what your specification is and you go to the market and you say, here's what we wanna do. One of the opportunities within the act is to do pre-market engagement. And there's an expectation to do pre-market engagement. And in that conversation with potential suppliers, there is the opportunity for greater innovation. And I think then that also allows us to have a much greater input in terms of what our residents are looking for and what the specific needs of Islington. So it's not a kind of cut and paste from any other borough. It's very much saying what we have. And in terms of, so I think that innovation piece is a really important part of kind of generating attractive bids that they feel that they've, as a supplier, they've really understood the needs of a local area. And then they've come with a bid that meets those needs, but also kind of allows them an opportunity for innovation. And within the council, we have a social value operations group, and it's a bit of a dragon's den at the moment for officers who are commissioning, that we bring them to people who cover employment and cover supply chains, and look at kind of what are the social value pieces that they could include in that, include in their commissioning documents at the moment. I think there's an opportunity in that to go further with that and to kind of give, as you're suggesting, here's the demographic requirements, here are some of the deprivation requirements of Islington, and really start that dialogue in the context of the new Procurement Act, so that there are innovative ways to do co-design, not only with officers of the council, but then ultimately with residents. So I think people like adult social care do it really, really well, 'cause it's very much linked to their care strategy, and I think we should do more of that as the Procurement Act allows.
That's really helpful, thank you for that. And I guess that will kind of lead into who will then monitor how social value is then implemented, 'cause that's a massive job with a lot of contracts, and then where would that kind of data be reported to? Yeah.
So one of the improvements that we're doing is a contracts register, so the council commissioned a digital contacts register. So historically, contracts have been managed locally within departments, and it's been a lot of contract managers scattered across the organization. The contracts register allows us a mechanism to collect that data at a central level, and within that, we're including a social value element of it. And that allows us, in time then, to say collectively across the organization, we've spent 650 million, we've generated 30 million kind of in a financial proxy of social value. So the contracts register will be really important in that. And in terms of the quality assurance piece, that will come into the Inclusive Economy Team, we're looking at social value assurance kind of roles within the team, who will sit within progressive procurement. So I think you're absolutely right, is it's well and good for an organization to say we're gonna deliver this social value, but then the council absolutely has to make sure it's delivered onto the quality that we want it delivered.
I'm going to come to Councilor Kondoka, Councilor Riverhaven, then Councillor Jackson, Councillor Clarke, then Councillor Jones. I'm strong in that order. I just wanted to pick up on something that Councillor Bell-Bradford said about some of the barriers to thinking outside the box a little bit about what we get from contractors. Are there any of those barriers that corporately, as a council, we can help with? Or is it just that this is all so new that you're learning about the options that you have for the first time? But are there any corporate barriers that are preventing you from really maximizing some of the opportunities that are provided to you?
So I think the biggest barriers, I think different departments across the council, some have no instruction on social value outside of the contracts as they come up, and some kind of completely understand it from the get-go. So I think construction and planning, the concept of providing you things for free or as an additional benefit is very clear. So I think the concept of yes, we also get free training and construction skills and things, part of a contract is kind of understood and they get it, and it's very easy to manage. For me, a good example where it's almost no knowledge, and I think not much of a good example of social value being harnessed is if you look at our IT sector, where we have one big provider, Microsoft, global company of which Giffington is probably a very small fish to them. They come back with the same contract every year, and I remember us going to the digital team and saying, Okay, we need to get social value from Microsoft. And they're like, Oh, we don't really know what social value could look like from Microsoft. And I suppose they didn't really ask before. I think we got to the point where we got free content. We got laptops and other things, but it was challenging. I think that's the thing. It's kind of getting each department to understand what is possible. And I think some departments interact with procurement all the time. Some departments interact with procurement like once every two years, in which case you kind of got to refresh them every time. So I think it's kind of getting to the point where every department understands what is possible and what they can ask for. And when we go to commission and procurement boards, myself, Councillor Ward, Caroline and Stephen are bored of saying over and over again, But we can get more social value. I think lots of people come with this instinct like, Oh, they're going to give us two jobs. We've done, that's great. And for, you know, it's just nowhere near good enough. Especially from there to be 20% of the weighting of a contract. So I think that's it. I think department by department, we've got like a real distinction about who understands social value and what's possible to be achieved. And unless we're there in the room, sometimes to kind of like nudge poke, things can slip through the gap.
Thank you, Chair. Following on with the hot topic of social value, and it perhaps is still following on from what's already been said. From what I'm hearing today and what I've seen in a lot of previous procurements, big and small, the social value that we get is often very, very connected to whatever is the actual procured item service. And again, with that thought, sometimes there's that lack of thinking outside that box of what else could be offered. How are you ensuring that you're enabling the teams or yourselves or the consultant, the client that you're working with, that you're procuring from, that you'll get that breadth of ideas of social value that go beyond just what that service is delivering. Oh, it's interesting that you mentioned the film fixer, that the social value is very much connected to the given internship opportunities because it's a film company. But then I think there's also a budget that also then goes to highways and parking because that's where the actual machinery and vehicles are all sat on the road. But all of that is still connected to, for example, arts and culture. Yet they, from what I have understood in their current or recent contract, do not receive any budget income from that contract and perhaps also limited social value, other social values. So just using that as an example, how would you go about changing perhaps current contracts, but also then with your new contracts being able to enable everyone involved to really see beyond just the service that is being provided, to really enable perhaps also other services that don't always get that attention and access to budget and to project opportunities where they could otherwise get it in these. Yeah, I mean, building on that, there is a cultural piece and it is about officers asking for more and really upping our commercial game. So it is about how do we push contracts. So one of the pieces that we're doing is looking at the chief executive has asked that she's gonna challenge each of the corporate directors on 10 of their largest contracts to really make sure that we're exacting as much as we possibly can from those contracts, writing to large suppliers and seeing what more they can deliver, telling them very clearly that we will not be paying for anymore. So I think that there is a, we've been on a bit of a journey with social value in so far as it's kind of been quite nice to have. And I think we're really now getting into the space where it's not only imperative, but it's a commercial imperative within the organization for us to get as much as we possibly can. I think in terms of systems, I think that the contract register will really help us in terms of identifying those opportunities. But I think in terms of your question regarding the social value is very deliberately around film and TV and broadcast. I think it's important to use the kind of specialism of those suppliers, but it's not the only thing that we can do because one of the things that I would really like to look at is professional volunteering. So any organization can say, well, I live in, we're out of Scotland, we can't do anything for Islington young people. For me, they still have an auditor, they still have a HR professional. And if we were able to secure 10 hours of accountancy for a voluntary organization in Islington, that's online, you don't need to be coming from Scotland to here. For me, that's the sort of thing that I think is slightly, it's still core to their business. They're still an accountant in a whatever type of firm, but it's delivering us a service that's not just directly, for instance, films or whatever that is. So that's, and that for me, is that there's needs to be a bit of a system for that. The question about the kind of organizational barriers for me, there needs to be a bit of a system on, if we collect this as social value, how do we pass it on to make sure that within three months of the contract happening, that the social value has been delivered and used by our communities.
Thank you for that chair. And just a couple of quick fire questions, just to clarify a few things. So the new procurement act, does that, so I'm looking at, well, my question is around social value and our minimum arts. Those are things that we set ourselves as the council. And I'm just looking at our minimum arts and, you know, it's safeguarding against modern slavery, not black listing trade unions, advertising the jobs on Islington jobs portal and paying a London living wage. Our minimum arts seem a bit minimal. And so I'm wondering, are we, do you think we're ambitious enough for like, I just, there's two questions. Have we benchmarked ourselves against, you know, neighboring or other local authorities? But secondly, like people could, I mean, I realize there's the minimum and I genuinely trust both from a political level and officer level that we are more ambitious. But I'm wondering, do we need to embed that into our minimum arts, that even before you start sniffing around our council, we want more from you. But I just seem like paying people a London living wage, and I realize we're not taking the drug, like there was a time when people were not being paid a London living wage. But I'm just wondering, are we ambitious? 'Cause it just seemed like our minimum arts aren't really, they're a bit minimal.
I think there's two part. I think the issue we have in Islington is not, it's not that, if we want to benchmark ourselves against other councils in London, the issue we have is that it's easy for contractors to point to other councils and say, why should we do this when the five other councils around you don't ask for this thing? So the issue isn't that we're not doing enough, it's that the other councils are doing so much less than us that these things are additional asks for them because they're not being asked by, I'm gonna name these councils as examples, Southwark, Camden, Hackney, whoever, for London living wage. So I appreciate, as Islington, we have high standards and I'd expect that he should always be pushing me. But I think one of the issues we have is that, and one of the dreams I always had was that we have a joint minimum ask for central London boroughs, which we don't have, because half of this stuff, the moment you walk across a borough boundary, the contracts change, they can kind of, they take some, I mean, some of the examples we see, they literally do rob some local authorities. Like some local authorities pat themselves on the back, being like two apprentices on like a 200 million pound contract. You know, and we wouldn't get our bed for like minimum wage, 10, like 50, what's it called, apprentices, you know, in-work training, always opposite, like skills, kind of women on tools, things like that. So I think it's, you're right, you're right to push us, but I do think, as you benchmark us to any other London authority, we are kind of like, I'd say we're in at least a top two, top three. I'd say we're first, but some people could argue otherwise. More broadly, I think it's what's come, what I came back to about that kind of leadership point. It's, by saying the reason why London, the way it used to be, our additional ask, and now it's our minimum ask, and I think we're kind of shifting to the point where things like local jobs, and you have to use local employers and local suppliers, are becoming our minimum ask, bit by bit, contracts by contract. So I think we're getting there. But you're right, we can always do more, we can always do more.
And I did have another question, but I think I'll talk about a topical issue, and this is in response to the Grenfell Tower inquiry. And so when we're talking about kind of awarding contracts, how flexible does a procurement act allow? So one of the questions I'm asking, I'm preempting myself from full council next week. And where organizations are implicated in these really horrible and tragedies, I don't want, both as a counselor and a lifelong resident of Islington, for us to be doing work for those who, you know, I'm gonna be careful with my language before anyone gets litigious, but who have been implicated in a tragedy. And so I kind of want to know, you know, we can pick up offline and making sure that we're not working, we can't really work with any of these organizations that were implicated and named in that Grenfell Tower phase two report. But how flexible does the act allow for us to say, actually, we don't like, you're implicated in, you know, a very serious incident or a very serious tragedy that we don't, as a council, feel like we want to work with you. And I don't know if you're able to update that. Maybe there's some, I'm not aware of some restrictions probably in this procurement act, but are you guys responsive to things that are happening, not just in Islington, but across the piece?
So I think the one thing the act allows is that it, well, I think it's partly is the market warming. So I think the market warming isn't just because we can sell our store, but often one of the issues you have with procurement is because we operate at such a high level of demand and kind of the size of our contracts. Sometimes we say we go out for procurement, but only two contracts will come back and one will be bad. So it's not really a procurement. It's we pick and pick the only option available. And I think the ability for us to do market warming and split up the contracts means we're kind of not locked in to having to use the same three named providers in the same sector for everything's really valuable. Something else that comes out of the contract, the new legislation is it forces the council, but also the suppliers to kind of have publishable KPIs and ways for the public and for us to kind of more easily manage and kind of see where contracts are failing. And we, the public and the council are getting value for money. So I think before all that is all very behind closed doors. Now we have to publish these things regularly. So I think both residents and us as counselors can say, okay, we paid you 200 million, but you're failing. So we're not getting this many care beds and we're failing to get this thing back and you're not providing this. And we didn't have that tool before. So I think that's really powerful.
And under the new Procurement Act, there will be a new Procurement Review Unit. So it's not an ombudsman, but it's not far off an ombudsman. And within there, a new watchdog for procurements. And under that, they will manage a debarment list. So if a council excludes a supplier, then the PRU, the Procurement Review Unit will then send out that message to every council that they can't use that supplier. So I think in terms of the case that you're speaking about, I think that would be, without going into the details of it, I think that they would be candidates for a debarment list. So that's a new thing within the Procurement Act, which I think is the guidance still has to be declared. So I'm not clear yet on how a council excludes a particular supplier and what the criteria that have to be applied to make that decision. But I think that's a really interesting development in the act. Thank you.
Looking at previous contracts, and I think that's probably the best place to start from. And I'm sure your team probably have picked up on consciously thinking, wow, we should have really have got more from that, but we didn't. I guess the new art makes it easier for us to be able to really know if we share those contracts or not.
Now I feel tested. So the Procurement Act comes live, as I said, at the end of February now. So anything that's procured up until then is under the old regime. So, I mean, there still are opportunities for us, and that's one of the things that we're gonna do in terms of this new commercial management approach, is really start going back to contractors and making sure that we've got best value. And as I said, the chief executive is gonna challenge corporate directors on that. I mean, it is within the feasibility to renegotiate contracts, but it needs to be, it's a mutual process, and it requires lawyers and so on. So that's what we're proceeding to do.
I think that the two bits I'd add is, like I said, I think we're more at risk for legal challenge from another route for that to happen is far greater now through this new act. I think the second thing is there's, we have to produce a lot more kind of reporting and reasoning on why we'd renew a contract. And I think oftentimes there can be in a council, you know, we have a contract and it's easier to just extend for two years and then extend the extension than it is to kind of go out for procurement again. And actually it makes it harder to just kind of keep rolling a contract extension and forces us to stop inwards and say, okay, actually, here's why we need to do the extension. If not, why we're not going out to just procure again. So I think it kind of gives us more steps off the bus where we can just be like, okay, we're not gonna just kind of keep rolling this extension. Two years plus one year extension on top of that for a three year contract is basically double the length of the contract. So I think it kind of gives us that ability to like step off and also have to justify it publicly.
And I guess the next part of that question, and there's a question maybe the chair would permit 'cause it's a piece of information that I've been tricked to find out for a while. The question itself is so I guess we have to slow down the process of signing new contracts, knowing everything that we probably do will be based on the odd one until the ad comes in for the true social value that we're seeking for in Islington. Now, just to follow up and you can answer this. I think there was a point that I asked. Do we know the top 10 oldest sort of contracts that we have in Islington as we run? Someone promised to give me that information. Never really got around to it. I think it would be really interesting for us to have a wider picture to understand what's been happening, how long it's been going for and it's sort of been, I think there's a lot of learning in those contracts for us. I mean, there might be reason not to make it a public thing, but I'm intrigued. Thank you.
And well, I apologize if you ask for information you didn't receive. I'll make sure that you do receive it, Councillor Jackson. And that's what the new contracts register will be able to do for us is that we should be able to generate that type of list. We should be able to generate value of contracts when they're expiring. So that's really important for us as an organisation. We centrally hold that information which hasn't been centrally held previously. So I will find that for you and share it with through the chair.
Yeah, so it's really good. For years, we've been talking about keeping jobs in Islington, keeping business, keeping the money in Islington basically. And we've always looked to Preston as a really good model of that. This is years ago. So it's really good. I sort of sense that your team and the inclusive economy and the community wealth building moving to a much more influential place in the council. I really like that. It's really good. And so as regards this progressive procurement strategy, it talks about sustainable economy. Environmental sustainability built into the progressive procurement policy and the new procurement act.
Also on the policy, maybe you can come on the act. Yeah, so I think we, I mean, part of it's there are smaller things which come into it like by using local supply chains, you are kind of driving towards net zero, less travel time. You don't have to ship things from different countries elsewhere. But I think more broadly, we kind of, there is like a net zero section which we're always pushing for in social value and kind of make sure they adopt policies both now and in the future, which kind of drive towards net zero. And we count that heavily as towards kind of like meeting social value requirements. So I think, yeah, it's very much driver. And it's actually kind of coming back to Councillor Abraham's question. I'd say it's probably one of the few areas where we have a bit more to go. I think we did a bit of research about what else local other boroughs are doing when it came to net zero and social value. I think it was Southwark and Lambeth or Lewisham, one of the ones that begins with an L. They're slightly ahead of us in the game. One of them, they require you to not only justify what you've done up to the point of asking for the contracts to get to net zero, what you're gonna do through the entire contract to make sure you keep getting down to net zero and beyond. So it's kind of like forcing companies to not just look back up to the point where they start and then continue that throughout. We don't, we're not there. We haven't got that as like a kind of standard social value ask. So yeah, I think when it comes to net zero, more to go, but it's definitely one of like the key, I think top things we ask for is always net zero and environmental impact.
In terms of the act, I would need to go and check to see if it's specifically mentioned. But one of the things that we're doing as a result of the act is a progressive procurement toolkit and sustainability will be a big part of that. But yes, I agree that in terms of minimum asks, maybe that is an area that we should be developing over the next period.
Thank you.
No, just to echo what Councillor Clark just mentioned, I was just going to raise that point. And it does mention a current procurement contract that it will be kind of asked of all relevant contracts and hoping that that scope is getting bigger and bigger and that it should be to all. And then as you mentioned, hopefully embedded through all of the contract requests as well.
So one of the things that we have done in terms of relevant contracts is we use practice from, I think it was Manchester where they had applied. So we have a standard now 20% weighting. But in contracts like highways, for instance, drainage, believe it or not, we extended that to 30% because it was so directly relevant to the delivery of the contract, that the social value and the kind of how they were achieving net zero and how they were kind of ability measures, that was so important. We felt that that had to be increased. So that's the sort of thing where we're trying to push the boundaries continually.
Just very quickly, so I do realise that we could go above 20%. So just learn something new. I think it'd be useful to get a breakdown of what the different percentages that we have contracts for at the different percentages, just to see where our kind of average is. I think that would be quite useful to know what we're pitching out.
A few slightly random disparate thoughts that I would like you then to respond to. And I'm glad Councillor Ward is here because I'm wondering in the future, how we might incorporate more social value thinking in terms of our when we're setting budgets, kind of across and how we get, you know, we've got 5000 employees, 51 elected members, how are we getting everyone's best ideas at such a difficult time for local government? And I understand there's new legislation so we've got to concentrate on getting that right first, but I just think there's such potential in this given all the other constraints. And so then I was thinking a bit about how are we, have we got a convening role here for one of the best, how are we drawing down knowledge from other local authorities like Preston or Manchester or other kind of leaders, also how are we sharing with, you know, through London councils? And then I was thinking about whether the central government's new deal for working people is gonna mean that there's loads of stuff we can just take off the pedal with, will that just be baked in now because there's gonna be a load of hopefully, please God employment rights coming on, you know, online. So what do we do to replace, what have we got to replace that stuff? And finally, internally, how much are we talking to the planning team? I'm really aware of this 'cause there's a life sciences building going through planning, I have been in my ward, as you know, I've been talking a lot about social value because often when there's building, the social value comes in social homes, right? It's not appropriate, it's a life sciences building. And that's been a really live question for us of how we're getting social value there. And I just wondered what the kind of cross pollination or whatever it is between those two teams and whether we're getting that right, just internally. Sorry, that's a lot, thanks.
I'm gonna go back to front. So commercial planning, because it also sits in my portfolio, I think, which is one of the reasons why I think it moved over from all planning being the one person to it moving over to the same place as local economies is because you can share that learning. So I think when it comes to residential housing, the person only asks for social housing, that's it. End of conversation. Whereas commercial properties, that isn't the same. And I think we, firstly, the planning team are amazing. I rate them very highly. And I think they're at the forefront of kind of like holding developers to task when it comes to, yes, we can get more. And I think very recently, we've just secured the section 106 on 99 City Road. And that is literally the gold-plated standard you will find anywhere in the country for a section 106 agreement for a commercial property beyond just kind of like, we've got the size of two football fields worth of office space on Ault Street, as well as funding our employment program to the tune of, what, $450,000 for five years, and the major space, and the community space, and some other money, not including CITL. And we all got that through it, like it has an additional benefit for free, not including the other waiting. So I think on the commercial planning side, I think we do very well. And actually, we're just about to produce a paper with PLEZ on kind of like detailing our model, and then kind of what the base plan looks like is then to then kind of spread it, the Easleyton model for like planning to other local authorities. The thing on new rights, that's actually a really good point. There's gonna be new legislation coming, and it's gonna kind of come back to Councillor Abraham's point, like what is the new normal once we have these kind of new rights? And that's a really good point. I think we've got to do a bit of thinking about that. Showing across London, like I said, I think one of them, I sit on, let's see, LCF. What's it called? - CLF.
CLF. So it was just that, LCF. I sit on CLF, which is kind of all the inner London boroughs. And I think one of the big conversations we were having is about how we kind of do share that best practice. I think there's one about planning, make sure we all have the same minimum ask in our local plan SPDs. There's the same thing with procurement. And I think I've got such a dream of kind of like making sure that everyone has those same minimum asks across all the boroughs. So I think we're definitely pushing that. I'll repeat the point about social value and setting budgets for your eye. I think in this time of kind of like, we're still kind of through that austerity period. It's like, we're gonna rely on social value more to kind of deliver for our residents. So your eye, I think it's so timely that we're having this kind of review because we're gonna be relying on these social value contracts that are gonna deliver stuff that we used to deliver in-house ourselves. Well, unfortunately.
Thank you for your presentation. And it all seems so exciting. And wonderful. Mine's kind of a bit of a simple question really 'cause I'm just a simple person. But I see that you've been working with the schools and EGA and all of this seems wonderful and working with the BCS organization. What I'm interested to know is what you've been doing with EGA. Are you gonna be doing it with other schools across the borough? Because what my key thing is that we have a lot of young people that their mental health is quite high. They have very low self-esteem because obviously that home environment all goes down to housing and everything else that's going on in the borough. I would really love to see some of these young people in these spaces, like I see Santiago, Council Santiago is a young man himself. I'd like to him to go to all these schools and deliver what he was saying so he can give hope to the future that if he can do it, anybody else can do it. It has to start in our schools, our secondary. It's not everyone's gonna go to university. Not everyone's even gonna go and do an apprenticeship. So if there's some hope that there's something else that we can do, then we should start with our young people.
So I 100% agree that developers regularly will say to me, Oh, we've started engaging with schools. And I'm like, I've met at CGA. And they're like, Oh, yeah. So I suppose one of the jobs, and EGA are an important school, I suppose one of the jobs of the World of Work program is about democratizing that and spreading some of that benefit across the piece. So yes, they do, so we do push them. With planning, it's kind of interesting because it is about near neighbors as well. So we want to make sure that their immediate neighbors are benefiting from the development. But through the 99 City Road piece, I mean, that is a strategically important piece for the whole borough. So the fabrication lab that we've secured in there won't just be for the immediate schools. It will be, we will develop a program for the whole of the borough. Similarly, the community space that's in there, yes, absolutely, local Bund Hill residents will benefit from that. But we'll also look at how do we run skills programs right across the borough. So I think managing to secure these large Section 106 agreements is really important. And I think standardizing it is critical. As we move into, I mean, I'm very conscious that economic development is not a statutory function. So we absolutely have to demonstrate the benefit every time. So there's no point making sure that all of our contracts say you have to use local suppliers. If there are no local suppliers, who can deliver those services? So we've created a construction directory, which is trying to make it dead easy for tier one contractors to use local suppliers. The next generation of that will be around professional services and making sure that we're able to access kind of small traders and individual traders in the borough. In terms of the convening piece that we do with anchor institutions, again, we're making sure that they're locked into things like World of Work program. And one of my mantras to the team is always, our job is to make it as easy as possible for people to do the right thing. 'Cause there are loads of businesses and developers and the anchors who want to do the right thing, but it's just not their core business. And for me, the job of the Inclusive Economy team, but even the wider VCS team is about really making sure that developer A, who wants to do the right thing, but has a really dead easy platform that they can do up in the leads. And they'll just use that to say, oh no, we've delivered social value. It's my job to make sure they can deliver it in as LinkedIn and really reach the diversity of people that we have, diversity of schools that we have in the borough and local suppliers.
If I could very briefly say, I think the EGA point also, we touched on something which I've really touched on a lot, which is within social value, how much we value each item. I think often you'll get developers off the back for like a 300 million pound development and say, and be like, oh, we'll come to your school and do an assembly and want a pat on the back. So I think it's, and I think it's within us, often we're having to challenge and say, that's not good enough for the school, 'cause they're not good enough for us. And I think sometimes their idea of what social value looks like are like, oh, we'll take the school around the building. Just useless, meaningless. But they'll try and count that social value. So I think it's always pushing back on them and being like, we don't want that. We want sustained careers advice. We want kind of roots in paid internships and stuff like that.
Sorry, Tara. So what I will do in terms of life science buildings is I will give them my shopping list and I will say, here are 20 ideas. Tell us what you can deliver and equally come forward with other ones. And I think to your point about the innovation across this organization is we need to tap into it and we need to find ways to get staff involved and engaged in that innovative commissioning conversation. It's not, here's what we did last year, here's what we're gonna do again. It's really rethinking. And I think the Procurement Act is an amazing opportunity 'cause the big message going out to all of our commissioners is this fundamentally changes how we buy stuff in this organization. And I think in terms of this committee, I think that challenge and really kind of refreshing our approach to buying is well-timed.
Great to end the session on such a positive note. There is an awful lot in the presentation, both presentations that you provided in the papers that we haven't been able to cover tonight. So can I ask committee members, if there are questions and comments arising out of the material in the papers we haven't been able to deal with tonight, please get them over to me and we can that way get answers that can be incorporated into our report. But it's been, I think, a really good session because I think it's given us really an insight into where we are at the moment and maybe where we want to take this scrutiny session. So again, for members of the committee, really wanna hear your feedback over the next week or so about what we want to focus on over the next few sessions, really arising out of the discussions that we have had. But Caroline Santiago, thank you both for coming and staying so late. And I'm going to extend my thanks for staying so late to the finance team who now get their moment or exactly in the sun, but in the autumnal gloom. What I'm aiming to do is finish this item by 10.15. So at least there's a chance of you going back to your children. Congratulations, Paul, on your great news. So that's the target. So in terms of the presentation, briefly, I think what would really help the committees a focus on what we ought to be aware of from the Q1 report and whether there really has been any changes to our medium-term financial strategy that we need to be updated on.
Okay, I'm just gonna highlight the main points within the quarter one 24/25 budget monitor report. So the forecast overspend of directorates at quarter one is 9.8 million, but after the corporate position and the application of contingency budgets, the net general fund position is reduced to 600,000 overspend. This is a far healthier position, I can assure you, than many other London boroughs are forecasting at this stage of the year, with some reporting to be in tens of millions of overspend. So just looking back briefly, when we compare the current quarter one forecast to the quarter one position we were reported in 23/24, the position is vastly improved. At this point of last year, we were forecasting a net general fund overspend of seven million, which is 6.4 million more than our current forecast. There's some good news in here that the children services is currently forecast to be on budget, and adults is forecasting a significantly lower overspend than in previous years. The current one million pressure reported in adults is due to the unavailability of care beds in the borough, but we expect this to be resolved this financial year with no ongoing pressures in the future. The directorates that are driving the vast majority of the current overspend are CWB, Community Wealth Building and Environment, with both reporting around three million overspend each. So CWB, the forecast is around a shortfall on commercial rent income, but there has been a commitment by the directorate to carry out a programme of rent reviews and other initiatives to help manage this going forward. The shortfall on planning income is due to reduced planning activity. However, it's felt that the assumptions are very prudent at this stage of the year, so some major planning applications do come through to fruition. We expect the forecast to improve. There has been slippage to the future work saving, but alternative solutions are being sought on that with a report due at CMT very shortly. Environment, unfortunately, there is a pressure in parking, of 1.5 million with the shortfall in income being mainly around suspensions and paying display due to delayed CPZ implementation due to the two elections that we've had this year. The position is closely monitored on a monthly basis and a number of management actions are included in that forecast. Just briefly, the HRA is forecasting a 5.4 million deficit, but as it's a ring fence to count, any surplus deficit will be transferred to the HRA reserves. The average minimum reserve level required in the HRA over the 30-year business plan is 31 million and we currently have 78 million in reserves, so again, a good reflection that we're in a good financial position. This will, however, fluctuate as we fund the HRA capital program. And finally, just very briefly, the forecast on the capital out-term for the general fund is 80 million compared to a budget of 114 million with a large proportion of that variance being requested to be re-profiled into later years. So that's it from me. Happy to take any questions.
Thank you, Jack. If I can just focus on the last point of re-profiling, there's a lot of items that have been essentially slipped going forward. What are the risks? Why is this re-profiling happening? Is this something structural within the council, something more national?
To be honest with you, there's a number of reasons. There is quite a lot of detail in the report. I think in the main, there's been sort of delays in planning application and activity. There's been some issues with contractors or purely due to inflation, costs are increasing above the allocated budget. So they've kind of been asked to sort of re-engineer, sort of almost go back to the drawing board to see if they can then come in on budget. 'Cause obviously, we've only got a certain amount within the capital program and we're trying to manage that accordingly. So yeah, there isn't just one particular reason. It's kind of a variation of reasons across all the schemes.
Well, I'm a bit confused now because you talked about the 600,000 overspend. And I'm looking at page 186.2.1 where it says, the 2025/26 and medium term budget setting process starts with a very significant funding gap to close for the immediate budget setting year of 25/26 and over the forecast period. To set a balanced budget in 25/26, the council must deliver estimated additional savings of 23 million in 25/26 and 107 million over the whole five-year forecast period. So I just wonder why, if things are so good at the moment, why have we got this huge amount of savings that we have to make?
So the numbers that Rachel talked through are specifically about 24/25, where we have essentially made the savings to balance the budget. So those numbers that you refer to, I'll talk a little bit more on when I cover the MTFS paper. But essentially every year, the challenge is slightly harder. The number required to savings gets slightly bigger. So I'll come onto that on that item if it's okay. And I'll just explain a bit more about why the gap is what it is for next year.
I think my question might actually be for Councillor Ward. And I'll start off with the officer. So it's 4.31, it's about an overspend in the community engagement and wellbeing. But this refers specifically to the proposed, there's a pressure of about half a million due to an unachieved saving, due to proposed contact centre consolidation. And Councillor Ward has gone to great lengths to explain to us how it was so inefficient, the previous system of having various and above average call centre handling. But, and I kind of wanted to say, so when are we gonna realise this? 'Cause it talks about the saving and 'cause this work has been ongoing for a while. When are we gonna realise the saving around 'cause we've consolidated all those call centres into a more manageable chunk. And I'm just wondering when, 'cause this work has been ongoing and we've heard so much about it. So I'm a bit slightly perturbed to see this half a million cost pressure when I was expecting us to be yielding the fruits of something that has been kind of, you know, and so that's why I was more of a, maybe a question for Councillor Ward who's been at the forefront of this in terms of when does that drill down into actually a saving? 'Cause it makes sense and I understand why we've done this. But I was just slightly perturbed by seeing this in the paper.
I'm as disappointed as you are, Councillor Ibrahim. Sorry, what page are you on? I can't find the paragraph.
On the, it's 115, one physical one. It's 119 on the, if you're online.
119, sorry. Sorry, bear with me, Councillor Ibrahim.
It's 0.4.31.
Sorry.
4.3.
Oh yeah, so the aim is to merge all three contacts. I mean, the fact that we have three different contacts.
So there's not even any one to have it?
It's ongoing. We haven't managed it yet. The pro, it's, I'm gonna be completely blunt. It's a difficult, messy process having three call centers and merging them into one call center. But it's the right thing to do. When someone calls up, they don't specifically want to ask you about tenancy. They don't specifically want to ask you about one thing. They want the person to be able to help them with each of those things. So it's better for the resident and it's better for us as well in terms of efficiency. So it is ongoing, but it's concerning that it's slipped. And I will keep a very, very close eye on this. And I will hopefully come back to the committee next time with better news.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, but my question was just with regard to the overspend in the environment. Forgive me. Colleagues, prior to me, have put forward the case. But now, for me, the goal posts seem to be widening because I heard of CPZs being suspended and the mention of election. But we know that there are pressures. I think another question I wanted to ask as well, which my colleagues asked earlier, is there are a number of management actions being taken. And maybe this question is for Councilor Ward, but there is no corporate director to oversee those management actions. So I'm getting increasingly concerned. And I feel that when we next monitor the reporting, we will be given further reasons as to why there is increase overspends in this area. It doesn't seem to be moving at pace, which is that new corporate word everyone's using. Thank you.
Can I take that one? I mean, there is someone acting up as corporate director at the minute, but I do take your point. If members have got questions about this kind of thing, they need to be able to say, Right, we'll get the corporate director here and let's talk about it." Now, members can do that with the acting corporate director, if you wish. But you're absolutely right. We need a permanent corporate director ASAP. And as Councilor Cormac Schwartz has said, the ad's gone out. So yeah, let's help us find someone of the best caliber.
Okay, this is supplementary. But in terms of, for me, my first question was around the goal posts being widened. Yeah, because in terms of the elections, how does that really impact the overspend and also the sort of suspension of CPZs to the tune of 1.5 million, I think you mentioned. So that's, yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, and after, for me, becoming concerning.
Yeah, it is concerning, Councilor Weeks, and I certainly wasn't expecting as many elections this year. But these things do tend to go up and down based on events during the year. I don't know if anybody wants to add to that, though.
I was just gonna say, like, it's a highly volatile area. Obviously, the CPZ delay has affected a saving that was agreed, so that's kind of one impact. But also, there is now kind of a delay for the rollout of LTNs, which is going to be, which has impacted the base quite significantly in so much as the ability to process new CP, and sorry, PCNs, sorry. All the terminology in parking, there's so many acronyms. However, parking colleagues, be assured, have got a number of actions, mitigations, management actions, that we do look at very closely. That was recently shared with the corporate director, the acting corporate director for housing and environment, Judge Young, and also Dave Hodgkinson. So we are sort of confident that those new initiatives are making an impact, but this is really why this is an area that we do monitor on a monthly basis. You know, the more of the low-risk areas we look at quarterly, whereas this one is definitely something that we look at. Like, I can't promise you it won't change again. Like, obviously, there's just so many variables at play at parking. It moves on a daily basis, if you like. But at the moment, with the information that we have, we don't perceive the position to be getting any worse at this point, anyway.
Thank you, Jo. Just to drive my attention to page 133, and forgive me if I've understood this incorrectly, but I'm just reading a $7,190,000 overspend because delays over a dispute with a neighbour over a party wall arrangement. That's just, I don't have any other word to say, but that's pretty wild. Why, you know, we're talking about, we had a meeting yesterday on the budget monitoring, and there was, sorry, on Tuesday, and we're talking about how difficult the decisions are. We can't avoid them. We have to do this. And to read that, along with, actually, if we go to the next page, a lot of the overspend is project delayed due to procurement or to the contractor. That, to me, just seems avoidable, one, and actually something's gone seriously wrong here, especially in the new-build team. But I think across management, how, A, if it seemed that poor planning, if it's due to delays, and also why wasn't a conversation had with that neighbour before the project even started? It's just not just a firewall. So I know we've had this conversation on the housing scrutiny team, but I did want to obviously bring that here 'cause I think it's really relevant considering how much overspend is in, you know, we're looking at that figure, actually.
So the numbers referenced in there are not overspends. They're slippage to the scheme. So essentially, what that means is we had a budget that we thought we were going to spend this financial year. However, in that instance, if the party wall is the reason why that project can't progress at the speed that we thought it'd be, it means that we will spend seven million pound less this year. It doesn't mean that the scheme will cost more money or we've lost money. It just means it's delayed the actual construction. So some of that spend will then happen the following year. So across all of those, what it is quite hard to do at the start of a big capital scheme is fully understand when the cash will go out of the door. So if you're just delivering something fairly small, like a park or a playground or something where you think it's six months work, that's fine. But if it's a multi-year project where we're working on an estate, those slippages can be really, really significant. Actually, there's a financial benefit to it being slower, although clearly the impact on not having the asset is big. But the financial benefit of not having to borrow the money upfront to spend as well means that actually, ironically, we're probably slightly better off through that slipping as long as inflation doesn't bite us by the time it's taken a bit longer to build. Does that make sense?
I guess my point was due to there being kind of contractors going into administration and that's costing significant cost to the council, when we have these delays or slippages over a party wall, isn't that gonna be kind of a risk if that contractor then goes into administration and of course, inflation is always going up. So I see your point, but I think where you've got seven million slippers, sorry, not overspent over a party wall, and then that's, we've had that problem of contractors going into administration and also delays costing the council, then how are we, 'cause it seems like to me it's not a big concern, it just seems like I was okay because that's gonna be spent next year, but it seems these are things that could be totally avoidable.
I mean, I completely take your point, Councillor Estemir. On the one hand, it's, as Paul's explained, kind of the benefits, but the flip side, of course, is we can't build the homes. After slippage, we're not building the homes. And there's, I think there's been, as you know, there's been really, really hard choices made about the entire new build programme earlier this year. As Councillor Colmish was saying earlier on, we just, we've slimmed it down to key projects. The very, on that particular one, Parkview Estate, there was a very hard choice made not to continue with Block D and just to continue with the three blocks that were already on site. And that one's touch wood, nearly, nearly finished, and we're very pleased with that. But you're absolutely right. Hard choices have been made about the new build scheme, the new build programme this year. A lot of the problems there around inflation and interest rates were unforeseen, but nevertheless, we've got to learn lessons from this. And as Councillor Colmish once said earlier on, it's all about grip and pace, and we've got to learn lessons from what happens this year with the new build programme going forward.
I was going to ask questions to those, but I think it's best to kind of use the timing accordingly. That is on the overspend. And I'm sure Chair will probably want to, you probably have more questions. Really worried about it forecasting when it comes to what we think is going, I'm a big concern, 'cause it just feels like we're not, I don't know if it is a political issue that I sort of put your team to be able to make that focus properly to say, right, this is what we're expecting to happen, for example, in the environment. We should know our policy position. We should know what the outcome is. The fact that we're not thinking that we've taken a policy position and it's working is of concern to me, because now we're saying we're overspending, but in reality, just people are not driving anymore. They're not parking anymore. Or the cost of parking is a lot more higher. So that should be something that I expect your team to sort of, or whoever that was involved, to kind of look to that and be able to make the right focus around this. So, and I guess I'm thinking who's really, who's responsible for this? Is this the directorate? Is it, and when this information was, how are you sort of countering this and say, right, actually, we think you've got this wrong. So, do you need, do we need more aid or some other tools to help us to do this properly without me going into it, but yeah.
I'll start, then I'll hand over to Paul. Ultimately, I'm responsible. The buck stops with me as executive member. So ultimately, if there's a problem, it's my fault, because that's the job I've taken on as executive member. What I will say is that, I mean, this does happen with the forecast. I mean, if anything, last year was much more volatile, and we were looking at, you know, some of the, I spent an awful lot of my time last year at this committee and talking to officers privately about the overspends, 'cause it was frightening at times. The particular issue of parking, I mean, we have learned some of the things that happened last year, but parking, it's volatile for all the reasons that's already been talked about. The forecast for this, I'm not offering this as any kind of execution or anything like that, but the forecast for this year is that we're due to end the year at an overspend of 648k. That's, it's unfortunate it's an overspend, but compared to what some of our neighbours are looking at, you know, if that forecast stays the same, and, you know, I will sleep easy. I don't know if Paul wants to add to that.
Yeah, so absolutely, when you're talking about parking, there's over 50 million pounds worth of income, and hundreds of thousands of transactions, which very slight changes in behaviour have really big impacts on the numbers, and if you recall last year, we bought unachieved income in parking to the tune of almost 10 million pounds. So it is a difficult thing to predict what the policy changes will have in terms of the financial impact on something like parking, where it is just huge volumes of things happening in the borough. What I, just to echo Councillor Ward's point, I suppose my position on where we get to as a bottom line is we will have, if we achieve what we are currently thinking we're going to achieve, it will be one of the best out turns in London, when boroughs neighbouring us and across the capital have overspends in one service area of about 30 million pounds. We are an absolute fraction of that, and single areas of a problem of a million, a million is an awful lot of money, and pays for an awful lot of valuable services. But the context of proper main adults of a million pounds versus temporary accommodation, we're not at the same level. We are very fortunate for that, and it's through really good management. But we've got a billion pound coming in and going out, so to have variances of these levels is normal, and I'm reassured that the management actions that take place to contain them are so far quite effective. And then we have, for anything that can't be contained, we have our contingencies. So the reason that we have an overspend of three million pounds and then in one area in the bottom line for the council is a few hundred thousand pounds is because we always think something will come up. So we have a contingency to deal with something. We just don't know when we set the budget what that will be. And the numbers in the budget were essentially started on their approval journey way back in January before the start of the financial year. So things change even before we start the year. So sometimes we get to the first of April, and we think on day one, actually, something's slightly off track. So we spend all year trying to bring it back into line. So hopefully there's a bit of reassurance about what happens and also the context for the bottom line. Although it's always bad to have an overspend, it's better to have 600,000 than 30 million. Chad, I won't follow up on it. I'm sure we're going to probably have this in the next time we're coming. We are, and we're running massively over budget in terms of the time budget. But I think if we can just have a quick update on the MTFS, particularly as we're now about to embark on a budget-setting exercise with a view to wrapping up the meeting no later than half 10. Yeah. If people need to leave, please leave. This has been a bit of a marathon. But I think we probably ought to at least touch upon the MTFS. But quick update. Yeah, absolutely. So I will be very quick, because it's not really a decision as such that we're talking about this. So this is just an update on where we are with the financial position. So in prior years, we did a budget monitor update for the in-year position every month. And we did an update on the overall budget and the long-term budget once a year, which is not really recognizing the importance of the actual longer-term budget. So what we did was we stepped the monthly monitor down to quarterly. And then we started to do quarterly updates of the MTFS, the medium-term strategy. So that is why we're seeing this report. And you'll see it a few times a year just to make sure that we are capturing the long-term impact of what Rachel was talking about. So anything in-year that has a long-term impact, we want to capture that early and make sure we're dealing with it. The overall gap is lower for the next three years than when we set the budget for this year. So we thought it would be a lot higher. It's come down. It's still really big numbers, so 63 million pounds over the next three years. That has come down. And the more we know around where the risks are in that, hopefully that will come down as well. So from that position, it won't come down massively. Maybe 3 or 4 million versus kind of halving or anything like that for next year. So by the time we get to the budget-setting process, I expect it to be marginally better as a result of things softening. So inflation has come really far down. Interest rates have not come down enough, but they are a lot lower than where they were in the peak. The context to this report was it was written just before a kind of change in government, although published probably slightly after, and not really anything changed from day to day in terms of the assumptions. There is still very little concrete information about where we will be heading from a financial position, albeit some softening of the mood music around local authority budgets. We are an unprotected department, and the chancellor is making comments about nationally very challenging positions. So I don't expect any additional money for next year, if I'm honest. I think there will be a rollover of what we've got. And then in future years, we will hopefully start to see some in the sector, but there's no guarantees on that whatsoever. We are fortunate when I keep talking about temporary accommodation because it's, quite frankly, killing a lot of other London boroughs, our MTFS at this point. And since this report was written, temporary accommodation is a challenge, but it's not racing away like it has with other authorities. A final bit, I will just reiterate the point that I made before about-- so the out turn last year was really, really positive. We pretty much lived within our means, and our reserves were protected. Where we're forecasting this year is pretty much the same. 600,000 pound in or out of reserves is absolutely fine because it's pretty much balanced on a billion pound budget. The report goes into details what's gone up and what's gone down, but we're not asking for any decisions within this report to change anything. We're just giving an update on where we are and where we think we're heading. So no surprises, things starting to get a little bit better and not really expecting great news in the settlement. Thank you. Chair, could I just add one? Yes. Just add one point to that, Paul's quite right to refer to the TA budget, the challenge there is there, but the fact that other boroughs have got much bigger challenges. And that's in no small part down to just the great stewardship by the team, but particularly the buying up x-right to buy properties that Kostelkommer-Schwarz talked about earlier. A huge proportion of that total budget goes to Islington because we're very, very good at it, and just big thanks to that team. Any quick questions on MTFS? Just to clarify, we have moved from three-year projections to five-year projections. I'm just checking from what I've seen from the table. Would it be correct to say, if there is no change over this Labour national government over the next five years, the requirement on the council tax would increase by 100% by 2030, I think. So he's suggesting that if we didn't do anything around managing the budget, we'd bridge that gap by council tax. I'm just-- the second one has got the layout for the five-year projection, and it describes what the council tax receipt would need to be to bridge that gap in terms of if we do business as usual. Projecting forward five years. I presume what you're saying is if we did nothing for the past next five years, then our council tax requirement would go up by 100%. I mean, I think that's not surprising. If we did nothing for five years, maybe it would. But as you know, Councillor, we don't do nothing. We look at these savings every single year. I wonder if Paul can clarify that. Yeah, just in terms of the-- so I just looked at Appendix A as well. So the term council tax requirement is not necessarily that we will be-- that it is a kind of proposal for that to be the council tax level. It's just the defined way that we have to calculate our local authority budget. The bottom line that is essentially the unfunded bit is always called council tax requirement. But I was very distracted by the council tax question. I'd forgotten what your first part of the question was. I'm very sorry. No, just echoing that hopefully the national government will help out to bridge that gap. Otherwise, the way I would read that is that it's over 120 million savings over the next five years. Councillor Brown. Sorry, just to clarify, Dermot. Council Ward, just for the benefit of earning, you're saying that things can only get better with a Labour government. And given that, Paul said, there's more supportive mood music from this government than the previous government around local government finances. Is that your understanding as the executive member? Well, as you know, Councillor Abraham, it's very easy to snipe from the sidelines and kind of say it. And I think to talk about a council tax requirement, we've worked really, really hard to live within our means. There's a 22 billion pound black hole in the public finances left by the Tories. We're already speaking to government about what we need to be, to keep on thriving and be a successful council. And I'm very optimistic about the future of Councillor Abraham. Right. Thank you for the team, Rachel, Paul, and Councillor Ward for coming in tonight. Just a couple of bits of formal business to deal with, and then I promise you can all go home. First off, I've been in discussions with Councillor Clark about Thames Water and how we as a council could best scrutinise them. And I think summarising the discussions, we've been thinking about a one-off meeting, a joint meeting of our respective committees to get Thames Water in and ask them some questions. Are we all happy with that as an approach? Yes, Chair. We'll get on with that. And then there's been a request to move the annual workforce report to the December meeting. I suspect that's something of a fait accompli, because we ain't going to have the report. We can't consider it. But formally, I think we have to agree that. So it's agreed. Anything anybody wants to raise about the forward plan, scrutiny review tracker, work programme, or anything that the individual chairs are doing on their committees. I don't see anything. So with that, thank you, and that concludes our meeting. Thank you, Chair. [BLANK_AUDIO]

Transcript

Hello, good evening. I'm Councillor Ruling-Kundukur, Vice Chair of the Committee. Oh, I didn't put it on. Should I repeat that? (laughs) Good evening, I'm Councillor Ruling-Kundukur, Vice Chair of the Committee.
I'm Councillor Jason Jackson, I'm Councillor for Holloway Ward and Chair of Homes and Communities.
Hello, I'm Councillor Saika Pandor, St. Mary's and St. James' Ward.
Evening, I'm Councillor Nestor Zagorovas-Armstrong for Highbury Ward.
Hi, I'm Councillor Kai Combs-Warts, legal representing council.
Hi, I'm Victoria Lawson, I'm the Chief Executive.
Hi, Councillor Koolshan-Ostermy, I'm Chair of Children's and Young People.
Evening, Councillor Angelo Weeks for Margaret May Ward and Chair of Licensing Committee.
Councillor Sarah Hyde, Caledonian Ward, backbench member.
Councillor Heather Staff, Lacock Ward.
Samanay Richardson, Democratic Services Officer.
Thank you all, apologies for--
Sorry, I was late. I'm Councillor Tricia Clark, Tufnell Park Ward, Chair of Environment and Region, Chair of the Environment, Climate Change and Transport Committee, thanks.
We've had, I don't think any apologies for absence. I've had apologies for lateness from Councillor Ibrahim and I know that Councillor Chaudry hopes to join us at some point tonight, but he's sent apologies if that isn't possible. There are no substitute members. Any declarations of interest? No declarations of interest. Can we agree the minutes of the previous meeting?
Agreed. - Thank you all. First item, Chair's report. The working group met to discuss the committee's approach to monitoring performance on the 13th of August. Myself, Councillor Kondoka, Hyde, Chagoras, Armstrong, all contributed in various ways to that meeting. We will be continuing the work of the group over the next couple of weeks and will report back on the next occasion. I am going to use my position as Chair just to make a comment about the papers for this meeting and going forward. There is, and I understand this, an obvious desire to minimize duplication of work and to provide this committee with as much information as possible. But this committee is different from, for example, an operational board or even the executive in that the people around this table are not full-time councillors. They are not as familiar with the language of the council. And many on this committee have either full-time day jobs, full-time personal commitments, full-time caring commitments. And in order for this committee to function effectively, we have to have papers that mean something to us that we can pick up and follow. And what will really assist going forward is if papers and presentations that have gone to other boards are going to be recycled for this committee, that there are executive summaries, no more than two or three pages, that highlight the key points that the paper is making, direct us to the essential reading and the further reading. Because it is a real challenge for members of this committee to wade through pages and pages of detail without a guide. We only have a few days to assimilate the information. So it's really a plea from me that for this committee to function properly, there have to be papers presented in a way that are intelligible for this committee. And I'm more than happy to sit down with the key officers preparing papers for this committee to provide what assistance I can in what will help this committee perform their really important function as the overview and scrutiny committee for this council. Just a word about public questions. Members of the public will have an opportunity to ask questions following each agenda item, but I stress this is a meeting of the council in public. It's not a public meeting. There are no items for calling, which bring us to the annual presentation of the leader of the council. Councillor Comer Swartz, you've prepared a presentation. Can you aim for about 10 minutes for the presentation? And what I'd like to do is allow every member of the committee at least the opportunity to ask one question once up to entry. We'll see how we go, but I've allocated about an hour for this item.
Thank you, chair. And I know that the committee have had the presentation in advance, so I won't do them the disservice of raising the presentation to them. So if we move on to the first slide, please. Oh, there's, wow, look at this. (laughs) Thank you. So I truly believe that Islington Council is one of the best councils in the country, and we have a hell of a lot to be exceptionally proud of. And just going through our five mission areas and drawing out some of those things that we should be really proud of. Our system to support looked-after children has seen now a reduction of looked-after children. I think this is really important because it means that we're getting the early intervention right, we're keeping families together, and giving those families the support that they need. Our educational outcomes continue to be positive, and increasingly so. That's reflected as well in the quality of our schools. We know that the majority of our schools in Islington are good or outstanding. Similarly, I know that I talk about this too often, but it's still brilliant that we've just had our youth justice service rated outstanding. I have to say, when I was executive member for children, I went to visit youth court, and it was sitting for three days. And now it's sitting for half a day across Camden and Islington. It means that the investment that we have taken over a decade has made a real impact for the most vulnerable children in our boroughs. So we should be exceptionally proud. And I'm so thankful to the officers, but also the counselors for continuing to recognize the importance of the work and investing in that. And it's great that that's now been recognized. Similarly, in the early intervention space, making sure that our youth services in the community continue to reach as many children as possible, and that we have the right support around our children with additional needs or disabilities, and also making sure that access to employment and education continues to deliver for our young people. We'll move on to the next slide. Similarly, in our community wealth building, background, I think as we continue to strive to be a council that prioritizes equality, it's been great that we've worked with London Met, not only to say that we want to prioritize certain communities, but to have the data to really show where exactly those communities are, who they are, and what would work best for them. And that's resulted in us getting over 1,000 people from minoritized backgrounds into work. Our LIFT program is something to be amazingly, like it's something that we have really spearheaded. It's a tech program, getting people into the tech industry. We work with seven other boroughs to do that. But it's really about not letting the industries come to London and not serve our residents. So that's another great thing to highlight as well. Our IMAX team, that I know a lot of you know about, is another thing that, given the cost of living crisis, I'm internally grateful for. It literally puts millions of pounds back into the pockets of our residents. With our affordable work spaces, this is something that we've been talking a lot about across the country because it's essential to the way we approach planning in our borough. And we should, as members of the planning committee know, we should be really proud of that. We've got a decade's worth of experience in this area, which shows that you can deliver real social value for residents out of our planning and procurement system. Go on to the next slide. Similarly, making sure that all our residents are able to thrive and be empowered by the services that they give them. And this is really across all our services, our early intervention advice services, our engagement services, our voluntary sector. I know that many other boroughs can't invest because of their financials in the voluntary sector, but we continue to. We have a ring-fence grant for them, and I think that this really has enabled some amazing work in the borough in partnership with them. So I'm really proud of that. Also, our engagement work that we started with Let's Talk Islington has created a kind of ethos in the council around how we do engagement differently and properly with residents really listening to what they have to say. And that we've asked and residents have responded in literally their thousands. So that's a really positive pilot that's working well. And we delivered our first community panel on climate change and climate, it's not climate change, it's climate resilience, sorry. That was my typo there. And participatory budgeting. And I have to say that evidence from that has been really compelling. I've had people come up to me outside of Moss saying that they were involved and they've loved it. And people who've talked about not only the subject, but also the connection that they made through doing that work with us. And obviously, housing must always be, and will always be probably our greatest priority as a council. We are, you know, I'll talk about TA probably a bit later, but being able to buy so many right to buy properties and being able to use them for TA is not only the right thing to do for our residents. We all know people come to our surgeries that, you know, the worst thing we could imagine is them not being able to have a home in the borough, having children away from school, sleeping in hotels. That's not what we want for our, so being able to buy our properties back and put people, you know, keep them in our borough is something we should be exceptionally proud of. Similarly, our work with the homelessness team. I know a lot of us around the table have been out with our homelessness team. They're a service to be really, and they, like, they're just brilliant how they treat people with dignity and respect and really wrap around people to make sure that our homelessness is as reduced in the borough as possible. And also, I have to say that given the recent report on Grenfell, how proud I am, it's not a small thing that we are 100% compliant on all our building safety work. It's really something that Councillor Halland has been fastidious about, and we should be relieved, but we must never be complacent in that area. Okay, and similarly, on our environmental work, being able to get four years in a row with the Healthy Street Scorecard, which is a really competitive, really robust, qualitative process, it's something we also should be really proud of. Also, we continue to develop and deliver on our liveable neighbourhoods. I'm really proud of the progression that we've had in that, from when they started to where they are, really a much more engaging process with our residents that are delivering for the environment more collaboratively. Similarly, you know, I think that how our borough looks is important to all of us. So having a clean borough is also really good, so having such high satisfaction rates in that area is also important. Oh, sorry, Victoria, before we, I just, I thought that it's really important as we move to greener infrastructure that we have the infrastructure to do that. It's not fair for us to say to residents we want them to be greener and not be there alongside that. So I wanted just to highlight the statistic at the end about how many electric vehicle charging points we're putting in, and we will continue to do that. Thank you. Also, in our health area, you know, being able to have the health determinant research investment has enabled us to really understand the borough in a way that we've never been able to before, and that's leading to some really interesting work looking at, you know, health and housing and other areas. Similarly, on adult social care, I think we've got our inspection coming up and looking through our self-assessment, like we did the other day, Councillor Chaudry. We have a hell of a lot to be proud of, and we're on a journey, but we're really moving forward in a positive way in that area. And also, you know, for me, I know I talk a lot about early intervention, but it's the only way to support people. So our public health team doing real targeted work on access to treatment on drugs and alcohol cessation is really, really possible. So, on to the more difficult areas. Obviously, we are a brilliant council, but, you know, there are contextual issues that bring us challenges, and we all know that temporary accommodation is one of those we have unprecedented demand. It's going up, not down in that area. Same with adult social care and children's services. And whilst I said looked after children were going down, I think it's important to realise that the complexity of cases that we are seeing is going up and therefore causing greater pressures on those services. Also, it would be remiss of me not to talk about our finances. We know how deeply challenging those are. You know, we've made prudent decisions year on year for over a decade now that has mean that we're not in the position that some other councils find themselves of being close to putting in a one by one notice. However, that doesn't mean that we don't have significant gaps and that's outlined there. We are seeing some hopeful soundings from government. We've seen the extension of the household supports fund and some really positive noises coming about the right to buy receipts, which will give us greater flexibility and enable us to build more homes. However, I will never stop talking. I don't think about local government finances and loudly to the current government because it's what we need to be able to deliver for our residents. And amidst all of that, rightly our residents have real high expectations for us to get the basics right for them. You know, we wanna make sure that we're getting it right in terms of repairs. We wanna make sure that we're getting it right in terms of bin collections. That's the things that, you know, make everyday life easier for people. So we wanna do that. So quickly, I'll go through the missions and the challenges there. As I said, complexity of cases in our children's social counts, send areas and send transport is always an ongoing issue. We all know that across London, we have declining birth rates and a myriad of reasons why there are less children now in London and that's left us to make some really difficult decisions around schools because we want the best education for our children and creating a strategy around that is really important. We won't shy away from those difficult decisions because it was needed for those children to provide. But also, once those kids are in those schools, we need to make sure that we're supporting them pastorally, educationally, to make sure they stay there. And the school absence thing is something that I know Councillor Safi and Gongo is really, it's a complex picture, but it's something that I know they should be working with the scrutiny committee to really get a handle on and improve because we need to improve in that area. Community wealth building, obviously the challenges of building new homes, giving the financials in those and the inflation rates around construction is complicated. And also tackling poverty. This is something that as someone who has been a Councillor for over a decade in this borough and has grown up and lived here all my life is something that I continue to think about often. We have some of the greatest services, we have always prioritised the most vulnerable in our borough and still we continue to see high rates of child poverty and high rates of elder poverty. And we're gonna do some round tables in the next few months about the complexity of that and how do we look at that in a borough that cares so much about these people and get it right for them and make sure the resident voice is at the heart of that. Also, I know that one of the reasons I've lived here all my life is because it is a place that as a black woman I feel safe. However, I don't think at the start of the summer, I know that a lot of us around this table from minoritised communities did not feel safe with what was happening up and down the country. And we can never be complacent in that area. So, Councillor Chapman is working with us and partners to work out how we do more about community cohesion. We know that we're a borough that's had a terrorist attack, so we can never be complacent about it. And we don't wanna say, oh, nothing happened here, so it's okay. We want to have a community that really understands each other and feels safe around each other. We need to do further joining up. I was in Southport Council a couple of weeks ago, so I know that every council talks about siloisation, but we can never give up on it as a challenge. And especially as we wanna get early into, we wanna live up to the mantle of being an early intervention council. So, getting those systems right. And similarly, we know that homelessness is rising. We know some of the complexity and reason for that, but we know that we have good services in that area. So, how do we maximise that and go further? And also, whilst we're building a lot of new homes and we have a lot of developments in the pipeline, we also know that we have a lot of people on our waiting list. And I know that councils around the table join me in our surgeries where we hear time and time again of people in the wrong housing. So, we need a lot more money for housing. And it's great that the current government is talking about housing in a way that I have never heard before, but we need that to deliver for Islington, not just places that have green belts. Yeah, we know that we're a borough that is likely to be... Sorry, am I doing okay on time and timing? (audience member speaks off mic) Oh! (audience member speaks off mic) Okay. (audience member speaks off mic) Okay, I'm so sorry. Yes. Well, yes. So, we need to do more on climate adaptation. We need to boost our recycling rates. You'll see the campaign we've got at the moment on food waste, that's a key part of that. I wanna bring public health into everything we do, literally have it in our equality impact assessment. Is this decision-making our borough healthy? If not, why are we doing it? And also, adult social care, we know how detrimental that is, and we want the people of all ages to be able to thrive and have independent lives in our borough, and social care should be an enabler of that, not a disabler of that. Thank you.
Thank you. I think my question is around temporary accommodation. It's an obvious issue in Islington, but I think just most recently, it's become more obvious across all kind of services, including housing, children's, and the corporate parenting. I think yesterday, statistics came to corporate parenting board about children who are being moved more than 20 miles out of the borough, and also how that affects children who are persistently absent as well. Not only are looked after children. So I guess my question is, do we need to do a deeper dive working across, officers across the services, whether it's a working group task and finish, because it's not gonna get any better. We can see it's worsening, and I feel like we've got to explore more options to really get kind of a grip of the issue.
Yeah, I mean, what I will say is, we have just got a report in from an external auditor into our temporary accommodation, because it is one of our greatest risk areas. So we didn't wanna be marking our own homework in that area. We've got someone to come in and look at how we do TA, and can we be doing it differently and better. So I think that that's a good starting point, but I take your point as well about actually, even it's great to look at as a system, but who are we prioritizing in that, and children and young people, especially our children and young people as corporate parents need their voice really heard in that. So I think it's a really good note for me when we bring that paper to executive, that we really make sure that our children's voices are centric to that.
So yeah, just to build on that, I think it's also really important to contextualize where Islington is. So if I just share some figures with you. So at the moment, one in 50 Londoners are in temporary accommodation. There was a report in the news this morning that that is costing London 90 million pounds a month. What I would say is the work that Islington has done around temporary accommodation over the long term, around purchasing homes, securing funding from the GLA and the MHCLG, which is about a million pound, 100 million. We've also got 100 million from the public loan and works board has meant that you've been able to buy a significant number of homes. So whilst we might have the seventh highest presentation of TA, we actually have no residents in B&B, none in leased accommodation, and people are in TA for 64 weeks compared to the sub-regional average of five years. So whilst it is tough and it is creating a budget pressure of 1.6 million over the year for Islington, you also have to recognize what an absolute credit the work that you've already done and commissioned is for our residents. I take your point about how do we work across the system. The same report that the leader spoke about came to the corporate management team. I definitely think there's more space to do in that, but I do think we've got some of the lowest numbers of children in TA, but we're also incredibly mindful the disruption of TA and what the importance of a stable home is. So I'll take that away as well, leader, to talk to the management team about how we do that.
Just a short note, I think because I've just recently got some data from the housing team in terms of how many families with children were out of the borough, and that figure was, I think it's more than 1,000. So it's the children that are out of the borough probably leaving schools, moving schools, so I just wanted to include that in this as well.
Thank you for your presentation. My question is, I'm really, really concerned about the SEND. A lot of the residents I'm supporting at the moment are the children of four years old, and there's clearly something wrong, but there's no assessment, they're going into school, they have no special person to look after them. It's rising, and children are suffering, parents are suffering, hence mental health, poor mental health. So I know we don't have the money, but we have to find the money. How are we gonna, what is the procedure? What are we going to do?
I mean, Councillor Pendle, I completely share your concern in this area. We have, the EHCP system to me has been so detrimental to children with additional needs. You know, you've got a system that instead of, is about including every child in education, is about proving how badly you need support. And you know, to have waiting times to even get that assessment of over two years is unacceptable. You know, we're putting a lot of support into our schools, you know, to preempt these kind of things, and you know, working with great nurseries, like Newington Green Nurseries that have SEND specialism, working with organisations like Place to Be in primary schools to hold children. But it's a system that, as you say, it's got nowhere near the resource it needs. And I think we need to continue pushing our new government to really look at this area, and for us to be funded. But it's, at the moment, it's also in a really invidious situation of being kind of our responsibility, the school's responsibility, and the health system's responsibility. And we need to get that joined up a lot better as well.
I can't see. Okay, let's bring it over here. Okay, oh yeah, thanks. So, under successes empowering people, there's an item about the two access Islington hubs. I went to the launch of the first hubs, the one at Upper Street. And the third one is due to be open in September. I'd like to know how that's progressing. But also, in this note, it mentions that 9,356, 50 residents have been through the first two hubs. I think it would be good to know how successful these hubs are in people's satisfaction. Because the idea of them was that there would be like a one-stop shop and people would be dealt with. They wouldn't be passed from pillar to post, but there's nothing here that really elaborates on how successful they are. The number of people going through is quite large, but how happy are they with the service with this access Islington hub?
Thank you, Tricia. I mean, yes, we measured the number of visits, but we also measured the resolutions in cases brought through the hubs and the satisfaction rates to them. And I wanted to chair whether it might be worth bringing a separate, deeper dive into that as, you know, 'cause we have the data. I don't have all the data with us tonight, but so that I can show you the impact and those, maybe give you some case studies about how it has resolved things. But also, I will say, I don't think we should shy away from learning in this council. So it's been great that we've had the two current hubs in place. But as we move to our northern hub, what's brilliant about where our northern hub will be will be that it's placed in manor gardens. So we have a new opportunity to work with the voluntary sector in a way that we haven't in the previous hubs. We have also looked at the budget of that new hub. Councillor Chapman's done a brilliant job of working with offices to reduce that by a quarter of the previous budget. So we're making a lot of positive changes in that and also working with the libraries, the manor garden library. So there's a lot of positivity going into that. And I think it's really an illustration of, like, learning. So the south hub has a particular flavour because it's with the housing office there, and obviously 222 has a different flavour because it's with our council services. But I think the northern hub as well will be another opportunity working with voluntary sector to see how we can support residents to get it right the first time. Just building on that, internally within the council, Councillor, we've also got our resident experience programme. That's mentioned in the delivery plan because we want to make sure that when our residents contact us, they're satisfied. And our ambition is around 85% levels of satisfaction because I know, when I've been sharing this message with the organisation all week, that when people contact us, that gives a very strong indication about how satisfied they are as a council overall. And it's really important that wherever any resident makes contact with us, whether that's someone walking the street or in one of our Islington hubs, that they get the right support and we're signposting and we're supporting. So the resident experience is going to do a number of different things. It's going to improve our online offer. So those residents who are confident and capable of going online do, because then what it means is the space, this continued space in our access Islington hubs to deal with more vulnerable residents, whether they're going to need much closer support and discussion around what they need. And one of the other things the team do do is understand why people are coming in. And again, that can influence where we might change some of our offers that we're dealing with, enquiries more quickly where it's appropriate to do so.
Yeah, I'd like to take up, Councillor Colm Schwartz's offer for more information. That'd be great.
Certainly.
Councillor Wayne, if I may, so the team do regular performance reports. I'm confident we can do both of those things. We can give you an update so you understand the position now and we can give them a follow-up date this time next year.
Thank you, Chair. May I please also just refer back to perhaps the first question and the first responses to acknowledge on the work of the council officers and just to give our gratitude to that. My question, thank you so much for the presentation. It's so lovely to see the amazing things that have been achieved in Islington and of course the unfortunate challenges that we are presented with. However, going back to perhaps something that you've mentioned, Chair, that the portfolio of the leader, I was thinking what I've not seen and what I've not heard today is really what's that strategic approach of delivering the leader's portfolio and what is it that the leader does and their team does that leads to the delivery of these amazing things and how are you able to measure that you are having an impact on these things and it's not, for example, those in the community or something by chance is happening and a lot of what is mentioned here are actually pieces of work that are underneath other executive members. So it's hard to then identify what's their work versus the leader's work. So I guess my question is, can you give us detail about the strategic approach that the leader and their team take to deliver their portfolio that leads to what we're seeing in this delivery and showcase also what are their KPIs to be able to measure that they are delivering something?
Yeah, thank you. Yes, I mean, I suppose I see my role as under the portfolio of kind of overall management is making sure that I'm supporting all the executive members. We have monthly one-to-ones where we discuss all of the portfolio areas and we talk about kind of their vision and how they wanna take that forward and through leadership meetings that we have weekly, we talk as a team about how we think that will work and how we shape that and the priorities of that. And I think one of the things that we've done more recently is the delivery plan that's also outlined in this paper because I really want us to be a council that has pace and grip in delivery. We have huge ambitions and that's brilliant but they're not really worth anything if they're not being delivered and delivered with residents at their heart. So making sure that we have that action plan that's gone through the executive but also for a long time, I've been passionate that we know the impact that we're having. So reviewing the KPIs as a council and making sure that we have a performance dashboard that actually doesn't, as we were talking about, about the access hubs, doesn't just talk about how many things we do but actually are they making a difference to those residents and also showing prioritisation and leadership is an illustration of that.
Just to build on the point about performance and KPIs, so supporting the delivery plan will be a short performance report that will come to the executive that will hold myself and the corporate management team to account in terms of its delivery. It'll both be a sort of a narrative on the impact. So if we'd done what we said we would in the same way, wouldn't you, as the leader said, what's the impact against outcomes? And then of course, all of you, as chairs of scrutiny, have an opportunity to really deep dive into any aspects of the delivery plan and the work that's happening. I think it's a really important moment and the leader was very clear to me when I started. Victoria's on YouTube, she said, we want you to be able to show delivery through the organisation of the ambition that the administration and the executive have set out. I really think that delivery plan is the first important marker to do that because it shows the focus and the prioritisation on the top 33 things. It's not to take away from all of the other things that the organisation does that we think will deliver on the Islington Together 2030 vision and help to try and move and address some of the challenges that our residents experience.
Still, I think the answer doesn't capture all of the leader's portfolio, for example, comms.
Yeah, absolutely. I think we're actually, I'm bringing forward a comms strategy in the next couple of months. I think we've been on a real journey with our communications. It's been a little slower than I would have liked, but that may be because I'm generally an impatient person, but getting a corporate director who's kind of took in the whole comms team, restructured it. I feel like we used to do comms in a very traditional way. It was all about press releases and quotes to our local papers. That continues to be a section, but we've expanded a lot in terms of internal comms, in terms of digital comms, and also in terms of engagement. I think that that's really what we've heard from residents that they want doing the Let's Talk Islington piece of work we did. What came back really strongly through that is that residents want to be heard and residents want to be engaged on the stuff that we do. So having an engagement facility within the communications team has really helped. But also, I think, and I know that this is a foible of many councils, but we do brilliant work and we don't often talk about it. So we've now got a public affairs function as a council, which also, given that we are in the brilliant position of being a Labour council with a Labour mayor and the Labour government, we have such an opportunity now to change things for our residents. And having a public affairs team that can put together evidence from across the council to influence select committees, to give us, today I used a pact from the public affairs team to talk to one of our local MPs about what they can do for us for a change. All of my other briefings, I've been like, here's a briefing on what we're doing as a council. But now we have an opportunity to say, these are our priorities. In your conversation with ministers and things, how do you help us deliver for residents? So that's exciting.
Thank you, Chen. I would ask the first questions if I get a chance. If it goes around, then I'll, absolutely. My question is really around the current budget constraints that we have. As leader, the box still stops reaching. And I'm inclined to know how much of an input do you have with some conversation around our current budget constraint? Especially overspent. And I'm sure there's something that must be important. I might be jumping into some other agenda that we're dealing with. But I'm intrigued to understand your positioning in terms of how you engage in, either the exec members around this, or even the officers around this, especially under overspent. Are you demanding that there's something is done? Or are you just accepting it as something that is totally, firstly, I know about the national constraint, but I mean, overspent is internal in-house positioning. We've put ourselves there. So if you can just elaborate a little bit on that, that'd be great.
Thank you. Yes, and I think given how you framed the question, I think you know that we do look at our pressures in all our departments regularly. So I'm very clear with our executive team that they all have a role in their budget, that they should be in their monthly PLMs talking about their budget and not going forward as what, we were in a cycle of just looking at our budget previously as kind of what's your savings going to be next year and how's that gonna be. But now we ask executive members to look at the current budget and the pressures and what's being done to manage that. But we also, I think, bimonthly come together as a leadership team and Dave Hodgkinson, our Director of Finance, comes to those meetings and literally goes through with all of us the pressures, why the pressures are there. Are they, why the contextual pressures, as you mentioned, Councillor Jackson, or are they specific to Islington? Is there something corporately that we're not managing quite right that needs to be changed? And also not only understanding what the issue is, but what is being done to manage that. And then the next one will come back and executive challenge about, okay, but you mentioned that the problem last time was this, how has that moved on? And I've really seen that as part of the, I know we're talking a lot about TAs this evening, but part of the thing that we really challenged on was we all know we have a TA policy, we all know that it's a difficult area, but actually what are we doing in the other areas around that to reduce that? So we know some of the, you know, sadly reasons why people are forced into TA, domestic violence, you know, private rented sector. So what are we doing in our landlord licensing schemes about that? What are we doing in our board team about that to minimise it? So, and that's a long-winded way of saying yes, we hold the budget as a team on the executive. And I know that Councillor Ward does an amazing job at holding it, you know, in his portfolio, but I think it's incumbent on all of us and offices to manage day-to-day.
Just to add to that Councillor Cowan, as the chief executive for the management and day-to-day budget management of our organisation, I'll candidly say it's one of my objectives as the chief executive that the leader has set me to make sure that we have robust financial management. I know we'll come on to it, but at the moment our expected budget pressure at the end of this final course of things like TA, adult social care, we have mitigations for each. And I have a set of governance structures within the officer structure that again, holds corporate directors to account, their leadership teams to account.
I guess, I'm intrigued to find out how are you, are there anything that you feel like you would have liked to see us do, but where we are at the moment, we might not be able to achieve them.
Are you saying, sorry, Councillor Jackson, that, you know, if the money floodgates come forth, what would we do?
If it doesn't.
What would we not do?
Yeah, are there anything, a flagship, part of what piece of work that you would have liked us to do as a council that we are probably already doing, but looking at where we are at this point, we might not be able to do that because we might have to make big bold decisions.
Yeah, okay, sorry, Councillor Jackson, I'm with you now. Yes, and that really worries me. I have to say, I know we have a lot of work to do, but it really worries me, I have to say, I know we've got really difficult decisions coming forward with our budget, you know, I outlined a gap. There is, we have been stewards of our budgets for over a decade now, making difficult, difficult decisions, and I know we set a collective budget, so I know all of you around the table have been with us in that, but there are no little decisions anymore. There is no, you know, lessening of stationery anymore. We don't do that anymore, you know. We are now looking at big decisions, really hard decisions, and I think in that, we need to keep our residents that need us most prioritised and we need to think about actually our long-term ambition for our residents, and I think we need to do that in a way that's sensitive. So one of my major worries is that we do something that only stores up issues for us later on, but that's going to be difficult. We're gonna have real difficult choices ahead. And yeah, I know that a lot of other local authorities who are in a lot worse financial position than we are have already taken those decisions, but also I think there's also peer learning in that, like what did they, when kind of forced at the edge of the cliff, what did they do and how, and can we learn from that when we're nowhere near that to do things differently and better, but yes.
Thank you, Chair. I love what I've heard about in terms of urgency and pace and getting on with the work, and that's why it really frustrates me that our recycling rate in Islington has plateaued for the last decade around 30% at best. I believe there have been numerous communication strategies, some investment in capital in terms of business as well, but is it time now for a big decision, like fortnightly household recycling?
Thank you. Yes, I mean, what I will say about our recycling rate is contextually more complicated in Islington than it is other places. We don't like someone I know who's a Councillor in Merton who was like, oh yeah, we have great recycling rates 'cause they all have gardens. And you can, you know, there's rates and how you measure those and there are things in that. So we have to understand that we're never gonna reach those kind of rates because we don't have places with huge garden, we're a very constrained borough. But I think it's also really important. Yes, we have had a lot of communications previously. And I know Matthew Bunce from the team is really brilliant and really passionate about the work, but I don't think we've held it corporately in the same way as we're holding it now. So you'll see from the food waste communications that we're doing at the moment, it's not, we've done a lot. You'll see at the next Islington Life that writ large, but also what we're doing in a way that we haven't done previously and Councillor Clark has been a real advocate of this, is actually we're gonna have for the first time people going door to door and talking to people about food waste recycling. We've got some funding to do that. I think previously, you know, Councillor North told me that on his estate some bins were put on his estate, but no information about what they were and what they were. So we're taking a real proactive approach at the moment to get those rates up, because we know how important it is.
Chair, just to say, I think Councillor Colm Schwartz means Matthew Homer, not Matthew Bunch.
Thank you.
That's really encouraging to hear, but also I don't think that the council or the executive holding the recycling can actually increase those rates. I think it's important to go to the people as part of the portfolio through consultations, potentially seeing what the appetite in this little community is to move to something that will save council money and also increase recycling rates, as we have seen across London with almost any other borough in London doing so.
Yeah, thank you. And I have to say that I don't think we change any system in a borough slightly. And I know that people's bin collection is the one thing in the whole borough that every resident receives. So we need to do that with real investigation. And I have to say, we do look at it really regularly. You know, we're looking at it currently again. And I think, you know, there are a lot of other boroughs that do it, but the results have been really inconsistent from those about how, if they have actually increased the recycling rates, if they have actually reduced the money. And I don't wanna take a ginormous decision, a huge step change in the borough without being reassured that it is going to see the results that we want it to see.
And just to add to that also, when the leader referred to public affairs, some of the work that we've also been doing is trying to push the previous government now, the new government to be really clear about what their national approach to waste and resources strategy is. I know members on the Environment Committee probably know this, but there's been delays to extended producer responsibility, delays to deposit return schemes. These are really important things that we need to come into play to really help, I guess, the whole national waste and resources system be better than what it is now. And I also think it needs to have a much stronger focus on reducing carbon emissions because actually our attention around waste would be on things like textiles and food waste. So it's right at the moment that we're running our gold campaign around food waste 'cause it's a good opportunity also into sort of the festive period about why that produces more opportunities for recycling as well. So we're trying to come at it from a number of different avenues as well.
Thank you, thanks very much for this. I just wanted to build on some things that have been said around communication and delivery. So it was really good to hear that you're working on that communication strategy. We know that you can't deliver appropriately or properly without effective awareness and without effective comms. So I'm glad to see there's a point in here about the IMAX team securing the additional income. A lot of my ward surgeries is taken up with people coming to us about benefits or access to that. They just don't know about the IMAX team. And we love them, we know what they do, and I know we've tried to get this message out. But the question is how do we keep improving around those costs? And similarly within that as well, and please take this in the spirit that this question is 'cause I do generally like some of the work we've done around refurbishment, but things around our hubs, and again, thank you for saying you bring this back, but places like where there has been a big refurbishment, how do we then justify to residents that come to ask us about those costs, particularly when we're having to make really difficult budget choices and having problems with overspends as well? So how would you address those two issues?
Okay, so on the, sorry, the issue of communication for blank bags. Yeah, IMAX, yes, you're absolutely right. It's a great team, and we have been trying a myriad of ways to communicate what they do. You know, we've had cost of living leaflets. We've had huge campaigns. You know, you will have seen the posters we had all up and down upper street to kind of maximise the knowledge of income maximisation. But we can always do more. And I think what I would say, if you allow me, Councillor Staff, is to say as key advocates for residents in the borough, what do you think we should be doing differently in this space? Because it is something that, you know, I'm so deeply passionate about. People getting the money that they're entitled to. It's not like we're giving them a handout. This is money that they're entitled to. So any reflection from any council is about, you know, where you think we're missing. Are we missing certain communities? You know, what could we be doing differently? Like, I know Councillor Hyde said something the other day about, you know, a simple leaflet with a QR code might be, you know, the answer to something around community safety. So please do feed in if you think there's more ways that we could be reaching people with like brilliant services like that. And then the second question was, sorry, TTT. What I will say is, and as I said previously, Councillor Chapman is doing a really good job on the new hub to make sure that that's, you know, the spend on that is already reduced by 25%. But what I will say is two things, that those hubs were budgeted for, they didn't go over. But also I think it's about dignity and respect. And why should you have a really difficult conversation about what's going on in your life in a place that feels like it's, you know. I think previously we had little cubby rooms and having a horrible conversation in a horrible atmosphere does not make you feel any more dignified. You've already had to come to someone to ask for help and that's a big step for a lot of people. So I think, you know, and we have staff in there doing amazing work, but having really hard conversation and holding people, why should they feel like their job is devalued and have that in a really kind of grotty space? We shouldn't. You should come in, you should feel relaxed, you should be able to have someone on your side in a nice environment say, oh, we're glad you're here, we wanna help you as much as we can. And so I don't, I get that sometimes, but you know, PWC would never, ever have a shoddy office, right, and we don't have that kind of money, but if we can give people a bit of dignity and respect, why not?
Thank you, sorry, for going sort of last in the question because much has been said around delivery now, you know, as a backbench council, I'm not going to make this mild-made specific, but you know, I was proud to sort of stand on a manifesto in 2020 to continue to be proud about all that we deliver, you know, but for me, my question is around capital delivery and how, so for example, we as councillors and backbench councillors can reassure our residents that we are going to deliver on our commitments because in the sort of three years I've been elected, but two years in this sort of term, I've been a bit concerned about, you know, the pace at which we deliver large projects, but also small projects. Now, I note the delivery plan, which was presented at executive in July, and you know, I've had conversations previously, but I would like to know what I can do to reassure residents that we will move at pace to deliver large and small capital projects. I note that there is a process which is, you know, initiate, design, refine, deliver, but I want to know how long is going to be spent on the delivery phase of that because you know, we have the projects that we need to deliver, so we don't need to initiate, we just need to deliver, and I would like to know what the council are going to do within the next two years to deliver. Thank you.
Yeah, it's a really good point, and it sort of comes back to one of the first conversations that the leader had with me, and it might have been on my first day, delivery is so important, and so the delivery plan is one part of it. What I do know around capital delivery as an organisation does well broadly, but actually when I've been out with board councillors, you've expressed sort of individual frustration, so one of the areas of improvement that we've started to implement is around how we programme and project manage capital delivery. Are we being really clear when we're setting out a clear milestone so that can be clear to me as the chief executive, that can be clear to you as members, as board councillors about delivering. The other part of that is for me to hold my senior management team and for them to hold other offices to account for that delivery because there'll always be exceptions where things will get delayed if there's challenges in planning or whatever, but actually what we need to get into is a much stronger rhythm, so I would say it's still a work in progress, Councillor Weeks, but one of my top priorities that we get much more swift. The other thing that we're doing that will help, I think, is actually some of our constitutional changes around the work with the constitutional working group, we're taking decisions at the right level, and I've also been talking to officers about the importance, all week, 'cause I've been talking to them all week about the delivery plan, about the importance of delivering on time and getting things like the basics done right. A part of that is also keeping you up to date as board councillors. It doesn't take a lot to drop you a line and just say, just to let you know this is still on track, just say, yeah, this has gone a little bit off, I'm gonna phone you and work it through, so I think there's a cultural piece as well as some work around system and process.
Well, and when we got elected successfully in 2020, to Ukraine was, unfortunately, still a new event. Inflation was going up, and after residents needed increase, I'm almost at, yeah, and then sort of levels of cost of living support. Unfortunately, these things are now business as usual. I think you have a safer inflation which may come down, but how is the council looking at, say, Ukraine now and cost of living support going up and factoring that into the plans, because that's what people can look at, yeah. So those three events were what affected projects two years ago, but it still can't in two years' time.
Sorry, Councillor Weeks, can I just clarify, are you asking about individual residence budgets supporting them for that, or do you mean the council's budgets on things like housing and?
For me, those events that I just listed were the reasons given for slowing down projects. Now, those events should now be treated as business as usual, and then after my question is, are those business as usual events now being affected into our project delivery? Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor Weeks. I'll start, but if Victoria has more operational details, then that would be really helpful.
I think overall, yes, and we have adapted to that. So I think one of the things we've done, for example, on energy is we previously had a system where we were on our own in terms of buying energy. And when Ukraine happened, we really looked at that and about the best way of adding, like getting actually better value in that. And we've now part of a regional consortium to buy energy as a grouping. So it's making structural long-term changes that do that. But also on our housing, I think we've learned a lot because of this spike in actually who are we commissioning? How are we commissioning? And actually Caroline Wilson's here. He's running a huge piece of work for us to make us in line with the new procurement legislation, which is something that's huge and arduous and challenging. But actually, I think there's a lot of opportunity for us in that to get more, more social value, better and long-term contracts so that we're not, this is an example, not a reality, but we're not commissioning every playground equipment individually, but we have one framework to do that annually and getting a longer term view in commissioning that enables us to manage some of those fluctuations and get better benefit out of it.
Yeah, so just some, I'll just add to that. So there's a number of ways in which we try to understand those different risks. So the executive in March considered the viability of the new build programme as a whole, as a result of some of those inflationary costs that we'd seen. Also, some of them are driven by building safety, the need for two staircases. I get updated regularly on the percentage increase in cost of cement. But we also have things like our principal risk register, which sets out some of our principal risks that we consider. We have a monthly discussion as the corporate management team about risk. Where's that playing into our organisation? It gives us information that we feed through to the executive about where we might want to apply contingency for our whole organisation. But every project that we will run will have a contingency and they will think about where those individual risks for projects may apply. I appreciate it's incredibly challenging at the moment 'cause very global things feel very local very quickly. And it can change the dynamic of local government very quickly. Thank you for that question.
Thanks. Thanks for asking about SCN children. I could also ask about adult social care or drug and alcohol services. I'm gonna ask about violence against women and girls 'cause that's not covered in this report. And we all know about the COVID pandemic, but one of the other pandemics we face as a society is the ongoing escalating rates in different ways as things move online in every part of society that we as a council respond to violence against women and girls, that it isn't just a police matter. It's very much on our radar too. So I just wanted to ask about where we're up to with that, early intervention with that or future plans for that.
Yeah, and it is a area of work that we have worked, I think, diligently for a long time. And I think one of the best things that we do as a council is recognize where we can support victims and where our voluntary sector can support victims. So the Violence Against Women and Girls Board is co-chaired with the voluntary sector and Councillor Wolf. And we really look at the services that we commission, but also the outcomes of that commission service. We have gone from, I remember when I was on that board, arguing with health about whether we could afford it was or not to having a well-networked team of it was in the voluntary sector, in statutory services, in hospitals, in lots of touch points. So that, you know, when those moments arise and we know that, you know, it can be, I think it's the average six times that someone can come in contact with services and not disclose. So we need as many opportunities for victims to be able to be heard. So I'm really proud of the work that we're doing in that. We have daily merits on domestic violence, which is reviewing our most complex and high risk cases around domestic violence. What I've challenged Councillor Wolf to think about is, 'cause it is going up, is what are we seeing in that? Like we do children's services, are we seeing repeats? You know, we're saying it's complex and high risk. So, you know, what are we doing in the early intervention space perhaps to get that right first time? So it's something that I'm deeply passionate about. It's something that I really challenge Councillor Wolf to continue. I think that we know that we have a good service in place. We know that we work with amazing partners in place, but we know that it is a societal issue that is increasing and we need to be on the front foot and really challenging ourselves in delivering in that area.
Just to add to that, just to build it back into the earlier conversation around temporary accommodation. So we have seen over a hundred percent increase in people who are suffering from domestic violence going into TA, around that domestic abuse alliance accreditation through housing. I have to just build on what the leader said. The daily MARAC meetings, I've sat in on one of those. I've never seen that organisation. It's a fantastic service that we provide.
Sorry, Che, can I add one more thing? And I'll be very quick about it. Also, I think we all recognise around this table that domestic violence is not a women's issue, primarily. I mean, I know that there's caveats in that, but we also commission and fund a lot of work with perpetrators. And I think that that's really something. You know, when I first started doing this work, that was seen as quite difficult, but I've had people from now, previous female-led organisations say they're so grateful that we have done it and they really get why we do it now, because we have to turn off the tap and any opportunity we can to work with men to change their behaviours, we must take up. So I'm really proud that we commissioned that work as well.
Thank you, Che. Thank you, Kaia and Victoria, to hear. Just a question. The question is that Councillor Jackson already mentioned the budget here. And within the budget, adult social care is one of the biggest killer of the budget. And this year, within this adult social care, we are scrutinising older people home, because this is a wonder, and there is so many elements there. But the main focus is on the older people, their population is increasing. You can't cut the service, because if you cut, like if you reduce the social worker, that means our vulnerable people face difficulty in everything, you can't do it. This is a political choice, I think, rather than more, and I think our director and everything is doing a fantastic job to do something. But as a leader, you know this is an issue of our present level government here. If they are not saying anything to give extra money or anything yet, what are you doing your leader level to let our government know that we needed money for adult social care to otherwise our council, not only our council, other council will bust very soon. And this is a political issue and political issue, this is one of my question. And one more question with that one is, I understood that because our 95% case work is housing, and since 2006 to still now, we can't limit this one. I feel this government will give us a target to build house, but Islington hasn't got place to build house. What is your plan, if we are given the target to build more house, where are you gonna build, what is your plan? Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor Choudry. First of all, on adult social care, I'm really proud that I'm the Labour lead on the Local Government Association of Health and Adult Social Care. So I very, very regularly talk to the government about adult social care and the complexity of the current system and how broken it is currently, whether that be employment rights for carers, whether that be dignity and respect for people receiving care, and also having the funding to deliver on all of those priorities and get health and social care correct for people receiving it. It's one that has to be one of our greatest priorities, and as you said, it is a huge part of the reason that local government is at risk of falling over, so we have to get it right. And I know that the new government is looking at whether to get a royal commission in this space, whether they're talking about a 10-year plan to create a national care service like the National NHS, but we've been very clear with them through the LGA that we think that the home for that is local government, not the NHS. So I'm very strident in this area because we have to get it right because it's, yes, it's a huge financial risk, but it's also people's lives. And we talk about adult social care, and that's from a young person of working age with learning difficulties, rights is someone who's going into palliative care at the end of their life. So we must, you know, it's a huge section of our society that we have to support. We're all going to be touched by adult social care in our lives. So it's something I'm really passionate about, keep on pushing to get correct. And then on housing, yes, yeah. Well, what I will say is we've always, and with Councillor Ward in the room, you know, we've always been really passionate about new building and building new homes. And we know that the government is now very passionate about that too. But we also know in Islington that the solution in housing cannot be held in new build alone. We know, especially as one of the biggest landlords of social housing, that it has to be about money for our current stock. You know, we need to bring back decent home standards, funding, it has to be about the wider system of private rented sector regulation and rent regulation and landlord responsibilities, TA that we've talked about a lot this evening, homelessness, supported accommodation, the whole system. And Victoria was pointing at this, which is a brilliant report that we've worked on with South ex, taking the lead on this, on securing the future of council housing. But it's really, it's really brilliant because it talks about all of those issues that I've just mentioned. It doesn't just talk about new build. And it talks about the complexity of building in London, that we are really constrained. So there's more building we can do. And we know we're very innovative, but also what I would say is, and I know I've talked about money a lot this evening, but if we got more money for housing, we have schemes ready to go, oven ready. I should, oh God, that's an awful thing to say. (muffled speaking) Yeah, I know, I know. But you know, literally leadership has gone through a number of schemes that are really ready to go. And I know that a lot of us have talked about those in our wards already. So, you know, we are ready for when the government are ready to give us money.
So I'm gonna take final question from me. Sorry, Bash, but we, I think, need to move on. We received at the last committee as part of the performance update, some very worrying statistics about both the volume of complaints in 23/24 and the number of complaints that were being upheld. What do you think is driving these numbers? And what are you as a leader going to be doing to ensure that both the volume and numbers of complaints fall in the forthcoming years?
Yeah, thank you, Councillor Wayne. Yes, it's something that me and Victoria talked about repeatedly in our one to ones. It's something that, you know, we've both done personal kind of deep dives into the nature of those complaints. And I know Councillor Ward has talked to you a lot about the resident experience work that he's doing. And that's the reason that that work is such a priority for us. About getting those systems in place. Having, you know, being invested in getting those systems in place that mean that whatever the issue is, that we're getting it right first time. And having, like, also talking to the call centre staff. They, of course, want to do a great job on our behalf. But, you know, do they have the tech to do that? Do they have the connections with the service? Like last time we had a meeting with the unions, they were saying, actually, things like turn of offices internally is a challenge for them. So actually, how are we equipping them with that information? So it's something that, and I'm sure Victoria will add, it's something that we are definitely not complaining about. We really want to reduce that down. As Victoria said earlier, you know, we should be able to, the way that our residents interact with us is really a test of our service and how we're delivering for them.
Yeah, I would also say on complaints, I think some of the volume is related to the volume of in-house services here in Islington, but also the size of your housing stock. So if you've got 36,000 people in homes, there are always going to be issues. I think it's recognising as well that the organisation does about 120,000 repairs a year. So we're not always going to get everything right. I think the key thing is, how do we learn from it? How do we apologise and how do we reduce the likelihood of that happening again? And we've seen a lot of learning in the organisation from when we had the special report from the LGI around housing. We've very much been able to deliver on all of the actions so that we are now, if I could put it this way, of no particular interest to the housing ombudsman at this moment in time, because they are pleased with the progress. I think there's always things that we can do about where we learn from complaints, particularly when things are escalating from a stage one complaint to a stage two. So what's driving that? Because it's okay, I think, for people to give us feedback where we need to be better, we need to listen to that. But what is it between stage one and stage two where we're not getting that right and we're not getting that right first time? And that's where we've been spending a lot of time. And if I give you an example, we've got a complaints board that meets very regularly to look at that, but we've also seen housing where they get some of the highest volume of our complaints where they're looking at that escalation and they do that deep dive audit on a really regular basis to try and stay alive to the issues and then also how we can fix it. But I have to say, some of the reasons we will get complaints are some of the reasons that the leaders outlined about why we want to lobby government for a different way of funding and securing housing, because some of the challenges we will face over the long term in terms of our investment into our homes cannot be solved unless there are some changes nationally to either the local housing allowance, to right to buy, that gives us more flexibility and investment that we can put back into tenants' homes.
Some residents would say that before we build new homes, we put our own existing homes in order. As leader, do you think at the moment we've got the balance right between maintaining our current housing stock and building new homes?
Balance, right, okay. I mean, what I would say is I do think we invest a lot in our current stock. We do, you know, as I've mentioned before, we're compliant in all of our risk areas. We've done a hell of a lot investing in areas that we know are key concerns, like damp and mould, really revolutionise how we're approaching that. What I don't think we do enough is talk about how much we invest in our current stock. Once again, we do regular capital works, cyclical works, and we do that and we do it well and never mention it to anyone, and that is our investing in our stock. We have some really, you know, some of the first social housing ever in the country, so they're really old stock, they're difficult, and we know all of us will have an estate in our thing with a particular peculiarity that we know is intrinsic to how difficult that stock is, so it's going to be an ongoing challenge. If we had more money, I'd definitely do more in that area, but we know also that investing in new homes is really important because of things like the environmental impact of those new homes is just of a completely different standard. You know, we know that actually the configuration of homes is completely different to, you know, when that Victorian stock was built, so it is a balance, and we know that also, like, you know, the number of rooms, it is a balance, and I know also that another thing I do, if, you know, the money came forward, is do a hell of a lot of retrofitting because we know that we could, we did that study with UCL, we know how we could do it, but we need the money to be able to do that, and it's something I also regularly lobby on.
Yeah, and if I just add a few more things to that, so, you know, this year, the Organised Aid, we've spent 50 million in capital into homes, so at the moment, about 97% of our homes are considered decent, I think that's why, in the delivery plan, one of the things that we've put in there is about tenant satisfaction, because you're right, Councilwoman, hearing the voices of our tenants and how they feel about the place that they live is important, and we're wanting, and our expectation is that they are all upper quartile. So, again, you'll be able to hold me to account, and the leader to account this time next year on that matter.
Thank you, I'm extremely grateful to the leader and the chief exec, because we've extended this session, albeit that that was as a result of the discussion that we had at the pre-meeting, that we really wanted to prioritise this tonight, because it's really our annual opportunity to quiz the leader, so extremely grateful to the leader and the chief executive for coming, and I think we'll see you again in a few months' time to discuss the progress with the five corporate missions that we have. We're going to move on now to the next topic, because we spent-- - Yes, but very sorry to interrupt, and I appreciate you wanted to end it. I did see that Councillor Jackson--
Sorry, Chair, I thought this was just for a prop. We currently do not have a director for the environment sector, so just before you go, can you just clarify, that's been for a long time now, and that department is also overspending, so, Chair, I just thought it's, sorry, what's going on?
Very, very quickly, Chair, I promise you. Both the corporate director for environment and the corporate director for housing is now being advertised. Please help us. It's on LinkedIn. Please share widely.
So we will now move on to the scrutiny review and the presentation. Just, Caroline, we need to give you a steer, and to give those that will be coming on the budget monitoring. What we decided was, because we have quite regular budget monitoring, that if something had to be squeezed a little bit in terms of time, it would be the budget monitoring and the MTFS. So, Caroline, probably in terms of timing, about 40 minutes in total for this session, and if, in terms of the presentations, we can keep them to, I think, five minutes each, that will be great. We've all read the documentation. It'd be great to prioritise the questions. Hopefully that's a helpful steer.
Thank you very much, Chair. And your feedback at the start of the meeting was very helpful, and I thought it might be useful just to kind of go back a little bit on what the Progressive Procurement Strategy is. We've given you an update on where we've got to, but I thought maybe just a little bit of context on what that is. The Progressive Procurement Strategy was written in 2020. It was an opportunity to really look at how we pull the lever of our buying and purchasing power within the council. It was written within the context of COVID, and so it very much has that recovery language throughout it. And we really focused on embedding social value into the organisation. It was a journey that the organisation had been on, and the Progressive Procurement Strategy was really an opportunity to capture it at that point. The focus in social value was really around jobs, apprenticeships, work experience. We looked at things like London Living Wage and career progression in terms of those contracts that were being outsourced. We also looked at kind of what our definition of insourcing was and kind of the focus on that. We also looked at, within the Progressive Procurement Strategy, around leadership in things like climate emergency and looking at supply chains and how we look at employee-owned supply chains within our supply chains. So there are three themes within the Progressive Procurement Strategy. One is around active leadership, and really the actions under that are in relation to the role of counsellors and to executive members in terms of the leadership that we show around the progressive use of our purchasing power and senior managers, but also then how we collaborate with people like there are anchor institutions across the borough. And the second area was around progressive supply partnerships, and that was really looking at kind of the business of procurement and really looking at contract management, but also how we can incentivise innovation within our purchasing and commissioning practices. And the final chapter or the final action theme was around community benefits and really looking at how, as an organisation, we could be pioneers in that and really looking at how we bring more SME, small and medium businesses into our supply chain, as well as the voluntary community sector. So within the presentation, there was a bit of an update in terms of some of the actions that we've done. So active leadership, you'll be aware that we have established the anchors network, but some of the work that we remain to do over the next period, the next three years, is around co-design and really looking at how we embed that resident's voice within our commissioning practice. Under the supply partnerships, we looked at, we have published in sourcing guidance for officers, so it's very clear when they come to commissioning a contract that that's one of the first conversations they have is around, is there an opportunity to deliver this directly ourselves? One of the pieces, and Councillor Comer Sports mentioned it around the Procurement Act, is around contract management and how we get better at that and really look at how we squeeze contracts for commerciality within the organisation. And then the final piece was around social value and making sure that we had 20% embedded throughout the processes and I think many of the commissions or many of the procurement bids coming to our board didn't have social value at the very start, but very much now do and we really challenge them and make sure that we can get as much social value as possible. The next part of our journey is really looking at how we mainstream that and capture that additional value within the organisation. So the Procurement Act, we just had an announcement today, it was due to be launched on the 28th of October. It's now being launched at the end of February, so it gives us a couple of extra months to do the implementation of that. But I think that's a really good opportunity for the organisation to kind of refresh its approach to contract management, to social value and to really embedding some of the principles that we set out in the original progressive procurement strategy, but take them to the next level and see what we can do next. I'm not sure, Councillor Bell Balfour, is there anything you would add?
Just got it at the time, so I think I'll leave it.
Start by asking this as far as the new act is concerned. As Morrissey might say, what difference does it make? What, as a result of this act, are we able to do as a council in terms of maximising social value that we weren't able to do previously? And does the act make it harder in any way for us to maximise social value? And in answering the question, I think the focus has got to be not so much on the operational, but on the principle of what can we do? What can we get out of a contract that we couldn't get out of a contractor before?
So I think the first thing to keep in mind is that the act, that the primary reason for the act is not to kind of help us get social value, but really it's because I think it comes from kind of a Tory belief that, like, local government's always wasting money. So it's what really undergirds is about transparency and ability. And I think there's big changes in there about how much we have to report. We have to report all the time at all stages, the levels of transparency, the ability for private companies to kind of take us to court where they think they've been, for address, where they think there's been an issue or they haven't been tended to the same way, which we didn't have before. So I think there's kind of big acts like that, and that's kind of the main drive of it. And then obviously within that, there is kind of more, again, another Tory push, although it's something we believe in, but I think it doesn't go as far enough around kind of involving small to medium enterprises. So I think if you look at opportunities from a new act, I think the main things are they want to see the actors to reduce the barriers for small to medium enterprises kind of enter the supply chain. Ways of doing that are everything from making it, how we advertise those, the contracts, our ability to break down big contracts into smaller contracts. So if you have a 200 million pound care contract, only the largest providers can bid for it. Now we've got the tools and the ability and also the kind of impetus to break those down into smaller contracts like care co-ops or kind of care companies that service a specific kind of group within your community can now kind of bid for those, we've got the tools to do that. The ability for us, that there's like a central digital register now where you can kind of put all those contracts in one place and for providers to put themselves on, which makes it easier for us to find them and then for them to find our contracts. And I think there's a lot more kind of market warming and lead in time to contracts coming online. I think that's an issue I've always had in the council is that we're not always clear when big contracts are coming up and if that's true for us and we're in the council, what does that mean for businesses? So now we've got to publish kind of a year, I think it's a year in advance when contracts are coming up. So that gives a year for businesses to kind of say, okay, here's what I've got to do internally to get myself ready to be in a place where I can legally bid for these contracts. So I think those are the big things. It's less about social value and more about opening the door for smaller and medium sized businesses to kind of get through the door and kind of bid for those contracts. I'm missing anything, Carol.
No, I think that's...
Similar to Councilor Nick's question, just in terms of visualizing what this might look like once the council has plans to implement it. Are there kind of clear examples of what the council wants to see from certain contracts in terms of specifically social value? So is there kind of the council knows exactly what areas they want to see more social value, how that looks, is it very tailored across the service or are we kind of relying on those who bid to kind of tell us what the social value is? 'Cause I think obviously it needs to be the other way round. This is our community, we know it. And secondly, have we prepared the ground for attractive bids? 'Cause I know previously, I think it's probably the same providers bidding and this goes for the smaller contracts as much as the much bigger ones. And what are we doing to prepare the ground to attract attractive bids so we can maximize the social value? Let's start with first, you take the attractive bids. So I think the thing about what we get from social value, so there's like the bread and butter, which we always get, which is like employment or like literally pots of money to run programs, which is fine, I think always beneficial. I think in terms of what we actually want to see, I think the same priorities we have as a council, it's about kind of improving workers' rights, which you kind of see through, like asking for like the living wage, which that's standard as contracts now, but it used to be social value. Just things like with the care contract where we had sick pay being added as a social value, now we have 70% of our providers providing it without us having to kind of fund it through our contract. There's things like workers' rights. But I think for me, a big thing is about, coming back to your point, Councillor Osmary, about who's kind of leading who. I think what we don't have is the ability for flexibility in contracts. So I think a good example is that we recently had a parking contract go out for tender and they came back to us and said, As social value, we'd love to give you free parking and you're in Islington. Like it's just kind of like a gift as part of social value in certain spaces. We then wanted to give that to a VCS organisation. The amount of effort it took to take something that's kind of outside the usual bounds of what we see as social value to make it then happen was, well, Caroline did it, so it's actually the amount of effort she did. But I think we're not set up to kind of be flexible when organisations come to us with things outside of just like money or employment. And I think when you're getting to that point where we were getting large contracts, often there are kind of like greater opportunities if you think about the contract we have with Film Fixer, which they manage all the kind of filming contracts we have. We could get money and jobs from them, but they also came to us and said, Actually, we'd love to have like an intro to filmmaking course as well. And that's kind of outside the scope we usually did. We ran that, I think one of Finn's children went on the course, they said they loved it. But I think it's that. So I think one of the things is, I think we're very good at kind of getting the bread and butter. What we're not very good at is when, is kind of work out contracts by contract, where it's like a specific area and they have like unique benefits they can provide. Us being in a place where we can say, yes, we can take the unique benefit and immediately do it and do it with kind of working outside of the usual panels that my portfolio covers.
So yes, so in terms of something additional that comes through the act, which I think answers some of your question is around pre-market engagement. So as officers and commissioners, we understand market engagement, that you've written what your specification is and you go to the market and you say, here's what we wanna do. One of the opportunities within the act is to do pre-market engagement. And there's an expectation to do pre-market engagement. And in that conversation with potential suppliers, there is the opportunity for greater innovation. And I think then that also allows us to have a much greater input in terms of what our residents are looking for and what the specific needs of Islington. So it's not a kind of cut and paste from any other borough. It's very much saying what we have. And in terms of, so I think that innovation piece is a really important part of kind of generating attractive bids that they feel that they've, as a supplier, they've really understood the needs of a local area. And then they've come with a bid that meets those needs, but also kind of allows them an opportunity for innovation. And within the council, we have a social value operations group, and it's a bit of a dragon's den at the moment for officers who are commissioning, that we bring them to people who cover employment and cover supply chains, and look at kind of what are the social value pieces that they could include in that, include in their commissioning documents at the moment. I think there's an opportunity in that to go further with that and to kind of give, as you're suggesting, here's the demographic requirements, here are some of the deprivation requirements of Islington, and really start that dialogue in the context of the new Procurement Act, so that there are innovative ways to do co-design, not only with officers of the council, but then ultimately with residents. So I think people like adult social care do it really, really well, 'cause it's very much linked to their care strategy, and I think we should do more of that as the Procurement Act allows.
That's really helpful, thank you for that. And I guess that will kind of lead into who will then monitor how social value is then implemented, 'cause that's a massive job with a lot of contracts, and then where would that kind of data be reported to? Yeah.
So one of the improvements that we're doing is a contracts register, so the council commissioned a digital contacts register. So historically, contracts have been managed locally within departments, and it's been a lot of contract managers scattered across the organization. The contracts register allows us a mechanism to collect that data at a central level, and within that, we're including a social value element of it. And that allows us, in time then, to say collectively across the organization, we've spent 650 million, we've generated 30 million kind of in a financial proxy of social value. So the contracts register will be really important in that. And in terms of the quality assurance piece, that will come into the Inclusive Economy Team, we're looking at social value assurance kind of roles within the team, who will sit within progressive procurement. So I think you're absolutely right, is it's well and good for an organization to say we're gonna deliver this social value, but then the council absolutely has to make sure it's delivered onto the quality that we want it delivered.
I'm going to come to Councilor Kondoka, Councilor Riverhaven, then Councillor Jackson, Councillor Clarke, then Councillor Jones. I'm strong in that order. I just wanted to pick up on something that Councillor Bell-Bradford said about some of the barriers to thinking outside the box a little bit about what we get from contractors. Are there any of those barriers that corporately, as a council, we can help with? Or is it just that this is all so new that you're learning about the options that you have for the first time? But are there any corporate barriers that are preventing you from really maximizing some of the opportunities that are provided to you?
So I think the biggest barriers, I think different departments across the council, some have no instruction on social value outside of the contracts as they come up, and some kind of completely understand it from the get-go. So I think construction and planning, the concept of providing you things for free or as an additional benefit is very clear. So I think the concept of yes, we also get free training and construction skills and things, part of a contract is kind of understood and they get it, and it's very easy to manage. For me, a good example where it's almost no knowledge, and I think not much of a good example of social value being harnessed is if you look at our IT sector, where we have one big provider, Microsoft, global company of which Giffington is probably a very small fish to them. They come back with the same contract every year, and I remember us going to the digital team and saying, Okay, we need to get social value from Microsoft. And they're like, Oh, we don't really know what social value could look like from Microsoft. And I suppose they didn't really ask before. I think we got to the point where we got free content. We got laptops and other things, but it was challenging. I think that's the thing. It's kind of getting each department to understand what is possible. And I think some departments interact with procurement all the time. Some departments interact with procurement like once every two years, in which case you kind of got to refresh them every time. So I think it's kind of getting to the point where every department understands what is possible and what they can ask for. And when we go to commission and procurement boards, myself, Councillor Ward, Caroline and Stephen are bored of saying over and over again, But we can get more social value. I think lots of people come with this instinct like, Oh, they're going to give us two jobs. We've done, that's great. And for, you know, it's just nowhere near good enough. Especially from there to be 20% of the weighting of a contract. So I think that's it. I think department by department, we've got like a real distinction about who understands social value and what's possible to be achieved. And unless we're there in the room, sometimes to kind of like nudge poke, things can slip through the gap.
Thank you, Chair. Following on with the hot topic of social value, and it perhaps is still following on from what's already been said. From what I'm hearing today and what I've seen in a lot of previous procurements, big and small, the social value that we get is often very, very connected to whatever is the actual procured item service. And again, with that thought, sometimes there's that lack of thinking outside that box of what else could be offered. How are you ensuring that you're enabling the teams or yourselves or the consultant, the client that you're working with, that you're procuring from, that you'll get that breadth of ideas of social value that go beyond just what that service is delivering. Oh, it's interesting that you mentioned the film fixer, that the social value is very much connected to the given internship opportunities because it's a film company. But then I think there's also a budget that also then goes to highways and parking because that's where the actual machinery and vehicles are all sat on the road. But all of that is still connected to, for example, arts and culture. Yet they, from what I have understood in their current or recent contract, do not receive any budget income from that contract and perhaps also limited social value, other social values. So just using that as an example, how would you go about changing perhaps current contracts, but also then with your new contracts being able to enable everyone involved to really see beyond just the service that is being provided, to really enable perhaps also other services that don't always get that attention and access to budget and to project opportunities where they could otherwise get it in these. Yeah, I mean, building on that, there is a cultural piece and it is about officers asking for more and really upping our commercial game. So it is about how do we push contracts. So one of the pieces that we're doing is looking at the chief executive has asked that she's gonna challenge each of the corporate directors on 10 of their largest contracts to really make sure that we're exacting as much as we possibly can from those contracts, writing to large suppliers and seeing what more they can deliver, telling them very clearly that we will not be paying for anymore. So I think that there is a, we've been on a bit of a journey with social value in so far as it's kind of been quite nice to have. And I think we're really now getting into the space where it's not only imperative, but it's a commercial imperative within the organization for us to get as much as we possibly can. I think in terms of systems, I think that the contract register will really help us in terms of identifying those opportunities. But I think in terms of your question regarding the social value is very deliberately around film and TV and broadcast. I think it's important to use the kind of specialism of those suppliers, but it's not the only thing that we can do because one of the things that I would really like to look at is professional volunteering. So any organization can say, well, I live in, we're out of Scotland, we can't do anything for Islington young people. For me, they still have an auditor, they still have a HR professional. And if we were able to secure 10 hours of accountancy for a voluntary organization in Islington, that's online, you don't need to be coming from Scotland to here. For me, that's the sort of thing that I think is slightly, it's still core to their business. They're still an accountant in a whatever type of firm, but it's delivering us a service that's not just directly, for instance, films or whatever that is. So that's, and that for me, is that there's needs to be a bit of a system for that. The question about the kind of organizational barriers for me, there needs to be a bit of a system on, if we collect this as social value, how do we pass it on to make sure that within three months of the contract happening, that the social value has been delivered and used by our communities.
Thank you for that chair. And just a couple of quick fire questions, just to clarify a few things. So the new procurement act, does that, so I'm looking at, well, my question is around social value and our minimum arts. Those are things that we set ourselves as the council. And I'm just looking at our minimum arts and, you know, it's safeguarding against modern slavery, not black listing trade unions, advertising the jobs on Islington jobs portal and paying a London living wage. Our minimum arts seem a bit minimal. And so I'm wondering, are we, do you think we're ambitious enough for like, I just, there's two questions. Have we benchmarked ourselves against, you know, neighboring or other local authorities? But secondly, like people could, I mean, I realize there's the minimum and I genuinely trust both from a political level and officer level that we are more ambitious. But I'm wondering, do we need to embed that into our minimum arts, that even before you start sniffing around our council, we want more from you. But I just seem like paying people a London living wage, and I realize we're not taking the drug, like there was a time when people were not being paid a London living wage. But I'm just wondering, are we ambitious? 'Cause it just seemed like our minimum arts aren't really, they're a bit minimal.
I think there's two part. I think the issue we have in Islington is not, it's not that, if we want to benchmark ourselves against other councils in London, the issue we have is that it's easy for contractors to point to other councils and say, why should we do this when the five other councils around you don't ask for this thing? So the issue isn't that we're not doing enough, it's that the other councils are doing so much less than us that these things are additional asks for them because they're not being asked by, I'm gonna name these councils as examples, Southwark, Camden, Hackney, whoever, for London living wage. So I appreciate, as Islington, we have high standards and I'd expect that he should always be pushing me. But I think one of the issues we have is that, and one of the dreams I always had was that we have a joint minimum ask for central London boroughs, which we don't have, because half of this stuff, the moment you walk across a borough boundary, the contracts change, they can kind of, they take some, I mean, some of the examples we see, they literally do rob some local authorities. Like some local authorities pat themselves on the back, being like two apprentices on like a 200 million pound contract. You know, and we wouldn't get our bed for like minimum wage, 10, like 50, what's it called, apprentices, you know, in-work training, always opposite, like skills, kind of women on tools, things like that. So I think it's, you're right, you're right to push us, but I do think, as you benchmark us to any other London authority, we are kind of like, I'd say we're in at least a top two, top three. I'd say we're first, but some people could argue otherwise. More broadly, I think it's what's come, what I came back to about that kind of leadership point. It's, by saying the reason why London, the way it used to be, our additional ask, and now it's our minimum ask, and I think we're kind of shifting to the point where things like local jobs, and you have to use local employers and local suppliers, are becoming our minimum ask, bit by bit, contracts by contract. So I think we're getting there. But you're right, we can always do more, we can always do more.
And I did have another question, but I think I'll talk about a topical issue, and this is in response to the Grenfell Tower inquiry. And so when we're talking about kind of awarding contracts, how flexible does a procurement act allow? So one of the questions I'm asking, I'm preempting myself from full council next week. And where organizations are implicated in these really horrible and tragedies, I don't want, both as a counselor and a lifelong resident of Islington, for us to be doing work for those who, you know, I'm gonna be careful with my language before anyone gets litigious, but who have been implicated in a tragedy. And so I kind of want to know, you know, we can pick up offline and making sure that we're not working, we can't really work with any of these organizations that were implicated and named in that Grenfell Tower phase two report. But how flexible does the act allow for us to say, actually, we don't like, you're implicated in, you know, a very serious incident or a very serious tragedy that we don't, as a council, feel like we want to work with you. And I don't know if you're able to update that. Maybe there's some, I'm not aware of some restrictions probably in this procurement act, but are you guys responsive to things that are happening, not just in Islington, but across the piece?
So I think the one thing the act allows is that it, well, I think it's partly is the market warming. So I think the market warming isn't just because we can sell our store, but often one of the issues you have with procurement is because we operate at such a high level of demand and kind of the size of our contracts. Sometimes we say we go out for procurement, but only two contracts will come back and one will be bad. So it's not really a procurement. It's we pick and pick the only option available. And I think the ability for us to do market warming and split up the contracts means we're kind of not locked in to having to use the same three named providers in the same sector for everything's really valuable. Something else that comes out of the contract, the new legislation is it forces the council, but also the suppliers to kind of have publishable KPIs and ways for the public and for us to kind of more easily manage and kind of see where contracts are failing. And we, the public and the council are getting value for money. So I think before all that is all very behind closed doors. Now we have to publish these things regularly. So I think both residents and us as counselors can say, okay, we paid you 200 million, but you're failing. So we're not getting this many care beds and we're failing to get this thing back and you're not providing this. And we didn't have that tool before. So I think that's really powerful.
And under the new Procurement Act, there will be a new Procurement Review Unit. So it's not an ombudsman, but it's not far off an ombudsman. And within there, a new watchdog for procurements. And under that, they will manage a debarment list. So if a council excludes a supplier, then the PRU, the Procurement Review Unit will then send out that message to every council that they can't use that supplier. So I think in terms of the case that you're speaking about, I think that would be, without going into the details of it, I think that they would be candidates for a debarment list. So that's a new thing within the Procurement Act, which I think is the guidance still has to be declared. So I'm not clear yet on how a council excludes a particular supplier and what the criteria that have to be applied to make that decision. But I think that's a really interesting development in the act. Thank you.
Looking at previous contracts, and I think that's probably the best place to start from. And I'm sure your team probably have picked up on consciously thinking, wow, we should have really have got more from that, but we didn't. I guess the new art makes it easier for us to be able to really know if we share those contracts or not.
Now I feel tested. So the Procurement Act comes live, as I said, at the end of February now. So anything that's procured up until then is under the old regime. So, I mean, there still are opportunities for us, and that's one of the things that we're gonna do in terms of this new commercial management approach, is really start going back to contractors and making sure that we've got best value. And as I said, the chief executive is gonna challenge corporate directors on that. I mean, it is within the feasibility to renegotiate contracts, but it needs to be, it's a mutual process, and it requires lawyers and so on. So that's what we're proceeding to do.
I think that the two bits I'd add is, like I said, I think we're more at risk for legal challenge from another route for that to happen is far greater now through this new act. I think the second thing is there's, we have to produce a lot more kind of reporting and reasoning on why we'd renew a contract. And I think oftentimes there can be in a council, you know, we have a contract and it's easier to just extend for two years and then extend the extension than it is to kind of go out for procurement again. And actually it makes it harder to just kind of keep rolling a contract extension and forces us to stop inwards and say, okay, actually, here's why we need to do the extension. If not, why we're not going out to just procure again. So I think it kind of gives us more steps off the bus where we can just be like, okay, we're not gonna just kind of keep rolling this extension. Two years plus one year extension on top of that for a three year contract is basically double the length of the contract. So I think it kind of gives us that ability to like step off and also have to justify it publicly.
And I guess the next part of that question, and there's a question maybe the chair would permit 'cause it's a piece of information that I've been tricked to find out for a while. The question itself is so I guess we have to slow down the process of signing new contracts, knowing everything that we probably do will be based on the odd one until the ad comes in for the true social value that we're seeking for in Islington. Now, just to follow up and you can answer this. I think there was a point that I asked. Do we know the top 10 oldest sort of contracts that we have in Islington as we run? Someone promised to give me that information. Never really got around to it. I think it would be really interesting for us to have a wider picture to understand what's been happening, how long it's been going for and it's sort of been, I think there's a lot of learning in those contracts for us. I mean, there might be reason not to make it a public thing, but I'm intrigued. Thank you.
And well, I apologize if you ask for information you didn't receive. I'll make sure that you do receive it, Councillor Jackson. And that's what the new contracts register will be able to do for us is that we should be able to generate that type of list. We should be able to generate value of contracts when they're expiring. So that's really important for us as an organisation. We centrally hold that information which hasn't been centrally held previously. So I will find that for you and share it with through the chair.
Yeah, so it's really good. For years, we've been talking about keeping jobs in Islington, keeping business, keeping the money in Islington basically. And we've always looked to Preston as a really good model of that. This is years ago. So it's really good. I sort of sense that your team and the inclusive economy and the community wealth building moving to a much more influential place in the council. I really like that. It's really good. And so as regards this progressive procurement strategy, it talks about sustainable economy. Environmental sustainability built into the progressive procurement policy and the new procurement act.
Also on the policy, maybe you can come on the act. Yeah, so I think we, I mean, part of it's there are smaller things which come into it like by using local supply chains, you are kind of driving towards net zero, less travel time. You don't have to ship things from different countries elsewhere. But I think more broadly, we kind of, there is like a net zero section which we're always pushing for in social value and kind of make sure they adopt policies both now and in the future, which kind of drive towards net zero. And we count that heavily as towards kind of like meeting social value requirements. So I think, yeah, it's very much driver. And it's actually kind of coming back to Councillor Abraham's question. I'd say it's probably one of the few areas where we have a bit more to go. I think we did a bit of research about what else local other boroughs are doing when it came to net zero and social value. I think it was Southwark and Lambeth or Lewisham, one of the ones that begins with an L. They're slightly ahead of us in the game. One of them, they require you to not only justify what you've done up to the point of asking for the contracts to get to net zero, what you're gonna do through the entire contract to make sure you keep getting down to net zero and beyond. So it's kind of like forcing companies to not just look back up to the point where they start and then continue that throughout. We don't, we're not there. We haven't got that as like a kind of standard social value ask. So yeah, I think when it comes to net zero, more to go, but it's definitely one of like the key, I think top things we ask for is always net zero and environmental impact.
In terms of the act, I would need to go and check to see if it's specifically mentioned. But one of the things that we're doing as a result of the act is a progressive procurement toolkit and sustainability will be a big part of that. But yes, I agree that in terms of minimum asks, maybe that is an area that we should be developing over the next period.
Thank you.
No, just to echo what Councillor Clark just mentioned, I was just going to raise that point. And it does mention a current procurement contract that it will be kind of asked of all relevant contracts and hoping that that scope is getting bigger and bigger and that it should be to all. And then as you mentioned, hopefully embedded through all of the contract requests as well.
So one of the things that we have done in terms of relevant contracts is we use practice from, I think it was Manchester where they had applied. So we have a standard now 20% weighting. But in contracts like highways, for instance, drainage, believe it or not, we extended that to 30% because it was so directly relevant to the delivery of the contract, that the social value and the kind of how they were achieving net zero and how they were kind of ability measures, that was so important. We felt that that had to be increased. So that's the sort of thing where we're trying to push the boundaries continually.
Just very quickly, so I do realise that we could go above 20%. So just learn something new. I think it'd be useful to get a breakdown of what the different percentages that we have contracts for at the different percentages, just to see where our kind of average is. I think that would be quite useful to know what we're pitching out.
A few slightly random disparate thoughts that I would like you then to respond to. And I'm glad Councillor Ward is here because I'm wondering in the future, how we might incorporate more social value thinking in terms of our when we're setting budgets, kind of across and how we get, you know, we've got 5000 employees, 51 elected members, how are we getting everyone's best ideas at such a difficult time for local government? And I understand there's new legislation so we've got to concentrate on getting that right first, but I just think there's such potential in this given all the other constraints. And so then I was thinking a bit about how are we, have we got a convening role here for one of the best, how are we drawing down knowledge from other local authorities like Preston or Manchester or other kind of leaders, also how are we sharing with, you know, through London councils? And then I was thinking about whether the central government's new deal for working people is gonna mean that there's loads of stuff we can just take off the pedal with, will that just be baked in now because there's gonna be a load of hopefully, please God employment rights coming on, you know, online. So what do we do to replace, what have we got to replace that stuff? And finally, internally, how much are we talking to the planning team? I'm really aware of this 'cause there's a life sciences building going through planning, I have been in my ward, as you know, I've been talking a lot about social value because often when there's building, the social value comes in social homes, right? It's not appropriate, it's a life sciences building. And that's been a really live question for us of how we're getting social value there. And I just wondered what the kind of cross pollination or whatever it is between those two teams and whether we're getting that right, just internally. Sorry, that's a lot, thanks.
I'm gonna go back to front. So commercial planning, because it also sits in my portfolio, I think, which is one of the reasons why I think it moved over from all planning being the one person to it moving over to the same place as local economies is because you can share that learning. So I think when it comes to residential housing, the person only asks for social housing, that's it. End of conversation. Whereas commercial properties, that isn't the same. And I think we, firstly, the planning team are amazing. I rate them very highly. And I think they're at the forefront of kind of like holding developers to task when it comes to, yes, we can get more. And I think very recently, we've just secured the section 106 on 99 City Road. And that is literally the gold-plated standard you will find anywhere in the country for a section 106 agreement for a commercial property beyond just kind of like, we've got the size of two football fields worth of office space on Ault Street, as well as funding our employment program to the tune of, what, $450,000 for five years, and the major space, and the community space, and some other money, not including CITL. And we all got that through it, like it has an additional benefit for free, not including the other waiting. So I think on the commercial planning side, I think we do very well. And actually, we're just about to produce a paper with PLEZ on kind of like detailing our model, and then kind of what the base plan looks like is then to then kind of spread it, the Easleyton model for like planning to other local authorities. The thing on new rights, that's actually a really good point. There's gonna be new legislation coming, and it's gonna kind of come back to Councillor Abraham's point, like what is the new normal once we have these kind of new rights? And that's a really good point. I think we've got to do a bit of thinking about that. Showing across London, like I said, I think one of them, I sit on, let's see, LCF. What's it called? - CLF.
CLF. So it was just that, LCF. I sit on CLF, which is kind of all the inner London boroughs. And I think one of the big conversations we were having is about how we kind of do share that best practice. I think there's one about planning, make sure we all have the same minimum ask in our local plan SPDs. There's the same thing with procurement. And I think I've got such a dream of kind of like making sure that everyone has those same minimum asks across all the boroughs. So I think we're definitely pushing that. I'll repeat the point about social value and setting budgets for your eye. I think in this time of kind of like, we're still kind of through that austerity period. It's like, we're gonna rely on social value more to kind of deliver for our residents. So your eye, I think it's so timely that we're having this kind of review because we're gonna be relying on these social value contracts that are gonna deliver stuff that we used to deliver in-house ourselves. Well, unfortunately.
Thank you for your presentation. And it all seems so exciting. And wonderful. Mine's kind of a bit of a simple question really 'cause I'm just a simple person. But I see that you've been working with the schools and EGA and all of this seems wonderful and working with the BCS organization. What I'm interested to know is what you've been doing with EGA. Are you gonna be doing it with other schools across the borough? Because what my key thing is that we have a lot of young people that their mental health is quite high. They have very low self-esteem because obviously that home environment all goes down to housing and everything else that's going on in the borough. I would really love to see some of these young people in these spaces, like I see Santiago, Council Santiago is a young man himself. I'd like to him to go to all these schools and deliver what he was saying so he can give hope to the future that if he can do it, anybody else can do it. It has to start in our schools, our secondary. It's not everyone's gonna go to university. Not everyone's even gonna go and do an apprenticeship. So if there's some hope that there's something else that we can do, then we should start with our young people.
So I 100% agree that developers regularly will say to me, Oh, we've started engaging with schools. And I'm like, I've met at CGA. And they're like, Oh, yeah. So I suppose one of the jobs, and EGA are an important school, I suppose one of the jobs of the World of Work program is about democratizing that and spreading some of that benefit across the piece. So yes, they do, so we do push them. With planning, it's kind of interesting because it is about near neighbors as well. So we want to make sure that their immediate neighbors are benefiting from the development. But through the 99 City Road piece, I mean, that is a strategically important piece for the whole borough. So the fabrication lab that we've secured in there won't just be for the immediate schools. It will be, we will develop a program for the whole of the borough. Similarly, the community space that's in there, yes, absolutely, local Bund Hill residents will benefit from that. But we'll also look at how do we run skills programs right across the borough. So I think managing to secure these large Section 106 agreements is really important. And I think standardizing it is critical. As we move into, I mean, I'm very conscious that economic development is not a statutory function. So we absolutely have to demonstrate the benefit every time. So there's no point making sure that all of our contracts say you have to use local suppliers. If there are no local suppliers, who can deliver those services? So we've created a construction directory, which is trying to make it dead easy for tier one contractors to use local suppliers. The next generation of that will be around professional services and making sure that we're able to access kind of small traders and individual traders in the borough. In terms of the convening piece that we do with anchor institutions, again, we're making sure that they're locked into things like World of Work program. And one of my mantras to the team is always, our job is to make it as easy as possible for people to do the right thing. 'Cause there are loads of businesses and developers and the anchors who want to do the right thing, but it's just not their core business. And for me, the job of the Inclusive Economy team, but even the wider VCS team is about really making sure that developer A, who wants to do the right thing, but has a really dead easy platform that they can do up in the leads. And they'll just use that to say, oh no, we've delivered social value. It's my job to make sure they can deliver it in as LinkedIn and really reach the diversity of people that we have, diversity of schools that we have in the borough and local suppliers.
If I could very briefly say, I think the EGA point also, we touched on something which I've really touched on a lot, which is within social value, how much we value each item. I think often you'll get developers off the back for like a 300 million pound development and say, and be like, oh, we'll come to your school and do an assembly and want a pat on the back. So I think it's, and I think it's within us, often we're having to challenge and say, that's not good enough for the school, 'cause they're not good enough for us. And I think sometimes their idea of what social value looks like are like, oh, we'll take the school around the building. Just useless, meaningless. But they'll try and count that social value. So I think it's always pushing back on them and being like, we don't want that. We want sustained careers advice. We want kind of roots in paid internships and stuff like that.
Sorry, Tara. So what I will do in terms of life science buildings is I will give them my shopping list and I will say, here are 20 ideas. Tell us what you can deliver and equally come forward with other ones. And I think to your point about the innovation across this organization is we need to tap into it and we need to find ways to get staff involved and engaged in that innovative commissioning conversation. It's not, here's what we did last year, here's what we're gonna do again. It's really rethinking. And I think the Procurement Act is an amazing opportunity 'cause the big message going out to all of our commissioners is this fundamentally changes how we buy stuff in this organization. And I think in terms of this committee, I think that challenge and really kind of refreshing our approach to buying is well-timed.
Great to end the session on such a positive note. There is an awful lot in the presentation, both presentations that you provided in the papers that we haven't been able to cover tonight. So can I ask committee members, if there are questions and comments arising out of the material in the papers we haven't been able to deal with tonight, please get them over to me and we can that way get answers that can be incorporated into our report. But it's been, I think, a really good session because I think it's given us really an insight into where we are at the moment and maybe where we want to take this scrutiny session. So again, for members of the committee, really wanna hear your feedback over the next week or so about what we want to focus on over the next few sessions, really arising out of the discussions that we have had. But Caroline Santiago, thank you both for coming and staying so late. And I'm going to extend my thanks for staying so late to the finance team who now get their moment or exactly in the sun, but in the autumnal gloom. What I'm aiming to do is finish this item by 10.15. So at least there's a chance of you going back to your children. Congratulations, Paul, on your great news. So that's the target. So in terms of the presentation, briefly, I think what would really help the committees a focus on what we ought to be aware of from the Q1 report and whether there really has been any changes to our medium-term financial strategy that we need to be updated on.
Okay, I'm just gonna highlight the main points within the quarter one 24/25 budget monitor report. So the forecast overspend of directorates at quarter one is 9.8 million, but after the corporate position and the application of contingency budgets, the net general fund position is reduced to 600,000 overspend. This is a far healthier position, I can assure you, than many other London boroughs are forecasting at this stage of the year, with some reporting to be in tens of millions of overspend. So just looking back briefly, when we compare the current quarter one forecast to the quarter one position we were reported in 23/24, the position is vastly improved. At this point of last year, we were forecasting a net general fund overspend of seven million, which is 6.4 million more than our current forecast. There's some good news in here that the children services is currently forecast to be on budget, and adults is forecasting a significantly lower overspend than in previous years. The current one million pressure reported in adults is due to the unavailability of care beds in the borough, but we expect this to be resolved this financial year with no ongoing pressures in the future. The directorates that are driving the vast majority of the current overspend are CWB, Community Wealth Building and Environment, with both reporting around three million overspend each. So CWB, the forecast is around a shortfall on commercial rent income, but there has been a commitment by the directorate to carry out a programme of rent reviews and other initiatives to help manage this going forward. The shortfall on planning income is due to reduced planning activity. However, it's felt that the assumptions are very prudent at this stage of the year, so some major planning applications do come through to fruition. We expect the forecast to improve. There has been slippage to the future work saving, but alternative solutions are being sought on that with a report due at CMT very shortly. Environment, unfortunately, there is a pressure in parking, of 1.5 million with the shortfall in income being mainly around suspensions and paying display due to delayed CPZ implementation due to the two elections that we've had this year. The position is closely monitored on a monthly basis and a number of management actions are included in that forecast. Just briefly, the HRA is forecasting a 5.4 million deficit, but as it's a ring fence to count, any surplus deficit will be transferred to the HRA reserves. The average minimum reserve level required in the HRA over the 30-year business plan is 31 million and we currently have 78 million in reserves, so again, a good reflection that we're in a good financial position. This will, however, fluctuate as we fund the HRA capital program. And finally, just very briefly, the forecast on the capital out-term for the general fund is 80 million compared to a budget of 114 million with a large proportion of that variance being requested to be re-profiled into later years. So that's it from me. Happy to take any questions.
Thank you, Jack. If I can just focus on the last point of re-profiling, there's a lot of items that have been essentially slipped going forward. What are the risks? Why is this re-profiling happening? Is this something structural within the council, something more national?
To be honest with you, there's a number of reasons. There is quite a lot of detail in the report. I think in the main, there's been sort of delays in planning application and activity. There's been some issues with contractors or purely due to inflation, costs are increasing above the allocated budget. So they've kind of been asked to sort of re-engineer, sort of almost go back to the drawing board to see if they can then come in on budget. 'Cause obviously, we've only got a certain amount within the capital program and we're trying to manage that accordingly. So yeah, there isn't just one particular reason. It's kind of a variation of reasons across all the schemes.
Well, I'm a bit confused now because you talked about the 600,000 overspend. And I'm looking at page 186.2.1 where it says, the 2025/26 and medium term budget setting process starts with a very significant funding gap to close for the immediate budget setting year of 25/26 and over the forecast period. To set a balanced budget in 25/26, the council must deliver estimated additional savings of 23 million in 25/26 and 107 million over the whole five-year forecast period. So I just wonder why, if things are so good at the moment, why have we got this huge amount of savings that we have to make?
So the numbers that Rachel talked through are specifically about 24/25, where we have essentially made the savings to balance the budget. So those numbers that you refer to, I'll talk a little bit more on when I cover the MTFS paper. But essentially every year, the challenge is slightly harder. The number required to savings gets slightly bigger. So I'll come onto that on that item if it's okay. And I'll just explain a bit more about why the gap is what it is for next year.
I think my question might actually be for Councillor Ward. And I'll start off with the officer. So it's 4.31, it's about an overspend in the community engagement and wellbeing. But this refers specifically to the proposed, there's a pressure of about half a million due to an unachieved saving, due to proposed contact centre consolidation. And Councillor Ward has gone to great lengths to explain to us how it was so inefficient, the previous system of having various and above average call centre handling. But, and I kind of wanted to say, so when are we gonna realise this? 'Cause it talks about the saving and 'cause this work has been ongoing for a while. When are we gonna realise the saving around 'cause we've consolidated all those call centres into a more manageable chunk. And I'm just wondering when, 'cause this work has been ongoing and we've heard so much about it. So I'm a bit slightly perturbed to see this half a million cost pressure when I was expecting us to be yielding the fruits of something that has been kind of, you know, and so that's why I was more of a, maybe a question for Councillor Ward who's been at the forefront of this in terms of when does that drill down into actually a saving? 'Cause it makes sense and I understand why we've done this. But I was just slightly perturbed by seeing this in the paper.
I'm as disappointed as you are, Councillor Ibrahim. Sorry, what page are you on? I can't find the paragraph.
On the, it's 115, one physical one. It's 119 on the, if you're online.
119, sorry. Sorry, bear with me, Councillor Ibrahim.
It's 0.4.31.
Sorry.
4.3.
Oh yeah, so the aim is to merge all three contacts. I mean, the fact that we have three different contacts.
So there's not even any one to have it?
It's ongoing. We haven't managed it yet. The pro, it's, I'm gonna be completely blunt. It's a difficult, messy process having three call centers and merging them into one call center. But it's the right thing to do. When someone calls up, they don't specifically want to ask you about tenancy. They don't specifically want to ask you about one thing. They want the person to be able to help them with each of those things. So it's better for the resident and it's better for us as well in terms of efficiency. So it is ongoing, but it's concerning that it's slipped. And I will keep a very, very close eye on this. And I will hopefully come back to the committee next time with better news.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, but my question was just with regard to the overspend in the environment. Forgive me. Colleagues, prior to me, have put forward the case. But now, for me, the goal posts seem to be widening because I heard of CPZs being suspended and the mention of election. But we know that there are pressures. I think another question I wanted to ask as well, which my colleagues asked earlier, is there are a number of management actions being taken. And maybe this question is for Councilor Ward, but there is no corporate director to oversee those management actions. So I'm getting increasingly concerned. And I feel that when we next monitor the reporting, we will be given further reasons as to why there is increase overspends in this area. It doesn't seem to be moving at pace, which is that new corporate word everyone's using. Thank you.
Can I take that one? I mean, there is someone acting up as corporate director at the minute, but I do take your point. If members have got questions about this kind of thing, they need to be able to say, Right, we'll get the corporate director here and let's talk about it." Now, members can do that with the acting corporate director, if you wish. But you're absolutely right. We need a permanent corporate director ASAP. And as Councilor Cormac Schwartz has said, the ad's gone out. So yeah, let's help us find someone of the best caliber.
Okay, this is supplementary. But in terms of, for me, my first question was around the goal posts being widened. Yeah, because in terms of the elections, how does that really impact the overspend and also the sort of suspension of CPZs to the tune of 1.5 million, I think you mentioned. So that's, yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, and after, for me, becoming concerning.
Yeah, it is concerning, Councilor Weeks, and I certainly wasn't expecting as many elections this year. But these things do tend to go up and down based on events during the year. I don't know if anybody wants to add to that, though.
I was just gonna say, like, it's a highly volatile area. Obviously, the CPZ delay has affected a saving that was agreed, so that's kind of one impact. But also, there is now kind of a delay for the rollout of LTNs, which is going to be, which has impacted the base quite significantly in so much as the ability to process new CP, and sorry, PCNs, sorry. All the terminology in parking, there's so many acronyms. However, parking colleagues, be assured, have got a number of actions, mitigations, management actions, that we do look at very closely. That was recently shared with the corporate director, the acting corporate director for housing and environment, Judge Young, and also Dave Hodgkinson. So we are sort of confident that those new initiatives are making an impact, but this is really why this is an area that we do monitor on a monthly basis. You know, the more of the low-risk areas we look at quarterly, whereas this one is definitely something that we look at. Like, I can't promise you it won't change again. Like, obviously, there's just so many variables at play at parking. It moves on a daily basis, if you like. But at the moment, with the information that we have, we don't perceive the position to be getting any worse at this point, anyway.
Thank you, Jo. Just to drive my attention to page 133, and forgive me if I've understood this incorrectly, but I'm just reading a $7,190,000 overspend because delays over a dispute with a neighbour over a party wall arrangement. That's just, I don't have any other word to say, but that's pretty wild. Why, you know, we're talking about, we had a meeting yesterday on the budget monitoring, and there was, sorry, on Tuesday, and we're talking about how difficult the decisions are. We can't avoid them. We have to do this. And to read that, along with, actually, if we go to the next page, a lot of the overspend is project delayed due to procurement or to the contractor. That, to me, just seems avoidable, one, and actually something's gone seriously wrong here, especially in the new-build team. But I think across management, how, A, if it seemed that poor planning, if it's due to delays, and also why wasn't a conversation had with that neighbour before the project even started? It's just not just a firewall. So I know we've had this conversation on the housing scrutiny team, but I did want to obviously bring that here 'cause I think it's really relevant considering how much overspend is in, you know, we're looking at that figure, actually.
So the numbers referenced in there are not overspends. They're slippage to the scheme. So essentially, what that means is we had a budget that we thought we were going to spend this financial year. However, in that instance, if the party wall is the reason why that project can't progress at the speed that we thought it'd be, it means that we will spend seven million pound less this year. It doesn't mean that the scheme will cost more money or we've lost money. It just means it's delayed the actual construction. So some of that spend will then happen the following year. So across all of those, what it is quite hard to do at the start of a big capital scheme is fully understand when the cash will go out of the door. So if you're just delivering something fairly small, like a park or a playground or something where you think it's six months work, that's fine. But if it's a multi-year project where we're working on an estate, those slippages can be really, really significant. Actually, there's a financial benefit to it being slower, although clearly the impact on not having the asset is big. But the financial benefit of not having to borrow the money upfront to spend as well means that actually, ironically, we're probably slightly better off through that slipping as long as inflation doesn't bite us by the time it's taken a bit longer to build. Does that make sense?
I guess my point was due to there being kind of contractors going into administration and that's costing significant cost to the council, when we have these delays or slippages over a party wall, isn't that gonna be kind of a risk if that contractor then goes into administration and of course, inflation is always going up. So I see your point, but I think where you've got seven million slippers, sorry, not overspent over a party wall, and then that's, we've had that problem of contractors going into administration and also delays costing the council, then how are we, 'cause it seems like to me it's not a big concern, it just seems like I was okay because that's gonna be spent next year, but it seems these are things that could be totally avoidable.
I mean, I completely take your point, Councillor Estemir. On the one hand, it's, as Paul's explained, kind of the benefits, but the flip side, of course, is we can't build the homes. After slippage, we're not building the homes. And there's, I think there's been, as you know, there's been really, really hard choices made about the entire new build programme earlier this year. As Councillor Colmish was saying earlier on, we just, we've slimmed it down to key projects. The very, on that particular one, Parkview Estate, there was a very hard choice made not to continue with Block D and just to continue with the three blocks that were already on site. And that one's touch wood, nearly, nearly finished, and we're very pleased with that. But you're absolutely right. Hard choices have been made about the new build scheme, the new build programme this year. A lot of the problems there around inflation and interest rates were unforeseen, but nevertheless, we've got to learn lessons from this. And as Councillor Colmish once said earlier on, it's all about grip and pace, and we've got to learn lessons from what happens this year with the new build programme going forward.
I was going to ask questions to those, but I think it's best to kind of use the timing accordingly. That is on the overspend. And I'm sure Chair will probably want to, you probably have more questions. Really worried about it forecasting when it comes to what we think is going, I'm a big concern, 'cause it just feels like we're not, I don't know if it is a political issue that I sort of put your team to be able to make that focus properly to say, right, this is what we're expecting to happen, for example, in the environment. We should know our policy position. We should know what the outcome is. The fact that we're not thinking that we've taken a policy position and it's working is of concern to me, because now we're saying we're overspending, but in reality, just people are not driving anymore. They're not parking anymore. Or the cost of parking is a lot more higher. So that should be something that I expect your team to sort of, or whoever that was involved, to kind of look to that and be able to make the right focus around this. So, and I guess I'm thinking who's really, who's responsible for this? Is this the directorate? Is it, and when this information was, how are you sort of countering this and say, right, actually, we think you've got this wrong. So, do you need, do we need more aid or some other tools to help us to do this properly without me going into it, but yeah.
I'll start, then I'll hand over to Paul. Ultimately, I'm responsible. The buck stops with me as executive member. So ultimately, if there's a problem, it's my fault, because that's the job I've taken on as executive member. What I will say is that, I mean, this does happen with the forecast. I mean, if anything, last year was much more volatile, and we were looking at, you know, some of the, I spent an awful lot of my time last year at this committee and talking to officers privately about the overspends, 'cause it was frightening at times. The particular issue of parking, I mean, we have learned some of the things that happened last year, but parking, it's volatile for all the reasons that's already been talked about. The forecast for this, I'm not offering this as any kind of execution or anything like that, but the forecast for this year is that we're due to end the year at an overspend of 648k. That's, it's unfortunate it's an overspend, but compared to what some of our neighbours are looking at, you know, if that forecast stays the same, and, you know, I will sleep easy. I don't know if Paul wants to add to that.
Yeah, so absolutely, when you're talking about parking, there's over 50 million pounds worth of income, and hundreds of thousands of transactions, which very slight changes in behaviour have really big impacts on the numbers, and if you recall last year, we bought unachieved income in parking to the tune of almost 10 million pounds. So it is a difficult thing to predict what the policy changes will have in terms of the financial impact on something like parking, where it is just huge volumes of things happening in the borough. What I, just to echo Councillor Ward's point, I suppose my position on where we get to as a bottom line is we will have, if we achieve what we are currently thinking we're going to achieve, it will be one of the best out turns in London, when boroughs neighbouring us and across the capital have overspends in one service area of about 30 million pounds. We are an absolute fraction of that, and single areas of a problem of a million, a million is an awful lot of money, and pays for an awful lot of valuable services. But the context of proper main adults of a million pounds versus temporary accommodation, we're not at the same level. We are very fortunate for that, and it's through really good management. But we've got a billion pound coming in and going out, so to have variances of these levels is normal, and I'm reassured that the management actions that take place to contain them are so far quite effective. And then we have, for anything that can't be contained, we have our contingencies. So the reason that we have an overspend of three million pounds and then in one area in the bottom line for the council is a few hundred thousand pounds is because we always think something will come up. So we have a contingency to deal with something. We just don't know when we set the budget what that will be. And the numbers in the budget were essentially started on their approval journey way back in January before the start of the financial year. So things change even before we start the year. So sometimes we get to the first of April, and we think on day one, actually, something's slightly off track. So we spend all year trying to bring it back into line. So hopefully there's a bit of reassurance about what happens and also the context for the bottom line. Although it's always bad to have an overspend, it's better to have 600,000 than 30 million. Chad, I won't follow up on it. I'm sure we're going to probably have this in the next time we're coming. We are, and we're running massively over budget in terms of the time budget. But I think if we can just have a quick update on the MTFS, particularly as we're now about to embark on a budget-setting exercise with a view to wrapping up the meeting no later than half 10. Yeah. If people need to leave, please leave. This has been a bit of a marathon. But I think we probably ought to at least touch upon the MTFS. But quick update. Yeah, absolutely. So I will be very quick, because it's not really a decision as such that we're talking about this. So this is just an update on where we are with the financial position. So in prior years, we did a budget monitor update for the in-year position every month. And we did an update on the overall budget and the long-term budget once a year, which is not really recognizing the importance of the actual longer-term budget. So what we did was we stepped the monthly monitor down to quarterly. And then we started to do quarterly updates of the MTFS, the medium-term strategy. So that is why we're seeing this report. And you'll see it a few times a year just to make sure that we are capturing the long-term impact of what Rachel was talking about. So anything in-year that has a long-term impact, we want to capture that early and make sure we're dealing with it. The overall gap is lower for the next three years than when we set the budget for this year. So we thought it would be a lot higher. It's come down. It's still really big numbers, so 63 million pounds over the next three years. That has come down. And the more we know around where the risks are in that, hopefully that will come down as well. So from that position, it won't come down massively. Maybe 3 or 4 million versus kind of halving or anything like that for next year. So by the time we get to the budget-setting process, I expect it to be marginally better as a result of things softening. So inflation has come really far down. Interest rates have not come down enough, but they are a lot lower than where they were in the peak. The context to this report was it was written just before a kind of change in government, although published probably slightly after, and not really anything changed from day to day in terms of the assumptions. There is still very little concrete information about where we will be heading from a financial position, albeit some softening of the mood music around local authority budgets. We are an unprotected department, and the chancellor is making comments about nationally very challenging positions. So I don't expect any additional money for next year, if I'm honest. I think there will be a rollover of what we've got. And then in future years, we will hopefully start to see some in the sector, but there's no guarantees on that whatsoever. We are fortunate when I keep talking about temporary accommodation because it's, quite frankly, killing a lot of other London boroughs, our MTFS at this point. And since this report was written, temporary accommodation is a challenge, but it's not racing away like it has with other authorities. A final bit, I will just reiterate the point that I made before about-- so the out turn last year was really, really positive. We pretty much lived within our means, and our reserves were protected. Where we're forecasting this year is pretty much the same. 600,000 pound in or out of reserves is absolutely fine because it's pretty much balanced on a billion pound budget. The report goes into details what's gone up and what's gone down, but we're not asking for any decisions within this report to change anything. We're just giving an update on where we are and where we think we're heading. So no surprises, things starting to get a little bit better and not really expecting great news in the settlement. Thank you. Chair, could I just add one? Yes. Just add one point to that, Paul's quite right to refer to the TA budget, the challenge there is there, but the fact that other boroughs have got much bigger challenges. And that's in no small part down to just the great stewardship by the team, but particularly the buying up x-right to buy properties that Kostelkommer-Schwarz talked about earlier. A huge proportion of that total budget goes to Islington because we're very, very good at it, and just big thanks to that team. Any quick questions on MTFS? Just to clarify, we have moved from three-year projections to five-year projections. I'm just checking from what I've seen from the table. Would it be correct to say, if there is no change over this Labour national government over the next five years, the requirement on the council tax would increase by 100% by 2030, I think. So he's suggesting that if we didn't do anything around managing the budget, we'd bridge that gap by council tax. I'm just-- the second one has got the layout for the five-year projection, and it describes what the council tax receipt would need to be to bridge that gap in terms of if we do business as usual. Projecting forward five years. I presume what you're saying is if we did nothing for the past next five years, then our council tax requirement would go up by 100%. I mean, I think that's not surprising. If we did nothing for five years, maybe it would. But as you know, Councillor, we don't do nothing. We look at these savings every single year. I wonder if Paul can clarify that. Yeah, just in terms of the-- so I just looked at Appendix A as well. So the term council tax requirement is not necessarily that we will be-- that it is a kind of proposal for that to be the council tax level. It's just the defined way that we have to calculate our local authority budget. The bottom line that is essentially the unfunded bit is always called council tax requirement. But I was very distracted by the council tax question. I'd forgotten what your first part of the question was. I'm very sorry. No, just echoing that hopefully the national government will help out to bridge that gap. Otherwise, the way I would read that is that it's over 120 million savings over the next five years. Councillor Brown. Sorry, just to clarify, Dermot. Council Ward, just for the benefit of earning, you're saying that things can only get better with a Labour government. And given that, Paul said, there's more supportive mood music from this government than the previous government around local government finances. Is that your understanding as the executive member? Well, as you know, Councillor Abraham, it's very easy to snipe from the sidelines and kind of say it. And I think to talk about a council tax requirement, we've worked really, really hard to live within our means. There's a 22 billion pound black hole in the public finances left by the Tories. We're already speaking to government about what we need to be, to keep on thriving and be a successful council. And I'm very optimistic about the future of Councillor Abraham. Right. Thank you for the team, Rachel, Paul, and Councillor Ward for coming in tonight. Just a couple of bits of formal business to deal with, and then I promise you can all go home. First off, I've been in discussions with Councillor Clark about Thames Water and how we as a council could best scrutinise them. And I think summarising the discussions, we've been thinking about a one-off meeting, a joint meeting of our respective committees to get Thames Water in and ask them some questions. Are we all happy with that as an approach? Yes, Chair. We'll get on with that. And then there's been a request to move the annual workforce report to the December meeting. I suspect that's something of a fait accompli, because we ain't going to have the report. We can't consider it. But formally, I think we have to agree that. So it's agreed. Anything anybody wants to raise about the forward plan, scrutiny review tracker, work programme, or anything that the individual chairs are doing on their committees. I don't see anything. So with that, thank you, and that concludes our meeting. Thank you, Chair. [BLANK_AUDIO]

AI Generated

Summary

At this meeting of Islington Council's Corporate Resources and Economy Scrutiny Committee, Councillors discussed the Leader of the Council's annual presentation, received evidence on the Council's 'Progressive Procurement Strategy', and scrutinised the first quarter budget monitoring report for 2024/25, as well as receiving a summer update on the 'Medium Term Financial Strategy' (MTFS). The Committee noted all of the reports they discussed.

Leader's Presentation

Councillor Comer-Schwartz, Leader of the Council, presented an annual report on the state of the Council.

She outlined a number of areas where the Council was performing well. These included:

A considerable reduction in the number of looked after children
Improvement in Key Stage 2 results
Provisional results indicating improvements in both Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 results compared to 2023 and 2019
An 'outstanding' rating for the Council's Youth Justice service
Reduction in the number of young people entering the youth justice system
High take up of free childcare places for two-year-olds by families on low incomes
Improvement in the proportion of 16 and 17 year old residents who are not in education, employment or training (NEET)
Supporting 1,685 residents into work, exceeding the manifesto commitment to help 5,000 people into work over 4 years.
The IMAX team had secured £6.2m in additional income for vulnerable households through helping them to claim benefits they're entitled to.
Two new Access Islington Hubs have opened, with a third due to open in September 2024
The Council was awarded Winner on the Healthy Streets Scorecard: lead inner London borough 4 years in a row
The Council planted 694 new trees in 2023/24
The Council has secured £5 million to establish 'Evidence Islington' to conduct research to improve services and reduce health inequalities in the borough
High resident satisfaction with Adult Social Care services
An increase in the number of people accessing treatment for drug and alcohol misuse.

She acknowledged that there were areas that are proving challenging for the council, and for residents:

Unprecedented demand for services particularly in Temporary Accommodation, Adult Social Care and Children Services
Budgetary pressures such as uncertainty in income and high inflation
Amidst these challenges, the need to get the basics right

She outlined specific challenges relating to the five corporate missions:

Child-Friendly: Pressure on Children's services, an ongoing decline in birth rates and a reducing school population, and a high rate of school absence.
Community Wealth Building: Building new council homes and investing in our community assets in a highly challenging capital delivery environment, and Tackling poverty
Empowering People: Continuing to build on community cohesion, and joining up early intervention and prevention.
A Safe Place to Call Home: Rising homelessness, and the need for significant capital investment in the council's 36,000 properties.
Greener: Responding to climate adaptation and low recycling rates.
Healthier: Uncertainty in Public Health funding from central government, and an increased complexity of needs in residents using Adult Social Care services.

The Leader also presented the Council's 'Delivery Plan 2024-26', which sets out the organisation's key objectives for the next two years. She explained that the Council had developed a new set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to ensure transparency, grip and pace in delivery.

Scrutiny Review of Progressive Procurement

The Committee received an update on the Council's 'Progressive Procurement Strategy'.

Officers explained that:

The strategy was developed in 2020.
It contains 25 commitments, supported by 222 actions.
69% of the actions within the strategy had been completed.
Social Value now accounts for 20% of the weight of an external tender.

Councillors asked questions about the implementation of the strategy, including:

The effectiveness of engagement with 'Anchor Institutions'¹. Officers confirmed that the Council was working with Anchor Institutions to standardise social value requirements.
How social value is measured. Officers explained that the Council is using the 'Social Value Portal' to measure social value in a consistent way.
Opportunities to share best practice. Officers confirmed that the Council was working to share its approach to procurement with other London boroughs.

Councillors also discussed the implications of the new 'Procurement Act', which will come into force in February 2025².

Budget Monitoring Q1 2024-25

The Committee then moved on to discuss the budget monitoring report for the first quarter of 2024/25, which had been presented to the Executive on 5 September 2024.

Officers explained that the general fund was forecasting an overspend of £0.648m for the year. This was after the application of contingency budgets and other corporate adjustments. They highlighted a number of key variances in the forecast, including:

A £1.065m overspend in Adult Social Care due to the unavailability of care home beds in the borough,
A £1.180m pressure from a shortfall in commercial rent income,
A £0.626m pressure from a shortfall in planning income,
A £1.550m overspend in parking income,
A £0.790m overspend in Street Operational Services,
A £0.336m overspend in Leisure,
A £1.399m overspend in Temporary Accommodation.

Councillors expressed their concern about the level of overspend in a number of areas, including:

The overspend in Adult Social Care, particularly the pressure caused by the lack of care home beds.
The overspend in Temporary Accommodation, which was linked to the rising cost of living and the national housing crisis.
The shortfall in commercial rent income, which had been impacted by the recent economic downturn.
The delays to the implementation of a number of Controlled Parking Zones (CPZs) which had resulted in a shortfall in parking income.
The projected increase in council tax.

Medium Term Financial Strategy

The Committee then received a summer update on the Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS).

Officers highlighted that:

The Medium-Term Budget position showed a significant budget gap of £23.098m in 2025/26
There was a need for estimated, additional savings of £23.098m in 2025/26 and £107.181m over the whole five-year forecast period

Councillors expressed their concern that the current national government had not indicated that they would be providing additional funding to local authorities.

Other Business

Before concluding the meeting, the Committee agreed:

To hold a one-off meeting with Thames Water to scrutinise their operations in Islington
To move consideration of the 'Annual Workforce Report' to the December meeting of the Committee.

Anchor Institutions are large organisations, like hospitals and universities, that are rooted in a place and unlikely to move away. ↩
The Procurement Act 2023 is intended to make public procurement simpler, more flexible, and more transparent. The act was due to come into force on 28 October 2024 but was delayed until February 2025 by the UK government. ↩