Transcript

Good evening, everyone. Can I start off by saying Happy New Year and welcome to the first meeting for 2025 for Overview and Scrutiny Meeting. My name is Councillor Ayas Maislam and I will be chairing this meeting tonight. Can I remind everyone that this meeting is being filmed for public viewing on the Council's website. Those participating in the meeting will be included in the footage. If there are any technical issues, I will decide if and how the meeting should continue after taking advice from officers. Members should only speak on my direction and ensure to speak clearly into the microphones. Members' conduct. Before we move on to this evening's business, can I please remind all members they must adhere to the standards outlined in the members' code of conduct. Significantly, this includes promote and support high standards of conduct through leadership and example, treat other members and members of the public with respect, treat local authority employees, representatives of partner organisations and volunteers with respect, acknowledging the roles they play, considering the views of others, including political groups where applicable, but reach your own conclusions and act in accordance with them. As members, your role carries significant responsibility, and that is essential that the interactions with senior officers are conducted with professionalism and respect. A constructive and collaborative way of working relationship with senior officers is crucial for effective governance and the achievement of shared goals in public service. Justina, please can you advise the committee whether any apologies have been received? No, Chair. All members are present. Thank you. Can any member declare if there are any DPIs they would like to stay at this point? Councillor King? I am a leaseholder of the Council. Thank you. Anyone else? The minutes from our meeting on the 22nd of November and 17th of December have been circulated, restricted and unrestricted. Can members who were present confirm these as true and accurate record? Yep. Thank you. Yep. The action log will be circulated at our normal meeting on the 28th of January. Our main item of business this evening is to scrutinise the Budget Report 2025-26 and MTFS 2025-2028. These are from the Cabinet-published papers and presented at Cabinet on the 8th of January 2025. Before we move on to the main order of business, can we start with the fees and charges, both the discretionary and statutory ones. The annual review of fees and charges align closely with the budget-setting process and also reflects some of the demand-led financial challenges that the Council faces. To present this item, I would like to welcome Councillor Saeed Ahmed, Cabinet Member for Resources and Cost of Living, and Julie Lorraine, Corporate Director of Resources, Statutory Section 151 Officer and Deputy Chief Exec. Can I now invite you to speak? I'm allowing you up to seven minutes to provide us with an overview. I understand that members have read their report and their presentation, and I'll let you know when you're nearing your last couple of minutes. Is that okay? Thank you, Chair, and good evening to the committee. I believe we want to start with the fees and charges. The fees and charges have been set out in terms of looking at each directorate closely and looking at how we can meet inflationary pressures and, at the same time, make sure that it's not a serious burden on any of our service users and residents. I don't have a very much detailed introduction, in particular, for fees and charges, but I would have more of a discussion on the budget itself. So I'd like to hand over to Julie to introduce more on fees and charges. Thank you. And, again, I'll be brief. The information on the proposed increases to fees and charges are set out for you in the budget pack in detail. I understand that any increases that affect residents' concern, members of all parties, I wanted just to provide an overview of the approach the Council takes to setting fees and charges for its residents. The first thing is there are two sets of charges. There's some statutory ones and there's discretionary ones. On the statutory fees and charges, we have little room for manoeuvre. It's the discretionary areas that most councillors focus on. Recently, and we did try and find it for you today, we weren't able to, but we will try and get it to you. But recently, we had the privilege of being party to an all-London Council's briefing. And Tower Hamlet's reliance on fees and charges as a proportion of his income is the lowest in London. We take seriously the impact of increases on all residents. We use RPI as a general rule of thumb basis for increase. And there are very few increases that go above that, although there are one or two. Benchmarking is important. When we look at our neighbours and what others pay, it's a similar position to council tax. Tower Hamlet doesn't see fees and charges as their route to secure significant income streams. As I said, as a proportion of our income, it's the lowest, I believe, across London. I think it's important that members have an opportunity to ask questions. Services sit within corporate directors, so nobody sits there in an ivory tower with a blanket saying, let's increase all this by this. And I was certainly party to a very detailed discussion with Cabinet members, where line by line, Cabinet members consider every single item. And you can see the shared pain on the faces of fellow corporate directors, where we sat through every single item that was considered very carefully. So I just wanted to set that context for you and leave it to you, really, to ask questions about areas of concern, general formulaic approach, or specific questions to corporate directors. Thank you. Before I move on to members' questions, are we anticipating any last-minute fees and charges to be added on as an amendment? To the best of my knowledge, as I sit in our council, no. Thank you. Can I see raised hands for those asking questions? And remember, this is just for fees and charges. So I've got Councillor Mohamed and Councillor Odin. Okay. Councillor Mohamed, do you want to go first? Great. Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you both for that brief introduction. I want to turn to the discussion of fees and charges, and an area I've got real concern about. Under 2.3 parking, it's COM334. So it's two new charges that have been introduced. It's around personalised disabled bay permits, where previously it was no charge. It's now incurring the charge. And then the blue badge permits, where previously it was no charge at zero pounds, it's now incurring a charge. And I think what's come out of the resident survey is that there's a real concern around the cost of living. And aptly, in your title, Councillor, it has, you know, along with the resources, the cost of living. And I'd welcome your thoughts on adding a charge to new charges. I appreciate one of them is every three years, but we are still in a cost of living crisis. And I think there's real concerns where disabled people are disproportionately hit by these cost of living crisis to the point of, you know, the disability price tag is what it's essentially called, and to the tune of, you know, hundreds of pounds. So the justification for bringing about this new fee would be really helpful to understand. Thank you, Councillor, for your question. Before I hand over to Simon to cover the more details, I think in this area, of course, it's a very vulnerable area, and we do not want to sort of penalise anyone in this current climate than any pressure than people are already experiencing. At the same time, the council provides various services to support our residents who are struggling. So if there are areas where a resident is struggling to meet any of the additional charges or even the day-to-day living costs, whatever it is, the council is here to support them. And we have various means of services with our resident hubs. We have various means of services for our tackling poverty team. And, yeah, we're always open for dialogue to support our residents whilst struggling. Thank you, and happy new year to all members. It's my first day, second day about, I've been doing my jury service. It's all finished now, thank you, Lord. In terms of responding to your question around fees and charges for parking, we've done a benchmark across other authorities across London, and that was we were just charging an admin fee for the processing of the permits. So given the amount of the gap that we have in our budgets from time to time, we have to look at things differently. The fees and charges are fair, I think, and proportionate, but other boroughs do charge for this, and I don't think the charge is that great given the amount of service that people get. But it's not about tackling people with disabilities. It's supporting people, but it's proportionate to do that charge. Just one brief follow-up. So I appreciate the answer, and it's not necessarily all boroughs. So I know, for example, our neighbours, Hackney, don't charge this. So I think the benchmark argument, I appreciate others might, but it's not a cross, and it's not a uniform thing. So I'd implore you, councillor, to look again at this. So I take the corporate director's point about it being an admin fee, but disability price tag means disabled people struggle far more and have quite higher costs. And I think when you look at the very nature of somebody who gets a bay or gets a blue badge, it's them accessing that because they need that to get out into society. So I think it has real ramifications and unintended consequences when it comes to isolation and other areas. So I'd really encourage you and the mayor to look again. I know it's tough, these decisions and these budgets are tough, but I think at a time where there's still a cost to live in crisis, I think it's really important, and I think it's a political choice, and I'd hope you'd look again at it. Thank you, Chair. Unless you want to respond. No? So can I just come and say, with Councillor Mohamed's point and the answers that you've given, there's a little bit of work here. So there's a recommendation here by one of the committee members, and you'll officially get all our recommendations at the end of the process, but can you be able to do a little bit of work for the committee to be able to make, be able to have better understanding, which is how much money is this proposing to collect in total, so that they're able to then balance off what's coming in, and if then the recommendation from the councillor about the mayor and the political choice about revisiting this as an option. And quality impact. Sorry, just an equality impact assessment would also be really helpful to understand that. Yeah, so the EQIA. So that's two pieces of work, and if we can have more information about how much money. And we understand that highways does have restrictions about ring-fenced accounts, but this is definitely something that falls under those guidelines. It's all right. Thank you. Councillor Uddin, you're next. Thank you, Chair, and thank you very much for your presentation. My question to Julie, can you tell me what are the main cost drives for health and social care services this year? And I have two questions, another question, one. Can you tell me how are the planning for the population change and increasing demand for service? Thank you. And your question seems to be on the main budget, which I'll give you a chance, but we're on fees and charges. Do you have any questions for fees and charges? Okay, then I can leave it later. Okay. Is there any other councillor that would like to ask any questions? Oh, Councillor Chowdhury? Thank you, Chair, and good evening to you all and happy new year to everyone. Just a quick one. What process are in place to ensure transparency and accountability in the calculation of leaseholder service charges? And can you also provide us with a comparison of these charges with similar housing services in other local authorities who are very close to us? Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. I think it's a good question. On the benchmarking with other authorities, if I can take that one away and perhaps provide a written response afterwards, that would be helpful. But in terms of leaseholder charges, obviously we do quite a lot in terms of sending people our estimated bills so that they can then come back and raise any queries. And then we obviously send the actual bills out. We do it on a cost recovery basis. We do also, through our tenant voice structure, work with residents to be transparent about how we calculate those charges. We have a leaseholder group of residents as well that feed into that tenant voice structure. We also, I think, as you know, from chairing our Housing Regeneration Committee, we have a leaseholder representative on that committee as well. So we do absolutely want to involve leaseholders in scrutinising our services and make sure that we've got that transparency and openness about how we work with them. Are there any other questions around fees and charges? Okay, I'll close that section. I'd like to move on to the main item for this evening's discussion, which is the Budget Report 2025-25 and the MTFS 2025-28. There are a number of appended papers to this report covering a number of areas, so members may have questions on specific areas. We will have Councillor Ahmed and Julie back presenting this and I understand that we also have a number of directors here to respond specifically to their responsibility areas and I have informed the committee, Simon Baxter has to leave early, so if we can take his questions first. Councillor Ahmed and Julie, if you want to provide us with an overview on the budget, you've got 15 minutes, but do bear in mind that we're taking the report as read. Back to you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So, there is much to say about this ambition and this budget that we've put in place together, but before going into the details, I would like to impress upon members here that the Council has once again succeeded in producing a sustainable budget and that that is balanced across the medium term for the next three years. The intention of this administration has been clear from the beginning. We have been committed to repairing the damage inflicted in our communities by successive cuts and managed decline. Delivering lasting improvements to the lives of our residents in Tower Hamlets has been one of the key priorities. Doing this, of course, has not been easy and we have had to implement huge improvements to our financial governance, but we are now able to demonstrate that the investment in communities does not have to come at the expense of doing best financial practice. In fact, with this budget, we are delivering a further £65 million of new investment while strengthening our reserves and exceeding our savings target and with no adverse impact on frontline services. This budget is about building on our past improvements whilst we are maintaining our previous commitments around free school meals, EMA, council tax support, winter fuel payments, as well as youth, waste and leisure improvements. But we are now going further than that by building on the positive financial comments on the best value report by providing £6 million further improvements. A further £15 million investment in waste services, £7.5 million to provide free home care, £6.5 million of community resilience, community financial resilience fund, which supports the primary and secondary school starters to pay for the school uniform, which is a brand new initiative. £3.1 million for the Mayor's Energy Fund to help protect vulnerable residents and reinstating meals on wheels. This would represent a total of £150 million of frontline investment delivered by this administration since 2022, investment that has in no way impeded on our ability to make £100 million worth of savings in the same period. This is a budget that puts residents first whilst ensuring both financial sustainability and good governance, and by creating a new £5 million contingency, as well as increasing our general fund reserves to £25 million. We are taking prudent measures to mitigate risks in a way that has not sacrificed our ability to deliver for Tower Hamlets. And talking about risks, Tower Hamlets is the sixth lowest council tax in London. And to those who can least afford an increase in general council tax, we will protect those residents by the council tax cost of living support fund. And that will be expanded to household income of £50,350. Additionally, so that means anyone, any household earning below that threshold would not pay any increase in council tax. Additionally, the 100% council tax support scheme remains, so that means those on the lowest income pay no council tax at all. So, finally, just to wrap up, I'm delighted to bring this budget forward. It's a forward-looking budget and clears all legacy issues since 2022. This budget invests in prosperity and benefits thousands of children and families. It is a prudent, sustainable and robust budget. It's gone through a rigorous process of months and months and months of work. And this is about the future of our residents and future of our borough. And it continues the great work, like I said, from the investment that we've done in the previous years. And, finally, I would like to thank Julie for her support throughout this whole process. The finance team have worked robust to work very hard in bringing this to all our sessions throughout the process of budget setting. And, of course, big thanks to the corporate directors and the directors for coming forward and helping us identify where we can put the right growth where it's needed and, at the same time, put savings off where we can find efficiencies. And thanks to the Mayor's Office for their support throughout the process as well. And, finally, this is about moving forward and we are now... It's not about looking back anymore. It's about looking forward and creating improvements in our borough. I'd like to end it there and I'll hand it over to Julie if that's all right. Thank you. Okay. Can I just... I did make available a slightly updated slide deck. I don't intend to present that slide deck to you. I just want to make sure that you've all got access to it because I'll refer to a couple of the slides. Slightly updated from the training version that you saw that you attended last week, Councillor. And it's shared by offices. Yeah. So, it falls to me as Section 151, first of all, to say I'm very fortunate to be Section 151 at Tower Hamlets. It's a council that is financially strong and resilient and able to invest in its community and, without exception, committed to doing so. and that's a really nice position to be in. That said, it's not just my job to tell you the good news. It's my job to make sure that you feel assured that the budget that's been set is realistic, affordable, that we understand the risks. There are always risks. Do we understand them? Are we resilient enough to face them? How do we know that? And most importantly that it's not a budget that's been set by accountants sat in a darkened room who know nothing about better schools and great education and looked after children and communities and housing and older people but that it's a budget that's actually going to be delivered by a whole team all of whom are sat in front of you. So, on that note what I would draw to your attention is that the budget that's presented to you in my professional view is an affordable budget. It does give the council financial resilience. It's ambitious. Not in terms of being financially stretched but in terms of in order to take that money and make the difference to the community that I know you all want to make. It requires huge delivery from colleagues in operations and I think that's really important to acknowledge. In terms of headlines it is balanced across all three years. We have taken all of the comments in the best value inspection review and yes, finance did come out of that really well but there were some observations made around some residual risks around they mentioned 7 million pressure which was a combination of one-off waste and one-off housing options funding. We've addressed that in this budget by putting that through all years. They rightly were concerned the amount of reliance the council placed on commercial income generation. In the previous MTFS that income was savings were largely realised but in this budget that reliance has moved from 48% to just 2% so again that risk has been mitigated. They also observed that even though it was a small amount previously there had been a reliance on reserves this budget presented to you makes no reliance on reserves at all. That said even though we are well placed we face the same risks as everybody else there are huge pressures on demand led services homelessness SEND adult social care none of those pressures don't affect Tower Hamlets in fact when you've got a fast growing young population you often find more of those pressures focus on places like Tower Hamlets so we do know that there are real residual risks in here we've done our best to learn throughout the year about those demand pressures there are real strong robust plans in place from relevant directors in their service areas to address those pressures going forward with investment in technology the single biggest risks to us lay ahead in the unknown what we know is easy it's what we don't we know that there's going to be a funding review from government a consulting on that there are two elements to that Tower Hamlets should gain from one which is around the RSG funding because we do have high levels of deprivation and a concentrated population but there's a business rates review at the same time that currently proposes that instead of keeping 30p in the pound of business rates you get to keep 100% in the pound of business rates of new business growth which would be great if you weren't already one of the biggest business rate bases that there was the opportunity for growth is very different and I'd rather have 30% of something than 100% of not very much so they're the risks the addition councillor to the pack that you've been given was at the request a question that was placed by overview and scrutiny at the very back you asked about the increase in funding year on year we've placed two pages at the back of that pack for you if you go to the very back in real terms we've shown you year on year how much additional funding has been given or not in some cases and on the second to last page we've shown you to the pound where all of that new allocated funding has been spent within the budget that's been presented to you so I hope that's helpful I'm happy to answer questions and so are colleagues thank you for that if it's okay with you I'd like to take the public room questions first and then we can come back to the main budget right so I have can I have some hands up about who wants to go I know Councillor Mohamed and Councillor Natalie wants to go first in the first round I feel like you guys are twinning up today while I take these two may I ask everyone else to keep your hands up so I know who's going next so Councillor Mohamed first and then Natalie next thank you chair first I'm going to start by saying thank you for all your hard work on this I think there's there's there's a lot that goes into this and I'm coming here tonight and answering questions so we appreciate it in terms of communities I want to focus on the saving proposal around the police and the 1.1 million pounds that's going to be saved per year that amount over three years to 3.3 million pounds so first just to say I totally understand the police aren't able to deliver on the police that they were able to so there's an understanding it'd be helpful to hear from you both how comfortable you feel about the amount of money that's being saved here and again I refer to the annual resident survey where ASB remains a real concern for residents so do you think it's justifiable for that 1.1 million and in terms of you're going for a community safety restructure and did all of that needed to be saved could parts of that have been used for innovation or to support in that restructure and ultimately how you're adequately funded to deliver a fighting for community safety so that would be helpful my question is around the growth proposal for the waste service so for the members of the committee I'm the scrutiny lead for environment and climate emergency so I've had a private meeting with Simon and his colleagues in the waste team and has given a very comprehensive answer on why this investment is needed and I would like Simon to explain that out to the committee I'll repeat what I mentioned in the meeting that there is some detail in the proposal of the growth proposal that there wasn't sufficient clarity as to the individual things listed out why an increase funding funding was needed so I wonder if you could explain to the committee what was needed Let's deal with safe communities first in that it's quite complex so you know the position with the Met I believe I'm reliably informed that I think we're one of the only boroughs in London if not the only borough to have a partnership task force so the Met are struggling to recruit their own we've managed to hold on to the partnership for another couple of years but seeking extra police officers to tackle the crime in the borough I just think was unachievable from the Met's perspective and in terms of the impact of reducing the investment down I suppose I counter that in a number of areas that first and foremost the mayor is intending to invest more money capital money in improving CCTV we've probably got one of the best CCTV suites in London if not the country there's further on our estates and we spoke briefly the HR committee and I said there is a need for reorganising social communities and I'll explain that within the context of the budget social communities do really well at tackling violence against women and girls prevent counter terrorism and business continuity not so on tackling crime the causes of crime and that's why the reorg will start to streamline some of that so I don't think I know that the removal of the money for the police will impact on the service delivery I think the service delivery will improve we are reorganising the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the results there was a blitz down in brick lane where we worked with the theos and the met a couple of weeks ago just before Christmas so there's some really good stuff already beginning to happen to start to reduce the crime and fear of crime in the borough attacking drugs it's a long way to go I'm having regular meetings now set up meetings with the borough commander and Vicky Tunstall because I think that needs to happen as part of moving forward and any restructure will be done in conjunction with the met so we work together to improve reducing crime in the borough so I'm confident that's the right thing to do I'm also confident the reduction in the budget of the police office is also the right thing to do I hope that helps and if not I'm happy to have an offline discussion with you on safe communities as well with Councillor Taller as well but we are going in the right direction I promise you waste so let's talk about what we've 15 million is a lot over three years I accept that especially with the cost of living Christ and everything else but as soon as you step outside your front door you're hitting our streets whether rich or poor black or white wherever you come from you're hitting and you know we can't underestimate the power of clean streets because it goes towards people feeling safe as well and I think the investment is welcome from my perspective it's something I've been pushing for quite hard even since I was a return of an interim as Director of Public Realm in May 2023 that's gone quick but let's talk about what we've done with the 5 million already so resident satisfaction have gone up in the area we've increased recycling rate from 15.73 up to 19% I'm hoping it's going to go past that beyond March 31st I'm hoping it'll be nearer 20% which has been incredible increased improvement in cleansing standards that's not me saying that and as I said time and time before this committee is Keep Britain Tidy independently to charity have measured that for us and said it's a lot cleaner and also a reduction in complaints so I think the signal for what's happened already with the investment that we've got is clear and I hope that members from all parties would think the borough has got a lot cleaner the reason for it the budget since 2020 has flat lined so you've got an increased population and use and footfall but the budget for waste was the same year on year so Judy's quite rightly pointed out we've had a hard look at it and that investment brings it up to where it should be and I think better clearer management better processes our workforce is happy it's actually a long way to go the engagement down the depot is better than it's ever been before and with the unions and staff so I think it's all going in the right direction and I think the investment is worthy but I don't become complacent on it's getting better and recycling is great because I know if I'm back here in June or July in front of OMS and it's all going the wrong way that I'm going to get me colour felt so I do appreciate that and I think it's good that we've got authority and a mayor and administration and the council that supports this service thank you thank you so I've got Councillor King anyone else on public realm yours not public realm okay before we let you go I have a question if that's okay so I want to touch on the 15 million over three years and this is an officer led question not a political one so I understand like the mayor and the political will to want to fix waste service and make sure we're giving the gold standard to the residents and this has been an issue and it's come up in the resident survey about what residents want how they want their services to work for them 15 million pound over three years is a substantial investment into the service I want to ask questions around how do you come to that decision about I see there's a breakup like you've given us a breakup of how the funding is going to be spent but when you look at it it doesn't I can't fully get my head around how that becomes a three year investment that's 15 million pounds so there is a question around how much is the waste service worth now what is it costing us now so then I can work out what the percentage of that investment is how much that service is growing firstly it would be good to understand that and the second thing is we've bought this service in house and one of the ideas is not just to be directly be able to give the service that we want and be able to be responsive to our residents but also it was about cost saving and being able to save money can you just give a brief understanding of are we still saving money with this 15 million pound injection into the service the base budget for waste has historically been since 2020 20 million year on year so year on year is 20 million and that's if your cost of waste is going up your disposal costs are going up fuel charges are going up inflation all those things and that didn't change the flat line of the budget was 20 million it's now 20 I think we're running about 26 million and that needs to stay at that if we're to continue to deliver this service well the budget needs to be stabilised and I've said that from day one when I was here in May 2023 I said the waste budget needs to be stabilised so one of the things that we will be doing and I'm happy to come back to the committee or HR committee we're reorganising public realm waste services so the structure is fit for purpose because that was never done and Council Benefit knows that we've had that discussion around what it looks like and it's not it's not without its problems waste it is a tough public realm is a beast and waste is a beast we've got lots of stuff going on the depot around vehicles which we're getting on top of but there's a lot of historical stuff that we're now covering up and sorting out and moving forward on I think in terms of I probably won't get thanked for this but when I hear the word savings from waste let's stabilise the budget first let's stabilise the workforce because the workforce you know we had the strike action in September 2023 and I don't get those phone calls from regional officials anymore like I used to Julie helped out to negotiate to talk us through that but when we talk about savings I think we need to rationalise and understand what is it we need to deliver the service and what do we benchmark against other authorities and then look at the savings because I think to bring it in for the right reason if I had been here I would have left refuse out but the budget is a difficult one and always will be unless we get on top of the structure and the people and I think that's what I've asked Ashraf Alley to do to do reorganisation what is it we need to deliver the right service for the borough and then have the budget to match but I'm happy to come back to this committee on a quality basis if you want to give you an update on what that looks like and what it feels like because I think it's important that you own it as much as I own it and that's I've only got one mission I said is to council benefit I'm here to serve and to make sure to do the right thing by people of the borough thank you for that can I just come back there's a lot of what you can I add something yeah of course thank you I mean just to touch on what Simon has already said and just sort of give a little bit more context from what we looked at from our lens as executives is that taking over any sort of business organisation even this chamber for example we find it's functioning but it's not giving us the output that fix it to put an immediate fix in place to get it up to some sort of standard which we done we pumped in money we know last time the one-off funds to get the service up to a standard where we think okay from now we can see we're above the water and we see what we're looking at and I think once we got to that stage it was more about looking at now that we got this room up and running what's the ongoing cost how do we align our priorities to make sure they're sustainable because we don't want to put in money into it and then a year later it's gone back to where we were again so I think this is why it's 15 million because it's 5 million per year so obviously MTF is for three years that's why it's in that way and so it's sustainable it's in the base so whatever improvements that we're coming up with and it's not just capital improvements it's like Simon said it's structures and it's the lot it's a full revamp of the service so that we make sure that whatever improvements we put in place it's long lasting and it's in the base so we could see the continuation of the improvements thank you thank you that makes a lot of sense and there's not a lot that I disagree with what you both said but I will come back and say this that it's a 20 million pound service and there's an injection of 15 million over three years I understand your point about sustainability completely completely completely makes sense and with the improvements we are we've recognized this as a committee that is heading the right direction we don't want it to store and especially not under for financial reasons I understand the structure of how you get to the budget all the hard work throughout the entire year of your start chamber and your cabinet and everything else that you do behind the scenes however you probably have the answers I just as a committee if we can have more reassurance 15 million pounds that's a massive growth in that so when you say sustainability long term can you tell us what does that mean what does that look like where are the savings going to come from are we expecting this just to be a service that is now going to move from 20 million to 25 million that's just the expectation is that what you're expecting to do after the third year or does it look because the good thing about the format about this year's budget is there's a lot of breakups in the in the performer for the growth but unfortunately I struggled with this injection of 15 million it has a breakup but it was quite similar to what we were doing last year but it doesn't really say how it's sustainable why it's needed for three years because a lot of those projects and those plans were what we heard about last year so it's a matter of just a little bit more information and like I'm sure you test this in your in all your meetings and I completely can imagine you doing that Julie is where you test the corporate director against the finances so if we can have a lot a bit more information around that so then we're rest assured as a committee here is okay it is council we can we can provide you with the detailed information but um when we look at this we look backwards so power bi as Simon says doesn't just say here's what he's spending today it shows him what he spent last year and the year before and so consistently for a number of years this service has overspent it overspent significantly more than it does today than it's asked for growth partially because we made permanent a significant proportion of temporary workers that were not really declared at the point that the service came back so add an establishment of x but a whole stack of agency workers on top of that and Simon service bought the cost so we look backwards and when a growth bid comes that says oh we really need this money accountants take some convincing to get it as far as cabinet and the mayor and we'd be happy to we'd be able to show you the three years expenditure which areas that's overspent on and why Simon's correct when he says this isn't about um investing more so we have a 25 million pound waste service i think reality councillor is you've always had a 25 million pound waste service but you had a 20 million pound budget yeah thank you um yep that was in a nutshell to be fair i mean this we'd we spoke about council benefit and i spoke about having a silver bronze and gold standard and and i think and i think council mark francis asked this very question of blessing she was here um you know about sustainability of long-term improvements and the budget and what happens if um and i think that's what i sort of refer to about savings that sort of worries me because let's stabilize the budget let's get the structure right and then this review what you want you want increased performance but reduced costs but we're a long way for away from that um so you know bronze silver and gold i think is probably a we were paying tin money but i'm expecting silver service but it doesn't work out but we we is moving in a direction and i think that's that's the council as a whole thank you um and so on that i would say ask for more information so if you can if you can put that you know paint that picture for us so we can follow the journey you are coming back quarterly we are on your backs about this we want it to improve and we want to work with you so the more information you give us we're along on this journey with you and then we know how to utilize this committee in order to make sure the performance is matched up with the investment is okay thank you thank you and on that note um i think you can go simon thank you so much thank you for releasing me early it's appreciated by me and my family thank you thank you very much um so can i now open up questions for any department apart from public realm because we've just done that um so i'm going to do you want to come back after you're going to come back after okay okay so counselor james and that you got to okay helima for anything in the budget now yeah okay so two for now so counselor king and then helima is okay can you two go first yeah thank you thank you for your presentation so counselor ahmed the um council taxes rate being raised uh by the maximum without triggering a referendum for the second year in a row obviously two percent of that is adult social care um increases of two percent um but you just explain the rationale and the justification behind that thank you thanks for your question counselor um so i think if first of all we need to first understand council tax wise the tower hamlets is actually the lowest um in terms of i think it's in our presentation um in terms of the the the the rises that we've had but it's the sixth lowest in london so so as as we know council tax is a cumulative sort of model so if we fall back in increasing council tax that we have to play catch up for a long time which isn't the main priority in this instance for for us right this moment is that council tax is required in terms of sort of as a as a great source of fund but at the same time we don't want the vulnerable residents to have any sort of impact in their day-to-day lives and i think that's why what i touched on before is to help those residents because council tax obviously we know that every every council tax every council would increase council taxes freezing council tax is an option at the same time those who can pay should support who those who can pay support the support the council support the residents that need support so the same way so what we what we've done at that in that process is increase the council tax cost of living support to the inflationary rate of 50 350 per household income to support those residents who cannot afford the increase and of course that basically means people that are on any income at the lowest level of income they wouldn't pay any increase at all or any council tax at all but but those who can afford should support the council and should pay the way through okay just as a follow as a follow-up to that i think it'd be a good um piece of work before we put together our budget recommendations to just get more detail on um first of all the council tax um rebates how much we actually do because in the report is saying like 23 percent um of households get um are eligible for uh council tax um discounts um and i think but i think that was last year though so it'd be good to understand how many more are coming in and then similarly how many more have or how many of those eligible have taken up those grants but my question is more about like as i said the rationale so as i said 75 of people are going to get a council tax um or even more than that actually because um discounts uh not everyone gets 100 discount but um everyone who does get a council tax increase which is the majority of people again they want to know the rationale so it's bringing in the revenue of um of a few million pounds and obviously you have to in your decision of what its growth what is savings why was that decision made for council tax um to and is it funding any particular growth or what particular consideration was made to not raise it to the maximum level thank you um so yeah what i've got here is historic nearest neighbor council tax increases so we are the lowest in terms of changes in council tax rate uh which is um very good but at the same time those who have to pay the increase i think what what is given in return if there was an increase in council tax and you wasn't seeing any growth any support for residents or support for people out there i think that would be quite unfair but at the same time for the slightest increase that we are going to go into per household i think we've got which comes to pounds and pennies at max um it the the benefit in return is is huge is huge so what we like we know the list of initiatives that this mayor has introduced from free school meals and emas and the list goes on from youth services and and you know have a whole a4 page full of initiatives that we'll come up with and this time around a brand new initiative where you have free school uniform for primary and secondary school starters which is great and already very much welcomed by whoever sort of come across this policy so far and mills and wills again for vulnerable residents i think the benefit in return for the slight increase that there is it's it outweighs it by far i'll hand over to julie thank you i just wanted to add one financial rationale counselor which i think is really important that everybody's aware of when government makes calculations on grant awards and particularly now they're looking at the funded formula they operate on the assumption that you do generate your revenue you do increase your counter tax the maximum so if you don't and the funded formula changes you just lose it because they will have assumed your level of grant will have assumed that you did so there is quite a punitive measure on local authorities that don't generate the revenue that they're able to just just from a financial perspective can i decide one more point here and i think this budget has the free home care included within this so yes adult social care is is a cost that comes through but at the same time what we're getting in return is free home care for the vulnerable residents i think that's very very important that's 7.5 million pounds and like we just spoke about before 15 15 million pound in waste services and these are people's day-to-day lives as they're walking around coming out of the house going to school going to work going to parks and leisure and meeting friends and families they'll see the improvement in the day-to-day life in in the cleanliness of the borough as well as the elderly people the the vulnerable people being looked after and those children going to education getting at all levels got all different levels of supports from free school meals to ema university bursaries and now a good chance of children that's about to start the primary school they get that boost in free uniforms and children who go into secondary school get free uniform i think that becomes a burden on a lot of parents who need to now a student starting starting year seven is a concern for people now they're going to spend another 200 pound 150 pound 200 pound on uniform which they didn't budget for before and there is a support and after that they can sort of get the finances in order and of course the council is here for support at any point they need thank you i was waiting for the kick-up reference not this year maybe later thank you chair um so my question is uh referring back to the executive summary in the slides about the new savings of the 77 million um so your target to achieve savings uh of the 77 million over the next three years will obviously have an impact on frontline services um especially the social care and homeless support can you explain a bit more around whether it will impact or not thank you um i can and there is a pie chart in in the pack so if you look at the pie chart uh the best illustration for an organization that's got it right for you as councillors is the areas where you see the most demand should be the areas where the least pressure for savings applies and if you look at the chart savings by directorate you will see exactly the point you made councillor that housing regeneration children's services and adult social care which are the three areas where we experience significant pressures face the least challenge on savings the significant areas of savings this year have come from corporate and cross-cutting areas i think we've set them out quite clearly in the report things like um we have an advantageous triennial valuation for pensions we've changed the way we account you know account in a much more contemporary way for capital none of those touch the services so i hope that pie chart gives you the assurance that you seek that those services that are of the most importance are under the least pressure at time that's to save money uh i'm sorry thank you chair uh yes uh the budget anticipates a return on investment of uh the tune of 13 million pound in technology and two million pound in sustainability through the fleet electrification of the fleet that we have uh how will this investment be prioritized and uh what metrics will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of achieving a long-term saving in this uh uh portfolio thank you uh so they're two quite separate ones but the big one the the technology one um actually one of the things we want to do is they get to try it before they buy it so the services that are going to be delivering savings using technology we invest in the technology they get to use it for a whole year at no point during that year is any saving expected this time next year we'll be setting the budget again so what we'll have is corporate directors informed by technologies they've been able to try and test and use before they commit to those savings and that's the important point i'd make it's not me or finance that commit to the savings it's the corporate directors that lead the services so i hope that gives you some assurance that we don't just say anything oh that looks like a whizzy bit of kit let's just buy that and force that service to operate at lower cost actually we invest in the technology uh ask corporate directors and three of them certainly steve reddy george and david actually are all being engaged at some point today i think in one of those technology pilots we've been looking at but the whole of next year the technology goes in they get to try it no expectations of savings at all in relation to the fleet sustainability and for me and and i know it's important from a planet and sustainability perspective we spend three million pan a year on diesel counselor and that's how we'll achieve the savings by electrification of the fleet we won't be buying expensive diesel so that one's a little bit simpler to explain good i've got i've got another question on the pension after after yes second round okay can i counselor i'm going to come to you counselor lee but counselor didn't you misplaced your question last time do you want to ask them now yes um thank you chair thank you very much thank you and i have my question to julie can you tell me what the main cost drive for the health and adult social care service this year and i got another question it's okay okay okay can you tell me what how are the planning for the population change and increasing the demand for service is clear thank you okay so um this year in terms of what have been the main increase in cost drivers is demand in three areas um more people um because a greater proportion of our population are aging as our nhs has been less equipped perhaps to keep people in hospital then those people rely on adult social care services for longer and to a greater degree and of course each hour of care that's provided costs more so inflation higher need and higher volumes those three drivers together and in terms of how do we forecast demographics and the population georgia is far more skilled than i am to tell you about how they work out about our aging population public health sits inside georgia's area um we use a lot of analysis as much as we possibly can we compare ourselves to others but at the end of the day you can't just sit there and say there's going to be even more people and it's going to cost even more and the needs are going to be even greater so we'll just put millions and millions and millions more in so what georgia and her team spend a lot of time doing is looking at how can we meet those needs in a different way how can we intervene sooner so perhaps people need less hours of care as they become frailer and older and all of those uh programs are things that the team are looking at and i think the the health and adult social care scrutiny members will probably have an awful lot of information about those demographic pressures and demands did you want to add anything georgia i think you should come and work in adult social care um so julie has set out in terms of the drivers some of the things that we're doing is the way i always describe in terms of how we respond to demand in adult social care is you can't stop somebody from getting older no we haven't found that that that that yet but what you can do is delay the need for adult social care so one of the ways in which it's really important to me is for instance i work very closely with steve ready because what happens in children's services and how um we support children will inevitably have an impact in terms of adult social care as those children grow um and become and become adults for instance from a public health perspective it's ensuring that we try to keep people healthier for as long as possible what we are seeing nationally and not just in tower hamlets is there's a lot of people in the population who are living with a lot of comorbidities you know maybe diabetes it may be high blood pressure it may be all sorts of chronic conditions and there was a time certainly i've been a social worker long enough to recall a time where people would come into adult social care when they were in the 80s now we have people who are in their 40s and 50s coming in with chronic health conditions and there's a very big difference between supporting somebody who's 80 years old for maybe 10 15 20 years depending on how they live and actually supporting somebody who's maybe 40 or 50 for the next 50 years so you can see already in terms of the financial impact so that's where public health comes in in terms of trying to support the population to keep as healthy as they can and that in a sense delays or hopefully prevents the need for for adult social care so those are some of the things that we're doing but of course if people circumstances are such that no matter what they've tried to do or the support we've provided they still need adult social care we have all manner of interventions things like reablement short-term support to get people back on their feet working closely with the nhs to pull our resources together to try and support as much as we can thank you thank you for that um in line with councillor with these questions about growth and the pressures on adult social care so with the free home care one thing that hammersmith council faced was lots of people moving in for that purpose how do we manage that i mean um with with the housing crisis that we have good luck coming into town but i think um yeah i think uh it's it's people may want to move into tablets which obviously shows that it's a good place to come to number one but number two i think the way our housing system works it wouldn't be just an easy process of just moving into town and if someone does want to privately rent a place and then come to to sort of benefit from the free home care i think they need to look at financially which is more viable that's what we're looking at from a numbers point of view i'm sure george has got a bit of answer than that thank you councillor no you you described that very well so as part of the work that we did to prepare for this we did speak to our colleagues in um in hammersmith and fulham um it's been a while since they implemented free domiciliary care um but they the the information they gave us quite recently in the last couple of months was they didn't see um as many people a huge um increase in people moving into the area um and of course as you said councillor it's it's it's not as easy as just moving in is it you've got to have somewhere to live and so forth and so forth so we are as confident as we can be that we are likely to see huge numbers of because they're now coming in to live in tower hamlets but we are going to be monitoring that just for our own purposes um but we think it's unlikely that we'll have a huge spike thank you and my question was no way um trying to say that our hammets isn't open it's open for all councillor lee thank you um my question so it's just one of your savings proposals and i just thought it was quite interesting it's uh technology enabled savings so it's not it you are projecting a not insignificant amount of money being saved here um and just for just in case members haven't seen it this this is essentially about um sort of internal internally the council um essentially making use of ai um which i think is quite interesting and some of it is is is pretty standard and i think completely harmless and makes a lot of sense some of it i have concerns on two levels concerns about staffing and concerns about residents so if i could just say it i understand you're projecting no no reduction in fte but this is a largely unexplored area and there is a lot of concern at the moment about the use of ai and what it means for workers essentially modernization is really important but you have that has to bring workers with it and i'm just concerned that in this sort of risk section the only risk projected is that uh staff might not want to use it there's not really any mention of the fact that this is something that is evolving constantly um and whilst i appreciate you not currently anticipating any impact on staffing you have already you know deleted uh well well vacant posts will already be deleted so as much as i understand that that that isn't uh technically jobs being lost there is something going on there and my other concern is um process automation um and it's reminding me of a discussion we had like previously in this meeting which obviously we can't necessarily go into but um the discussion we had the last meeting um um and essentially my point is these things are not infallible and it says process automation revenues and benefits processing you know we're dealing with residents here what safe i think i just think this is another one where i'd like to see some more detail chair because i think there are safeguards that need to be put in place and at the moment the only risk that's being talked about is staff might not want to adopt ai which it's true true um but i think there's more to it than this and it's obviously very topical at the moment we're being talked about but i would just like to see a little bit more detail on this one i'm happy to do that i think by way of assurance i can say several things because this to my area and ai is my passion and i did spend some time with all our trade unions talking about this ai is going to happen organizations that are ready for ai that apply that technology to do the transactional tasks freeing up people to do the things machines can't are the ones that are going to invest in their workforce for the future and that is where tower hamlets wants to be there are no assumptions counselor on savings as a reduction of number of permanent posts we have made an assumption on three things automation in revenue and benefits is happening to us universal credit is out of our hands we have a skilled assessment team i've been talking today about how we change the focus of that assessment team to enable them to assess grant awards to enable them to do evaluations of grant awards as all will tell you he's always looking around for people to do that so our plan is the opposite where are we going to make the savings we use too many agency staff we have too many temporary workers and when we reach a point where we have natural churn in areas where technology is applied that's the point at which you make decisions members have been very clear with me and corporate directors are all very clear there are no savings targets against established posts as a result of that technology what we fear is if we don't grasp it and take our staff with us skilling them to do the things machines can't then it will happen to us i hope that gives you assurance just wanted to give you an example um councillor lee from from an adult social care perspective we've just completed a pilot which i'm more than happy once we finish the evaluation to talk to you about it's something called magic notes so the only way i can describe it is in the old world certainly i recall when i was a social worker and that's still the reality now a social worker for instance goes out to undertake an assessment and visit somebody at home you have a really good conversation that might take for an hour two hours three hours depending but the burden in terms of recording is so significant you can easily spend a full half a day or whole day recording a two or three hour assessment in terms of all the paperwork that you're required to do that's disproportionate what i want is people in adult social care to be talking to people and spending their time actually engaging with our residents rather than spending most of their time looking down and actually recording of course recording is important in its own way but it mustn't overtake that face to face that contact so what magic notes in essence should do is it it supports in terms of recording that conversation it just doesn't take what's said in that conversation and automatically upload it but it's populated the professional then looks at it to make sure that it's reflective of the conversation and boom it saves that time and what that means if it's successful of course this is still the pilot and we still need to evaluate it is it doesn't replace me it doesn't mean i don't need as many social works not at all it means that people who are waiting instead of possibly waiting a couple of months hopefully you now just need to wait maybe a couple more weeks before we actually get to you rather than waiting long periods of time so i just wanted to throw that in as one of the many examples um that mean that actually ai will support us in terms of how we work with residents thank you i think that relates really strongly with me um having social workers have more face time with our residents than spending about abundant by paperwork did you have a supplementary for this i just want to say yeah that that is reassuring and thank you for that and i think perhaps yeah this is maybe more something to discuss probably at a later time because it's just and maybe actually even with that specifically in in health scrutiny um just because usually the time when record keeping is most important is when something goes wrong um and i just it's that my point about is about safeguards mostly and especially you know if this is the automation with universal credit um unfortunately i've seen some uh pretty shocking mistakes coming out of that as well so i think it's just ensuring that we have safeguards in place for residents with the safeguards can i ask um i assume there's other counselors out there are councils that are ahead of us when it comes to ai so we get to learn from them so and but we also don't want to be too behind where there's technology out there we're not making the best of it am i correct in thinking yes no absolutely certainly where i was previously um before coming to tower hamlets um well ahead in terms of ai but we always we we did build a safeguard in in recognizing that not everybody would be able to use for instance automation and access to it so there was always um an option for people who weren't able to do so yeah uh councillor muhammad um thank you chat leading the very nicely on from catholic and chowdhury about technology uh specifically on the magic notes uh point so i think something you said julian i don't want to misquote you just want clarification on it um there's no saving in the 25 26 but there will be savings in 26 27 and 27 28 so with the magic notes i think your point was you're not gonna force us upon people when if it doesn't work you won't buy it that kind of thing but with that specific saving i'm assuming of the 77 million that was mentioned has that been baked in then because the assumption is there's six million of savings for 26 27 and as in three million three million not six million total so has that not already been baked into the 77 million of savings though it is baked in in future years it's not all magic notes so there's co-pilot power bi iron finance uh i'll be the first to tell you i used to have 18 temps uh abdul will tell you 18 to produce a set of management accounts we do it in real time now in seconds so the establishment of finance hasn't changed but the cost base did as a result of that so it is numerous different applications you're right councillor those savings are baked in in future years and the reason it's important that it's future years is that we'll have an opportunity having tried it for a year to be able to sit here this time next year and say this is how we know that we're able to make that saving in this financial year you'll have seen it but it's not baked in on the establishment even in those years it is assuming there are relying so if the caseload per social worker can go up by a tiny bit for each social worker and that means that residents gain as well at some point your requirement for agency social workers will go down it doesn't mean you need less permanent social workers we don't need less accountants but it's those transactional staff and i think the biggest difference that i would say is for a long time everybody used to talk about automation and that was fine as long as it was for customers or residents i don't know whether you've ever phoned one of them places up that says press one for this and two for that and three if you want to chat bot to hang up on you ai isn't about that ai says you know what customers need people transactional activities can be done by machine with checks and balances so that's what it's looking at i would say that our approach is extremely conservative with a small c in terms of the timing the amount and as i say we've already begun to talk to our trade unions about getting them on because this needs staff to want to be re-skilled in the skills that we will need i hope that gives you assurance that that does i think it does give me some assurances i think suppose my point is so i'm not like i think i completely agree with you i think the potential of ai is really exciting and something as kind of georgia mentioned you know helping our social workers do what they're brilliant about focusing on supporting our residents absolutely and it's just there's slight concerns that i suppose that more information at a future day would be helpful um we all know we have the greatest will at least i'm talking to the saving about magic notes so that's why i talk about magic notes specifically it's under the social care optimization so both children's and adults so it's 1.5 billion each uh in a following financial yeah that's been baked into um the 77 million and i appreciate it's not going to what's to stop us coming back this time next year and say well we didn't work and i know we're being quite conservative as you say about that um and the next financial year gives us a chance to test and get it right and do that but i suppose it's with it's just that needing to understand that a bit more would be helpful because you're right there's loads of amazing potential here um but i suppose it's something that's already been baked in with some assumptions and i have no doubt you're going to reassure me here georgia but i think it's um yeah there's probably a bit more information that's needed post the two pages that we've got here you could have been a fly on the wall actually councillor when we were having this conversation as julie said um there was uh when we started magic notes uh initially there was an expectation do we build this in you know in 25 26 um steve and i felt that we wanted to try it but you know julia's section 151 office has been very clear to say um you know if it's not magic notes then it could be something else so it's not just the only thing we're looking at from an ai perspective so i think i'm quite clear in terms of expectations to say if after we've tried it i sort of think i'm going to struggle maybe to meet the savings or it doesn't work for whatever reason the onus is on me to ensure that um i i offer up something else and because there's a number of things that we are looking at in the service which of course as we said to councillor lee we'd be happy to bring in it gives me flexibility in terms of other ways i could make those savings still in the technology space but not necessarily with magic nose i think that's really helpful and very similar to councillor lee i think as councillor as the chair said um i think helping us understand that journey the journey that's already been taking place and the journey you're about to embark on would be really helpful to kind of add the added reassurance because i i think this is really incredibly exciting but i think we need to feel comfortable that this is an achievable saving so i think it's helpful thank you would you mind counter if i just had let's not wait a year to find out the hard way so quarterly you know we will be doing this as we go and i know the different technology the different corporate directors are looking at and i'm sure they'd be happy and keen to ensure that as they're updating in reports we can see as we go not wait 12 months and then look back and say it didn't work yep and don't worry i'm writing down recommendations as i go um can i steve ready can i ask you to take your sso hat off and add some um add some uh response because obviously george has spoke about adult social care from children's services point of view i think this is a good point for you to come in now um thank you have a new year everyone and um i don't ever mention it but we're outstanding in children's services i don't know i don't know if i've mentioned that yet but um yes yes yes um that and the great education services that we offer in this area um so i think the important point is to recognize that um as as colleagues have flagged up you know it's very early days and there are some concerns so it's really helpful that we've got this sort of next year to try some things out and that's and that's really important um but i think and i also recognize um colleagues concerns around impact on staffing and you'll be aware that there is a bit of a national shortage of children social workers and it's created a bit of a market where we have quite a lot of agency staff and people making decisions about being agency social workers rather than being permanent because of financial advantages and even in a amazing place like tower hamlets even with great children's services we still have to use agency staff so i can see a certainly a scenario with the success of some of the ai means that actually our staff can be more effective and efficient and if that release staffing capacity that would be agency staff that we're currently using which which is still significant even in in a place like it's armlets thank you and i think there was a hint there congratulations to children's services for the outstanding offset report well done to you your team and the deputy uh mayor as well i'm sure he'll be really happy to hear that i've complimented you i mean but we have a job to do here in this committee and that is to make sure that you stay there so we stay outstanding okay so that doesn't mean you your feet is off the fire at any time soon right zaid i know you want to leave early so i'll let you come in with your question is okay yeah yeah okay thank you thank you chair it's just um um based on the uh issue around ai uh i come from a background of it in government so and we're we're big on ai we're big on uh technology and changes so i'm really encouraged to hear that you are looking into that so and i'm also i was going to ask the very question what else are you looking at this kind you very timely mentioned copilot and the about we also considered um copilot being a product of microsoft and it just requiring license i'm sure you've thought of all of that and not just magic notes um what when uh you're testing you said testing phase and piloting when do you are you expecting this to start or has it begun already and is there a timeline where you expect to have a yes or no go no go kind of uh um a date and then to say yeah well this is good for us or this is not one second um that's a really good question and can i just tag with that and ask can ai help us with the ehlps did i say right okay okay so a couple of things just and i'll ask david so you can see it's not just copilot and we are microsoft accredited we work with microsoft all of this ai we've already got as you know council we are going to buy it we're going to use it and it is applicable in every area of our business one of the really exciting things i'm sure david will talk to you about is um ai and detection and properties around smart homes damp and mold i know he's been looking at that today and i know um we've been talking to steve about speeding up special educational assessments by having a platform that allows different professionals to do their input simultaneously instead of waiting for one piece of paper to circulate around and parents not know so in real time parents will be able to look and see where their assessment's up to but david you've been looking today i think it's some smart ai that's very different than copilot yeah so um thanks to um some technology that that julie has um really kind of um asked us all to look at using we've been looking at a a company called switchy which can place devices in our residents homes that can detect when there may be factors leading uh that increase the risk of damper mold um in in residents houses we can instantly communicate with those residents and they are also trialing being able to do that in different languages as well as part of the um um trial so that we can instantly start giving people advice to reduce the damper mold in their house that's specific to what we think is causing it but it can also help us get ahead of the situation so that we are for instance looking at our long-term plan maintenance works targeting the right blocks by getting uh much better data insights about how we do that planned program as part of our asset management strategy so for for us it is um really exciting actually and it allows us hopefully to move from a situation where residents are having to call the call center to complain about damper mold to one where we're actually contacting residents before they have damper mold because that would be brilliant wouldn't it and it would take a lot of demand out of the system but also mean when residents do have to call to get through because i know that's an issue as well because we're getting less calls um but also i think i mean and this this is one area i do agree with the prime minister who gave a speech on ai this week planning is another area with a substantial benefit from ai um so you know historically we've used planning officers to do things like validation and simple tasks where we're checking that africans submitted the right documents we don't need human beings to do that we we can use ai to do that and then use the planning officer to properly assess and make judgments and advise planning committees um rather than spending their time just checking the documentation has been submitted so for me and also planning is another area where we've got agency staff so if we can free up resource from that it's about losing those agency staff um because there's huge demand for planners um and i'd rather have them looking at big applications like the white chapel life sciences campus than than doing simple administrative tasks so um it can be used in a whole range of areas let's hope ai doesn't replace politicians steve do you want to come back um no i just support julie's point really is that um even in the current way we do the education health and care plan process ai could make that um more effective and efficient but also and there's already some um technology that means we can in future allow parents to see the plan being created so that actually would be helpful they wouldn't have to wait for somebody to update them they wouldn't have to contact the council they could dial in and see it which i think would be it would be a really good development um councillor knightley you're next thank you chair um so i have a question i think it may be for um councillor ahmed um but it's also i think it's probably around anyway i'm not sure um i noticed that areas of significant cost pressure so um specifically send and accounting for demographic demographic pressures in adult social care are accounted for in the growth um proposals but i see that homelessness which is also a significant area of cost pressure doesn't have anything mentioned there isn't anything around it in the in this budget um so i wanted to know like are we thinking realistically about what 2025 might bring um and do you think we've accounted for the risks adequately happy for um either of you to take that question so cancer there are a number of elements where we're looking at and we do one of two things you can just keep putting more millions in for more hotel rooms and accept our fate or we can really maximize the potential of having our own um tower hamlets homes back in house and hra dave and i have met with savills we've looked at um acquisitions and transfer and operation of our own temporary accommodation from our own housing office and when you see the hra next week you will see an awful lot of money set aside to acquire those units so so the investment that's going in is not in let's just keep paying for the problem to be there it's very much around two areas one prevention and david refocusing some of the resources that have been given to uh enable greater prevention of homelessness i think some of the government new legislation will help some of that and secondly uh looking at our ability to house people ourselves rather than rely on third party um commercial organizations and and that's a massive commitment don't know whether you want to add to that david well it was just it was just to add to the the fact that we want to continue the work that you've started actually which is about procuring uh accommodation at lower costs to what what we've been doing uh in recent times so particularly getting out of hotel accommodation which we've now successfully done getting out of costly b&b accommodation and sort of reducing the length of time that we're having to place families and that type of accommodation for through procuring other forms of accommodation so we've got our buyback program as julie said um but we're also looking at where is the where which geographic areas are is the smallest gap between the local housing allowance level and what we have to pay um for a private sector land let's the team are very focused on that to try and bring the cost down to the council of the property that we're placing people um into um and i one of the things we're also doing is giving ourselves um a really kind of um stretching target this year in terms of the number of properties that we procure and we're increasing the amount of resource that we put into the team that does that procurement of properties to go out there and find us um properties so that we're not going for those costly nightly paid um and b&b um accommodation basically um i think it's also worth saying we're hopeful that some of the national legislation around um things like um uh ending no fault evictions will will help with some of the demand pressures as well um councillor khan thank you chair good evening uh last year there was 5.2 million worth spent on homeless service recent quarter focus that uh this year said that housing option is focusing 11 when were spent last year idle and social care overspent 3.1 million this year predicting the budget by 4.4 million last year a special education need disabilities overspent 3.2 million the quarter to focusing this year is 1.1 million s and d and 1.8 million in s and transport these reports you refer that this is a national uh local and the national uh demand pressures my connection to the corporate directors which so much information known both locally and nationally of these areas can the corporate director for those areas given assurance lesson have been learned about underestimating past demand that is budget reflects on more realistic level and spend on that the council the council will be facing significant overspent again this is my question one and question two will be uh uh uh also to the corporate director of finance and resource given us assurance that any past part of the council that constantly a source of overspending are given support and ensuring that lesson are learned to improve the budget setting thank you chair did you get that i did i did get that i'm going to try and answer and not sound defensive councillor um but uh two things first of all in a number of areas you've you've mentioned you can see absolutely that mainstreaming those investments have happened housing options was a one-off it's been baselined waste is another example that you've heard from simon also you'll see in their areas of investment in things like legal and hr all of which have not been it wasn't that the budget was wrong it was that a number of savings had applied over the years had never actually materialized so each year there was overspending i i would say as ft that i've said before the answer of the skill of the experts isn't in here's how many more million we need to meet the demand the answer in their expertise is here's how we can design the services in order to enable us to meet our demands at the best value for money we can so there's a balance between the two and i'm sure they will each talk to you about the things they're doing to deliver to meet that new demand that isn't necessarily about just keep more money just keep more money it's about doing things differently yeah i mean i i suppose just for homelessness which was the biggest number that you quite rightly pointed out um julie's already mentioned that extra investment has been put into the service and now baselined into it so i think that's really important um but it's also the things that i've just spoken to so it's the reducing um demand but also reducing the cost of accommodation but also hopefully through that improving the quality of accommodation because not only is things like b and b the most expensive accommodation it's actually the worst for families because they don't have the basic facilities that people need to sort of lead um full um and healthy lifestyles so um so actually for me those side that side of things is really important as as well as the extra investment that's gone into the prevention agenda and to try and work with families but also landlords upstream to prevent households becoming homeless in the first place i'll just jump in as well um councillor um i think it's fair to say that as local authorities in adult social care we're all grappling with the same issues nationally nobody has cracked it in terms of um being able to forecast definitively it's you know you it only takes you so far when we're using the national tools that are available to us like poppy and pansy and while the forecasting might support in terms of numbers from my perspective one of the most difficult things in adult social care is how do you forecast complexity um and that's the thing that i grapple with the most it's not so much yes the numbers are high but actually it's just the level of complexity of people's needs that is really really difficult to actually forecast and with that in mind knowing that i am unable in a sense to provide a definitive this is what next year is going to look like i then do some of the things that david for instance and all the other corporate directors are doing trying to do more in the prevention space um early intervention um using um digital um looking at work looking at the way in which we practice for instance as social workers not being um paternalistic and turning up and saying to families yes you can just have everything you want yeah but actually looking at um what support have they got around them in terms of friends and family and neighbors and then we come in and we support and we enhance that rather than being the sole provider so there's any number of things and those are some of the things that we are trying to do to manage and mitigate um that that that rise thank you check and i just had one one last point here i think you had really good answers council i think i'm just gonna add one quick point because these are service-based demands right and we are forecasting a lot of the time so it's quite difficult but at the same time what assurance you've asked for and i think what assurance that we can give at this point is that what is happening you see you heard a lot of you heard from simon there's service redesigns happening so a lot of thorough in-depth looking of where where the pressures are and how we can sort of tackle it internally from the council and then what needs to happen a review for value for money make sure that we're doing the right way make sure that we're aligned our strategies are aligned and we are aligned in terms of what demands we're facing and finally is what will happen you heard of technology and you know that we're going to use technology to make sure that we're doing more and we're achieving more and ultimately to control pressures and control our finances going forward thank you councillor chowdhury thank you chair thank you uh my question is on the pension valuation uh with the the projected saving of 12 million pound uh from the three years pension valuation can you explain how and what measures are in place to ensure that the pension obligations are still met without compromising the employees uh benefits thank you and uh just before i uh finish uh congratulations to steve the team my mutalukdar and everyone it was i was there last night so it was a great night thank you very much thank you thank you thank you and just to say thank you to uh councillor for chair of children's scrutiny during that period thank you okay was that your comment that's it oh that was easy okay uh councillor have these next but i can ask there's a question oh there's a question oh we've asked about the pension savings okay i'll wait there okay so i'm sure you're riveted councillor at the technicalities of pensions i'll just make it easy but i will happily spend more time um so the triennial valuation happens next year we've been in touch with our actuaries we've had independent advice the time that's pension fund is in surplus it's not in deficit in surplus by 168 ish percent and we make contributions each year to two things one we fund existing contributions and two we set aside money to fund future deficits or we did three years ago and as a result of the workforce growing we pay a percentage of our payroll we insource leisure we insource waste your payroll gets bigger you pay more so it's an independent actuarial valuation uh that we've taken advice on we've given several options we've taken quite the cautious one and it has no impact whatsoever on the funding of our pension fund please be assured thank you uh while we wait for cancer after to come back i had one question on school uniforms so this is um a really exciting budget in the sense that we're reinvesting back into local authorities but coming like it's a trend coming from uh central government um how from from a political point of view they've they've rightfully made this choice that this is something that we want to do because we understand which our poverty uh high in the borough and the needs of the borough this is this is a gap and we want to fill it from officers point of view what work's been done so for instance this is starting from year seven there are lots of children who are um lots of families that have children multiple children who are in different years and one struggle is getting that first initial uniform set when they start year seven but then it's a bit of a struggle because for instance a blazer cost 54 pounds for for a school that my child goes to and that's the same as a blazer for an adult so when it comes to the five-year duration has there been any work done around what the needs are and how so there this is what politicians want to do what have officers done as far as collecting evidence where the needs are how how the delivery looks like can you give me a little bit of idea of how this has been designed um i can come back to you with some detail analysis that we provided we used uh a combination of uh information we already had from our schools and we have a team in place that delivers our holiday activity and delivers vouchers to schools already so we used a lot of their analysis i would love to give you the answer from my fingertips i haven't got it okay but i will make sure that you do get it and see the analysis that was done because i'm looking so i'd like some data and evidence around um how many kids are in year seven year eight year nine that that kind of understanding of how how we've used evidence to promote this and to say this is how we want to deliver it and i understand this doesn't mean that politically you can't change what the delivery looks like if the demand change or if if evidence shows something different but also uh just just how would it work because in the past there have been some initiatives really good initiatives that this this administration has come up with but then the whole applying how does it apply how do you promote it there's been a little bit of a lag of that how do you plan to do that if you can give us some information then we can also help promote it but also from scooting point of view we know where to look when it comes to the rag figures coming forward it's okay perfect um abdi you're the last speaker and then we're going to oh cancer king after that you have another one okay oh cancer can want to come back as well for them okay great um thank you my final question i want to kind of focus in on is about adult social care and one of the savings you're due to make is around the mental health residents living in supported uh accommodation out of the barba so i mean some of the finance colleagues in the room might not necessarily agree but i think there's there's times where it's okay not to make a saving and i'd wonder if you could speak a bit more about this saving and so the idea is to it's pretty niche there's a small service of 140 residents who are supported in sport accommodation outside the barba and it'd be interesting to know so part of it is about saving money and i think a part of it is also it's time to do that review but it just the reassurance that it's the latter that it's about doing the review and it's not necessarily about the cost saving because i think there are times where it's okay not to make a saving and and actually it might not be appropriate for all 140 to come back in to the barba so what reassurances do we have that we're not going to hear some horror stories of people um being forced in because the saving talks about the the duty uh the statutory duty and we always know the statutory duty is you know pretty bare minimum at times compared to what we as barbers should be offering and it should go above and beyond so we really welcome that from an officer but also from a political perspective and hearing on behalf of your colleague and administration that it's a commitment of yours to not force any residents i need 140 um who are outside and supported accommodation for mental health reasons aren't going to be pushed back into the bar or worse be discharged because they refuse to so there's the office and it's a political uh i would like commitments from that um absolutely you've answered the question actually uh councillor yes and i can absolutely give you that assurance so the circumstances in which people are placed outside of the borough um we have a great borough but unfortunately we don't have a huge amount of provision in terms of supported accommodation um or care homes and so forth so sometimes particularly when people have either left hospital or in crisis or require specialized support or accommodation if there's no provision in borough we then look elsewhere to ensure that people's needs are met which is not ideal because these are tower hamlets residents and like many people they'd love to remain in tower hamlets um what tense has possibly happened in the past is where we found places for people outside of the borough we've in a sense um left them there in the in the borough sorry wherever they they are um but what this program is about is actually being a very targeted and very clear approach to actually speak to these people to say we placed you in havering or wherever it might be at you know six months ago or a year ago we've now found something for you appropriate um back home in tower hamlets would you like to return sometimes people will turn around and say nope actually i'm quite happy to stay and because they are still our residents despite the fact that they decided to say we'll continue to support them so they absolutely do have a choice um the majority of times you will find that people will want to come back and are quite welcome the opportunity to come back but they do have a choice and the savings are in relation to the fact that um generally tends to be more expensive to to place people outside of your area because within our area we will have arrangements with our local providers and so forth whereas outside of the area we we are sometimes forced to pay at the rates of the placing local authority which sometimes are not always as competitive as ours so that's where the the saving comes in but if you look at the the numbers this work has been going on for the probably the last two to three years you can see that they are quite small numbers in terms of the savings and also the number of people who have come back and i think that's reflected of the fact that people are given choice yeah thank you can i can do you want to come back so yes i think from the political side of course all our residents we don't we don't want anyone to leave the borough the more that we have the mirror is and we've got a populating borough which we are proud of and um and i think what's really important is these are vulnerable residents so i think here it's not about what we want politically but i think what's right we'll take the expert advice and and sort of go go along that route and if if again it's it's an open dialogue if someone does want to return we'll take expert advice and if and someone's suited where they are and if it's best for them i think um it's up to the individual to choose from but as a as a political administration we would want to be able to remain in our borough and whoever wants to come back of course they're always welcome to do so thank you thank you uh councillor king thanks um it's a bit of a strange question um and it might be something we need to go away and just get further clarification on as part of like the recommendation and the budget report i mean generally looking through the papers like it's not clear to me yet i appreciate i haven't been to the budget briefing yet sort of where the growth in um your presentation um julie says has some detail about the increase in grants from central government it'd be good to see how um the core funding or the funding is changing across the board including how much we're getting in through council tax etc etc i'm sure that will be in the full budget papers um my question is to um to what extent are we relying on capital infrastructure levy um receipts to fund um to fund things that are not infrastructure funding uh which we've been i mean the capital program which was announced at the end of 2023 sort of uh loosened loosened it up a bit um and said obviously and you know those are monitored by a finance officer and audit um the legal team etc you know testing to what extent we can spend that on services so i just wanted to see if you had a overview of to what extent if at all we are um in this budget and in our core spending generally using community infrastructure levy uh on this um because yeah i just know there's a high reserve in capital um infrastructure um receipts sitting there waiting to be spent um so counter to the best of my knowledge on services no additional application has been made of still one of my bigger concerns is the opposite um and that is ensuring that community infrastructure levy and section 106s are applied and delivered and delivered and we get the value and we don't risk uh developers coming back to us at any point and i know that's something that david's really focused on so although that sounds like i'm turning the question around maybe that's good good news to your ears but my concern is the other way around it's not that we are in any way draining still away from capital schemes it's i think david would be the first to say the pressure coming from me to deliver the schemes associated with still but do you want to comment david yeah well i completely agree with that point from julie but also just to say i think there are some welcome changes to the rules that will make it easier for us to spend so for instance the ability to combine um uh sort of section 106 and so receipts with with right to buy receipts and those kind of things where we've had a lot of restrictions in the past um that i think is helpful that um those are going to be freed up to some extent to allow us to really kind of apply those receipts more easily and and in combination with other funding streams which will also help the viability of projects um thanks chair um i have a question about the bark and time project um just wanted to highlight it for the committee it seems like a really significant and complex project i've also been talking with david's um team about it but um i guess i just wanted to ask could can you give the committee assurance um both that we're not going to leave it because obviously this the growth proposal is for the uh is for a growth in year three of the mtfs but um could you give us assurance that we're not going to wait until year three for it to actually work on it and the second assurance is that we are also being supported um by the best possible expertise uh whether that be internal or external um to figure out how we're going to deal with this um yeah when it comes to an end yeah so um it's a really important question um and i just do want to reassure you that we're certainly not waiting to kind of you're free to resolve the issue around the long-term future of the bark and time heat and power network um abdul khan and karen swift and their team are are looking with the best possible external expertise about how we decarbonize that plan and we look at things like the data centers locally that we could take heat from and uh rather than um um other more sort of carbon intensive sources um so that's what one point but we're also getting commercial advice around how we can sort of make sure that um we're ready to get the um um the plan into a sort of cost recovery place um for that point so um that work is happening now um and um and obviously we're talking to potential customers as well from from the point in which that that kicks in so that that that's all happening now and we're certainly not waiting until year three can i just add anything i know john's put his hand up um so i'm the opposite not wait until year three to see growth i expect to see a return counselor on that i think that's reasonable and i just wondered if you might have asked john because you want to come in really hard on it yeah i can um sort of emphasize and uh support what david said um i've been heavily involved in the matter today we've been uh sending um strong letters to partners um we are going to deliver barquentine um and we're not waiting until year three i'm going to show you thank you great thank you john thank you um now last question from cancer thank you chair this is on the school uniform my question is if if i am correct that there is only two shops in torham is providing things uniform for our kids and we are being a really populated borough and really young people and a lot of children going to the school and as my chair have said that adults jacket is 54 pound and seven years old jacket is also 54 pound so who set the price for those items on the shops the question is one second is is there any possibility that more shop can come in to sell the inform uniform so that monopoly for the those two shops can be broken thank you although it sounds like i'm ducking the question i would imagine the person who understands more about how schools control pricing on school uniforms actually isn't me probably mr ready over there yeah cancer if it's okay i'll have to bring you a written response for yourself and the committee on that um about the the what appears to be a monopoly from what you've described which which isn't a usual practice thanks yeah thank you um happy to have some of that information come back thank you all of you for all the help and support you've given us today to get a better understanding of the budget this is uh since 2022 this is probably one of the nicer meetings i've been to in the part of me um i just before we i say goodbye to you and we move into the recommendation phase um i just wanted to ask uh to cancer say is previous year we've had um some changes made last minute in order to be best equipped to put the recommendations in can you just let me know do you anticipate any changes or anything else like that anything we should be aware of before you go off everything we have here it's in the paper so far okay fine right um sorry counselor just to be clear um the one additional thing you will see if you agree the rent setting for the hra at this meeting at the next scrutiny meeting you will be able to scrutinize the hra budget but that's not adding anything that's just the process yeah yeah i understand that was the last thing we had to do so as far as further information is concerned we wanted more information on waste and we'll put that in writing to you um when we talked about ai magic no um there was a little bit more on that whatever you can provide us we would be grateful school uniform is a bigger thing and i understand it's a new thing so we'd like um some more information on that um and then recommendations we're just going to have a discussion so you'll hear about it but thank you very much for your contribution tonight um have a good evening thank you okay in order to uh start moving on um i want you to start thinking about um um if you had any thoughts about how the meeting went today about what offices have said to you and any recommendations any ideas anything you need further information apart from the ones i've already mentioned um you can start getting go so who wants to go first yep natalie can't say really quick addition to the recommendation you've already given about waste um is that i'd like it to be um at the improvements in the coming year to be oh i'd like to ensure that the waste service um is improving and in an evidence-led way um so that's just in addition to the one that you've already asked for yeah so if we we can have a discussion as well as recommendation so um as far as discussion that i felt like in the budget the way the proposal was put forward i thought this is something that because of the amount of money that's been spent over the three years that officers would have prepared a lot more for us which we didn't get and i am happy for what you've recommended and if we go away and think about some more questions i wasn't i don't know about anyone else i wasn't rest assured that that looked like evidence-based and it didn't look like 15 million pounds worth of work that needed to be done because i've had i've had meetings with um the team um obviously not in public session and i think there is more detail that they can give that they haven't necessarily provided to the committee so i think it's definitely worth asking for did you feel rest assured i did yeah yeah very much so um yeah okay council mohammed and then king um yeah um yeah general reflections i thought they answered it well i think they've so i do still keep going back to the ai when i which i think is really apt from counts like i think it's there's there's a real potential real excitement but i think what came out of that is there's savings baked in that might not necessarily be come to fruition like i think so i know we spoke at great length about magic notes as one example but there's a whole save proposal in here which is six million um not in the first year will be delivered three million the second year and three million the third year but i might not necessarily so i think the deputy chief as i mentioned it's test before you buy um but it's already part of the main presentation as part of the 77 million so i think there is it's not inconsistencies but i think there's the savings here that we probably need to challenge a bit more of a find out a bit more because i think actually if it's part of the 77 million over three years that's a figure that's already been announced to us and announced to the world but there are some that are contingent on several actions happening so i think there's a bit more information that we need there yeah i i think i agree with that to test that further and i would also add um if committee is satisfied with this is this is something that you could easily forget about and then come back in a year's time and then oh my goodness we're in a different place i think that it might make sense for the committee to have a six month update after the budget's passed to see where we are so then that will help shape what happens at the next budget meeting is that fair yeah just general reflections or is there now recommendations as well recommendations reflections so just the recommendations i think i'd hope we all can agree as a committee is around the blue badges and the um well i kind of mentioned my first question the blue badges and so we know the same people have been hit the hardest and actually as a recommendation from this unified from this ons is actually is that an appropriate saving to be making um it's from nothing to being 40 pounds for disabled residents who who need that car or the blue badge or that space um to get out and i think we've risked unintended consequences of isolation and there's numerous other reasons why i think it probably is the most appropriate one to make especially right now where we are still in the cost of living crisis i think that's apolitical i think it's just one that we should hopefully recommend yeah universally agree and if we i asked the question about how much uh officers think this is going to collect and didn't get an answer so if we can ask that please in written form cancer king to take um the points council biannfe made about waste and apply it more generally i think there in terms of the growth that we're seeing in the budget you can break it into two um two categories one which is sort of like unavoidable increase in demographic change need whatever um which is being and growth is being applied to to meet that demand but then the other thing as well then there are several sort of high profile ones um of course administration want to talk about which are primarily designed to tackle the cost of living crisis and indeed you know you know look wonderful in the council press release or whatever but my concern is that when you package together things like um what we need to be assured of is things like the energy fund meals on wheels winter fuel allowance cost of living relief fund the council tax relief fund school uniform grant um to what extent is the uptake um being modeled to to happen yeah um and indeed what will the like actual impact be and what i think is missing is that a cumulative sort of like impact um and outcome based like assessment on on that thing like is it really tackling uh and the attempt to tackle some of the key fundamental like um you know health and uh cost of living issues here but um i think we need to package them together as a couple of you know a couple of million quid and be like okay but are we how many people we're reaching you know how how is it how are we changing sort of like the levels of you know um the metrics that we measure all these things in the in the council by like is it having like a proper impact and that applies to like waste as well like to what extent is our recycling rate going to go up because of this investment as an example yeah i think i agree with that can we put it yeah we've got that uh councillor lee yeah um i just second the points made about about waste i feel like like we've talked a lot about that in this committee and i feel like we've sort of we've gone on a bit of a journey with it and i think if you sort of listen to some of the comments made you would think that that five million plan had done the job it was all fine and now for some reason oh no we're going to do it again and again and again and i think there's just an answer questions then if there are answers those questions then it would be good to see them um um my there's just something i want to point out which is it's it's featured a little bit across different issues that we've mentioned but it did have its own section that we didn't really get to but um there seems to be a reliance um on on essentially not filling vacancies uh that that is where some of these savings are coming from is not filling vacancies in the council um i think it's a 7.5 vacancy factor they're a lot they're banking on there is a potential that they're baking in problems for the future with this and i think that there is an issue there and i do think we haven't had the time to discuss it in this meeting i think it would be good something good to come back to um it just because a post is vacant doesn't mean it's not necessary um i think there are there is potential for issues in the future with this and i would like to come back to this at some point yeah that's agreed yep i think we've got that um any other councillors want to come in with any recommendations yep concern one of the concerns i have from the budget is the ever increase of homelessness uh uh with last year was well over the budget and this year i don't know how uh if we get more intensive uh breakdown of how they're gonna what was the prediction for this year uh compared to last year and you know the public sector a lot of people a lot of landlord are evicting people uh and therefore is increasing demand for homelessness and that is the over by the last year i just want to see forecast for this year on this please that's one thing and second thing i'd like to thank you for those who attended this school thing today and there's um there are a few more coming in please do come and testify please would we really appreciate to give thank you yeah actually i did want to come in actually so the um the answer that they gave around homelessness it sort of addressed it but it sort of didn't as well and i think also mandan's made a really good point that the that there will be general fund pressures still on in homelessness and they haven't really answered how so they've talked about the hra investment into like long like buying back homes but there is like realistically there will still be general fund pressures from homelessness um and that's maybe we could ask for more information about that uh thank you uh chair i'd like to touch uh on the school uniform side of it obviously it's going to be rolled out soon end of the year or i'm not sure when it's rolling out is it steve september yes like similar to the free school meals we'd like to see what's happening in the six months down the line or uh further down the line and one more thing i'd like to echo what has been said about the uh 15 million pound investment into that system uh i would like to yeah west management i'd like to know a bit more into that you know and uh and the question i had on pension and the it side of it i need a bit more information on that if that's possible yes thank you any other questions all right so i want to come back on a couple of things so the school uniform um i think especially after the bvi report it's really important to understand and i i try to ask these questions um steve it's about what happens it's a politician's job to be able to come up with pledges and come up with things they want to do and politicians are always going to be ambitious about serving the community and where they see gaps i want to know how officers take that ambition and turn it into a policy and turn it into an initiative because this has just been announced it's um it's going now you tell me it's going to start in september i would have thought there would have been a lot of uh information around that because it's a really good thing to do and i i just thought that it's one of the um one of the big ticket items one of the big things that's happening and coming new that officers and and the politician would want to tell give us more information about um so i'd like information about how many kids are in year seven year eight year nine year ten year eleven now and how many kids are in year six that are going to go into year seven that are going to be entitled to this but then there's a cap so i understood stood it as fifty thousand pound household income but then i've had different information that is it might be more than that so the threshold might be higher can i please get some more information and clarity on that before we pass the budget and when if there is a threshold income threshold how have we decided this can i have some case studies like what what uh what a like family uh income might look like so if it's fifty thousand one uber driver who's a parent and a dinner lady is another parent three kids and one in year six who might be entitled to it but there's two other kids in secondary school how does that work out tackling poverty give me some more evidence-based work like why is public money best used for this in this way and not a blanket anyone in secondary school applies for this that are really struggling just give me a give me um some rationale behind how why we've decided to do it like this and not any other way and what evidence has been modeled and been used to come up with this initiative um and that i i will come back to the point that this does relate back to the bvi about officers rolled and politicians roles and how we balance that off please and then that can be also applied a little bit to waste management because last year's uh budget was was telling us one thing i understand that you can come back and have a different stance but when we were here a couple of weeks ago talking about waste we had i unless i'm wrong we had no indication that the waste service was going to grow in investment at this level which is a little bit worrying and the mayor did make a comment that i thought was indicative sorry i thought the mayor made a made a comment that i thought was indicative of him looking at future investment but it was just he didn't say anything about it so yeah there's future investment and there's 15 million pounds in three years that's that's that's really like something as you said you were reassured with information we didn't get that at this committee even i know we're not going to be able to get through everything but we've always been open to written form information that a report could have come here just don't waste it alone because of how much money has been invested in here and we're up for best values we were up for the best value inspection just recently we've got an envoy coming you know it would make total sense for us to have a report on 15 million pounds over three years so can we make that a point when we do write to officers about this did you want to come back um so it's it's around the school uniform because i don't quite understand it in terms of are children eligible now going from year six to year seven they are yes for new new intakes and so this is an addition so kids who are in year six now they're eligible okay and it's a five-year journey but it's only for the year seven kids that are starting but the year seven kids already get it anyway so the new year seven so they're year six now there'll be the new year seven in september primary school as well steve this is only for secondary school right i think it's primary and primary there is an existing hardship scheme if you go on the council's website we are one of the not many councils in london have it but there's an existing scheme you can apply to um i guess what i would say as well is i've obviously relatively new to the borough i've done quite a few school visits and i've talked about free school meals and other things and when i've talked to head teachers about what are the other pressures and what are they finding themselves supporting families with the school uniforms issue does come up a lot but i'd fully take your point around well okay that's an issue that people have raised well have you then decided where thresholds is and have you modeled the numbers and how much will that come to fully fully accept that yeah and we understand the school uniform it's been something that's been popping up in the last 14 years it's been a struggle for families but why year seven why not year nine why not year seven in year nine like give give us the rationale behind it why we've come up with the with the figures the way it is and what's even more important is to see how the numbers are um in year year all year groups in in the borough so we can get a picture of other numbers going down are they going up where how do you decide whether which year the support is needed the most because it's about at the end of the day um tackling child poverty is about supporting parents with their income we want to make sure we're supporting families long term not just temporary uh plus the you know sticky plaster type of solution yeah that's what we're asking we don't have any idea about that so do they apply is there a blanket a letter that goes out to all residents how are you going to advertise it all of that please uh yeah just there's only a point about the threshold i think it'd be really helpful to sit beside this on top of the communication is also what about the parents who just miss out so i think your point about you might be working as a you know retail and you might be an uber driver combined income might just push you ever so slightly over and i think is there a reason we haven't been doing that because rather than 50 000 and something and if you get it under it then you get that support if you're over it and just you don't get anything kind of thing and how are we supporting those who are squeezed in the middle that just miss it i think it's really important to understand and it's as kind of steve has said there's there's a hardship fund that very few councils do but how are we making sure we have an active plan to promote that as well because if you've just missed out and you've applied then what is the kind of the path to getting that support and is it as simple as transferring over application or they have to hold to have a whole nother application and it's that ease of going from one part of the council to the other which can sometimes put people off and i think that's really important to the threshold but also signposting them to what is my yeah and coming back to being evidence-led is if if parents are actually utilizing the hardship fund or are they not and also if you're on benefits is there is there an element in your benefit that includes this for your children or not um so does that mean then we put the emphasis on uh children's um in work poverty families in work poverty like we we just want the evidence to say why this this cohort is important than anyone else sorry uh counselor chowdhury and then halima uh just a quick one on this uh free school uniform there's only one shop in town if i'm not wrong is that right that how many shops are there yeah where's the other one yeah where's the other one i only know one sorry sorry what all right so i've never been to that one anyway um just uh well that's my view anyway uh i didn't know there was one in front in market um we've installed a lot of things can we not insource this school uniform um not a bad idea because um there are these are very expensive stuff year six kid the jacket is the same price as a year nine or whatever i can i have an image of the mayor stitching up school uniform um mine would really be a recommendation to work with the schools um because the school my children currently attend what i hear from the children is that come the end of the year term so just before summer holidays a lot of children are going to school with trainers and what i know the school does do is they have a little fund i don't know where that fund comes from but they've got a fund where then they uh obviously you know i think it's a voucher a causa voucher they were saying that they're they uh they they then give to the family who goes and has to buy that pair of shoes um so really to understand better and i can completely agree with you children grow so quick and it's you know that 150 pounds initially in year seven probably would take them through to year eight but um blazers are very very expensive yeah one evidence is school secondary schools now have a scheme of hand-me-downs where people hand in the blazers and the trousers for our parents to come and utilize that's that that's telling uh counselor king did you want to come back yeah just briefly on school uniform grants that's full experience um yeah so branded i'm only thinking of a t-shirt branded school uniform t-shirt for primary school child from what new market is about 16 pounds but from sainsbury's or whatever it's like four pack you can just get a plain white t-shirt which is fine for schools which is four pounds and most parents get like four plain ones and one um branded one so i think that's the other thing as well to bear in mind like is it all going to be like through the uniform shops or will it be able to be you know well yeah it would be much better value for money for everyone if it could be yeah if you could do it so that people can mix and match as they do and the school uniform from secondary school is substantially a lot more than primary schools we need to differentiate that any more no perfect are we well you've you've thoroughly gone through the budget so you should be proud of yourself okay if there so we've got um officials written all that down all your recommendations please email with any more recommendations we've got a deadline of friday the it's a week before the next ons means so the friday before the next ons please so you've got deadline if you can do that because we do have to go through the official channels um so it kind of sets out the next step so we will draft this into a recommendation from ons or sorry report um with recommendation and your comments um we have to agree the report electronically because our comments have to go to the mayor uh not next friday the friday afterwards and we will bring it back to the next formal awareness but our comments have to be submitted to to the mayor so those can be considered at their cabinet so please look out for the report let us know if you have any amendments comments thank you very much any other business abdi mohammed sorry i don't speak too much but um just in my role as scrutiny lead for community safety just a blurting people that i'm going to be running a a series of programs around um tackling hate crime and ensuring that visa council can do uh our most to support around hate crime so please do look out for my information we're running a challenge session challenge session we're trying to get it in before when we're done uh so if you can come please do come along um yeah there'll be witnesses from gonna costa barba so please do come along thank you very much and there's the free school um meals ons uh challenge that we're doing and we're visiting some schools so thank you councilman for your work on this and please do visit them you've got the invites in your diary thank you very much there's also the net zero well of course the net zero which i attended last week so it's the second session on the 23rd of january you're all very welcome thank you all right thank you everyone have a good evening bye bye thank you you you you you you you you you you you