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Agenda and decisions
December 1, 2025 View on council website Watch video of meetingTranscript
Hello and good evening, everyone. Welcome to the 13th of February 2025 edition of the Environment OSC. My name is Councillor Jamie Coakley. I'm the Councillor for St. Mary's and I'm the chair of this committee. Here with me this evening is Councillor Judy Gasser, the Cabinet Member for the Environment and Paul Chadwick, the Executive Director for Environment and Paul Chadwick, the Executive Director for Environment. and Community Services. Just chair's notes, I'll ask that members of the committee introduce themselves when they first participate in discussions and officers can also introduce themselves when they're called to present their reports. Starting off, are there any apologies for absences? None received. Full house, good news. So, item one on the agenda is the minutes, so I just wanted to ask members, are there any objections to confirm in the previous minutes as a correct? All right, that's agreed. Item two, are there any declarations of CUNAE, other registrable or non-registrable interests? Councillor White. I'm a member of Community Renewable Energy Wandsworth crew, who do have dealings with the council, but I draw no financial benefit from my involvement with the organisation. Okay, and who are you again? Hang on a second. Give me a minute. Councillor Paul White for two. Thank you, Councillor White. That's noted. Okay. So, with that moving on, we can move on to the substantive items. So, our first one, or potentially first three, if the committee is happy with it, since the first three items, items three, four, and five, are all very closely related. That is, the Climate Action Plan, the Retrofit Strategy, and the Climate Adaption and Resilience Strategy. I propose that we have an officer presentation from Mr. Hager, and we can then question and scrutinise the three pieces together, and then we can vote on the three separate papers at the end of the discussion, if members are happy with that. Councillor Caddy. Good evening, Councillor Caddy. Just a quick question. In some committees, we're only allowed sort of one or two questions per paper. Does that mean we'd only be allowed one or two covering all three, or are you quite happy, because I've got questions on all three? So, will that be okay to stick with that? Yeah, that's fine. We haven't previously put question limits in. I think Councillor White's got quite a few. So, yeah, no problems there. Okay. I have no problem. Okay, great. So, if everyone's happy with that, Mr. Hager, do you want to come and set up your presentation? I think... I might say something. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, why are you setting up? Councillor Gasser, if you wanted to say something. Yeah, good evening, everybody. And I'm very proud to be introducing all the work that the team's been doing over the last year and that they're going to do. But I just... I'm going to be serious just for a moment and just to say climate change is real, no matter what anybody says. We've just had the hottest ever January. We've had terrible fires in Los Angeles. We've got flooding across the world, hurricanes. There are lots of problems. But it's not too late. There's still a lot we can do. And here in Wandsworth, we are doing everything we possibly can to meet our climate targets and to support our residents through the changes. And Mr. Hager is going to present a report of all the action we've taken in the last year, all our plans for the year ahead. You know, the climate team is working incredibly hard. We've got a very thorough adaptation resilience strategy. That's how we keep our residents safe and well in extreme weather. And a retrofit strategy. And in simple terms, how do we help our residents adapt their homes so that they're warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and save on electricity bills, you know, or energy bills? And just to say this is a cross-council initiative, Mr. Hager, and the team work with all their colleagues across the council. And every single director is contributing whatever way they can. And, for example, the transport department and highways department, they're electrifying all their vehicles. The housing department is bringing in a landlord licensing scheme. And part of that scheme would ensure that landlords offer properties with a decent level of energy efficiency, which is good for carbon emissions, and it's good for our residents' bills as well. You know, children's services work very closely with schools because we know how passionate young people are about this. So we're educating them and we're supporting them. And we're decarbonizing the schools where we can. And we work with partners across the borough because we have a very challenging target, 2043, to be carbon zero. We won't achieve that alone. We're working with partners, health partners, business partners, education partners across the borough to achieve that together. So, Mr. Hager will present all of our priorities for the year ahead. Absolutely everything is important. But my particular priorities is we're working on a biodiversity action plan because we have pockets of really good practice across the borough, but they're not sort of codified, brought together at the moment. So they will be. We will have an action plan coming our way, I think, in the summer. And we will ask our residents to feed into that as well. So I'm very proud about that piece of work. I'm particularly interested as well in how planning can help us achieve our targets because there's an awful lot we can do through planning to encourage residents to do the right thing, to support them to do the right thing, make it easier, and to make sure that developers do the right thing as well. So over to Mr. Hager. We're doing incredible work. And thank you very much to the officers for everything they're doing. Thank you. Are you all, Cesar, on the side? Yeah. Great. Me and Callum are going to get out of the way of the big screen then. Fantastic. Thank you very much, Councillor Gasson. Thank you, Chair. So I'm going to run through the three reports we've got in front of you. So we've got the ones with climate action plan update for the previous year and the refresh and new action plan for this year, for 2025. We've also got the ones with retrofit strategy, and we've got the ones with adaptation and resilience strategy that are all before you. So just quickly to remind the committee of our approach to tackling climate change, and there's three key strands to what we do. So one is about becoming a carbon neutral organisation by 2030. So this is about reducing carbon emissions from us as an organisation. So it's about looking at our buildings, looking at our vehicles, and also operating in a more sustainable way with skills across the organisation. The second part is about creating an environment that is low carbon, sustainable, and resilient. So this is about using our powers, our influence across the borough to be able to create that resilient environment and also to promote low carbon approaches and reduce carbon emissions across the whole borough. The third is about working with communities so they can take action on climate change. As Councilor Gasser said, we can't do this on our own as a council. It needs everybody in the borough to come together. That includes residents, it includes businesses, partners, community organisations, all working together to take climate action. And combined, these are all going to take us towards our target of net zero borough by 2043. So I want to highlight a few things we've done. This is not an exhaustive list. There is a more exhaustive list in the papers. And I'm sure there'll be questions about some of those as we go through the agenda. But I want to highlight there's been an increase in bike hanger storage. So we now have 1,374 bike hanger spaces across the borough. We've also run anti-idling campaigns to target air pollution in hotspot areas. And we've delivered warm home packs to reduce energy use and fuel bills for fuel poor households. We've delivered those to over 1,500 households alongside some other interventions to really sort of like go a bit deeper and to help some of those households more to reduce their bills. And we've got seven green flag parks with a new green flag park for Coronation Gardens. We've also delivered the cleaner borough plan with increased recycling rates and a new lower emission fleet. And also we've done climate action micro grants throughout the year supporting community groups. And in particular, sustainable September, which is really showcasing climate action across the borough and how the community is getting involved. And there's a few more things we've done. So we've delivered decarbonisation projects to Roehampton Leisure Centre. We've got more on-street EV chargers. Bids have been submitted to the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund to bring in that external funding to be able to deliver more. There's been community involvement in parks, conservation and biodiversity. Southside Library of Things is one of the top three sites in the UK. There's also been flood protection work at John Burns Primary School. So that's a bit of a taster of some of the things that have been delivered throughout the year. I'm now going to move on to the Wandsworth retrofit strategy. So this is a strategy that's been in development for a long period over the year. And my colleague here, Ali Mulvan, has led on that. And it's important because nearly half of carbon emissions in Wandsworth come from domestic housing. So it comes from our residents' homes and primarily from gas and electricity that's used there to heat and power them. And there's therefore a need for an increase in retrofit. So reducing the energy use within those homes and switching away from fossil fuel powered heating, such as gas boilers, towards things like heat pumps, increasing the amount of solar panels that there are. And we need to increase this so that we can reduce carbon emissions. There are a lot of challenges around retrofit, especially on funding and who's funding it, how is it going to be funded, how can residents do it themselves, how can the council support it. And there's a real need to work in partnership on this and for the council to play a really leading role in bringing some of this together. So we've developed a strategy which provides the high level ambition and direction of travel for retrofit. It sets out the extent of the need for retrofit and why we need to act and why it's important. It also highlights the need to work in partnership and how we can do that. It also sets out the role of the council because previously it's not really been well defined. It's not been clear about actually what is the stuff that the council should be doing. And I think some partners and some community organisations have not always been clear about that. So it sets that out. This is what we can do. This is what we can influence in terms of retrofit. And then actions to deliver against the retrofit strategy are included in the ones with climate action plan for 2025 and will be included in future iterations of that plan. So just in terms of a quick overview of what's covered. So we've got a section on social housing, which is looking at how we can maximise funding and opportunities for retrofit and also engaging with our social housing residents. There's a section on private sector, which is about providing clear information on retrofit for residents, encouraging take up of retrofit, supporting those who are struggling to pay their fuel bills and improving the energy efficiency of their homes. And also engaging with landlords as well, because the private rental sector is obviously really, really important within Wandsworth. There's also a section on place-based approaches, which is looking at how we can retrofit whole areas and some of those approaches that we can develop around that. Identifying heat networks and also promoting community energy. We're also looking at funding, looking at how we can bring in external funding to drive retrofit, including government funding. And also looking at external finance and whether there's options around bringing some of that in as well and driving investment into the borough. And the final section is about green skills, promoting and supporting green skills and careers in retrofit. The other strategy that's on the agenda is the Wandsworth adaptation and resilience strategy. So Wandsworth faces a change in climate, and that is very clearly set out within the strategy. There's a lot of detail about climate projections, about climate impacts and the climate risk mapping that's been done by the team. And this work has been led by Nikki Wheeler in the team. We need to prepare for this change in climate, and we need to build the resilience of our infrastructure and our communities. There's already been a lot of work done on this at London level. There was the recent London Climate Resilience Review, which produced a series of recommendations for all sorts of organisations across London, including for local authorities. And that has been a real driver for the adaptation and resilience strategy that we've developed for Wandsworth. So we've developed that strategy to address this in a lot of detail. So the strategy itself presents the climate risk and vulnerability assessment for the borough. It also provides a framework for us to work with, so we are robust and consistent on our approach to adaptation across the borough. It also sets long-term priorities to guide and inform the council's work around climate adaptation and resilience. And it also, importantly, informs local stakeholders of climate risk. Some of our stakeholders, some of those organisations may not be aware of some of the risks that are associated. So this is a way for us to set that out quite clearly so that they can understand the risks for themselves and the risks that are opposed to the borough as a whole. Also, this is leading the way in London, so other boroughs are interested in what we're doing. Since the London Climate Resilience Review came out, we're, I think, the first to publish an adaptation of resilience strategy that actually takes that on board. And lots of others are very interested in finding out about how we're approaching this, what we're doing and what we're going to do in the future as well. And that's really, really positive feedback for us to get. So in terms of the strategy, there's an element there about embedding adaptation and resilience across the organisation, including in our sort of internal governance. So making sure that officers across the council are thinking about adaptation and resilience and building that in. Ensuring a joined-up approach to adaptation and resilience so we can maximise the impact and increase capacity of the council to build that resilient borough. So how do we work with partners? How do we bring this to other teams within the council as well? It's also about compiling and analysing the data required. We have climate risk mapping that is there publicly available on the website and so it's about developing that even further so we can deliver more, we can identify more. And then it's about implementing effective adaptation and resilience measures across the borough as well, particularly targeting those areas of highest climate risk. So those areas that are most vulnerable to climate change but are most at risk and targeting our efforts there to address the risk that we understand. And then ensuring formal monitoring and evaluation of it as we go along. So making sure that we're taking an adaptive approach to how we're doing it because we recognise that climate change is not going to progress in a uniform and linear way. It's going to change and we need to review where we're going, where we are with this and what the changing requirements are. So it's building in some of that flexibility and adaptability to how we approach this. And then finally I'm going to talk quickly about the Wandsworth Climate Action Plan for 2025. So there's three key priorities within that. One is around delivering the actions to support the retrofit strategy and delivering actions to support the adaptation resilience strategy. And also that stuff around working with our communities and residents and partners on climate action. There's also the Biodiversity Action Plan, which Councilor Gasser mentioned. There's a decarbonisation strategy for our buildings, which is coming out this year. There's the second phase of the Cleaner Borough Plan, which is set for delivery. There's work around improving communal heating systems and social housing and continued rollout of sustainable transport as well with EV charging, cycling infrastructure and school streets. And that is a very short list of what is in quite a detailed action plan in the appendices. So I'm going to leave that there as an introduction and then I'm happy to take questions. Thank you for that, Mr. Hager. And you're definitely not exaggerating when you're talking about condensing it down. That was so round. It's nearly 200 pages of detail that he's managed to sum up really eloquently there. So, yeah, so now we can consider the three papers. There'll be a lot of questions and there may overlap between them. But we have our whole climate team ready to answer them. Councillor Caddy, let's go first. Thank you very much. I'll just preempt my remarks by saying that I totally agree that climate change is an absolute focus and absolute priority for everyone. So I'm not questioning that. I guess my big picture question based on the paper is are we going to actually get there in 2030? I wondered if there was some kind of graph or some kind of table which shows us essentially how we get from where we are now, which is actually looking at the numbers sort of going slightly backwards this year. How do we actually close that gap and get to where we need to be in 2030 for being a carbon neutral organisation? And then obviously 2043 and net zero borough and how each of these kind of projects and sort of lines that we're looking at, how each of them contribute to that big picture? Because there's nothing that sort of comes together and shows me how we're going to bring that kind of carbon down. Very specifically, I also wondered how the carbon impact is kind of being measured, because I think one of the things that it says in the paper is that high represents, I think, was it a 25 to 50 percent reduction in that particular area. And just looking at some of the examples, for example, improving cycle parking, I'm not quite sure how I understand how improving cycle parking equates or how anyone would calculate that that equates to a 25 to 50 percent reduction of carbon in that area. And then finally, in terms of the numbers, I just want to make sure obviously 5 million is an enormous amount of money that we're investing. And I want to make sure that we're investing it in the right places. So are all of these projects that we're looking at, are they all calculated to kind of bring the biggest bang for our buck in terms of getting to that net zero position? And I guess what would be really useful to see would be to see a kind of carbon estimate for each of those projects so that we can see whether we're actually doing the right things to get to where we need to be by 2030, 2042. For me, that was kind of the big thing that was missing from this paper. Thank you, Councillor Cady. Would Mr. Hyger like to take those on? Yep, thank you very much. So in terms of getting to our 2030 carbon neutral goal, the decarbonisation strategy, which I referenced in the presentation, that is going to set out a detailed pathway to 2030. There's a lot of work that's gone into developing heat decarbonisation plans for all of our buildings to really assess actually what needs to happen to reduce carbon emissions from those particular buildings and to put them all together into a programme that sets out what we need to do. So that's going to be coming there and that's going to be very, very detailed in terms of setting out what projects will deliver what carbon reductions in the future. Thank you. And just on the cycle hangers as the example. Yeah, so the carbon impact measurements, I mean, those are estimates because you can't measure all of the carbon for every single project. It's very tricky to do that. It's quite intensive to do that. So we do have sort of rough calculators to sort of use to estimate that. And certainly when you've mentioned about sort of the bids and the projects that are there, when they're brought forward, there is an expectation that officers are looking at how much carbon can be saved from those projects. And that's part of that decision making. But I think Mr. O'Connor wants to come in on that. Thanks, Andrew. So for those of you who don't know me, I'm Claire O'Connor. I'm Director of Climate Change Communications and Policy. So in answer to the 5 million and making sure that the 5 million is allocated where it's going to have the biggest impact, we have a Climate Change Steering Group. That's an internal group of director level across every single directorate. I co-chair it with Catherine Burstyn, who's obviously one of our Directors of Finance. And we also have Paul Gilotti, who most members know, who one of his functions is around audit. So it is an incredibly robust meeting. We scrutinise the bids that come forward. We don't put forward every single bid that comes. And we look very much towards the impact that those projects will have towards our 2030 target and also our borough-wide 2043 target. Yeah, did you want to come back on? Can I just very briefly come back on the – because the thing that worries me is I can understand that cycle hangers are a good thing. People want them. You know, they're good for encouraging cycling. What I can't understand is how they contribute to a big reduction in carbon across the borough. And I think we should just be really clear about why we're making decisions. And if we're investing 860,000, I think it was, in cycle hangers, that's okay. That's fine. But we shouldn't be pretending that there's going to be a big carbon effect if there's not. And I can't understand how having a, you know, several more cycle hangers across the borough is going to be able to reduce sort of significant levels of carbon across the borough. It just sort of doesn't make sense to me, so I'm just trying to sort of triangulate whether we're actually looking at some of the right things and making the decisions within the right framework. So the example of bike hangers would be encouraging cycle use, which means that you're avoiding journeys that would otherwise be more polluting. So potentially you would be cycling instead of using a petrol car, and so carbon savings come that way, and that's how you would work out sort of actually how many avoided journeys and things like that, and that's where the carbon saving would come from. Just to come back, my experience of cycle hangers is that people don't necessarily reduce the number of cars, you know, it's just somewhere better to store their bike. And I have no problem whatsoever with cycle hangers and, you know, people having places to store their bike. I would just be astonished if people necessarily reduce their journeys significantly. A lot of people I know who use cycle hangers used to store their bikes in their hallway. I would just be surprised that the number of journeys was reduced. I may be wrong, but I just wanted to make sure that we're sort of really focusing on bang for our buck when it comes to carbon reduction. Yeah, I think, okay, I think we've gone a bit back and forth, so did a member of the committee want to come in one more time on that, and then we move on to some other lines of questioning? Yeah, so I'll come in. So I think we've used the high, medium, and low impact for quite a few years, so it's quite an established thing that we've used as a team and to present the actions to this committee. I hear your point, Councillor Cuddy, but obviously the team is well-experienced in terms of identifying the impact, and they are constantly keeping up to date with all the national research and the national best practice to ensure that that informs the decisions we take and the approach we take in the borough. So we had Councillor Belton next, then Councillor Osborne, then Councillor Cook. So Councillor Belton. Tony Belton, Battersley Parkward. Can I suggest, Chair, that rather than comments and reply, we have a more open discussion, because I certainly wanted to add to all sorts of things that Councillor Gaddys said, rather than going back to the officers. I mean, we can just discuss all of it, and the officers can come in at the end or something. It just seems to me it might be a better way of doing it. Well, if you want to, like, approach questions to other members, you can, but I think Councillor Cuddy's questions were directed at the officers. Yeah, but I want to go on about the cycle parking and just be repeating it all. So, I mean, it would have, I just think it would, in my view, it would be better if it was a general discussion, but you're the chairing. I want five kind of areas at the moment. One is incredibly trivial, and then it gets more and more significant as we go up. Incredibly trivial, I don't want to answer to. Incredibly trivial is there are a couple of typos in that presentation. I'll happily point them out afterwards if you want, but there are a couple of typos. As I said, that's incredibly trivial. I think Councillor Cuddy's point about somehow or other quantifying the individual items we're talking about and the net impact of those. I'm sure it's incredibly difficult, but I'm also sure it would be very helpful indeed if we knew whatever Councillor Cuddy was talking about. Or I'd be talking about that that actually was relatively minor and cosmetic and the level of it. I think that would be quite helpful, and therefore I also agree with Councillor Cuddy that it would be quite nice to have a sort of running checklist if we possibly could. I also think that I'm sure the officers have considered this, but again it came up in Councillor Cuddy's comments, really. There's a little bit of a confusion, I think, between those steps which are definitely about prevention or our attempts to prevent climate change and our purely defensive actions in the event of climate change. So can I suggest, I may be wrong, someone obviously pointed out I'm wrong, but it seems to be the flood defences of John Burns, incredibly valuable to have, but I don't actually see how flood defences of John Burns stops climate change. So I think prevention and mitigation are two separate categories. And I think there might even be a third one, which is encouragement, enticement, like I would say about the bike hangers. Let's argue about the motorcycle journeys or not, but if there are some, and fewer car travels, then there has been an impact. So what we can do to encourage and entice. Just as an aside, I love the one with the flowers around the tree towards the end of the presentation. I don't know whether you saw that. Just saying, why isn't it like that in my road? And, of course, in some roads there are. And I think that's a serious point. If we tried to put flowers around every street all over the place, it would obviously cost an awful lot for goodness knows how much impact, perhaps not very much. And I just wonder, in terms of this and the main issue I'm coming to, is whether, although we're trying to encourage the private sector, we're not hitting the public sector, because the biggest public sector of all, of course, is your or my house. That's where the biggest investment by masses is going to happen in the next 10 years. And so, for instance, if I took the tree plant, something completely off the wall, like a prize to the Battersea, as opposed to the Dooting, or the Putney, or, you know, like a prettiest street or something in the borough, which actually got the people doing it, rather than the council, because the council couldn't possibly do it all. And so look outside the council's abilities. Now, that's relatively trivial. What is much more important, I think, is the figure you showed in the presentation about the scale of global warming that comes from domestic housing. Now, I think I'm a reasonably good, responsible, ecological kind of person, had the roof insulated for ages, double glazing, gas boiler, shoot me down, Councillor White. And so, a bit off there. But I actually don't know, I've never bothered to find out, what the infrared picture of my house would look like. And I don't, I mean, although we may all have these things that you have to have nowadays if you're going to sell a house, what is it called, certificate, yeah. Although we've all got to have those, I've got my doubts about the value of that. But the actual infrared picture, I think, shows a real, and what if the council, instead of trying to do everything, just, and there's going to be privacy issues here, I'm sure, just to get in the way, just the infrared down the road, you know, like whoever they are who did street mapping, street view, you know, Google Street. And if they went up and down the road just doing infrared of everywhere and showing, so you could see how much, you might be horrified. Because they're the people with the real money, and, you know, like him and me. I mean, to be honest, as opposed to the council doing everywhere, we have cash, and we do our houses up, and we spend money on putting attic extensions, and we do all sorts of things we do. So that, so I wonder whether we're encouraging that kind of private investment enough, even though we're trying. No, we've got to think outside of what the council can do, because as the paper admits, quite honestly, there's no way the council can do it on its own. So we've got to encourage as much as possible from the private sector, and that includes individuals. So that, I think, is a major issue, I think. And I think, although the officers have tried very hard, and we all agree with the objectives, et cetera, et cetera, I think that bit's missing about how we actually get to the big spenders, people, how we get to them. I'll give one example of that, and that is district heating that was mentioned in terms of social housing. I don't understand this, so I don't know, but Councillor Marshall once produced a piece of paper which said something like, if you're going to have heat pumps, actually, so expensive, relatively expensive, and inefficient, doing it house by house, do it for the whole of my terrace. I live opposite another terrace, do it for the whole of the two terraces, so it's there collectively, and possibly the council could help that, and therefore you could have it on a wider scale. Again, encouraging private investment. So that was my comments. All right, thanks for that. On your third point, I'll quickly leap to defence of the officers, that our plan is the Climate Action Plan, and so that does always include, like, a heavy emphasis on resilience and adaptation. It's not specifically just about preventing climate change and achieving our net zero borough. Andrew Hacker, did you want to come back on Councillor Berylton's other points? Yeah, and I just wanted to emphasise that it's about adaptation and mitigation, so it's about reducing carbon emissions, but also facing up to the reality that the climate is changing, and so we do need to take action on that. Actually, on that, Nicky can go into a bit more detail about some of the stuff around the balance between it. Hi, I'm Nicky Wheeler. I'm policy and programme lead in the climate change team. It's a really good point. And if we were sort of having this conversation 50 years ago, then absolutely, the priority should be mitigation. Unfortunately, the world didn't reduce greenhouse gases, so the climate has changed. The adaptation resilience strategy, the data is split into observed climate changes and projected, and we can see very clearly from the science that temperatures have risen in Wandsworth since the end of the 19th century. Precipitation patterns have changed. They've overall decreased over summer and increased in winter. And furthermore, we can see from the projections across all scenarios and across all climate hazards that there will be further changes. And I think a final point, even if we were to hit net zero, say, tomorrow, because of how greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, the climate is still going to change, and therefore, we do need to adapt. There were a couple of other points there as well, which I wanted to talk about there. One was around, Councilman Belton mentioned about the flowers beneath the tree, and actually, that's a really good example of community action. So I wanted to bring in Georgina, who leads on our engagement work, just to talk a bit about how we engage with people and how we involve people in action on climate change. Georgina. Thanks, Andrew. Hello, I'm Georgina Crichton, Partnerships and Engagement Lead within the Climate and Sustainability Team. So the micro-grant program, the Climate Action micro-grants that we launched last year, have been really successful for us, both in terms of the impact, but also the learnings that we've generated. And we've been working with a number of groups, similar to the initiatives that you've been talking about, Councilor Belton. So particularly Green the Grid, which is, you'll probably, some of you may already know, is quite a well-established and ambitious group based in Southfields, but keen to green the grid, quite literally, people's front gardens, public space, and so on. And there are a number of other examples of schools, community groups, and individuals who are keen to run these sorts of initiatives. We had 60 climate micro-grant applications overall, and we awarded 35. Really strong representation across the borough. And for those of us in the room, you can see some of the photos from the micro-grant programs on the wall over there. And it really shows the sort of breadth of ambition and creativity that residents are hoping to achieve with our support. And the micro-grants were up to just £500, so it's quite impressive to see the level of activity that's happening across the borough. One of the final points by Councilor Belton was about housing, and especially about the role of individual households in terms of retrofit and taking action. And that's an area within the retrofit strategy. So I'll hand over to Ali to expand on that a bit more. Hi all. I'm Ali Malvern, policy and programme lead within the climate change and sustainability team, and I led on the retrofit strategy. So I think it's fair to say that the strategy outlines what is within local authority control, and what is within our influence, and a crucial part of that is recognising what can we be doing to affect change, and particularly behaviour change in residents. So I see three main areas for us, one being securing and attracting funding for private residents to use within their homes. Another is establishing private and public partnerships to really create and draw in on that funding, and also be aware of the innovation and technology that is changing in this sector that will inform the residents' retrofitting plans. And finally, it's the information and awareness that we can put out to residents to help them and guide them in what changes they can be doing in their homes, all of which is laid out within the strategy of our plans coming forward. Yes, I think first, Councillor Gasser, you want to add something? Oh, I was just going to add to all that. I've been to a couple of really good events recently, and other colleagues in the room have been as well, where there's been information exchanges for residents, and the crew energy have been there, and the company whose name I've horribly forgotten, but somebody will remind me, who are setting up sort of district houses, generating energy together and sharing it out. Just remind me the name of the company? One Zero. One Zero, that's right. And they said there are some really interesting initiatives going on, and perhaps colleagues can explain better than I can about what that initiative is. But I know there's 30 or 40 households in Ellsfield have signed up to this initiative, and it's somehow generating energy together. I don't know, I'm not technical. Somebody can explain it. So, Councillor Belton, hopefully you can come to one of these events and see there's some really exciting stuff happening, actually. But an expert is going to have to explain exactly how this scheme works. So, Councillor Belton, did you want to come back on any other point? Yes, I do. I'm pleased that more is going on than you think I allowed for. And perhaps more is going on than I'm aware of. In fact, I'm sure more is going on than I'm aware of. But I don't, with respect, I don't need to be told, I certainly don't need to be told there's a crisis around. I was going to say coming, it's not coming, it's here, isn't it? So, I don't think that was particularly relevant. I'm still concerned that there's just too much dependence on what the big institutions can do. I'll give you another example, which Councillor White knows only too well, I'm afraid. One of my constituents happens to be a professor in this business. And he also happens to be a leaseholder on a flat-topped estate. And if you think of the GLC estates, the old GLC estates in Putney and Battersea Park, there are lots of flat-topped estates. And he's been after me to do something about having a solar panel. And this is not, I think, to do, but we've had, unfortunately, we've not got very far, largely with the Housing Department. Now, I'm not blaming the Housing Department. I'm sure it's got its own priorities. But the Housing Department wants to resolve all insulation problems and solve all the insulating work across before approaching things like putting solar panels on. And we've got a really enthusiastic international expert, a professor in the business. He's given up. He's given up lobbying me. I haven't got anywhere. So, I guess, I mean, the institution will find it very difficult, particularly as an institution like the Housing Department. I'm sorry I'm not knocking my close friends in the Housing Department. Many of them do a fantastic job. But they have legal and other responsibilities about the buildings, which are so great upon them. And they live through that spectrum, that view. And they're not using the skills and abilities of some of the residents there who have ideas. I think that's probably true across the board. And I think we've got to break out of that as much as... I'm not criticising people at all... But this is a discussion to try and get the best out of everything, isn't it? I'm not knocking people. And I know Councillor Cady actually agrees with me in general principle. And we all agree with Councillor Gasser. Like, it's a really serious issue. End of story. Thank you, Councillor Batson. I agree, like, it's important to have a really joined-up approach between housing and the environment team as another example, especially because they'll be responsible for doing a lot of the retrofit work. Did anyone on the climbing team want to come back on those points, or should we move on to another question? Only to highlight that I think there is really good joint working across the council. I think we can always do better. I think we have some real experts in the borough. I think we've started to have more of them come out to our network events and find out who they are. But I think we can always find out more and tap into the expertise in the borough. I think to Councillor Belton's first point, I think supporting residents who can afford to retrofit their homes to see that it's an issue through things like identifying where the heating is coming out or identifying who that they can talk to, that is an area of focus for us. But I think we can do better, and we are always looking for creative ideas that we can help to engage residents more in this particular area for action. Yeah, and I'd also say to Councillor Belton, if your neighbour does want to get involved, we have a lot of networking events and ways for residents to get in touch with the council. So try and get him to come along to one of them. It'd be good to hear from him. Councillor Osborne, did you want to go next? You must have listened to a criticism of me to stop me making these comments. No, no, no, I was just saying bring him along, because if he does have good points, then it could be something to learn from him. Councillor Osborne. Yeah, first of all, typos aside, I thought it was an excellent presentation, well presented, and I'm grateful for it. One of the, and that's relevant to something else that I want to say, which is one of the things that's happening here, and I think it's a good idea to merge the three papers together and have a general discussion. I think that is useful. One of the things that's going on here is that we have to have so many different things going on across such a broad spectrum of activities, because the programme requires it. It's the only way this can be achieved. And remembering them all and getting them all organised into something we can understand, I think, like the presentation, I think is important. It's a sort of, I'd like to have a copy as a sort of aid memoir of what's going on and what we're doing. I know that in each case I have to drill down a little bit more to get more information. And indeed, I think that's the case in the papers that we've got in front of us as well. You can't go into enough detail in paragraph by paragraph by paragraph, but you can give us a taste in the documents that we've got this evening of what's happening. I think it's relevant to the way that, actually, if I may say, Councillor Caddy approached the question of the bike hangers. I think we do need to interrogate each paragraph a little bit to get a better understanding of how relevant it is, what's going on is to the programme, all the different programmes on climate change. So, having said that, that basic introduction, let me home in on one in particular, just because it interests me, which is the Library of Things in Southside. I am interested to know, where does that fit into the programme? In the same way as bike hangers, how do they fit into the programme? What are they achieving? How is it measured? I note the comments in the paragraph, paragraph 62 on page 16, about the performance of the Library of Things, and that's its measure of its contribution. But I'd be interested to know how the performance is measured, what the performance means. I'm intrigued by the idea that it's in the top three performing locations across the UK in its contribution. I'd like to know what the other two are, for a start. So, a sentence or two on how it is contributing, and a little bit more flesh on the bones of the story about the Library of Things. Just this evening, just on this one thing, there are about 18 things here I could pick out and ask the same sort of question. But just give us a bit of flavour on that one, because it particularly interests me. Mr. Hyger, do you want to come in on that? Well, it's encouraging to think that you want more detail. I was conscious that it's quite a lot of papers that have been put in front of you. I was conscious of the page count. But in terms of the purpose of the Library of Things, that's basically an opportunity for people to be able to go and rent things instead of buy them. And the reason it's important in terms of climate change and carbon emissions is everything we use, everything we buy, everything that's made generates carbon emissions. If you can reduce the amount of stuff that is made by being able to rent it and reuse it and share that, then you reduce the amount of carbon emissions. And so that's why we've supported Library of Things and why we've got that in Southside Shopping Centre. So that's the purpose behind it. And that's how it fits in with the overall climate approach. And it fits in with a circular economy approach as well about that reuse and repair and sharing and making sure that stuff isn't wasted and is thrown out. And in terms of the performance, Ali can update a bit more because she leads on that. Thanks, Andrew. Yeah, so currently the Library of Things in Wandsworth has been in place just over a year. And it is one of the newer sites in London and some of the more used sites are longstanding. And they are Dalston, famously, is the most high performing site. Second to that is sometimes Hammersmith and Fulham. But in the last two months, Wandsworth has overtaken Hammersmith and Fulham and is the second highest site for November and December of last year. And that's reported in – we get monthly statistics through which base it on a number of KPIs, predominantly the number of hires and the carbon savings associated to that, taking the metric around what it would have cost to purchase it as opposed to borrowing a shared resource. Thanks. Yeah, it's a really impressive scheme. And for any residents are watching, if you need to do some DIY and you need a drill instead of spending 100-odd quid on one, you can just rent it in the Library of Things. And that's another example. Save money, save the planet. I think, Councillor Cook, you wanted to come in next. Thank you. I was delighted to hear Councillor Belton's opinion that the state can't do everything. I'm in total agreement. But thinking of things which we can do as a council in this context, while this is all conceptually very coherent, certainly acknowledge all the work that's gone into it, when you try and find tangible, concrete – concrete is probably the wrong word, using this context, tangible actions to in particular jump out. And I have to say, I think they're rather lacklustre in what they actually tell us, and I think it's really a bit alarming. So I think they're both on page 14. The rate of installation of EV chargers has definitely slowed. It would be useful to see a graph, but we should be accelerating that, and we're certainly not. And trees, 1,000 trees sounds like a lot, but when you divide it by the number of wards, it's probably about 50 trees per ward, which ain't all that many, really, and so I think there just needs to be a hugely more ambitious approach, and those are pretty much the only sort of hard actions I can find in there, and I find that a little bit concerning, really, that when you look at the things which we actually have planned, that they're really not terribly impressive, which I guess is Councillor Cady's point as well. Mr. Hager, I think we maybe previously talked about the EV chargers, and I think you mentioned maybe it was ground-dependent, the amount of numbers, but did you want to come back to Kirk's specific points on the chargers and the trees? Yes, I'll start by caveating that I'm not overseeing the delivery of the EV charge points, and that's the transport strategy team, but my understanding of it is that it's largely central government grant-dependent, and it goes in phases, so it doesn't necessarily track neatly with calendar year, and there is another phase of installations that are being planned out now, and they will then be delivered. So it's not necessarily a year-on-year increase that's neat, it tends to track the funding that's coming out to deliver it. So that's one of the factors behind that. In terms of trees, I think I'll hand over to Matthew to answer that. We've talked about trees on many committees, haven't we? We are very ambitious about trees, and 1,000 is quite considerable when you look across London, the amount of trees that are planted, particularly trees rather than whips and things like that, which lots of other local authorities plant and claim as planted trees. But they take a lot to maintain and keep as well. So for me, it's more about how do we protect those trees and help them sustain and not lose them as part of the journey. So we're replacing more trees, or we should be replacing less trees, and the net gain should be greater. That's what we should be targeting. But in addition to that, as part of our social value for all our procurements now, we're seeking contributions so we can plant more trees above our 1,000 target. So watch this space. We're not complacent here. We will keep trying and keep trying to grow the population of our trees in the borough. Thank you, Mr. Eady. I think, Councillor Gasser, you also wanted to comment on that. I'm just going to add to that, and I may not have discussed this with Mr. Eady yet, but, yes, I'm very ambitious about trees, and I want to see a lot more trees, but it's something to discuss in the future. Definitely one more. Councillor Brooks. Thank you, Chair. Councillor Ethan Brooks for Thamesfield Ward. Jumping to page 154 amongst the climate adaptation and resilience maps, side by side, we have graphs about where there are high pollution hotspots opposite a map of pollution risk in the borough. On page 155, we have graphs that show the two different Putney High Street measuring sites sky-high compared to the other sites in the borough, but with the map opposite, Putney High Street area appears to be the lowest air pollution risk part of the borough. But as we heard in the presentation, this risk map is going to be used to direct where mitigation efforts are directed in terms of where the Council focuses its actions on lessening the risk of air pollution. Why is it that we're going to deprioritise action to reduce air quality, air pollution, in the highest polluted part of the borough? Yeah. Climate change. Yeah, so I'm going to ask my colleague, Nikki, to answer that because she's the person who's been doing a lot of work on adaptation of resilience. Thanks, Andrew. Yeah, no, it's a really good point. With the climate risk map, basically risk is presented based on exposure to different climate hazards, one of which is air pollution. That's the map that you can see on page 154, and the other is vulnerability, and risk is calculated by a combination of exposure to those hazards and the vulnerability of the population living in those areas. So how the map calculates the risk, it gives exposure and vulnerability an equal weighting because we know that although air pollution is high in Putney, the vulnerability of the population is shown to be relatively low within the borough. So factors like prevalence of asthma, younger populations, age 0 to 4, who would typically have kind of more severe impacts from air pollution. And I think a really important thing to highlight with the climate risk map is it's relative within the borough, it's not absolute. So air pollution is high in Putney. Putney, the data shows that it's higher in other areas of the borough, and the data also shows that the vulnerability is higher in other areas of the borough. So if we look at a borough-wide picture, it's not saying there's no risk in Putney, it's just saying that the risk is greater in other parts of Wandsworth Borough. If you're saying that there are other areas of the borough that are higher, why are we looking at graphs on page 155 that show the two Putney High Street measurement sites as the highest listed? I'd also flag that you might be measuring the population that lives in and around Putney High Street based on the multiple indices of deprivation. But that's not who's necessarily on Putney High Street. Putney High Street contains a major railway station, people commuting in from all around, people travelling in to see Fulham Football Club, all sorts. They won't be captured by any sorts of indices of deprivation that you could possibly have. Yet they'll be at huge risk of the air pollution there as well. So I don't think we can say that you can base a risk map off of the local population to start with. But if it's the case that the council is going to focus its actions based on this sort of risk map, I still think that we should focus our action where air pollution is the highest. Yeah, sorry, I will say Claire O'Connor, Director of Climate Change again. So I think we are constantly adapting and re-evaluating the maps and bringing in lots of other different sources of data. So this is one iteration that we'd look to build on. I think we work very closely with our air quality team. So we're aware of also who uses Putney High Street and the commuters and also the impacts that you're talking about. I think it's important to say these maps are to support us to take an approach. It's not about not concentrating on Putney High Street anymore. And I wouldn't want you to take that away. This is part of a wider view that we're taking as a council around risk. And there still will be work around the air quality around Putney High Street taken forward by our team. So I just want to make that really, really clear. Thank you. And yeah, having had lots of conversations with the air quality, they definitely mentioned Putney High Street a lot. I think, Councillor White, you were next. Thank you. First of all, I'd just like to compliment the team for this three reports, because I think the width and the depth of it and what's covered is really, really quite impressive. Like some of the people have said tonight, though, my worry is about the resources and the capacity to be able to do everything, which is going to be a massive effort. And, you know, you need, coming back to something that Councillor Cook said, you need state funding really to underpin this, to allow the private sector to come in. And whether we're going to see that is obviously a mute point. But I wanted to also, a couple of points that were mentioned about, Councillor Belton raised a really good point around the community getting involved. And obviously, I'm a member of a community group. And I think there is expertise out there. And that gives us more capacity. And I don't think that we're drawing on it enough, as Councillor Belton pointed out. And I think the trust, I know that the ruse of the particular estate, there was worry about maintenance, and there was worry about insurance as well. And the longevity of a scheme, will people continue to, you know, have that involvement and enthusiasm to carry the scheme to the end? But I think that you've got to, we've got to trust. Because if we don't, we're not going to get there. And as I say, the community, especially in a place like Warnsworth, the skills and the commitment that are there, I think, that we could be using. One of the schemes that Councillor Gasson mentioned is very similar to this, but it's obviously in the private sector. And it would be drawing upon, very similar to what Councillor Belton spoke about, drawing upon the resources of an area where they can build scaffolding, they can bring everything in, and do it, and then reduce costs so that people can actually put in a heating, a new heating system, solar panels, and do all the insulation as well. And that brings me to one of the other points that was raised. I mean, the, what, it's really a question of fabric first or adaptation first. And if you put fabric first, first, then unfortunately you're going to have to bring in hybrid systems sometimes, so that will need gas heating backup at times, because, you know, you're still going to need a system, and that will be cheaper to do. If you did it the other way around, you could actually change the, you would change the heating and the lighting system so that they would be decarbonised. So that job will be done, and then you could come and do fabric first afterwards, but that would mean that the actual adaptation you're bringing in, the heating system and solar panels, are going to be, certainly the heating system is going to be more expensive, because it's going to have to do a lot, work a lot harder, because the fabric first work hasn't been done. So I hope that spreads a little bit of light on that. One of the points that Councillor Caddy mentioned about the cycling hoops and the hangers, I mean, this is the idea about a modal shift, isn't it? I mean, we're looking to basically provide the infrastructure to encourage people to make that shift across. One of the questions, because I've spoken for far too long, so I'll give you a question here. I mean, our chair is going to one of the centres of low pollution and high cycle use over the weekend. I'll leave you to guess which city he's going to. But they have achieved a massive reduction in pollution. They've achieved a much more safe environment. And it started a very, very, very long time ago, and it started with these sort of adaptations. But they've made massive strides, or massive cycles, I don't know. But how are we going to get to a situation, or will we ever get to a situation where we would be able to have that infrastructure that people would, you know, in a large sense, move from car vehicles to cycling? Mr. Hager, do you want to come back on this? Yeah, so there was a paper that recently went to Transport Committee, which did provide an update on what's going on across the borough in terms of sort of cycling and the infrastructure there. So I would say sort of have a look at that. And that really sets out what's being done across the borough. And there's sort of a taster within this report, but there's much more detail in that report. And that sets out a bit more. To come back to some of the other points you said about getting the community involved, that's obviously something we've tried to do as much of as we can. We've got the Once with Sustainability Network that brings people together. I know that you've been to some of those meetings and seen how many people come along to talk about climate change, to share expertise, to speak to us and speak to other people as well. And that's really important. And that's something that we want to build on. As we said earlier, there's always more we can do. And we're looking to do more on that and trying to really utilize that community involvement. Because we can't deliver this all ourselves. We need the community to come along with us to take that on and to deliver it. And you mentioned about some of that stuff about bringing that into specific areas. And that's definitely part of the retrofit strategy. So looking at place-based approach and how we can bring together an overall look at particular places to see how we can retrofit and reduce carbon emissions from those areas. And community energy is a part of that. Heat networks are a part of that. And investment is a part of that as well. So it's definitely stuff that's in there. It's still early stages because this has not been done elsewhere. There's no set model that is there that we can follow. There's other people trying some of these things. And we're keeping an eye on those things. We're keeping linked in with those things to make sure that we're learning from that so we can take that learning and apply it here in Wandsworth as well. I think it's definitely worth keeping Councillor White's comments, especially about the fabric first approach and being a bit more efficient, cost efficient, definitely keeping them on hand. So I think Councillor Caddy was next and then Councillor Annan and then Councillor Jeffries. So Councillor Caddy. Thanks very much. I'll be really quick because I think probably I now know the answer. It was really about retrofitting and it was just to sort of, I guess, reiterate or Councillor Belton said it's clearly going to be really important, the privately owned homes. And we've obviously got the cost, retrofit cost for council homes. It would be really good to have a kind of roadmap of what we need to do for the 45.5% that's coming from the domestic homes. What, you know, what does it look like between now and 2030 in order to achieve what we're looking to achieve? Because I fear it may be a huge challenge and it would be really good to sort of understand that. We'll see that sort of represented. But I suspect that's probably a work in progress. Yeah, and I'd echo that it would be good to see the sort of intermediate targets year on year on how much retrofitting is done and the progress we're making. But did you want to come back on that specifically? Yeah, so tracking the exact number of retrofits that take place is incredibly hard to do because a lot of it happens in private households. They don't need to actually report or register anything with us as a council or anywhere really because a lot of it will be done under permitted development. It's home improvements. It's not necessarily I have now retrofitted my house in one action. It's normally quite often it's going to be spread out over a number of years where there's some insulation that goes in, some solar panels, a heat pump, and that's done over an extended period. So retrofit is a bit of a process. So tracking that is really, really hard and having some sort of target around it is also really hard to do because we don't have reliable information on this. And also we don't necessarily control it either. So we wouldn't want to set a target that we can't directly influence and control. What we can do is track where we can and use proxies where we can and report on that. And as we've always been with the work on climate change, be open and transparent about that to show sort of what we would want to see and then see what we can actually observe. But there would need to be that understanding that it's not necessarily going to be an exact figure because that information doesn't really exist. Councillor Anand, did you want to come in? Yeah, my name is Councillor Julian Anand and I'm representing Battersea Park Watch. And coming to retrofit, I've seen that in the papers you stated that one of your strategies is to support families, like council homes with the warm home parks. And then also I've seen in the papers that what you're trying to do is also to support families who are those on low income with true crew energy with efficiency bulbs and then thinking works. So if I'm with you, I didn't know that thinking works like one sort of council support thinking works. I knew them like before, but I didn't know that one sort of council is also part of the people who support them. How are we making sure that the end user, that is the residents, are being informed or being, the awareness is there for them to know that this is available for them? Because I work with the charity and I meet a whole lot of people who don't know that there are this office available for them. Me, myself, I didn't know a whole lot until I read this paper. So how many charities are you working with to make sure this office that we have in one street council is being shared out there, that people get to know about this? I know crew energy, that's the energy, like the efficiency bulbs and all that, thinking works for you to charge your, when you have pay, but it's just one organization. And how many charity organizations are aware of this? How many counselors have this information, whereby when we are doing surgeries, we can't even advise people, because some of the people, they will come not just because of housing issues, but they will come because they've got other issues whereby we can advise them that, well, this is available and then inform them. When we say assets for all, we have to make sure this is available for everyone who is on low income. So please, can you please share much more information on this and also make, please, please make sure that counselors are aware of what is the office once what council have for residents and also voluntary organizations, please. I imagine one of the comms officers or the partnerships would like to comment on that. Yeah, thank you. So I'll speak about the warm home packs, which are a targeted intervention that we funded through the cost of living. And we have data that we update annually to advise which homes are low income and which homes have a low energy efficiency rating. As ever, it's a data source that can be out of date. It will be out of date as soon as it's published. So there'll be an element of error and discrepancy around that. But we target every household on that list and send them a letter directly inviting them to collect a warm home pack for free from any of the locations. The locations that we ask residents to collect them from are either the council reception, which I'll be familiar with, or local libraries. And we work quite closely to form partnerships with community centers and other organizations who may well know of people that would be in need. So there is a fairly broad rule or guidance around the distribution of warm home packs that if a resident is in need but hasn't received a letter or if a resident is in need or believes that their neighbor might be one, then there is an allowance to enable them to collect them. And we do form partnerships throughout that process and have done with Age UK and other services that visit particularly vulnerable groups throughout the borough and provide them with a number of warm home packs to distribute via their means as well. I'm going to say this because I visited one sweat food bank. It was when I visited them before I got to know that they are warm tools that people can use at their homes, which was given to them by crew energy for it's all part of this. You can wear it and be warm. If I haven't referred a client or residents to one sweat food bank, they wouldn't know that this is available. So how are we going to make it more available like this awareness system because if the person doesn't need food bank, like items, food items, it means the person is not going to go to the food bank. And I can't be sending people to the food bank like every three or four weeks. It has to be like maybe four times or five times in a year. So the gap in between is really a lot. So with that part, because I know it's not that much expensive like we do, it's not too much expensive. Please make it more wide for a lot of community organizations that people meet them daily. I meet people daily like every day. Today I meet like 25 people who they need this, they need that. I can't say, okay, because I can't send you to the food bank because you don't need food bank, but you need this. So I could give you this. And I know we have only crew energy who is distributing that, which is just one organization. And how are they reaching out to other charity organizations within the borough? Yeah, and I think it's a really good point, Councillor Allen. I think every year we try and improve the way that we communicate about the warm packs. I think this year we've done more in terms of the targeted interventions and also putting packs in libraries and having them in the community drop-ins. But I think it's an important point you raise that if you're not aware, then there's more that we need to do. So we'll take that away as an action to talk to crew about how we can reach out, to talk to our partners in the voluntary community sector team again about how we can reach out. And also we're very conscious of not bombarding councils with lots of information. But this could be one that, as you've highlighted, is really important for all of you to know for your surgeries. And so we can take that away as well. Yeah, I think that's a really important point that Councillor Allen has raised. And, yeah, there are a lot of people that would slip through the crack when maybe receive or open a letter from the council. And the only way that they would get this information is from a local charity or a community group that they go to, that if we partner with well and we let them know about it, then they could tell them on our behalf and make it a lot easier. Because sometimes, you know, they don't even understand what is written in the letter. I don't understand, when it happened, I didn't understand what the meaning of that word. It's so much of a big way for me. How do I explain this to this woman who has English as their fourth language or fifth language, who needs an interpreter before she will understand what I'm talking about? So, please. Councillor Jeffries, I think you were next. Thank you, Chair, Sir James Jeffries, Councillor for Thames Hill Ward. I just wanted to come to what the Covenant member mentioned about the role of planning in all of this. And I just wanted to make two points. The first is, as a resident, perhaps more than a councillor, all of the new build developments in the borough are understandably, rightfully insulated to the nth degree. And for those of us who live in those blocks, shared ownership in my case, that works fantastically well in the winter. There is, I think, actually a really important flip side to that, which is that in the summer, those blocks are absolutely excruciatingly hot. And I don't think that there is a flat in our block that doesn't have a portable air conditioning unit, which undermines the entire point of improving energy efficiency. And particularly for those of us with kids, actually that situation has been borderline dangerous at some points, particularly when the kids are younger. So I don't know what the council can possibly do within its own planning purview, but I would just like to note that as a resident. My next point may be slightly less helpful and may be quite political, but there is a genuine point underlying the question. The government, Rachel Reeves as chancellor, announced some changes recently to the planning system, essentially ensuring that developers would be able to ignore the newts and the bats when it comes to unlocking new development. Clearly, there is a balance to strike between development, getting new houses online, and also protecting and improving biodiversity. Where does she and the administration sit on that topic? I appreciate there's some political framing there, but I think it is a matter of topical interest to the public, and I think they'd be interested to understand where the administration might sit on the balance between protecting and improving biodiversity and unlocking development. It's not something we've had a chance to discuss yet, but we do need a position, absolutely, and with Councillor Hague and Councillor Belton and others, we do need a position. I mean, I know where I stand, but yes, so I can watch this space and I will discuss with colleagues and get back to you on that. Thank you, and yeah, as a member of the Plan Applications Committee, I do always feel like I wish we did have stronger protections on that, and that's hopefully something that we get to see develop more in future. And on your first point, did officers want to come back to that? I've also very much emphasised with having been even in a council block on the Doddington during COVID when it was about 35 to 40 degrees. Some of these blocks are very overheated, and is there something else that we could combat in that? I think the only thing I'd say is that I think it points to the need for the adaptation and resilience strategy and to take that long-term approach to a changing climate and stuff like that, like overheating. Councillor White. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted... I had about 17 questions, but I've put them down into about four, so to save everyone being bored to death. But I think they can come to two areas. One sort of is actually around Councillor Jeffery's inquiry, really, about planning, and the other one is around education. But sort of the first one is an outside one about pollution is on paragraph 32. It's interesting how many anti-idling civil penalty notices have been issued in the last three years, which would indicate the seriousness of how we're taking this. And then go on around the planning. With developments, we talk about car clubs, but how many car club spaces do we insist, particularly if we can take these three developments that are mentioned in paragraph 29, how many car club spaces are being provided. And then the further question on from that is that do we need a planning SPD with a lot of this in to make sure that we can actually resist developments that are not in the interests of the climate and residents of the borough. So I think that would be a question on the spaces for the car clubs that we'll have to take away, because obviously no colleagues from planning are here this evening. And similarly, the comment around the kind of the SPDs, I think that's quite a technical one that we'll take away and come back to you, Councillor White. And if you indulge me, Chair, on the other one. The other one's really about education, as I say, and we face a real problem, especially with the election in America, that climate change-denying groups will try to impact certain elements, certain groups of people within our community. Are we taking that as a risk factor? Are we thinking about that? And the second one really is about the work and skills. I mean, 14-plus education is going to be really important to try and change people's idea, because, I mean, when I was growing up, I was probably the only one of my friends who actually didn't go into construction in some way. But it's fallen out of, you know, trends now. Younger people aren't attracted to construction. But there are so many new, with off-site building and everything, you know, a lot of it's done within an IT purview. So a lot of people might be attracted to it, which traditionally wouldn't be. I mean, women, for instance, you know, might be much more attracted to construction in the way that it's done now. I mean, what are we doing to try and encourage schools to, you know, to try and give a technical education, at least a level one technical education that people at schools might be encouraged to go forward into construction and into the new green industry? Because we haven't got enough people. We haven't got enough workers at the moment. Brexit, there was a massive, massive mistake on many counters. But one of them was actually denying industry the skills that they needed at a vital time. So what about the replacement workers? Where are they going to come from? Thanks for that. In terms of retrofit and skills, that's addressed in the retrofit strategy. There's a section on green skills. And we recognise that's really, really important. There's been a lot of work being done across the whole of South London, South London Partnership. In fact, George Jr. in the team was working directly with South London Partnership on some of that work around developing green skills. So there's a lot going on. South Thames College have been very, very involved in that. University of Roehampton are very involved in it. They've launched the... I can't remember what it stands for. It's CTECH. I can't remember what the acronym is, unfortunately, at this moment. But that's around developing new approaches around sustainable construction as well. So there's a lot of stuff that's happening within Wandsworth and across South London as well. Neighbouring boroughs that we can learn from and where people can go and get skills. And so that's a really important part of it. Within the retrofit strategy, it sets out some of the demands around skills that we need and the amount that's needed. And there's a lot of work done by colleagues in economic development, especially with work match around how can they get placements sorted out? How can they develop skills for people? And part of it is about talking about how retrofit offers a really good career for people, for people who are in school now and can get the skills, people who are maybe sort of starting training, maybe people who already work in construction and can retrain and gain those skills as well. And there's a career there for them to earn good money working locally because the demand is going to be there to work locally as well. So I think it's about framing it all together into one sort of package and making sure everything links together. And that's part of what we try to do as a team is work across different partners, different organisations, across different teams within the council as well to try to bring this together, make sure those linkages are made. The climate-denying propaganda. I want them to replace the American people. I'm not sure that's my job description. I would say that we use a variety of ways of engaging with all different communities and communicating, and we're always looking to expand and look at different ways of doing that. I think it's about having conversations, and I think we encourage conversations throughout all of our engagement work. Councillor Bellyton. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for letting me come back. I've got just two or three points I wanted to make. One in the friendliest possible way, not being confrontational at all, but Councillor Cook says he was pleased to recognise that I didn't think the state had to do everything. Can I suggest to him that capitalism itself has a little bit of a problem coming to terms with what one of the officers said about making anything causes some level of carbon? So if you're going to have capitalism and growth and so on, we all have a problem that you might like to face as well. My second point is in terms of the planning issue, in many ways couldn't agree more. The problem with planning is it's very slow and reactive, as everyone knows. You can't actually stop people doing this, that, and the other simply because the planning department doesn't want it if it's not illegal. I mean, you can stop some things and you can recommend against and so on and so forth, but at some levels, and this is certainly the level, you can't enforce everything that some of us would like to do. The third bit, which is, I think, really interesting, I hadn't thought about, but I'm the only person old enough, sorry about that, but I'm the only person old enough to remember that, though I know Councillor Osborne knows a lot about it. We went through a climate crisis like this before. We have actually done it and in the 50s and 60s, there were horrific smogs and the Clean Air Act and I was on the council when the Clean Air Act was being resolved and people ought to look back at it a little bit. You'll find committees where it says, every house in the borough, by the way, had a coal fire and hearth, often in every room in their house. So smoke was coming out of everywhere and you can find the Public Health Committee reports, as I recall them, where it says, we are now going to tackle, let's say, Shaftesbury. I remember that one particularly. There are 10,000 hearths in private houses. There are 2,000 in shops, 1,000 in this, that and the other and we've got a plan to get rid of them all in the next 18 months and we went through the whole borough like that. There was obviously legislative backing for that in a way that there isn't now but if the crisis is as bad as we thought it was in the 50s and 60s about smog, then we might have to face doing that and saying, you know, retrofitting is not an option. You will do it. I'm not kidding about this. It could be that level of seriousness. Just make a comment. Obviously it doesn't need a reply but just a comment. Was that more direct to the officers to come in? Not really, but they might find it interesting looking up the minutes of the committees that was actually tackling ward by ward, committee cycle by committee cycle, next month we're going to tackle this ward and that ward and we're going to get rid and it was enormous scale of it. You think you have 8,000 hearths in Charlottesbury. They will now all be pulled out and replaced. So I would just say as a history graduate, Councillor Belton, I'll dig out those minutes because I think we can always learn from history so that's a really interesting piece of kind of behaviour change and action that I think we could look at. Alright, so we've had a pretty good bash of discussing these three papers. Were there any more final comments? Or... Okay, good. So in that case we can then get to taking the three papers together. Or as in like we've discussed the three papers together but we'll be voting on them separately. So first we'll be starting with the paper number three which is the Wandsworth Climate Action Plan. So this is for decision and I asked the committee whether they agree to support the recommendations in paragraph three of the report. That's agreed. Then next we have the Wandsworth Retrofit Strategy. So again, does the committee support recommendations in paragraph three of the report? Agreed. Agreed. And finally, number five, the Climate Adoption and Resilience Strategy. And does the committee agree to support those? Agreed. Great. So that concludes the papers. Thank you to the climate change team for their work and for taking all the questions tonight. Would everyone like to have like a quick break since we, that was like an hour and a half of pretty continuous questioning or yeah? If everyone's okay? You okay, Councillor? I'll take this one. Okay. Fine. Thank you. All right. So I guess we'll have a five-minute break. Five minutes? Yeah. Five minutes. Yeah. Five minutes. All right. Welcome back, everyone. Welcome back, everyone, to the committee. Could we get started with the committee? Thank you. Welcome back, everyone. Now, once we've got through our climate extravaganza, we'll be moving on to paper number six. So that is the consultation on draft open spaces event policy paper number 25 to 53. I think Mr. Edy wants to give this a quick introduction. Thank you, Chair. So the Council's policy for events, parks, events in parks, commons, and open spaces was first adopted in 2014. It's important that policies of the Council are up-to-date and reflect and reflect residents' changing needs. Best practice in events management has also developed since then, with Parks for London, for example, providing template events policy performers and evidence based on how to manage events well across parks and open spaces. In our year of London Borough Culture, we will see some exciting events bringing the health, social, and cohesion benefits of culture and creativity to all parts of the borough. When we developed the bid, we asked residents what kind of events they would like to see and heard that local people would like to see more family-friendly events taking place in the borough's parks. Reviewing the adopted policy also helps us to secure a lasting legacy beyond the year of culture. Officers have reviewed the policy in line with best practice guidance, as I suggested Parks for London was the key guidance we reviewed against this. We are a listening council and so the document in front of you is a draft for consultation. We want to hear from as many people as possible and we launch in a public consultation subject to approval, the draft by executive. A final decision of the updated policy will be made in the summer when a further report will return. In the interest of transparency, Appendix 1 clearly sets out the adopted policy data from 2014 alongside draft changes. Draft policy retains the event size and categories and limits on frequency as agreed in 2014. It improves the event impact mitigation, reflecting good practice such as noise management or ensuring that no event can take over an entire park, common or open space. Places new requirements on event organisers to deliver more sustainable events that protect the environment, wildlife, biodiversity, provide social value, widened participation through the Council's Access for All programme. The draft policy also proposes some changes to facilitate events in parks that have limited tarmac areas. This includes grass areas over the autumn and the winter and that event proposals will be assessed based on a case-by-case basis to make sure they are suitable for the location. Subject to approval and the consultation commencing, we listen to everyone's views on these proposals before making a decision that balances protecting our parks and open spaces and commons with our ambition to widen access to culture and creativity for all. Thank you, Mr. Eadie. We haven't got any deputations today from any of our interested groups such as friends of our various parks and commons. Having a couple of bits of email correspondence which I just wanted to relay for the minutes so one of them was from two for institution common just saying that there will be they will be coming soon after this meeting with their feedback for us to note and ahead of a further meeting. I also got a very detailed email from friends of Wandsworth common which I would briefly summarize here and then ask the cabinet member for a response. So in summary the letter from the friends of Wandsworth common highlights their strength feeling about the idea of large and frequent events on Wandsworth common also highlighting how the recent enable events application did not have any grounds for objection that included damage to flora, fauna or biodiversity. The friends group urged that the consultation for the strategy be a meaningful and robust consultation over an adequate time frame. The group shares the laudable objective of enabling improved and wider access to events in open spaces across the borough especially during the year in which we are the borough of culture. But the friends group do not think that these objectives require big events especially categories C and B over prolonged periods. They also believe that MAC and friends groups should be consulted on category A events as well as B and C. And finally they have specific comments on the amount of event days the policing of structures such as gazebos and a further suggestion to prohibit use of non-biodegradable party items such as balloons. All of these all of the details in the email have been taken forward and I'm sure will be discussed in future meetings but Councillor Gasser did you want to come back on that? Yeah absolutely I'm just saying thank you for the friends of Wandsworth Common for everything they do and for sharing your concerns and I just want to say we hear you and we have a date in the diary as you know to meet with you and all the other friends and amenity groups and we will be absolutely listening to your views and you know I've said many times you know biodiversity and nature and the benefits they bring are absolutely top of my agenda. I can promise you we're not planning on putting like big events like Club and Common you know on Wandsworth Common. No way that's not what's in mind but we do need to have a framework which encourages all our residents to come to us with ideas for fun and inclusive community events so this sets that out and we're going to be consulting and listening and we're not actually asking for any more events or any more days in the current policy but we are recommending much tighter controls to protect the grass and the biodiversity and the residents well-being so I hope we can work together very positively on this and come up with a framework that will encourage lovely events and I know I've spoken to the friends about how do we get a more diverse crowd onto Wandsworth Common so let's have a think together about some lovely events that we could put on to get a different bunch of people to enjoy Wandsworth Common and then we all want to do that so there should be a positive consultation I thank you and I look forward to listening to you all about it. So I think Councillor Osborne you wanted to weigh in on this. Yeah I'd like to say something about this letter from the friends of Wandsworth Common which I think we've all had a copy of. Is that not the case? Email. I think it was emailed to all members of the committee but It may have been this but when did it come? A couple of days ago. A few days ago I think. Okay forgive me. But you know you'll. Forgive me I thought it had gone to everybody but let me say something about the letter from the friends of Wandsworth Common which has been summarised actually accurately by the by the chair. It is a I have to say the letter is a thoughtful and gracious contribution to the consultation process which is no surprise that if I've ever had anything to do with the the leadership individuals of the friends of Wandsworth Common their contact with me has always been thoughtful and gracious at every at every level on everything that they've been concerned about. But if I talk about the substance of their letter it raises a number of issues with us some of which I agree with quite strongly some of which I'm I'm intrigued by I can't say I agree with every single element of the letter. But most of it are in particular there's I think interesting bits in it about biodiversity which I think we should pay attention to but most of it I would say it ought to be fed into the consultation process and that's what I would urge the friends of Wandsworth Common to do with the content of their letter with an exception. There is one element of the letter which I think is very important and what I would suggest is that it should be focused on in particular because it talks about part of the draft in the in the consultation document that we've got and and hones in on a bit where it talks about the existing policy wording and the revised draft policy wording and a difference between the two. One key difference being that in the existing policy the the max the management advisory committees and and the friends are consulted on event proposals. Exactly and then in the proposed revised policy it talks about the max and the friends being notified about events and I think it's that is a very useful focus focus which they've drawn to our attention and and flagged up for us to consider. I would say that is so important that we should take a look at that tonight and what I would suggest is this I would say that we the the proposed new draft should be abandoned and we should stick with the original draft the original text which which was in the the existing policy where you talking about consulting rather than notifying. I think that was a valuable formulation and should be kept and I would say that it's so important I'm sure having had dealings with the with the leadership of the friends of Wandsworth Common I'm sure they understand that means that it's about engagement and discussion it's simply about the timing it's not about giving them a veto over what happens or approval or disapproval or anything like that it's about the value and the importance of their engagement with the with the plan the plans for for events anywhere but in particular on Wandsworth Common and I think because it's important and I think we should revert to the and stick with the existing policy wording it should there should be for that part with that there should be a clear minute this evening that we're opting for consult and not notify and that that should go forward as as the consensus of this committee into the consultation process in in the coming weeks and months thank you thank you councillor Osborne I believe we can just minute that that we want the emphasis or yeah I think if it's um if you're proposing an amendment to the the draft document then um when we get to the end of discussions perhaps moving it seconding it and then a week's time okay okay councillor books do you want to come in next thank you very much um appreciate uh the background and thank you councillor Osborne for um pre-empting something that we were also going to raise about the needs to consult the MAC um we can see the list of objectives that the council are trying to achieve with these changes but um I'm afraid the revisions to the policy and in removing so many different protections that were there for a reason amounts to quite quite a dangerous change um to the open spaces events policy that ultimately threatens people's enjoyment of the parks for the benefit of um people watching I'll just list what I had down as the important uh changes that were being made um allowing grass areas to be used for events between the 30th of September and the 1st of April risking great damage to the to the grass and in the park removing the requirement to ensure that sports pitches remain operational um to a sort of case by case try our best lifting the 10pm event cutoff time allowing consecutive weekend events on the same piece of grounds um having event days um not include setup and removal periods so parts of the park can be cordoned off to the public longer than um just the event days themselves removal of the 75 decibel noise limits with no alternative limit proposed and then finally I had down limiting eliminating the public consultation on variations to the events policy in future I don't see how the committee can let a draft policy go through to the consultation without uh the guardrails that used to be there in the policy kept in there um it I think it's quite dangerous and given how important the parks and commons are to residents across the borough and I don't think we should let the policy go through through as it is and for that reason we've prepared an amendment to the drafts which will um put forward this evening I'm perfectly happy to to hear um either councillor gasser or uh an officer try and justify the removal of the changes but I'm afraid in my opinion um the draft policy doesn't achieve the objectives listed in um paragraph nine thank you uh thank you council books uh mr edie would you like to uh come back on any of those specific points I'm I might need to be reminded of them um as we go through um but that was the allowing of grass areas to be used for events between the 30th september and the 1st of april removing the requirement to ensure sports pitches remain operational lifting the 10 pm event cutoff time allowing consent consent of weekend events on the same piece of grounds um having event days not include setup and removal periods for stages and things like that removal of the 75 decibel noise limit with no alternative limit proposed and eliminate eliminating the need for public consultation on variations to the event policy in the future um i'll try and go through those i might have to flick through the document as i go but um so it's quite typical at any event the the organizer will have to demonstrate how and they mitigate the impact including any damage to the grass areas and things like that that is quite typical now um if we only rely on events being able to be um delivered on hard standing areas that will rule out practically all our parks and open spaces across the borough um if you only do them in the summer then that's the busiest part when people are most likely to use the parks so what we're trying to do is create flexibility in line with most of other neighboring boroughs and other boroughs across the council this framework provides the protections to be able to make sure that if there was any risk that we felt that it was going to have a serious impact to the quality of the the grassed areas or the sports pitches we would it wouldn't be permitted um so it's providing that additional flexibility it's allowing events to happen more across the year so there's less disruption you don't want all your events to happen in the summer because that will disrupt the park you try and spread it out more equally or the common or the open space in terms of the consecutive weekends this is again quite typical in the in the events management because you need to make it a viable proposition so if you need to bring infrastructure to be able for you to be able to deliver events you know to keep the costs down rather than doing a weekend set it down and then come back in three or four weeks time it doesn't become a viable proposition we want affordable events and free events where possible and and the market will be able to tell us that but also these these things won't happen very frequently anyway but what we're trying to do is attract people to want to deliver events in the borough and if we put lots of barriers up and really tight restrictions then people it won't be an attractive place for people to want to come and do events i'm going to go back to the point the framework of this policy they will have to demonstrate for an events plan how they mitigate any impacts on noise nuisance damage to any pitches impacts on biodiversity or natural habitats traffic impacts all of these have to have plans to be able which will have they will be presented you know and over my period of my career we have rejected plenty of events that haven't been able to demonstrate how they can satisfy to meet the conditions and the protections within any borough's policy um what was the the setup time as well so if if you grant a let's say five days events or a medium size and you include the setup setup could take two or three days the set down could take two days so straight away you have no event so by saying all the event days have to be used including the setup and set down again no one will want to do events here and the infrastructure that you need to make sure you run a successful and safe event is really important around the toilet provision about how you means of escape security safe ingress and egress and things like all these things the control of noise all the infrastructure has to be put in place so if you include stays within the limited days that we want to do events again just people won't want to do events in the borough because it'd be too limiting if i can come back thank you very much for that mr eddie i think we've managed to get very quickly to the to the tension at the heart of this disagreement i think um you're describing the needs to um create a new policy with greater flexibility to enable these events but all with all i'm seeing as i'm listening to you describe what you're trying to do and what the administration is trying to do sorry that is greater flexibility to put the parks at risk to close them off to residents and to disrupt the lives of people that live near the parks that's why uh we're looking to add it back in to the policy the guardrails and the protections that were there in the first place perhaps um we're quite content with um the parks as they are protected as they are so they can continue to be a valuable resource for people to enjoy play sports walk their dogs um have the children play that's the primary use of the parks that people enjoy so much and that's what we're trying to stop being damaged by the reintroduction of these protections back into the policy did you want to come back on that mr eddie i mean i'm always welcome to hear feedback this is meant to be a consultation and um but none of the event days in any of these spaces are being increased they are exactly the same as what the current policy is so for you for there to be said that we're trying to increase it that's not the case we're trying to work within the framework that already exists um and i can assure you there is plenty of protections within this policy and more oneness on the licensing process of events to make sure that noise is protected and consultation is done but there's a legal framework for that to be able to to happen um if i may just one final point you said yeah you say that there's this um continuing protection but this draft policy removes the need for public consultation on changes to this policy in the future so this will be the very last consultation we have this borough ever sees on its open spaces events policy so that's a huge protection that's being taken away taken away the fact that we could ever weigh in on future changes at all so i don't see how these protections are protected if any future administration could revise the policy without going through the very process that we're going through now um it'd be helpful if you can point me in the direction of that because i've got it in front of me any variations to the or the event restrictions any material changes to this policy are only possible if they're approved by the council's executive non-material changes are delegated to offices and consultation and relevant lead member it says the executive it doesn't describe a public consultation process or going through the osc committee well the process we are doing that process now aren't we we we're going to go out to consult consult now that's that's the bedrock of how councils operate you know so i think councillor adolph as you were next thanks um and agree with councillor osborne around the the amendment to the wording and keeping it into the consult i think that seems like a fair and and fair point that we can discuss at the end so could you outline in a bit more detail how exactly residents are going to be consulted on this to kind of reassure people that it is it is very much draft policy we're going to take into account the views of the friends and the various different groups and the whole kind of range of residents to kind of reassure people how we're going to do that so the consultation framework is being designed now we have a meeting with all the friends and max in a week or so's time which was already arranged to get their first initial views although some have already shared some of those views but we will have a session with them the consultation will be using our normal consultation framework for the council but we will also be trying to get views from focus groups and things like that to make sure we get a broad view of the communities as i've said the our arts and culture strategy and the preparation for our bid for london borough of culture residents were telling us that they would like to see events in our parks and open spaces so what we're trying to do is create a framework that protects those really important green assets in our borough but allows controlled events within this framework for them to be able to enjoy and the consultation will work really hard to make sure we get to seek all those views across the broad parts of the council of the council and our residents just a quick follow-up can you describe how this will take into account the kind of the different events that will be appropriate for different commons because obviously not all commons have the same kind of level of infrastructure and they have different levels of biodiversity and i think that will be helpful to kind of have some reassurance that that's being taken into account so in terms of i would expect us if there is an appetite for events on these green spaces and and commons and parks we would restrict areas of those parks and open spaces because they are in our view very important assets for biodiversity or habitat development and the policy will protect those um in terms of um sorry what was the question i guess what i mean is how are you taking into account kind of the different events that will be suited to the different commons because they're obviously not all suitable for the same kind of events yeah so part of the the like i say it's been developed but we will ask the kind of events and the scale and the genre and the themes of the kind of events that the community and the residents would like to see on on their commons we would give them some guidance around what those commons can potentially do you know because it's easier to come from a list rather than just an open question but absolutely we we want to understand um what our residents would like to see if they would like to see events in all our parks and open spaces we might have a very clear message that far parks and open spaces are completely off off the table that's what the purpose of this is and that will really help us and the market and community groups and residents to be able to make a decision where they want to host an event because the people up our residents would have told us the kind of events they want so they'd already know there's a demand there so the market will be able to see very clearly if it's shakespeare in the park you know for example and things like that if people really want to see that that might come out in a consultation and if it's a goer then they'll be able to contact relevant organizations that could put on events such as that so it's it's consultation exercise will be really really helpful to inform our approach going forward all right councillor caddy then councillor i'll respond thank you very much chair um i think probably the first thing i'd say is that obviously the consultation document is what we're putting out or what the council is putting out as kind of the recommendations so it's something that we we should all agree with and as councillor brooks has said there are many areas in here that i i certainly don't agree with and i think will be really detrimental to the future of our commons i don't understand why we why we would be proposing some of these sort of dilutions to the controls that currently exist um just two areas that i'll just very quickly highlight the sports pitches the revised draft policy wording is that eventually minimize impact on the maintenance and operation of sports pitches i mean that means nothing minimize could could mean still a huge amount of damage and you know my kids play sport on those pitches and they are regularly closed because of too much mud or too much water or the weather so they're already losing those pitches for quite a significant number of events during the year and if they lost them for even more it it would be really really um challenging i think um to run some of those sports clubs and then secondly on the the decibel level i can understand um wanting to change it to to mean that smaller events um have to be quieter or more considerate but why remove the decibel level why not keep that in as a as a kind of upper level um and the final point i want to make is that a couple of times it's been mentioned what other boroughs do and i don't think necessarily we should be copying and following what other boroughs do because if i think about one of our neighboring boroughs in particular um with clapham common they let all sorts of ridiculous events go on there that residents hate that are really noisy and i've spent a lot of time working with residents on petitions to try and get some of those terrible events reduced because of the damage that they do so i don't think we should necessarily be taking lessons from other boroughs and what they do is irrelevant anyway and then the final final point you know i really love our commons and our open spaces and i really don't think they should be used as a cash cow and the thing that sort of hints to me that that's the aim behind some of these policies is the use of the word market demand you know we're we're looking essentially and and i i can see the irony of course i can councillor belton but i but but i but i really do i i really value our open spaces and i would urge if this committee is is happy to do so just dial back on some of the dilutions that have been talked about because i really really do think that they will be damaging our commons i really do do you want to come back on those points yeah no thank you and um thank you for your comments i am a very keen sports person as well and you know sports pitches we would not want to lose them but if if we had an event that came in that was of such high interest to our residents and that is the space that would not compromise any nature or biodiversity um then that might be the best option because it's flat and it's easy accessible i don't know but ruling out all the options for for events to be held makes it difficult but you've you've got to trust the process that it's not in the interest of the council to create uh an environment where pitches are damaged and any income that comes will help to restore those pitches and take them to a you know a better level if i just come back on the other one sorry leave the wording as it is eventually not be permitted to compromise the maintenance and operation of sports pitches that's fine okay so on the decibel element what the policy is saying is leave that to the licensing because that has more powers it's more you can be prosecuted if you don't comply with it um so yep it's it is it says events that involve significant noise generating sources must provide sufficient and suitable noise management plans and address the licensing objectives of the licenses act 20 2003 and follow the best practice for the event noise management included but not limited to the noise council co-practice of 1995 noise limits for events including licensable activities to be set through licensing process including the relevant stakeholder consultation and on your last point this isn't the attention of the council to create cash cow we're looking at local events most events don't break even for years you know and have to be subsidized and we are very passionate about making sure that events are inclusive and accessible which will mean that we will expect access for all principles where there's free or highly discounted access which will make it a challenge for anyone to deliver event that isn't subsidized or so that is clear that is very clear that is not the intention of the of this policy thank you mr eddie uh council osborne yeah look i'm trying very hard here to be consensual in our approach to this uh this uh consultation draft consultation document you know i look we could have a round i could drag up stories from the past about e formula one and charging kids to go into it but it's it exactly it's irrelevant and i don't want the party political uh division i that's the point i'm trying to make exactly i'm i'm trying to come up with a formula which is is we've got a consultation document we've got a draft there are bits in it which we're concerned about and your concerns are just as valid as the ones that i draw drew attention to earlier on and my formula was let's not try and fix everything with an amendment because i think that it all merits discussion including yours merits discussion over the coming weeks and months you have valid points and and they merit discussion i'm saying let's get those points uh made clear like my points about consultation versus notification and get them minuted after this meeting so they are very clearly highlighted as part of the discussion and part of the consensus here tonight and they go forward with a special status into the consultation process in the coming weeks and months because frankly we i don't think we're in a position to have this kind of back and forth negotiating here tonight in a committee meeting about the kind of detail which you've you've drawn to our attention that you're concerned about i don't think it's practical i'm not saying it's invalid i think you're making a very reasonable set of points and i want them to be discussed but i think the way to do it is to say let's have a highlighted minute from this discussion tonight and that's what goes forward into the consultation process i might add by the way it's a a technique which we've started to use in a number of uh oscs uh councillor jeffries will know that we've done it a couple of times i think in in general purposes uh we've done it in in some of the other oscs we're moving into a different style of osc i think as we go forward which um overview and scrutiny committee for those listening in um which uh respects the point of view of the opposition i have said a couple of times in discussions with the opposition i don't want to see a committee that simply lists decisions in its minutes when um an argument has been made by the minority party perfectly reasonable argument but which the majority party disagreed with i want prospect posterity to know what the the minority party was saying i want it minuted i want it to go into the record and so the minutes are becoming much more important uh in the way that we handle uh as our overview and scrutiny committees evolve i would urge you to do as i have done and say what i've said should be clearly minuted have a special status because it's minuted and lifted out of the discussion that we're having on this uh this draft i would say why don't you do the same with your points and let's almost as an experiment see if we can use it as a way of uh of moving forward and getting a proper discussion a proper discussion over the detail of what what you're saying because i honestly don't think that you or us are in a position to go into the kind of detail and come up with a valid decision tonight on on that those sort of items what do you say thank you very much councillor osborne and i appreciate what you're saying but i think for two reasons i i wouldn't agree with that and i think we should definitely amend it one is i think this is such an important and kind of permanent change that we should be looking to make an amendment so that the document that we give to people is our recommendation because everybody you know if you receive a document from the council asking for consultation the contents of it are essentially what the council is recommending so we shouldn't be recommending things that we fundamentally don't agree with and i think it's better to get the consultation document that we send out for people to discuss right than rush it through and i don't think there's any particular urgency this isn't a particularly urgent issue i think we've got time to put the amendment through make those changes to the consultation document and actually consult properly and and you know say what we really think when we're putting out the consultation document it's you know with the best will in the world a minute is a minute an amendment will actually go through um council of osborne's being bending over i'm amazed and this is a learning experience for me this evening um i'm amazed at council osborne's total reasonableness on this issue um uh and i i i can barely barely uh resist having fun about the marketization of public goods coming from the majority of minority party gosh nearly slipped up there um but i i haven't read it so closely i must admit does it say can i ask does it say somewhere in the proposal referred back or something like that to the cabinet to the council's executive because i mean i don't mind if this paper says the executive because we know whether that is but if it's public that is you know the actual the actual policy we're trying to get through then i don't think it should refer to the executive needs a change of government to change local government legislation there won't be an executive it'll be a cabinet it'll be something else it's just the council's normal decision procedures i mean we don't have to get stuck on whether it's the executive the cabinet the leader you know all that sort of stuff does that actually say it though and what well in that case i don't think it should i think it should say refer back to the council or whatever the phrases and the council will change it as necessary mr eddy did you want to come in on that that's fine um you know we want to make sure that if their material changes it goes through an open and transparent process so if that if the wording needs to change to reflect that or whatever successor governance processor will be you know we can make that amendment okay um wait uh cancer why you also had your hand out did you was this related or was this like an extra point before we start talking about amendments yeah i mean that there's there's one thing i'd like to speak positively about what's being said but also i think that i think a lot of the amendments are actually offering us a lot more flexibility and i don't think that uh yeah i agree people like the commons but that doesn't mean that they can't be liked in different ways and there are other groups that the the um the uh the uh demographics of of of onesworth are changing um and and i think that our documents must be flexible to reflect that uh so i support uh what what uh mr edy has been saying that there's one area though i think that the language does need to be tightened up not up this one thing i would agree with you and that's on the sports pitches um i don't think our sports pitches are in fantastic condition anyway i mean you know with climate change i mean that this this weather this winter has been absolutely awful um and um to start the season if you like it already in a bad condition is is not going to be conducive to to um uh good uh sports playing i i presume that a lot of the matches have been called probably haven't played for five or six weeks yeah so you know i think that adding to the burden in in that way isn't is is not helpful so i'd like the language we can change the language it's fine but i need i think it needs to be tightened up and protections for the sports pitches i think needs to be a big requirement here mr edy you wanted to comment on that i'm i'm happy to take that away but sports pitches we shouldn't just think about football it could be a cricket pitch why it could be a cricket pitch they don't they're not used in the winter and it's a space it's normally flat you've got we've got soft you know we've got other sports pitches that aren't used in the winter um so i don't think we should dismiss it completely if there's an opportunity for an event that we ask the event organizer to make sure they protect and mitigate any damage concede the point that we don't want to lose sports pitches in terms of football and rugby during the season so we can modify that to be a bit more specific are there any other other comments okay so general point on amendments i know i know based on full council that last minute amendments are all the rage but i would say that it is i probably say in general more likely to get a more detailed hearing if it's we're able to see the detail and the text a bit like in advance of the meeting because otherwise there's always the risk and the issues with trust and so that's just a a comment that you know in future you know with a serious amendment it would be nice to get them further advanced but you but you you do have an amendment and do you still want to go forward with it um right so it's an amendment to recommendation a um on page 188 so it now reads and i'll pass this uh to the clerk in a moment um to approve the revised drafts event policy for the boroughs parks commons and open spaces brackets excluding battersea park close brackets with the below protections from the 2014 policy included for public consultation grass areas shall not be used for events over the winter months between 30th of september and the 1st of april brackets with exception of that of barn elm sports center or events directly linked with winter sports or the annual boat race events events shall not be permitted to compromise the maintenance and operation of sports pitches a time limit of 10 pm shall be imposed on all events as per the 2014 policy wording there will be no cat c or cat b events at any site on the same park common or open space on consecutive weekends event days are defined as the day of the actual live event and event site builds and removal days maintain the existing noise limit wording in the current policy public consultation must be carried out and approval of the environment osc and executive achieve before variations are made to the open spaces event policy in the future and finally for category a b and c events retain the consultation with the relevant max and friends groups thank you i propose the amendment or or did you still want it to just be meant to there it's gonna it's gonna have to be an amendment i guess so i propose oh council well that's a lot of amendments that's a lot of points and you're asking us to make a decision to to amend uh why didn't you give it to us a 24-hour notice i mean why have you presented it now i'm not obliged to do that we don't have to i know no you're not obliged to do it but it would be really helpful in the spirit of uh what councillor osborne said we could work on it we we could have had 24 hours to work on it back and forward and come up with an agreement quite um we used to and you remember when you were housing cabinet member we used to bring we used to bring amendments the day before to get to give everyone an opportunity to have a look at you always rejected them i mean you know you never accepted if i had a chance to read through all of the papers in so much detail you know earlier then fine but as i said i only got papers on monday and you know i had to schedule reading them but can you see what's happened that you we've we've gone from a very positive position of thinking my god how are we going to look at all of this in 10 seconds these are really uncontroversial well you probably do but the thing is that we haven't had a chance to have a look at them kim so it's okay i was i was about to come up with a wording for an amendment which says um where the uh draft consultation paper uh replaces consultation with notification we replace notify with consult the draft the draft replaces consultation with notification that should be reversed and we should revert to uh consultation as in the original uh original documentation original i'll second that yeah um so i think i think then councillors if uh if we take the the substantive amendment that councillor brooks has proposed and has been seconded and we take a vote on that as one block and then following on from that we will then if necessary then take the vote on the second amendment is that is that agreed yes okay okay so we're taking the amendment on all of the yeah this this list and then if needed yeah we'll move on to the next one okay so so approaching that so uh can we have votes for the amendment uh sorry um sorry councillor brooks's amendment so can we have the votes for the amendment it's four yep and vote five sorry no no it is for who was for yeah yeah and uh votes against six okay so that motion is hold and then so did so sorry um uh mr reedy like to make a comment i understand sorry if we're going to do this procedurally correctly then we can open again at the whole debate because something else has been put we can't have jump in just because an officer feels they want to jump in we've got to take the vote now we started it well well was your comment as a result of the vote or was it did you want to say something before the vote and then it's now i was i was i was going to say maybe i'm out of order but there might be some potential merit in refining some of the amendments and um because you know the sports pitches for one i you know could concede that but not all sports pitch sports pitches ones that you know um so it gives us the flexibility encourages people to want to do events council belgin may i just say that i think the list of the amendment was far too prescriptive uh but the cabinet member if she's who i know to be very concerned about getting all these things right will ensure that she goes through with the officers each one of those individual comments that have been made and checks and and sees whether any of them actually are worth taking on board in terms of the discussion next time round and so we're not necessarily rejecting it we're just rejecting that as a whole plate put as too prescriptive in one go yeah absolutely agree and i think that's very much in the spirit of what councillor osborne was saying we can have these individual ones um potentially ministered to and then we as in these were these are the points raised in in the opposite in the opposition amendment so that can be put in the minutes and we can also take that forward so councillor osborne did you still want to proceed with your amendment can i propose uh the amendment which i outlined earlier okay so again to uh yeah and that was for more the changing of the words and notify to consul sticking with the old wording basically okay uh so can i have votes for the amendment it's agreed that's unanimous so that then becomes the substantive uh recommendation okay so now we have the substantive recommendation um in paragraph two of the report with councillor osborne's amendment so uh is that agreed okay so we're to take vote so can we have votes for the substantive that's six and votes against that's four so so the yeah it's carried supported yeah so moving on we now have item number seven which is the leisure infrastructure plan um so i think i said that the recommendations and in paragraph two of the report all of them so you were against all of them or did you want to separate but we were going to be forcing but um see you then so cc okay if if members okay so paragraph c is unanimous rest was um supported by six votes to four all right okay so leisure infrastructure plan item number seven paper number 25-54 um i believe it becomes the gases you want to just come in quickly and hopefully this isn't going to be quite so controversial so you know we've got a very ambitious uh program ones both moves together to get all our residents moving in whatever way they would like to get moving and one of those ways is in our leisure centers and in our parks and these assets actually need some investment they've not been invested in for a while so first of all we need to protect these assets and we're seeking a budget from finance committee not from this committee um to enhance our leisure centers uh but that is what we call invest to save that that funding because actually through the tender process which officers will outline um to enhance our leisure centers uh but that is what we call investor save that that funding because actually through the tender process which officers will outline we're expecting a new contractor to come in and generate some really nice uh revenue as a result of the investment we're going to make so i'll let the officers talk all about it but this is the next step in getting all our residents moving and fit and healthy and happier thank you councillor gaza so uh with officers like to highlight the paper thank you thank you chair um my name is rebecca towers and i am interim head of projects for culture and leisure i'm a colleague here good evening councillors my name is mark fisher i'm the interim head of leisure and contracts so i'm going to introduce the paper so we're really pleased to be bringing this uh leisure infrastructure plan to committee this evening so thank you for having us um so the plan is a really important part of onesworth moves together our leisure strategy as uh councillor gasser just explained and the strategy is about inclusive accessible affordable sustainable facilities and this plan will help to deliver against that the outcome of having those types of facilities good quality facilities that all our residents can enjoy will mean higher physical activity levels and better mentor and physical well-being so um this plan we think is crucial for achieving the goals that we set out in the leisure strategy um and council gas already talked about the need to protect and enhance leisure facilities leisure infrastructure which includes indoor built facilities so leisure centers and halls um playing pitches parks and open spaces playgrounds and opportunities for active travel with sustainability being a cross-cutting theme really um this plan sets out an approach for the next five years and pulls out some of the priorities for years one and two um that are in addition to the schemes that we've already started um and we've had some real successes this year so we know we've got a capital program already um and we've opened paddle courts at king george's park we've had improved tennis courts or they're nearly finished um wonder recreation centers had some work done that means that um the carbon emissions have been cut so really important work there um we've started those grass pitch playing playing pitch improvements to make sure that they're not waterlogged and out of action during the winter months so we've got a schedule of um improvements planned for many pitches across the borough so that that's really good um and this additional investment will unlock a whole load of other opportunities and more outcomes for local people and our planned approach will help to deliver more efficiency avoid loss of income um avoid disruption for users um and like i say deliver those outcomes for local people um so in this additional funding that we're asking for in the paper will link to the plan will deliver investments across leisure centers for example latchmere leisure center needs swimming pool roof uh repairs um and um we have a variety of other plans or proposals that will be linked to the uh leisure operator procurement exercise um which has already been mentioned that will bring a significant return on that investment so that's a very much linked to that process so we haven't got anything firmed up at the moment um we also need to improve um and protect um pitches such as buttersea park or weather pitch which is coming to the end of its life cycle if we don't replace it it will be out of use you know again lots of residents enjoy using that um so we want to avoid that kind of scenario happening and then finally looking at um schemes in parks for example the replacement of aging infrastructure such as cricket nets in parks again free um at point of access um and available to residents and residents really uh value that kind of facility so i'm just going to stop now and ask you to review the recommendations that are set out in the report and we're really happy to take any questions that you might have thank you very much uh so we can now open the floor to questions so counselor caddy i think you had your hand up thanks very much chair um yeah i mean i i think it's great that we're that we're investing in in these facilities i've got i guess a big picture question and then something more specific so on the big picture obviously 30 million is is the number but there isn't much sort of detail behind that and obviously we do have the action plan at the back and it would just be really good to have some numbers around things because i think um speaking to officers 30 million probably won't cover everything that we want to do and it would be really good to understand what we're prioritizing and why um and again where we're going to get the most bang for our buck so it'd be really good to understand how that 30 million is being spent and prioritized and i appreciate that some of it will be you know necessary repairs like the latch for latch millage center roof but it would be good to understand of the action plan what is actually going to be paid for by that 30 million and then the second um question was very specifically obviously with the demise of the winstanley york road plans um the leisure center there and the new facilities there are not going to be built anytime soon um what plans are there to put in place something very specifically in that area to try and improve the delivery in that area because i'm very very conscious that people there have been waiting a long time for a an all singing all dancing leisure center that will not now be appearing i'll have a go at answering those first of all that's okay um so of the um 30 million um about 10 million of it is investment we're expecting through a leisure contractor so we are wait we will borrow the money but they will cover the financing costs and the return on the investment so we are in the middle of the last stage of the procurement process so we've given them feedback at the first stage of what they think they based on data and feasibility what they think we we should invest in so at the moment it's really difficult for us like i suggested the other day to give you that until we've got that back because some of the works that they propose might pick up some of the protect stuff which means we might be able to do more stuff um which means that we can re or deprioritize other things that we're planning to do most of the 20 million is being picked up through end or nearing end of life cycle assets so tennis courts all weather pitches roofs windows boilers all those kind of things but once we have a much clearer understanding what the leisure contractors are going to come forward with we can re-look at it with our fm team and our design services team and go right if we phase these things and pull these things together the money will go further disruption to our customers will be less um so it's really difficult to answer that question but it will become much more clear when we come back to committee in june for a contract award report and includes what the investment will be as part of actually be a contractual requirement of the bidder to be actually deliver it so they'll be contracted to do it including the return to the council so apologies if i'm i'm being vague but it's it's a really difficult one to answer no that's really helpful and and presumably in june we can get the breakdown of what we're going to be spending whatever the balance of the 20 million is that we've got left on and what the priorities are just to sort of understand how much we can do with this action plan and what i should have said as well there's a safeguard is the money that is going to be asked for approval at finance committee is going into a development pot for us to make business cases against so it's not what we've got the money yeah it's not automatic so we will have to go through we internally have an investment and funding board um and depending on that we might need further approvals after that so you know we appreciate a lot of money but we want to make sure we get the best back for our buck out of this and exploit all the opportunities of economies but also you know there might be an opportunity for external funding that might come across in the next three or four months we can go well we don't have to spend half a million on that we can can spend 200 000 because we'll be partner agreement so in one way it's good that we're not putting all the eggs in one basket now making commitments that we might need to change in the future thank you what wait sorry did did you want to come in on that second point or was that yeah about that well it's not not caring okay yeah so get back to that second question before we move on so winstanley york road as part of our onesworth moves together strategy a key focus is working in our estates so we're piloting lots of things in um alton rohampton at the moment um and trying to work with other key anchor and partner institutions to open up access to facilities so we're working with ipstock school in alton to try and get access to the swimming pool we are getting access to the swimming pool in half term next week you know for people so we'll be exploring all those opportunities um we want to do more at battersea sports center which is just literally across the road um and coming forward we have the new nine elms community health and well-being facility coming forward which will have dance studios community kitchen sports hall uh 3g pitch so there is things in the pipeline but we haven't stopped not being optimistic about winstanley and york road as well so i will fight you know to get those facilities in in the borough as well thank you mr ed uh councillor white um thank you um yeah i mean it's sort of vaguely related to that really the um um um i hope that there's enough money to to extend our offer you know so i think one thing that this borough has always lacked is outdoor gyms for instance um and i think the uh impacts um you know of those can be i mean traveling into merton if figs marsh you know it's constantly in use you know so um especially on council estates i mean going on from what we were saying there as well um so you know being close to areas where there might be low low activity would would be i think a really good move well joint show um so yes absolutely agree with that and i think um one of the things we'd like to do in year one is to do a bit of an audit and find out where we've got multi-use games areas i think outdoor gyms and activities on housing estates and beyond because um i don't think we have that level of detail that we can look at where the gaps are and where it would be useful to have more provision um so we'll start with the audit and then i think you know that is one of the areas that we would like to look at for sure so um that would perhaps come forward in a a later point once we've we've done that review thank you uh councillor annan yeah miss marty please i would like to know what you have what plans do you have for withstand estates because you know the regeneration has been put we've got a post on building of the leisure center and there is nothing in particular for sports for women and girls or even for even men over there i am the only one at the moment running activities for children and also for women like either doing chair yoga and table tennis and saturday activities activities like football and all those things for the children but what do you have because i'm a private like let me say charity small charity which i'm trying to involve and engage the people in the community just for them to keep up but as a council what are your plans because i will come after you i look forward to it um so i suppose it's fair to say that we're that they those plans are emerging because we agreed as part of when we agreed the strategy that alton roehampton would be the pilot let's learn the lessons and we've about we've started we're in the implementation phase which we're doing learning but we will come to other key areas of the borough including winds down the york road um you know and no no asset is safe from me to get people you know um active you know moving um you know we are responsible for the libraries there is a hall there why can't we do more active why can't gll do more stuff in the library how can we get schools to stay open and allow their assets to be used so these are all key things so we're only six months into our new strategy um but i appreciate some of these things been waiting a long time but do give just be a little bit more patient and we're happy to talk to you and you know we're really pleased with the work that you're supporting us with on women and girls we're ready to you know create a plan and how we can support more women and girls to be active as well um so yeah and the next stage for me is how do we make all our assets and our activities and services much more inclusive and accessible so once we've done the task and finishing group of women and girls let's look at how do we get more people with disabilities or or additional needs be more active as well so and that includes the assets as much as the activities so yeah be assured we're all very ambitious to support people to be active and keep pushing keep poking me with a stick to get it to happen thank you thank you mr and yeah i also noticed in the paper in the equality statement how um a higher percentage of women than men use our leisure centers and then so there must potentially be some lessons to learn there about why is that is that other lessons are seen as a more trustworthy safe environment for for women because whenever i go to a private gym that's always very dominated so i found that particularly interesting uh councillor belton i'm particularly interested in what councillor annan's just said i've been involved when stanley was in my ward or rather the boundaries changed and so i'm no longer but i was involved in that for a long long time and i still am because i still get involved in the wind stanley discussions the plan was of course for a massive sports center swimming pool costing zillions um and it may still happen but it's such a long i can tell you from discussions i've had in from housing point of view it's such a long way off um i just wonder whether perhaps we should lower our sites in the interim and just have some outdoor facilities that would be relatively cheap and you could put in one part of the of the york gardens which won't is extremely unlikely to be affected by any of the any of the potential developments none of which have been resolved but there are some areas that clearly will stay as a grassland and you could put a bit of an outdoor gym there at a much lower cost than the big target yeah that's a a good point uh did you want to come in that and see only to assure the committee that i'm personally working with paul moore the director of place to make sure that we continuously exploring opportunities for meanwhile uses and opportunities while we wait for whatever regeneration is coming in the pipeline so it's really important to us and um we're not resting on our laurels just waiting for the big ticket to come you know we appreciate that so there's there's a need now and and we want to meet it thank you uh any other comments councillor white it's just a very very quick one i want something that mr heady said that um about using schools in the evening i mean you know i remember going back years you know campaigning to get the floriat school open of an evening it's right next to the brockle banks in between the brockle bank and henry prince estate there are a precious few youth facilities for those two estates um and it's in perfect position it was brand new great facilities and it was just locked up every night and then we had complaints on the estate about kids hanging around on the estate well where else were they going to go all right thanks for that uh did officers want to come back on that yeah i just want to say i mean the autumn work is really going it started and it's going really well and i'm hearing other places that we can go next we haven't decided what we do once we have the prototype and the model that we take to other places i think we could explore a couple of the things that have been mentioned today and they sound really interesting as and they do need that kind of focused attention to find out what the opportunities the assets what the people really want and who are the who are the providers in that local area that can make things happen which is what we're doing on the altar and so it feels like there's some good um next steps for our state's work so thank you for that thank you okay are there any other questions i'm aware i'm very aware that we're meant to be finishing in 14 minutes and we still have two papers left after this so are there any other final comments or should we go to a vote okay yeah so um does the committee agree to support the recommendations in paragraph 1.2 of the report that's agreed unanimous moving on iso number eight in the agenda procurement of a boriculture services paper number 25-55 mr ed i think you're leading on this did you want to say say anything about it or should we go straight to questions i can do a short introduction um apologies i would normally have this all in my head but i'm covering a colleague who that's fortunately sick today so please um so onesworth council is responsible for the care and maintenance for approximately 60 000 trees across parks open spaces cemetery housing land schools and highways maintenance of our trees is really important if we want to protect their benefits for the future so these contracts are for maintenance including tree pruning tree felling stump grinding basal growth removal tree and climbing tree inspections emergency works and specialist woodland operations the current contract expires in march 2026 today's report asks for the committee to approve that officers can go to the market to procure new suppliers through a joint tendering process through the better service partnership of richmond and wandsworth priorities for the new contract are improving the quality of service for residents exploring options for efficiencies becoming more financially stable sustainable and securing the council's response to climate change and nature recovery the proposal is the new contract runs for four years with an option to extend for a further four years paragraph 14 sets out the timetable for the procurement paragraphs 15 to 18 sets out you talk the alternative procurement groups that could be were considered and a second report will come back to committee in the autumn to make the formal decision to appoint to award the contract just to reassure you because we've had quite a few representations about trees in in previous committees we're not waiting for a new contract to continue to improve alongside getting ready for that new contract offices are working with members of enable who will be transferring across to the council from the 1st of april around service improvements including redesigning business process across trees and highway teams to make sure it's better integrated because it need it is not at the moment um so i just want to assure you and also how we consult and communicate with our residents as well all those will be new processes from for early in the new for an actual year happy to take any questions thank you mr he and i'm glad to hear about the more emphasis on communication with residents um since we have that deputation recently about it it is very important that we see an improvement in that so uh open the floor to questions any questions mr edy uh council about him i just wanted to comment on on the communications um i'm not sure how much i'm sure the officers are aware of it but just to make the point i had two very nice little trees um on the road outside me um i enjoyed them every year they came they they came to life in the spring and the nice autumn leaves etc etc both cut down very young uh removed and replaced um i would have liked to have been told without having to ring up the trees outside your house are going to be chopped down because they're not indigenous at least i might have had an argument with that but at least it's understandable just have them disappear without even being told i'm sure i'm sure lots of residents are irritated when trees just disappear without being told yeah and i definitely second that point i think it's important that we in future move to a system where the residents are given some advance notice before a tree is focused some people do keep care really deeply about it and it's good that they if they in future get that advance notice uh did you want to comment on that quickly i mean it's disappointing to hear because you know our contractors should be letting you know and i hope that has not happened in the recent past because we've been very clear five years okay well maybe i thought he's going to say four or five days i was gonna say thank god um we've been very clear with our with enable and our contractors that is not acceptable practice anymore so if that is happening please let my teams know and we will make sure that they're told categorically that's not an acceptable position thank you uh councillor jeffries thank you chair um how to forgive me um mystery you may not be able to answer this question but um i'm just interested to see the approximate figure for the sort of the stock of trees across the borough um we've got the thousand trees per year target which is is a great stat for a leaflet and whether that's uh when uh the labour party's in power or or us um if we're also cutting down 500 trees every year the stock of trees is only going up by 500 so i just wondered whether whether it would be possible and a more meaningful target to aim for 70 000 trees over four or five years well as you say the net gain is probably around 500 so in five years to do 10 000 that it's probably not that feasible but um what we're trying to do and what will happen when we have more control over the service is try and work with the communities to see if we can support the growth of trees so they don't fail um and you know friends of trees groups and things like that so they're regularly watered but we've heard today about how the climate is changing everything and while we want to plant trees we've we've got more storms we've got more flooding you know lots of things that are in the last couple of years has affected too many trees so we will learn from those i know my colleagues were went to a national event at kew about how everywhere across the country can support tree growth and protect our really important green assets thank you any more questions okay so uh in that case we can go to the recommendation which is to support paragraph two with the report is that agreed agreed all right final paper paper number nine that is um the revenue budget monitoring for a quarter three of 2024 slash 25 um so mr modern i believe you want to quickly say a few words on this and then we'll get through some many questions i will be very brief uh so this sets out the as you said the quarter three uh good evening my name is alex mollen assistant director for finance and performance uh this sets out the quarter three forecast for the current financial year um it will be becoming more familiar the the key difference for this report is that we've also included the um appendices for the draft budget that went to finance committee earlier in earlier in the year um the forecast is for an effectively on budget position which i'll be very surprised if it stays exactly it is but 2 000 variants is very very positive so we're we're quite pleased with that um in the interest of time i will leave it there and see if there are any questions thank you mr modern and i agree with a budget of 45 million only being 2 000 off is is is pretty bang on so uh congratulate the team on that councillor books thank you very much chair um we did discuss this briefly in the briefing you very kindly joins um on monday evening but um in the paper in the autumn of 2023 that outlines the beginnings of the food waste recycling program um it was outlined that the the council was looking to accrue 725 000 pounds a year in by diverting food waste from the general waste into the new waste stream given that the tonnage of diverted food waste has been low even with the 72 000 low-rise properties which is i think represents the lowest hanging fruits in terms of the people who are most likely to take up the scheme with gusto um and that tonnage remains low so at what point in the budget reporting process would we see a variation um of that 725 000 targets not being reached thank you uh thank you councillor um so yes so that 725 000 pounds as you as you referenced was for a an estimate at the time uh for the full year's worth of saving savings that would accrue as a result of diverting residual to food waste um we've not had a full year's worth of food waste service it takes a while for this to be rolled out it takes a while for it to be embedded um so on on that basis for the current year we will not hit the 725 000 that was referred but as we've previously mentioned that is a a full year's target that's not what we would have expected to hit this year um we have also at the same time rolled out an additional recycling round and we've been able to leverage the communications that have gone on at the same time as the food waste to encourage people to recycle and we have been able to generate significant savings from the um transfer into recycling over and above um over and above the the the shortfall in in the year for the food waste so actually for our disposal targets we are under our budget for this year any other questions mr mr chadwick you want to come on might i just start to off um so yeah so it's it's in two parts that we haven't rolled we haven't had a full year and we haven't rolled the food waste out completely but what what i do have in front of me figures which show that our food waste uh tonnages per month are increasing month on month and we've in january had our most successful month at about 300 tons which um in my terms is about 60 african elephants um and you know he's our he's our biggest ever month and that we see that pattern going up thank you for that um um that would be very interesting information to be shared in a paper at some point um might might we see that in the future would that be a also in the kpi paper or that's not actually kpi i'm sure we can find a way of introducing those figures into the commentary against the kpi so yeah okay no questions uh counselor about um what does that tonnage equate to in terms of money in terms of food waste uh tonnage uh savings that's about 45 000 per month that kind of order if you look at look at it in isolation from the rest is that is that right yes i think we've we've calculated that for this month as being 50 000 so if you rolled out across the year that's about 600 000 pounds but as mr chadwick mentioned the tonnage rate is increasing and we would hope it to do more so yes any other questions cancer caddy um it's not really a question it's probably just more of a comment and i guess this is in the context of seeing that leisure infrastructure plan um and all the kind of fantastic things that we could be doing and that we want to be doing it's just having a look at the numbers for some of the savings um efficiency savings you know we've got a massive budget of you know 45 million and we again talked about this in the pre-meet um seeing efficiency savings of kind of less than two percent across the board on on those kind of numbers you know it would be good to maybe be seeing more um and i guess the challenge would be is is there more we can do on efficiency so that we can use the the money to sort of spend on things that we really need to do okay so uh mr moredon do you want to come in on that uh thank you so um i think you're you're right it's a it's a good challenge um the number does seem small in the context of our overall budget um and i think it that number reflects the kind of almost day-to-day saving that in my role um we're trying to make sure that the services are delivering as we've heard today bang bang for our buck a few times um i think it's worth highlighting that a lot of services within the environment committee are typically characterized by the kind of the large and long-term contracts so we don't often see um a kind of an immediate efficiency saving we often see big savings led by by the kind of changing contract so the agricultural contract that was mentioned that has the opportunity to deliver um greater efficiencies and we would expect to as part of the specification process um and we also have services that are driven largely by our ability to cover the cost so we want to generate revenue to be able to cover a cost enhance the services support people so it is a mixture of income generation which again won't won't won't be part of that line but we would expect to see that increase in the future as part of key contract terms that come forward thank you thank you mr moore um as the committee's now been seen for three hours uh i now need to dispose of the remaining business on the agenda um procedural 16 um we can continue to debate item number nine for a further 10 minutes i'm hoping it will be a little bit less than that but we can keep going with that for now so does anyone else have any more questions for mr mooreland before we wrap up nope so that was completely unnecessary statement then so all right so um is the does the committee agree to note the report great thank you and that concludes the business of tonight's meeting so thank you
Transcript
Hello and good evening, everyone. Welcome to the 13th of February 2025 edition of the Environment OSC. My name is Councillor Jamie Coakley. I'm the Councillor for St. Mary's and I'm the chair of this committee. Here with me this evening is Councillor Judy Gasser, the Cabinet Member for the Environment and Paul Chadwick, the Executive Director for Environment and Paul Chadwick, the Executive Director for Environment. and Community Services. Just chair's notes, I'll ask that members of the committee introduce themselves when they first participate in discussions and officers can also introduce themselves when they're called to present their reports. Starting off, are there any apologies for absences? None received. Full house, good news. So, item one on the agenda is the minutes, so I just wanted to ask members, are there any objections to confirm in the previous minutes as a correct? All right, that's agreed. Item two, are there any declarations of CUNAE, other registrable or non-registrable interests? Councillor White. I'm a member of Community Renewable Energy Wandsworth crew, who do have dealings with the council, but I draw no financial benefit from my involvement with the organisation. Okay, and who are you again? Hang on a second. Give me a minute. Councillor Paul White for two. Thank you, Councillor White. That's noted. Okay. So, with that moving on, we can move on to the substantive items. So, our first one, or potentially first three, if the committee is happy with it, since the first three items, items three, four, and five, are all very closely related. That is, the Climate Action Plan, the Retrofit Strategy, and the Climate Adaption and Resilience Strategy. I propose that we have an officer presentation from Mr. Hager, and we can then question and scrutinise the three pieces together, and then we can vote on the three separate papers at the end of the discussion, if members are happy with that. Councillor Caddy. Good evening, Councillor Caddy. Just a quick question. In some committees, we're only allowed sort of one or two questions per paper. Does that mean we'd only be allowed one or two covering all three, or are you quite happy, because I've got questions on all three? So, will that be okay to stick with that? Yeah, that's fine. We haven't previously put question limits in. I think Councillor White's got quite a few. So, yeah, no problems there. Okay. I have no problem. Okay, great. So, if everyone's happy with that, Mr. Hager, do you want to come and set up your presentation? I think... I might say something. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, why are you setting up? Councillor Gasser, if you wanted to say something. Yeah, good evening, everybody. And I'm very proud to be introducing all the work that the team's been doing over the last year and that they're going to do. But I just... I'm going to be serious just for a moment and just to say climate change is real, no matter what anybody says. We've just had the hottest ever January. We've had terrible fires in Los Angeles. We've got flooding across the world, hurricanes. There are lots of problems. But it's not too late. There's still a lot we can do. And here in Wandsworth, we are doing everything we possibly can to meet our climate targets and to support our residents through the changes. And Mr. Hager is going to present a report of all the action we've taken in the last year, all our plans for the year ahead. You know, the climate team is working incredibly hard. We've got a very thorough adaptation resilience strategy. That's how we keep our residents safe and well in extreme weather. And a retrofit strategy. And in simple terms, how do we help our residents adapt their homes so that they're warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and save on electricity bills, you know, or energy bills? And just to say this is a cross-council initiative, Mr. Hager, and the team work with all their colleagues across the council. And every single director is contributing whatever way they can. And, for example, the transport department and highways department, they're electrifying all their vehicles. The housing department is bringing in a landlord licensing scheme. And part of that scheme would ensure that landlords offer properties with a decent level of energy efficiency, which is good for carbon emissions, and it's good for our residents' bills as well. You know, children's services work very closely with schools because we know how passionate young people are about this. So we're educating them and we're supporting them. And we're decarbonizing the schools where we can. And we work with partners across the borough because we have a very challenging target, 2043, to be carbon zero. We won't achieve that alone. We're working with partners, health partners, business partners, education partners across the borough to achieve that together. So, Mr. Hager will present all of our priorities for the year ahead. Absolutely everything is important. But my particular priorities is we're working on a biodiversity action plan because we have pockets of really good practice across the borough, but they're not sort of codified, brought together at the moment. So they will be. We will have an action plan coming our way, I think, in the summer. And we will ask our residents to feed into that as well. So I'm very proud about that piece of work. I'm particularly interested as well in how planning can help us achieve our targets because there's an awful lot we can do through planning to encourage residents to do the right thing, to support them to do the right thing, make it easier, and to make sure that developers do the right thing as well. So over to Mr. Hager. We're doing incredible work. And thank you very much to the officers for everything they're doing. Thank you. Are you all, Cesar, on the side? Yeah. Great. Me and Callum are going to get out of the way of the big screen then. Fantastic. Thank you very much, Councillor Gasson. Thank you, Chair. So I'm going to run through the three reports we've got in front of you. So we've got the ones with climate action plan update for the previous year and the refresh and new action plan for this year, for 2025. We've also got the ones with retrofit strategy, and we've got the ones with adaptation and resilience strategy that are all before you. So just quickly to remind the committee of our approach to tackling climate change, and there's three key strands to what we do. So one is about becoming a carbon neutral organisation by 2030. So this is about reducing carbon emissions from us as an organisation. So it's about looking at our buildings, looking at our vehicles, and also operating in a more sustainable way with skills across the organisation. The second part is about creating an environment that is low carbon, sustainable, and resilient. So this is about using our powers, our influence across the borough to be able to create that resilient environment and also to promote low carbon approaches and reduce carbon emissions across the whole borough. The third is about working with communities so they can take action on climate change. As Councilor Gasser said, we can't do this on our own as a council. It needs everybody in the borough to come together. That includes residents, it includes businesses, partners, community organisations, all working together to take climate action. And combined, these are all going to take us towards our target of net zero borough by 2043. So I want to highlight a few things we've done. This is not an exhaustive list. There is a more exhaustive list in the papers. And I'm sure there'll be questions about some of those as we go through the agenda. But I want to highlight there's been an increase in bike hanger storage. So we now have 1,374 bike hanger spaces across the borough. We've also run anti-idling campaigns to target air pollution in hotspot areas. And we've delivered warm home packs to reduce energy use and fuel bills for fuel poor households. We've delivered those to over 1,500 households alongside some other interventions to really sort of like go a bit deeper and to help some of those households more to reduce their bills. And we've got seven green flag parks with a new green flag park for Coronation Gardens. We've also delivered the cleaner borough plan with increased recycling rates and a new lower emission fleet. And also we've done climate action micro grants throughout the year supporting community groups. And in particular, sustainable September, which is really showcasing climate action across the borough and how the community is getting involved. And there's a few more things we've done. So we've delivered decarbonisation projects to Roehampton Leisure Centre. We've got more on-street EV chargers. Bids have been submitted to the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund to bring in that external funding to be able to deliver more. There's been community involvement in parks, conservation and biodiversity. Southside Library of Things is one of the top three sites in the UK. There's also been flood protection work at John Burns Primary School. So that's a bit of a taster of some of the things that have been delivered throughout the year. I'm now going to move on to the Wandsworth retrofit strategy. So this is a strategy that's been in development for a long period over the year. And my colleague here, Ali Mulvan, has led on that. And it's important because nearly half of carbon emissions in Wandsworth come from domestic housing. So it comes from our residents' homes and primarily from gas and electricity that's used there to heat and power them. And there's therefore a need for an increase in retrofit. So reducing the energy use within those homes and switching away from fossil fuel powered heating, such as gas boilers, towards things like heat pumps, increasing the amount of solar panels that there are. And we need to increase this so that we can reduce carbon emissions. There are a lot of challenges around retrofit, especially on funding and who's funding it, how is it going to be funded, how can residents do it themselves, how can the council support it. And there's a real need to work in partnership on this and for the council to play a really leading role in bringing some of this together. So we've developed a strategy which provides the high level ambition and direction of travel for retrofit. It sets out the extent of the need for retrofit and why we need to act and why it's important. It also highlights the need to work in partnership and how we can do that. It also sets out the role of the council because previously it's not really been well defined. It's not been clear about actually what is the stuff that the council should be doing. And I think some partners and some community organisations have not always been clear about that. So it sets that out. This is what we can do. This is what we can influence in terms of retrofit. And then actions to deliver against the retrofit strategy are included in the ones with climate action plan for 2025 and will be included in future iterations of that plan. So just in terms of a quick overview of what's covered. So we've got a section on social housing, which is looking at how we can maximise funding and opportunities for retrofit and also engaging with our social housing residents. There's a section on private sector, which is about providing clear information on retrofit for residents, encouraging take up of retrofit, supporting those who are struggling to pay their fuel bills and improving the energy efficiency of their homes. And also engaging with landlords as well, because the private rental sector is obviously really, really important within Wandsworth. There's also a section on place-based approaches, which is looking at how we can retrofit whole areas and some of those approaches that we can develop around that. Identifying heat networks and also promoting community energy. We're also looking at funding, looking at how we can bring in external funding to drive retrofit, including government funding. And also looking at external finance and whether there's options around bringing some of that in as well and driving investment into the borough. And the final section is about green skills, promoting and supporting green skills and careers in retrofit. The other strategy that's on the agenda is the Wandsworth adaptation and resilience strategy. So Wandsworth faces a change in climate, and that is very clearly set out within the strategy. There's a lot of detail about climate projections, about climate impacts and the climate risk mapping that's been done by the team. And this work has been led by Nikki Wheeler in the team. We need to prepare for this change in climate, and we need to build the resilience of our infrastructure and our communities. There's already been a lot of work done on this at London level. There was the recent London Climate Resilience Review, which produced a series of recommendations for all sorts of organisations across London, including for local authorities. And that has been a real driver for the adaptation and resilience strategy that we've developed for Wandsworth. So we've developed that strategy to address this in a lot of detail. So the strategy itself presents the climate risk and vulnerability assessment for the borough. It also provides a framework for us to work with, so we are robust and consistent on our approach to adaptation across the borough. It also sets long-term priorities to guide and inform the council's work around climate adaptation and resilience. And it also, importantly, informs local stakeholders of climate risk. Some of our stakeholders, some of those organisations may not be aware of some of the risks that are associated. So this is a way for us to set that out quite clearly so that they can understand the risks for themselves and the risks that are opposed to the borough as a whole. Also, this is leading the way in London, so other boroughs are interested in what we're doing. Since the London Climate Resilience Review came out, we're, I think, the first to publish an adaptation of resilience strategy that actually takes that on board. And lots of others are very interested in finding out about how we're approaching this, what we're doing and what we're going to do in the future as well. And that's really, really positive feedback for us to get. So in terms of the strategy, there's an element there about embedding adaptation and resilience across the organisation, including in our sort of internal governance. So making sure that officers across the council are thinking about adaptation and resilience and building that in. Ensuring a joined-up approach to adaptation and resilience so we can maximise the impact and increase capacity of the council to build that resilient borough. So how do we work with partners? How do we bring this to other teams within the council as well? It's also about compiling and analysing the data required. We have climate risk mapping that is there publicly available on the website and so it's about developing that even further so we can deliver more, we can identify more. And then it's about implementing effective adaptation and resilience measures across the borough as well, particularly targeting those areas of highest climate risk. So those areas that are most vulnerable to climate change but are most at risk and targeting our efforts there to address the risk that we understand. And then ensuring formal monitoring and evaluation of it as we go along. So making sure that we're taking an adaptive approach to how we're doing it because we recognise that climate change is not going to progress in a uniform and linear way. It's going to change and we need to review where we're going, where we are with this and what the changing requirements are. So it's building in some of that flexibility and adaptability to how we approach this. And then finally I'm going to talk quickly about the Wandsworth Climate Action Plan for 2025. So there's three key priorities within that. One is around delivering the actions to support the retrofit strategy and delivering actions to support the adaptation resilience strategy. And also that stuff around working with our communities and residents and partners on climate action. There's also the Biodiversity Action Plan, which Councilor Gasser mentioned. There's a decarbonisation strategy for our buildings, which is coming out this year. There's the second phase of the Cleaner Borough Plan, which is set for delivery. There's work around improving communal heating systems and social housing and continued rollout of sustainable transport as well with EV charging, cycling infrastructure and school streets. And that is a very short list of what is in quite a detailed action plan in the appendices. So I'm going to leave that there as an introduction and then I'm happy to take questions. Thank you for that, Mr. Hager. And you're definitely not exaggerating when you're talking about condensing it down. That was so round. It's nearly 200 pages of detail that he's managed to sum up really eloquently there. So, yeah, so now we can consider the three papers. There'll be a lot of questions and there may overlap between them. But we have our whole climate team ready to answer them. Councillor Caddy, let's go first. Thank you very much. I'll just preempt my remarks by saying that I totally agree that climate change is an absolute focus and absolute priority for everyone. So I'm not questioning that. I guess my big picture question based on the paper is are we going to actually get there in 2030? I wondered if there was some kind of graph or some kind of table which shows us essentially how we get from where we are now, which is actually looking at the numbers sort of going slightly backwards this year. How do we actually close that gap and get to where we need to be in 2030 for being a carbon neutral organisation? And then obviously 2043 and net zero borough and how each of these kind of projects and sort of lines that we're looking at, how each of them contribute to that big picture? Because there's nothing that sort of comes together and shows me how we're going to bring that kind of carbon down. Very specifically, I also wondered how the carbon impact is kind of being measured, because I think one of the things that it says in the paper is that high represents, I think, was it a 25 to 50 percent reduction in that particular area. And just looking at some of the examples, for example, improving cycle parking, I'm not quite sure how I understand how improving cycle parking equates or how anyone would calculate that that equates to a 25 to 50 percent reduction of carbon in that area. And then finally, in terms of the numbers, I just want to make sure obviously 5 million is an enormous amount of money that we're investing. And I want to make sure that we're investing it in the right places. So are all of these projects that we're looking at, are they all calculated to kind of bring the biggest bang for our buck in terms of getting to that net zero position? And I guess what would be really useful to see would be to see a kind of carbon estimate for each of those projects so that we can see whether we're actually doing the right things to get to where we need to be by 2030, 2042. For me, that was kind of the big thing that was missing from this paper. Thank you, Councillor Cady. Would Mr. Hyger like to take those on? Yep, thank you very much. So in terms of getting to our 2030 carbon neutral goal, the decarbonisation strategy, which I referenced in the presentation, that is going to set out a detailed pathway to 2030. There's a lot of work that's gone into developing heat decarbonisation plans for all of our buildings to really assess actually what needs to happen to reduce carbon emissions from those particular buildings and to put them all together into a programme that sets out what we need to do. So that's going to be coming there and that's going to be very, very detailed in terms of setting out what projects will deliver what carbon reductions in the future. Thank you. And just on the cycle hangers as the example. Yeah, so the carbon impact measurements, I mean, those are estimates because you can't measure all of the carbon for every single project. It's very tricky to do that. It's quite intensive to do that. So we do have sort of rough calculators to sort of use to estimate that. And certainly when you've mentioned about sort of the bids and the projects that are there, when they're brought forward, there is an expectation that officers are looking at how much carbon can be saved from those projects. And that's part of that decision making. But I think Mr. O'Connor wants to come in on that. Thanks, Andrew. So for those of you who don't know me, I'm Claire O'Connor. I'm Director of Climate Change Communications and Policy. So in answer to the 5 million and making sure that the 5 million is allocated where it's going to have the biggest impact, we have a Climate Change Steering Group. That's an internal group of director level across every single directorate. I co-chair it with Catherine Burstyn, who's obviously one of our Directors of Finance. And we also have Paul Gilotti, who most members know, who one of his functions is around audit. So it is an incredibly robust meeting. We scrutinise the bids that come forward. We don't put forward every single bid that comes. And we look very much towards the impact that those projects will have towards our 2030 target and also our borough-wide 2043 target. Yeah, did you want to come back on? Can I just very briefly come back on the – because the thing that worries me is I can understand that cycle hangers are a good thing. People want them. You know, they're good for encouraging cycling. What I can't understand is how they contribute to a big reduction in carbon across the borough. And I think we should just be really clear about why we're making decisions. And if we're investing 860,000, I think it was, in cycle hangers, that's okay. That's fine. But we shouldn't be pretending that there's going to be a big carbon effect if there's not. And I can't understand how having a, you know, several more cycle hangers across the borough is going to be able to reduce sort of significant levels of carbon across the borough. It just sort of doesn't make sense to me, so I'm just trying to sort of triangulate whether we're actually looking at some of the right things and making the decisions within the right framework. So the example of bike hangers would be encouraging cycle use, which means that you're avoiding journeys that would otherwise be more polluting. So potentially you would be cycling instead of using a petrol car, and so carbon savings come that way, and that's how you would work out sort of actually how many avoided journeys and things like that, and that's where the carbon saving would come from. Just to come back, my experience of cycle hangers is that people don't necessarily reduce the number of cars, you know, it's just somewhere better to store their bike. And I have no problem whatsoever with cycle hangers and, you know, people having places to store their bike. I would just be astonished if people necessarily reduce their journeys significantly. A lot of people I know who use cycle hangers used to store their bikes in their hallway. I would just be surprised that the number of journeys was reduced. I may be wrong, but I just wanted to make sure that we're sort of really focusing on bang for our buck when it comes to carbon reduction. Yeah, I think, okay, I think we've gone a bit back and forth, so did a member of the committee want to come in one more time on that, and then we move on to some other lines of questioning? Yeah, so I'll come in. So I think we've used the high, medium, and low impact for quite a few years, so it's quite an established thing that we've used as a team and to present the actions to this committee. I hear your point, Councillor Cuddy, but obviously the team is well-experienced in terms of identifying the impact, and they are constantly keeping up to date with all the national research and the national best practice to ensure that that informs the decisions we take and the approach we take in the borough. So we had Councillor Belton next, then Councillor Osborne, then Councillor Cook. So Councillor Belton. Tony Belton, Battersley Parkward. Can I suggest, Chair, that rather than comments and reply, we have a more open discussion, because I certainly wanted to add to all sorts of things that Councillor Gaddys said, rather than going back to the officers. I mean, we can just discuss all of it, and the officers can come in at the end or something. It just seems to me it might be a better way of doing it. Well, if you want to, like, approach questions to other members, you can, but I think Councillor Cuddy's questions were directed at the officers. Yeah, but I want to go on about the cycle parking and just be repeating it all. So, I mean, it would have, I just think it would, in my view, it would be better if it was a general discussion, but you're the chairing. I want five kind of areas at the moment. One is incredibly trivial, and then it gets more and more significant as we go up. Incredibly trivial, I don't want to answer to. Incredibly trivial is there are a couple of typos in that presentation. I'll happily point them out afterwards if you want, but there are a couple of typos. As I said, that's incredibly trivial. I think Councillor Cuddy's point about somehow or other quantifying the individual items we're talking about and the net impact of those. I'm sure it's incredibly difficult, but I'm also sure it would be very helpful indeed if we knew whatever Councillor Cuddy was talking about. Or I'd be talking about that that actually was relatively minor and cosmetic and the level of it. I think that would be quite helpful, and therefore I also agree with Councillor Cuddy that it would be quite nice to have a sort of running checklist if we possibly could. I also think that I'm sure the officers have considered this, but again it came up in Councillor Cuddy's comments, really. There's a little bit of a confusion, I think, between those steps which are definitely about prevention or our attempts to prevent climate change and our purely defensive actions in the event of climate change. So can I suggest, I may be wrong, someone obviously pointed out I'm wrong, but it seems to be the flood defences of John Burns, incredibly valuable to have, but I don't actually see how flood defences of John Burns stops climate change. So I think prevention and mitigation are two separate categories. And I think there might even be a third one, which is encouragement, enticement, like I would say about the bike hangers. Let's argue about the motorcycle journeys or not, but if there are some, and fewer car travels, then there has been an impact. So what we can do to encourage and entice. Just as an aside, I love the one with the flowers around the tree towards the end of the presentation. I don't know whether you saw that. Just saying, why isn't it like that in my road? And, of course, in some roads there are. And I think that's a serious point. If we tried to put flowers around every street all over the place, it would obviously cost an awful lot for goodness knows how much impact, perhaps not very much. And I just wonder, in terms of this and the main issue I'm coming to, is whether, although we're trying to encourage the private sector, we're not hitting the public sector, because the biggest public sector of all, of course, is your or my house. That's where the biggest investment by masses is going to happen in the next 10 years. And so, for instance, if I took the tree plant, something completely off the wall, like a prize to the Battersea, as opposed to the Dooting, or the Putney, or, you know, like a prettiest street or something in the borough, which actually got the people doing it, rather than the council, because the council couldn't possibly do it all. And so look outside the council's abilities. Now, that's relatively trivial. What is much more important, I think, is the figure you showed in the presentation about the scale of global warming that comes from domestic housing. Now, I think I'm a reasonably good, responsible, ecological kind of person, had the roof insulated for ages, double glazing, gas boiler, shoot me down, Councillor White. And so, a bit off there. But I actually don't know, I've never bothered to find out, what the infrared picture of my house would look like. And I don't, I mean, although we may all have these things that you have to have nowadays if you're going to sell a house, what is it called, certificate, yeah. Although we've all got to have those, I've got my doubts about the value of that. But the actual infrared picture, I think, shows a real, and what if the council, instead of trying to do everything, just, and there's going to be privacy issues here, I'm sure, just to get in the way, just the infrared down the road, you know, like whoever they are who did street mapping, street view, you know, Google Street. And if they went up and down the road just doing infrared of everywhere and showing, so you could see how much, you might be horrified. Because they're the people with the real money, and, you know, like him and me. I mean, to be honest, as opposed to the council doing everywhere, we have cash, and we do our houses up, and we spend money on putting attic extensions, and we do all sorts of things we do. So that, so I wonder whether we're encouraging that kind of private investment enough, even though we're trying. No, we've got to think outside of what the council can do, because as the paper admits, quite honestly, there's no way the council can do it on its own. So we've got to encourage as much as possible from the private sector, and that includes individuals. So that, I think, is a major issue, I think. And I think, although the officers have tried very hard, and we all agree with the objectives, et cetera, et cetera, I think that bit's missing about how we actually get to the big spenders, people, how we get to them. I'll give one example of that, and that is district heating that was mentioned in terms of social housing. I don't understand this, so I don't know, but Councillor Marshall once produced a piece of paper which said something like, if you're going to have heat pumps, actually, so expensive, relatively expensive, and inefficient, doing it house by house, do it for the whole of my terrace. I live opposite another terrace, do it for the whole of the two terraces, so it's there collectively, and possibly the council could help that, and therefore you could have it on a wider scale. Again, encouraging private investment. So that was my comments. All right, thanks for that. On your third point, I'll quickly leap to defence of the officers, that our plan is the Climate Action Plan, and so that does always include, like, a heavy emphasis on resilience and adaptation. It's not specifically just about preventing climate change and achieving our net zero borough. Andrew Hacker, did you want to come back on Councillor Berylton's other points? Yeah, and I just wanted to emphasise that it's about adaptation and mitigation, so it's about reducing carbon emissions, but also facing up to the reality that the climate is changing, and so we do need to take action on that. Actually, on that, Nicky can go into a bit more detail about some of the stuff around the balance between it. Hi, I'm Nicky Wheeler. I'm policy and programme lead in the climate change team. It's a really good point. And if we were sort of having this conversation 50 years ago, then absolutely, the priority should be mitigation. Unfortunately, the world didn't reduce greenhouse gases, so the climate has changed. The adaptation resilience strategy, the data is split into observed climate changes and projected, and we can see very clearly from the science that temperatures have risen in Wandsworth since the end of the 19th century. Precipitation patterns have changed. They've overall decreased over summer and increased in winter. And furthermore, we can see from the projections across all scenarios and across all climate hazards that there will be further changes. And I think a final point, even if we were to hit net zero, say, tomorrow, because of how greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, the climate is still going to change, and therefore, we do need to adapt. There were a couple of other points there as well, which I wanted to talk about there. One was around, Councilman Belton mentioned about the flowers beneath the tree, and actually, that's a really good example of community action. So I wanted to bring in Georgina, who leads on our engagement work, just to talk a bit about how we engage with people and how we involve people in action on climate change. Georgina. Thanks, Andrew. Hello, I'm Georgina Crichton, Partnerships and Engagement Lead within the Climate and Sustainability Team. So the micro-grant program, the Climate Action micro-grants that we launched last year, have been really successful for us, both in terms of the impact, but also the learnings that we've generated. And we've been working with a number of groups, similar to the initiatives that you've been talking about, Councilor Belton. So particularly Green the Grid, which is, you'll probably, some of you may already know, is quite a well-established and ambitious group based in Southfields, but keen to green the grid, quite literally, people's front gardens, public space, and so on. And there are a number of other examples of schools, community groups, and individuals who are keen to run these sorts of initiatives. We had 60 climate micro-grant applications overall, and we awarded 35. Really strong representation across the borough. And for those of us in the room, you can see some of the photos from the micro-grant programs on the wall over there. And it really shows the sort of breadth of ambition and creativity that residents are hoping to achieve with our support. And the micro-grants were up to just £500, so it's quite impressive to see the level of activity that's happening across the borough. One of the final points by Councilor Belton was about housing, and especially about the role of individual households in terms of retrofit and taking action. And that's an area within the retrofit strategy. So I'll hand over to Ali to expand on that a bit more. Hi all. I'm Ali Malvern, policy and programme lead within the climate change and sustainability team, and I led on the retrofit strategy. So I think it's fair to say that the strategy outlines what is within local authority control, and what is within our influence, and a crucial part of that is recognising what can we be doing to affect change, and particularly behaviour change in residents. So I see three main areas for us, one being securing and attracting funding for private residents to use within their homes. Another is establishing private and public partnerships to really create and draw in on that funding, and also be aware of the innovation and technology that is changing in this sector that will inform the residents' retrofitting plans. And finally, it's the information and awareness that we can put out to residents to help them and guide them in what changes they can be doing in their homes, all of which is laid out within the strategy of our plans coming forward. Yes, I think first, Councillor Gasser, you want to add something? Oh, I was just going to add to all that. I've been to a couple of really good events recently, and other colleagues in the room have been as well, where there's been information exchanges for residents, and the crew energy have been there, and the company whose name I've horribly forgotten, but somebody will remind me, who are setting up sort of district houses, generating energy together and sharing it out. Just remind me the name of the company? One Zero. One Zero, that's right. And they said there are some really interesting initiatives going on, and perhaps colleagues can explain better than I can about what that initiative is. But I know there's 30 or 40 households in Ellsfield have signed up to this initiative, and it's somehow generating energy together. I don't know, I'm not technical. Somebody can explain it. So, Councillor Belton, hopefully you can come to one of these events and see there's some really exciting stuff happening, actually. But an expert is going to have to explain exactly how this scheme works. So, Councillor Belton, did you want to come back on any other point? Yes, I do. I'm pleased that more is going on than you think I allowed for. And perhaps more is going on than I'm aware of. In fact, I'm sure more is going on than I'm aware of. But I don't, with respect, I don't need to be told, I certainly don't need to be told there's a crisis around. I was going to say coming, it's not coming, it's here, isn't it? So, I don't think that was particularly relevant. I'm still concerned that there's just too much dependence on what the big institutions can do. I'll give you another example, which Councillor White knows only too well, I'm afraid. One of my constituents happens to be a professor in this business. And he also happens to be a leaseholder on a flat-topped estate. And if you think of the GLC estates, the old GLC estates in Putney and Battersea Park, there are lots of flat-topped estates. And he's been after me to do something about having a solar panel. And this is not, I think, to do, but we've had, unfortunately, we've not got very far, largely with the Housing Department. Now, I'm not blaming the Housing Department. I'm sure it's got its own priorities. But the Housing Department wants to resolve all insulation problems and solve all the insulating work across before approaching things like putting solar panels on. And we've got a really enthusiastic international expert, a professor in the business. He's given up. He's given up lobbying me. I haven't got anywhere. So, I guess, I mean, the institution will find it very difficult, particularly as an institution like the Housing Department. I'm sorry I'm not knocking my close friends in the Housing Department. Many of them do a fantastic job. But they have legal and other responsibilities about the buildings, which are so great upon them. And they live through that spectrum, that view. And they're not using the skills and abilities of some of the residents there who have ideas. I think that's probably true across the board. And I think we've got to break out of that as much as... I'm not criticising people at all... But this is a discussion to try and get the best out of everything, isn't it? I'm not knocking people. And I know Councillor Cady actually agrees with me in general principle. And we all agree with Councillor Gasser. Like, it's a really serious issue. End of story. Thank you, Councillor Batson. I agree, like, it's important to have a really joined-up approach between housing and the environment team as another example, especially because they'll be responsible for doing a lot of the retrofit work. Did anyone on the climbing team want to come back on those points, or should we move on to another question? Only to highlight that I think there is really good joint working across the council. I think we can always do better. I think we have some real experts in the borough. I think we've started to have more of them come out to our network events and find out who they are. But I think we can always find out more and tap into the expertise in the borough. I think to Councillor Belton's first point, I think supporting residents who can afford to retrofit their homes to see that it's an issue through things like identifying where the heating is coming out or identifying who that they can talk to, that is an area of focus for us. But I think we can do better, and we are always looking for creative ideas that we can help to engage residents more in this particular area for action. Yeah, and I'd also say to Councillor Belton, if your neighbour does want to get involved, we have a lot of networking events and ways for residents to get in touch with the council. So try and get him to come along to one of them. It'd be good to hear from him. Councillor Osborne, did you want to go next? You must have listened to a criticism of me to stop me making these comments. No, no, no, I was just saying bring him along, because if he does have good points, then it could be something to learn from him. Councillor Osborne. Yeah, first of all, typos aside, I thought it was an excellent presentation, well presented, and I'm grateful for it. One of the, and that's relevant to something else that I want to say, which is one of the things that's happening here, and I think it's a good idea to merge the three papers together and have a general discussion. I think that is useful. One of the things that's going on here is that we have to have so many different things going on across such a broad spectrum of activities, because the programme requires it. It's the only way this can be achieved. And remembering them all and getting them all organised into something we can understand, I think, like the presentation, I think is important. It's a sort of, I'd like to have a copy as a sort of aid memoir of what's going on and what we're doing. I know that in each case I have to drill down a little bit more to get more information. And indeed, I think that's the case in the papers that we've got in front of us as well. You can't go into enough detail in paragraph by paragraph by paragraph, but you can give us a taste in the documents that we've got this evening of what's happening. I think it's relevant to the way that, actually, if I may say, Councillor Caddy approached the question of the bike hangers. I think we do need to interrogate each paragraph a little bit to get a better understanding of how relevant it is, what's going on is to the programme, all the different programmes on climate change. So, having said that, that basic introduction, let me home in on one in particular, just because it interests me, which is the Library of Things in Southside. I am interested to know, where does that fit into the programme? In the same way as bike hangers, how do they fit into the programme? What are they achieving? How is it measured? I note the comments in the paragraph, paragraph 62 on page 16, about the performance of the Library of Things, and that's its measure of its contribution. But I'd be interested to know how the performance is measured, what the performance means. I'm intrigued by the idea that it's in the top three performing locations across the UK in its contribution. I'd like to know what the other two are, for a start. So, a sentence or two on how it is contributing, and a little bit more flesh on the bones of the story about the Library of Things. Just this evening, just on this one thing, there are about 18 things here I could pick out and ask the same sort of question. But just give us a bit of flavour on that one, because it particularly interests me. Mr. Hyger, do you want to come in on that? Well, it's encouraging to think that you want more detail. I was conscious that it's quite a lot of papers that have been put in front of you. I was conscious of the page count. But in terms of the purpose of the Library of Things, that's basically an opportunity for people to be able to go and rent things instead of buy them. And the reason it's important in terms of climate change and carbon emissions is everything we use, everything we buy, everything that's made generates carbon emissions. If you can reduce the amount of stuff that is made by being able to rent it and reuse it and share that, then you reduce the amount of carbon emissions. And so that's why we've supported Library of Things and why we've got that in Southside Shopping Centre. So that's the purpose behind it. And that's how it fits in with the overall climate approach. And it fits in with a circular economy approach as well about that reuse and repair and sharing and making sure that stuff isn't wasted and is thrown out. And in terms of the performance, Ali can update a bit more because she leads on that. Thanks, Andrew. Yeah, so currently the Library of Things in Wandsworth has been in place just over a year. And it is one of the newer sites in London and some of the more used sites are longstanding. And they are Dalston, famously, is the most high performing site. Second to that is sometimes Hammersmith and Fulham. But in the last two months, Wandsworth has overtaken Hammersmith and Fulham and is the second highest site for November and December of last year. And that's reported in – we get monthly statistics through which base it on a number of KPIs, predominantly the number of hires and the carbon savings associated to that, taking the metric around what it would have cost to purchase it as opposed to borrowing a shared resource. Thanks. Yeah, it's a really impressive scheme. And for any residents are watching, if you need to do some DIY and you need a drill instead of spending 100-odd quid on one, you can just rent it in the Library of Things. And that's another example. Save money, save the planet. I think, Councillor Cook, you wanted to come in next. Thank you. I was delighted to hear Councillor Belton's opinion that the state can't do everything. I'm in total agreement. But thinking of things which we can do as a council in this context, while this is all conceptually very coherent, certainly acknowledge all the work that's gone into it, when you try and find tangible, concrete – concrete is probably the wrong word, using this context, tangible actions to in particular jump out. And I have to say, I think they're rather lacklustre in what they actually tell us, and I think it's really a bit alarming. So I think they're both on page 14. The rate of installation of EV chargers has definitely slowed. It would be useful to see a graph, but we should be accelerating that, and we're certainly not. And trees, 1,000 trees sounds like a lot, but when you divide it by the number of wards, it's probably about 50 trees per ward, which ain't all that many, really, and so I think there just needs to be a hugely more ambitious approach, and those are pretty much the only sort of hard actions I can find in there, and I find that a little bit concerning, really, that when you look at the things which we actually have planned, that they're really not terribly impressive, which I guess is Councillor Cady's point as well. Mr. Hager, I think we maybe previously talked about the EV chargers, and I think you mentioned maybe it was ground-dependent, the amount of numbers, but did you want to come back to Kirk's specific points on the chargers and the trees? Yes, I'll start by caveating that I'm not overseeing the delivery of the EV charge points, and that's the transport strategy team, but my understanding of it is that it's largely central government grant-dependent, and it goes in phases, so it doesn't necessarily track neatly with calendar year, and there is another phase of installations that are being planned out now, and they will then be delivered. So it's not necessarily a year-on-year increase that's neat, it tends to track the funding that's coming out to deliver it. So that's one of the factors behind that. In terms of trees, I think I'll hand over to Matthew to answer that. We've talked about trees on many committees, haven't we? We are very ambitious about trees, and 1,000 is quite considerable when you look across London, the amount of trees that are planted, particularly trees rather than whips and things like that, which lots of other local authorities plant and claim as planted trees. But they take a lot to maintain and keep as well. So for me, it's more about how do we protect those trees and help them sustain and not lose them as part of the journey. So we're replacing more trees, or we should be replacing less trees, and the net gain should be greater. That's what we should be targeting. But in addition to that, as part of our social value for all our procurements now, we're seeking contributions so we can plant more trees above our 1,000 target. So watch this space. We're not complacent here. We will keep trying and keep trying to grow the population of our trees in the borough. Thank you, Mr. Eady. I think, Councillor Gasser, you also wanted to comment on that. I'm just going to add to that, and I may not have discussed this with Mr. Eady yet, but, yes, I'm very ambitious about trees, and I want to see a lot more trees, but it's something to discuss in the future. Definitely one more. Councillor Brooks. Thank you, Chair. Councillor Ethan Brooks for Thamesfield Ward. Jumping to page 154 amongst the climate adaptation and resilience maps, side by side, we have graphs about where there are high pollution hotspots opposite a map of pollution risk in the borough. On page 155, we have graphs that show the two different Putney High Street measuring sites sky-high compared to the other sites in the borough, but with the map opposite, Putney High Street area appears to be the lowest air pollution risk part of the borough. But as we heard in the presentation, this risk map is going to be used to direct where mitigation efforts are directed in terms of where the Council focuses its actions on lessening the risk of air pollution. Why is it that we're going to deprioritise action to reduce air quality, air pollution, in the highest polluted part of the borough? Yeah. Climate change. Yeah, so I'm going to ask my colleague, Nikki, to answer that because she's the person who's been doing a lot of work on adaptation of resilience. Thanks, Andrew. Yeah, no, it's a really good point. With the climate risk map, basically risk is presented based on exposure to different climate hazards, one of which is air pollution. That's the map that you can see on page 154, and the other is vulnerability, and risk is calculated by a combination of exposure to those hazards and the vulnerability of the population living in those areas. So how the map calculates the risk, it gives exposure and vulnerability an equal weighting because we know that although air pollution is high in Putney, the vulnerability of the population is shown to be relatively low within the borough. So factors like prevalence of asthma, younger populations, age 0 to 4, who would typically have kind of more severe impacts from air pollution. And I think a really important thing to highlight with the climate risk map is it's relative within the borough, it's not absolute. So air pollution is high in Putney. Putney, the data shows that it's higher in other areas of the borough, and the data also shows that the vulnerability is higher in other areas of the borough. So if we look at a borough-wide picture, it's not saying there's no risk in Putney, it's just saying that the risk is greater in other parts of Wandsworth Borough. If you're saying that there are other areas of the borough that are higher, why are we looking at graphs on page 155 that show the two Putney High Street measurement sites as the highest listed? I'd also flag that you might be measuring the population that lives in and around Putney High Street based on the multiple indices of deprivation. But that's not who's necessarily on Putney High Street. Putney High Street contains a major railway station, people commuting in from all around, people travelling in to see Fulham Football Club, all sorts. They won't be captured by any sorts of indices of deprivation that you could possibly have. Yet they'll be at huge risk of the air pollution there as well. So I don't think we can say that you can base a risk map off of the local population to start with. But if it's the case that the council is going to focus its actions based on this sort of risk map, I still think that we should focus our action where air pollution is the highest. Yeah, sorry, I will say Claire O'Connor, Director of Climate Change again. So I think we are constantly adapting and re-evaluating the maps and bringing in lots of other different sources of data. So this is one iteration that we'd look to build on. I think we work very closely with our air quality team. So we're aware of also who uses Putney High Street and the commuters and also the impacts that you're talking about. I think it's important to say these maps are to support us to take an approach. It's not about not concentrating on Putney High Street anymore. And I wouldn't want you to take that away. This is part of a wider view that we're taking as a council around risk. And there still will be work around the air quality around Putney High Street taken forward by our team. So I just want to make that really, really clear. Thank you. And yeah, having had lots of conversations with the air quality, they definitely mentioned Putney High Street a lot. I think, Councillor White, you were next. Thank you. First of all, I'd just like to compliment the team for this three reports, because I think the width and the depth of it and what's covered is really, really quite impressive. Like some of the people have said tonight, though, my worry is about the resources and the capacity to be able to do everything, which is going to be a massive effort. And, you know, you need, coming back to something that Councillor Cook said, you need state funding really to underpin this, to allow the private sector to come in. And whether we're going to see that is obviously a mute point. But I wanted to also, a couple of points that were mentioned about, Councillor Belton raised a really good point around the community getting involved. And obviously, I'm a member of a community group. And I think there is expertise out there. And that gives us more capacity. And I don't think that we're drawing on it enough, as Councillor Belton pointed out. And I think the trust, I know that the ruse of the particular estate, there was worry about maintenance, and there was worry about insurance as well. And the longevity of a scheme, will people continue to, you know, have that involvement and enthusiasm to carry the scheme to the end? But I think that you've got to, we've got to trust. Because if we don't, we're not going to get there. And as I say, the community, especially in a place like Warnsworth, the skills and the commitment that are there, I think, that we could be using. One of the schemes that Councillor Gasson mentioned is very similar to this, but it's obviously in the private sector. And it would be drawing upon, very similar to what Councillor Belton spoke about, drawing upon the resources of an area where they can build scaffolding, they can bring everything in, and do it, and then reduce costs so that people can actually put in a heating, a new heating system, solar panels, and do all the insulation as well. And that brings me to one of the other points that was raised. I mean, the, what, it's really a question of fabric first or adaptation first. And if you put fabric first, first, then unfortunately you're going to have to bring in hybrid systems sometimes, so that will need gas heating backup at times, because, you know, you're still going to need a system, and that will be cheaper to do. If you did it the other way around, you could actually change the, you would change the heating and the lighting system so that they would be decarbonised. So that job will be done, and then you could come and do fabric first afterwards, but that would mean that the actual adaptation you're bringing in, the heating system and solar panels, are going to be, certainly the heating system is going to be more expensive, because it's going to have to do a lot, work a lot harder, because the fabric first work hasn't been done. So I hope that spreads a little bit of light on that. One of the points that Councillor Caddy mentioned about the cycling hoops and the hangers, I mean, this is the idea about a modal shift, isn't it? I mean, we're looking to basically provide the infrastructure to encourage people to make that shift across. One of the questions, because I've spoken for far too long, so I'll give you a question here. I mean, our chair is going to one of the centres of low pollution and high cycle use over the weekend. I'll leave you to guess which city he's going to. But they have achieved a massive reduction in pollution. They've achieved a much more safe environment. And it started a very, very, very long time ago, and it started with these sort of adaptations. But they've made massive strides, or massive cycles, I don't know. But how are we going to get to a situation, or will we ever get to a situation where we would be able to have that infrastructure that people would, you know, in a large sense, move from car vehicles to cycling? Mr. Hager, do you want to come back on this? Yeah, so there was a paper that recently went to Transport Committee, which did provide an update on what's going on across the borough in terms of sort of cycling and the infrastructure there. So I would say sort of have a look at that. And that really sets out what's being done across the borough. And there's sort of a taster within this report, but there's much more detail in that report. And that sets out a bit more. To come back to some of the other points you said about getting the community involved, that's obviously something we've tried to do as much of as we can. We've got the Once with Sustainability Network that brings people together. I know that you've been to some of those meetings and seen how many people come along to talk about climate change, to share expertise, to speak to us and speak to other people as well. And that's really important. And that's something that we want to build on. As we said earlier, there's always more we can do. And we're looking to do more on that and trying to really utilize that community involvement. Because we can't deliver this all ourselves. We need the community to come along with us to take that on and to deliver it. And you mentioned about some of that stuff about bringing that into specific areas. And that's definitely part of the retrofit strategy. So looking at place-based approach and how we can bring together an overall look at particular places to see how we can retrofit and reduce carbon emissions from those areas. And community energy is a part of that. Heat networks are a part of that. And investment is a part of that as well. So it's definitely stuff that's in there. It's still early stages because this has not been done elsewhere. There's no set model that is there that we can follow. There's other people trying some of these things. And we're keeping an eye on those things. We're keeping linked in with those things to make sure that we're learning from that so we can take that learning and apply it here in Wandsworth as well. I think it's definitely worth keeping Councillor White's comments, especially about the fabric first approach and being a bit more efficient, cost efficient, definitely keeping them on hand. So I think Councillor Caddy was next and then Councillor Annan and then Councillor Jeffries. So Councillor Caddy. Thanks very much. I'll be really quick because I think probably I now know the answer. It was really about retrofitting and it was just to sort of, I guess, reiterate or Councillor Belton said it's clearly going to be really important, the privately owned homes. And we've obviously got the cost, retrofit cost for council homes. It would be really good to have a kind of roadmap of what we need to do for the 45.5% that's coming from the domestic homes. What, you know, what does it look like between now and 2030 in order to achieve what we're looking to achieve? Because I fear it may be a huge challenge and it would be really good to sort of understand that. We'll see that sort of represented. But I suspect that's probably a work in progress. Yeah, and I'd echo that it would be good to see the sort of intermediate targets year on year on how much retrofitting is done and the progress we're making. But did you want to come back on that specifically? Yeah, so tracking the exact number of retrofits that take place is incredibly hard to do because a lot of it happens in private households. They don't need to actually report or register anything with us as a council or anywhere really because a lot of it will be done under permitted development. It's home improvements. It's not necessarily I have now retrofitted my house in one action. It's normally quite often it's going to be spread out over a number of years where there's some insulation that goes in, some solar panels, a heat pump, and that's done over an extended period. So retrofit is a bit of a process. So tracking that is really, really hard and having some sort of target around it is also really hard to do because we don't have reliable information on this. And also we don't necessarily control it either. So we wouldn't want to set a target that we can't directly influence and control. What we can do is track where we can and use proxies where we can and report on that. And as we've always been with the work on climate change, be open and transparent about that to show sort of what we would want to see and then see what we can actually observe. But there would need to be that understanding that it's not necessarily going to be an exact figure because that information doesn't really exist. Councillor Anand, did you want to come in? Yeah, my name is Councillor Julian Anand and I'm representing Battersea Park Watch. And coming to retrofit, I've seen that in the papers you stated that one of your strategies is to support families, like council homes with the warm home parks. And then also I've seen in the papers that what you're trying to do is also to support families who are those on low income with true crew energy with efficiency bulbs and then thinking works. So if I'm with you, I didn't know that thinking works like one sort of council support thinking works. I knew them like before, but I didn't know that one sort of council is also part of the people who support them. How are we making sure that the end user, that is the residents, are being informed or being, the awareness is there for them to know that this is available for them? Because I work with the charity and I meet a whole lot of people who don't know that there are this office available for them. Me, myself, I didn't know a whole lot until I read this paper. So how many charities are you working with to make sure this office that we have in one street council is being shared out there, that people get to know about this? I know crew energy, that's the energy, like the efficiency bulbs and all that, thinking works for you to charge your, when you have pay, but it's just one organization. And how many charity organizations are aware of this? How many counselors have this information, whereby when we are doing surgeries, we can't even advise people, because some of the people, they will come not just because of housing issues, but they will come because they've got other issues whereby we can advise them that, well, this is available and then inform them. When we say assets for all, we have to make sure this is available for everyone who is on low income. So please, can you please share much more information on this and also make, please, please make sure that counselors are aware of what is the office once what council have for residents and also voluntary organizations, please. I imagine one of the comms officers or the partnerships would like to comment on that. Yeah, thank you. So I'll speak about the warm home packs, which are a targeted intervention that we funded through the cost of living. And we have data that we update annually to advise which homes are low income and which homes have a low energy efficiency rating. As ever, it's a data source that can be out of date. It will be out of date as soon as it's published. So there'll be an element of error and discrepancy around that. But we target every household on that list and send them a letter directly inviting them to collect a warm home pack for free from any of the locations. The locations that we ask residents to collect them from are either the council reception, which I'll be familiar with, or local libraries. And we work quite closely to form partnerships with community centers and other organizations who may well know of people that would be in need. So there is a fairly broad rule or guidance around the distribution of warm home packs that if a resident is in need but hasn't received a letter or if a resident is in need or believes that their neighbor might be one, then there is an allowance to enable them to collect them. And we do form partnerships throughout that process and have done with Age UK and other services that visit particularly vulnerable groups throughout the borough and provide them with a number of warm home packs to distribute via their means as well. I'm going to say this because I visited one sweat food bank. It was when I visited them before I got to know that they are warm tools that people can use at their homes, which was given to them by crew energy for it's all part of this. You can wear it and be warm. If I haven't referred a client or residents to one sweat food bank, they wouldn't know that this is available. So how are we going to make it more available like this awareness system because if the person doesn't need food bank, like items, food items, it means the person is not going to go to the food bank. And I can't be sending people to the food bank like every three or four weeks. It has to be like maybe four times or five times in a year. So the gap in between is really a lot. So with that part, because I know it's not that much expensive like we do, it's not too much expensive. Please make it more wide for a lot of community organizations that people meet them daily. I meet people daily like every day. Today I meet like 25 people who they need this, they need that. I can't say, okay, because I can't send you to the food bank because you don't need food bank, but you need this. So I could give you this. And I know we have only crew energy who is distributing that, which is just one organization. And how are they reaching out to other charity organizations within the borough? Yeah, and I think it's a really good point, Councillor Allen. I think every year we try and improve the way that we communicate about the warm packs. I think this year we've done more in terms of the targeted interventions and also putting packs in libraries and having them in the community drop-ins. But I think it's an important point you raise that if you're not aware, then there's more that we need to do. So we'll take that away as an action to talk to crew about how we can reach out, to talk to our partners in the voluntary community sector team again about how we can reach out. And also we're very conscious of not bombarding councils with lots of information. But this could be one that, as you've highlighted, is really important for all of you to know for your surgeries. And so we can take that away as well. Yeah, I think that's a really important point that Councillor Allen has raised. And, yeah, there are a lot of people that would slip through the crack when maybe receive or open a letter from the council. And the only way that they would get this information is from a local charity or a community group that they go to, that if we partner with well and we let them know about it, then they could tell them on our behalf and make it a lot easier. Because sometimes, you know, they don't even understand what is written in the letter. I don't understand, when it happened, I didn't understand what the meaning of that word. It's so much of a big way for me. How do I explain this to this woman who has English as their fourth language or fifth language, who needs an interpreter before she will understand what I'm talking about? So, please. Councillor Jeffries, I think you were next. Thank you, Chair, Sir James Jeffries, Councillor for Thames Hill Ward. I just wanted to come to what the Covenant member mentioned about the role of planning in all of this. And I just wanted to make two points. The first is, as a resident, perhaps more than a councillor, all of the new build developments in the borough are understandably, rightfully insulated to the nth degree. And for those of us who live in those blocks, shared ownership in my case, that works fantastically well in the winter. There is, I think, actually a really important flip side to that, which is that in the summer, those blocks are absolutely excruciatingly hot. And I don't think that there is a flat in our block that doesn't have a portable air conditioning unit, which undermines the entire point of improving energy efficiency. And particularly for those of us with kids, actually that situation has been borderline dangerous at some points, particularly when the kids are younger. So I don't know what the council can possibly do within its own planning purview, but I would just like to note that as a resident. My next point may be slightly less helpful and may be quite political, but there is a genuine point underlying the question. The government, Rachel Reeves as chancellor, announced some changes recently to the planning system, essentially ensuring that developers would be able to ignore the newts and the bats when it comes to unlocking new development. Clearly, there is a balance to strike between development, getting new houses online, and also protecting and improving biodiversity. Where does she and the administration sit on that topic? I appreciate there's some political framing there, but I think it is a matter of topical interest to the public, and I think they'd be interested to understand where the administration might sit on the balance between protecting and improving biodiversity and unlocking development. It's not something we've had a chance to discuss yet, but we do need a position, absolutely, and with Councillor Hague and Councillor Belton and others, we do need a position. I mean, I know where I stand, but yes, so I can watch this space and I will discuss with colleagues and get back to you on that. Thank you, and yeah, as a member of the Plan Applications Committee, I do always feel like I wish we did have stronger protections on that, and that's hopefully something that we get to see develop more in future. And on your first point, did officers want to come back to that? I've also very much emphasised with having been even in a council block on the Doddington during COVID when it was about 35 to 40 degrees. Some of these blocks are very overheated, and is there something else that we could combat in that? I think the only thing I'd say is that I think it points to the need for the adaptation and resilience strategy and to take that long-term approach to a changing climate and stuff like that, like overheating. Councillor White. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted... I had about 17 questions, but I've put them down into about four, so to save everyone being bored to death. But I think they can come to two areas. One sort of is actually around Councillor Jeffery's inquiry, really, about planning, and the other one is around education. But sort of the first one is an outside one about pollution is on paragraph 32. It's interesting how many anti-idling civil penalty notices have been issued in the last three years, which would indicate the seriousness of how we're taking this. And then go on around the planning. With developments, we talk about car clubs, but how many car club spaces do we insist, particularly if we can take these three developments that are mentioned in paragraph 29, how many car club spaces are being provided. And then the further question on from that is that do we need a planning SPD with a lot of this in to make sure that we can actually resist developments that are not in the interests of the climate and residents of the borough. So I think that would be a question on the spaces for the car clubs that we'll have to take away, because obviously no colleagues from planning are here this evening. And similarly, the comment around the kind of the SPDs, I think that's quite a technical one that we'll take away and come back to you, Councillor White. And if you indulge me, Chair, on the other one. The other one's really about education, as I say, and we face a real problem, especially with the election in America, that climate change-denying groups will try to impact certain elements, certain groups of people within our community. Are we taking that as a risk factor? Are we thinking about that? And the second one really is about the work and skills. I mean, 14-plus education is going to be really important to try and change people's idea, because, I mean, when I was growing up, I was probably the only one of my friends who actually didn't go into construction in some way. But it's fallen out of, you know, trends now. Younger people aren't attracted to construction. But there are so many new, with off-site building and everything, you know, a lot of it's done within an IT purview. So a lot of people might be attracted to it, which traditionally wouldn't be. I mean, women, for instance, you know, might be much more attracted to construction in the way that it's done now. I mean, what are we doing to try and encourage schools to, you know, to try and give a technical education, at least a level one technical education that people at schools might be encouraged to go forward into construction and into the new green industry? Because we haven't got enough people. We haven't got enough workers at the moment. Brexit, there was a massive, massive mistake on many counters. But one of them was actually denying industry the skills that they needed at a vital time. So what about the replacement workers? Where are they going to come from? Thanks for that. In terms of retrofit and skills, that's addressed in the retrofit strategy. There's a section on green skills. And we recognise that's really, really important. There's been a lot of work being done across the whole of South London, South London Partnership. In fact, George Jr. in the team was working directly with South London Partnership on some of that work around developing green skills. So there's a lot going on. South Thames College have been very, very involved in that. University of Roehampton are very involved in it. They've launched the... I can't remember what it stands for. It's CTECH. I can't remember what the acronym is, unfortunately, at this moment. But that's around developing new approaches around sustainable construction as well. So there's a lot of stuff that's happening within Wandsworth and across South London as well. Neighbouring boroughs that we can learn from and where people can go and get skills. And so that's a really important part of it. Within the retrofit strategy, it sets out some of the demands around skills that we need and the amount that's needed. And there's a lot of work done by colleagues in economic development, especially with work match around how can they get placements sorted out? How can they develop skills for people? And part of it is about talking about how retrofit offers a really good career for people, for people who are in school now and can get the skills, people who are maybe sort of starting training, maybe people who already work in construction and can retrain and gain those skills as well. And there's a career there for them to earn good money working locally because the demand is going to be there to work locally as well. So I think it's about framing it all together into one sort of package and making sure everything links together. And that's part of what we try to do as a team is work across different partners, different organisations, across different teams within the council as well to try to bring this together, make sure those linkages are made. The climate-denying propaganda. I want them to replace the American people. I'm not sure that's my job description. I would say that we use a variety of ways of engaging with all different communities and communicating, and we're always looking to expand and look at different ways of doing that. I think it's about having conversations, and I think we encourage conversations throughout all of our engagement work. Councillor Bellyton. Thank you, Chair. Thanks for letting me come back. I've got just two or three points I wanted to make. One in the friendliest possible way, not being confrontational at all, but Councillor Cook says he was pleased to recognise that I didn't think the state had to do everything. Can I suggest to him that capitalism itself has a little bit of a problem coming to terms with what one of the officers said about making anything causes some level of carbon? So if you're going to have capitalism and growth and so on, we all have a problem that you might like to face as well. My second point is in terms of the planning issue, in many ways couldn't agree more. The problem with planning is it's very slow and reactive, as everyone knows. You can't actually stop people doing this, that, and the other simply because the planning department doesn't want it if it's not illegal. I mean, you can stop some things and you can recommend against and so on and so forth, but at some levels, and this is certainly the level, you can't enforce everything that some of us would like to do. The third bit, which is, I think, really interesting, I hadn't thought about, but I'm the only person old enough, sorry about that, but I'm the only person old enough to remember that, though I know Councillor Osborne knows a lot about it. We went through a climate crisis like this before. We have actually done it and in the 50s and 60s, there were horrific smogs and the Clean Air Act and I was on the council when the Clean Air Act was being resolved and people ought to look back at it a little bit. You'll find committees where it says, every house in the borough, by the way, had a coal fire and hearth, often in every room in their house. So smoke was coming out of everywhere and you can find the Public Health Committee reports, as I recall them, where it says, we are now going to tackle, let's say, Shaftesbury. I remember that one particularly. There are 10,000 hearths in private houses. There are 2,000 in shops, 1,000 in this, that and the other and we've got a plan to get rid of them all in the next 18 months and we went through the whole borough like that. There was obviously legislative backing for that in a way that there isn't now but if the crisis is as bad as we thought it was in the 50s and 60s about smog, then we might have to face doing that and saying, you know, retrofitting is not an option. You will do it. I'm not kidding about this. It could be that level of seriousness. Just make a comment. Obviously it doesn't need a reply but just a comment. Was that more direct to the officers to come in? Not really, but they might find it interesting looking up the minutes of the committees that was actually tackling ward by ward, committee cycle by committee cycle, next month we're going to tackle this ward and that ward and we're going to get rid and it was enormous scale of it. You think you have 8,000 hearths in Charlottesbury. They will now all be pulled out and replaced. So I would just say as a history graduate, Councillor Belton, I'll dig out those minutes because I think we can always learn from history so that's a really interesting piece of kind of behaviour change and action that I think we could look at. Alright, so we've had a pretty good bash of discussing these three papers. Were there any more final comments? Or... Okay, good. So in that case we can then get to taking the three papers together. Or as in like we've discussed the three papers together but we'll be voting on them separately. So first we'll be starting with the paper number three which is the Wandsworth Climate Action Plan. So this is for decision and I asked the committee whether they agree to support the recommendations in paragraph three of the report. That's agreed. Then next we have the Wandsworth Retrofit Strategy. So again, does the committee support recommendations in paragraph three of the report? Agreed. Agreed. And finally, number five, the Climate Adoption and Resilience Strategy. And does the committee agree to support those? Agreed. Great. So that concludes the papers. Thank you to the climate change team for their work and for taking all the questions tonight. Would everyone like to have like a quick break since we, that was like an hour and a half of pretty continuous questioning or yeah? If everyone's okay? You okay, Councillor? I'll take this one. Okay. Fine. Thank you. All right. So I guess we'll have a five-minute break. Five minutes? Yeah. Five minutes. Yeah. Five minutes. All right. Welcome back, everyone. Welcome back, everyone, to the committee. Could we get started with the committee? Thank you. Welcome back, everyone. Now, once we've got through our climate extravaganza, we'll be moving on to paper number six. So that is the consultation on draft open spaces event policy paper number 25 to 53. I think Mr. Edy wants to give this a quick introduction. Thank you, Chair. So the Council's policy for events, parks, events in parks, commons, and open spaces was first adopted in 2014. It's important that policies of the Council are up-to-date and reflect and reflect residents' changing needs. Best practice in events management has also developed since then, with Parks for London, for example, providing template events policy performers and evidence based on how to manage events well across parks and open spaces. In our year of London Borough Culture, we will see some exciting events bringing the health, social, and cohesion benefits of culture and creativity to all parts of the borough. When we developed the bid, we asked residents what kind of events they would like to see and heard that local people would like to see more family-friendly events taking place in the borough's parks. Reviewing the adopted policy also helps us to secure a lasting legacy beyond the year of culture. Officers have reviewed the policy in line with best practice guidance, as I suggested Parks for London was the key guidance we reviewed against this. We are a listening council and so the document in front of you is a draft for consultation. We want to hear from as many people as possible and we launch in a public consultation subject to approval, the draft by executive. A final decision of the updated policy will be made in the summer when a further report will return. In the interest of transparency, Appendix 1 clearly sets out the adopted policy data from 2014 alongside draft changes. Draft policy retains the event size and categories and limits on frequency as agreed in 2014. It improves the event impact mitigation, reflecting good practice such as noise management or ensuring that no event can take over an entire park, common or open space. Places new requirements on event organisers to deliver more sustainable events that protect the environment, wildlife, biodiversity, provide social value, widened participation through the Council's Access for All programme. The draft policy also proposes some changes to facilitate events in parks that have limited tarmac areas. This includes grass areas over the autumn and the winter and that event proposals will be assessed based on a case-by-case basis to make sure they are suitable for the location. Subject to approval and the consultation commencing, we listen to everyone's views on these proposals before making a decision that balances protecting our parks and open spaces and commons with our ambition to widen access to culture and creativity for all. Thank you, Mr. Eadie. We haven't got any deputations today from any of our interested groups such as friends of our various parks and commons. Having a couple of bits of email correspondence which I just wanted to relay for the minutes so one of them was from two for institution common just saying that there will be they will be coming soon after this meeting with their feedback for us to note and ahead of a further meeting. I also got a very detailed email from friends of Wandsworth common which I would briefly summarize here and then ask the cabinet member for a response. So in summary the letter from the friends of Wandsworth common highlights their strength feeling about the idea of large and frequent events on Wandsworth common also highlighting how the recent enable events application did not have any grounds for objection that included damage to flora, fauna or biodiversity. The friends group urged that the consultation for the strategy be a meaningful and robust consultation over an adequate time frame. The group shares the laudable objective of enabling improved and wider access to events in open spaces across the borough especially during the year in which we are the borough of culture. But the friends group do not think that these objectives require big events especially categories C and B over prolonged periods. They also believe that MAC and friends groups should be consulted on category A events as well as B and C. And finally they have specific comments on the amount of event days the policing of structures such as gazebos and a further suggestion to prohibit use of non-biodegradable party items such as balloons. All of these all of the details in the email have been taken forward and I'm sure will be discussed in future meetings but Councillor Gasser did you want to come back on that? Yeah absolutely I'm just saying thank you for the friends of Wandsworth Common for everything they do and for sharing your concerns and I just want to say we hear you and we have a date in the diary as you know to meet with you and all the other friends and amenity groups and we will be absolutely listening to your views and you know I've said many times you know biodiversity and nature and the benefits they bring are absolutely top of my agenda. I can promise you we're not planning on putting like big events like Club and Common you know on Wandsworth Common. No way that's not what's in mind but we do need to have a framework which encourages all our residents to come to us with ideas for fun and inclusive community events so this sets that out and we're going to be consulting and listening and we're not actually asking for any more events or any more days in the current policy but we are recommending much tighter controls to protect the grass and the biodiversity and the residents well-being so I hope we can work together very positively on this and come up with a framework that will encourage lovely events and I know I've spoken to the friends about how do we get a more diverse crowd onto Wandsworth Common so let's have a think together about some lovely events that we could put on to get a different bunch of people to enjoy Wandsworth Common and then we all want to do that so there should be a positive consultation I thank you and I look forward to listening to you all about it. So I think Councillor Osborne you wanted to weigh in on this. Yeah I'd like to say something about this letter from the friends of Wandsworth Common which I think we've all had a copy of. Is that not the case? Email. I think it was emailed to all members of the committee but It may have been this but when did it come? A couple of days ago. A few days ago I think. Okay forgive me. But you know you'll. Forgive me I thought it had gone to everybody but let me say something about the letter from the friends of Wandsworth Common which has been summarised actually accurately by the by the chair. It is a I have to say the letter is a thoughtful and gracious contribution to the consultation process which is no surprise that if I've ever had anything to do with the the leadership individuals of the friends of Wandsworth Common their contact with me has always been thoughtful and gracious at every at every level on everything that they've been concerned about. But if I talk about the substance of their letter it raises a number of issues with us some of which I agree with quite strongly some of which I'm I'm intrigued by I can't say I agree with every single element of the letter. But most of it are in particular there's I think interesting bits in it about biodiversity which I think we should pay attention to but most of it I would say it ought to be fed into the consultation process and that's what I would urge the friends of Wandsworth Common to do with the content of their letter with an exception. There is one element of the letter which I think is very important and what I would suggest is that it should be focused on in particular because it talks about part of the draft in the in the consultation document that we've got and and hones in on a bit where it talks about the existing policy wording and the revised draft policy wording and a difference between the two. One key difference being that in the existing policy the the max the management advisory committees and and the friends are consulted on event proposals. Exactly and then in the proposed revised policy it talks about the max and the friends being notified about events and I think it's that is a very useful focus focus which they've drawn to our attention and and flagged up for us to consider. I would say that is so important that we should take a look at that tonight and what I would suggest is this I would say that we the the proposed new draft should be abandoned and we should stick with the original draft the original text which which was in the the existing policy where you talking about consulting rather than notifying. I think that was a valuable formulation and should be kept and I would say that it's so important I'm sure having had dealings with the with the leadership of the friends of Wandsworth Common I'm sure they understand that means that it's about engagement and discussion it's simply about the timing it's not about giving them a veto over what happens or approval or disapproval or anything like that it's about the value and the importance of their engagement with the with the plan the plans for for events anywhere but in particular on Wandsworth Common and I think because it's important and I think we should revert to the and stick with the existing policy wording it should there should be for that part with that there should be a clear minute this evening that we're opting for consult and not notify and that that should go forward as as the consensus of this committee into the consultation process in in the coming weeks and months thank you thank you councillor Osborne I believe we can just minute that that we want the emphasis or yeah I think if it's um if you're proposing an amendment to the the draft document then um when we get to the end of discussions perhaps moving it seconding it and then a week's time okay okay councillor books do you want to come in next thank you very much um appreciate uh the background and thank you councillor Osborne for um pre-empting something that we were also going to raise about the needs to consult the MAC um we can see the list of objectives that the council are trying to achieve with these changes but um I'm afraid the revisions to the policy and in removing so many different protections that were there for a reason amounts to quite quite a dangerous change um to the open spaces events policy that ultimately threatens people's enjoyment of the parks for the benefit of um people watching I'll just list what I had down as the important uh changes that were being made um allowing grass areas to be used for events between the 30th of September and the 1st of April risking great damage to the to the grass and in the park removing the requirement to ensure that sports pitches remain operational um to a sort of case by case try our best lifting the 10pm event cutoff time allowing consecutive weekend events on the same piece of grounds um having event days um not include setup and removal periods so parts of the park can be cordoned off to the public longer than um just the event days themselves removal of the 75 decibel noise limits with no alternative limit proposed and then finally I had down limiting eliminating the public consultation on variations to the events policy in future I don't see how the committee can let a draft policy go through to the consultation without uh the guardrails that used to be there in the policy kept in there um it I think it's quite dangerous and given how important the parks and commons are to residents across the borough and I don't think we should let the policy go through through as it is and for that reason we've prepared an amendment to the drafts which will um put forward this evening I'm perfectly happy to to hear um either councillor gasser or uh an officer try and justify the removal of the changes but I'm afraid in my opinion um the draft policy doesn't achieve the objectives listed in um paragraph nine thank you uh thank you council books uh mr edie would you like to uh come back on any of those specific points I'm I might need to be reminded of them um as we go through um but that was the allowing of grass areas to be used for events between the 30th september and the 1st of april removing the requirement to ensure sports pitches remain operational lifting the 10 pm event cutoff time allowing consent consent of weekend events on the same piece of grounds um having event days not include setup and removal periods for stages and things like that removal of the 75 decibel noise limit with no alternative limit proposed and eliminate eliminating the need for public consultation on variations to the event policy in the future um i'll try and go through those i might have to flick through the document as i go but um so it's quite typical at any event the the organizer will have to demonstrate how and they mitigate the impact including any damage to the grass areas and things like that that is quite typical now um if we only rely on events being able to be um delivered on hard standing areas that will rule out practically all our parks and open spaces across the borough um if you only do them in the summer then that's the busiest part when people are most likely to use the parks so what we're trying to do is create flexibility in line with most of other neighboring boroughs and other boroughs across the council this framework provides the protections to be able to make sure that if there was any risk that we felt that it was going to have a serious impact to the quality of the the grassed areas or the sports pitches we would it wouldn't be permitted um so it's providing that additional flexibility it's allowing events to happen more across the year so there's less disruption you don't want all your events to happen in the summer because that will disrupt the park you try and spread it out more equally or the common or the open space in terms of the consecutive weekends this is again quite typical in the in the events management because you need to make it a viable proposition so if you need to bring infrastructure to be able for you to be able to deliver events you know to keep the costs down rather than doing a weekend set it down and then come back in three or four weeks time it doesn't become a viable proposition we want affordable events and free events where possible and and the market will be able to tell us that but also these these things won't happen very frequently anyway but what we're trying to do is attract people to want to deliver events in the borough and if we put lots of barriers up and really tight restrictions then people it won't be an attractive place for people to want to come and do events i'm going to go back to the point the framework of this policy they will have to demonstrate for an events plan how they mitigate any impacts on noise nuisance damage to any pitches impacts on biodiversity or natural habitats traffic impacts all of these have to have plans to be able which will have they will be presented you know and over my period of my career we have rejected plenty of events that haven't been able to demonstrate how they can satisfy to meet the conditions and the protections within any borough's policy um what was the the setup time as well so if if you grant a let's say five days events or a medium size and you include the setup setup could take two or three days the set down could take two days so straight away you have no event so by saying all the event days have to be used including the setup and set down again no one will want to do events here and the infrastructure that you need to make sure you run a successful and safe event is really important around the toilet provision about how you means of escape security safe ingress and egress and things like all these things the control of noise all the infrastructure has to be put in place so if you include stays within the limited days that we want to do events again just people won't want to do events in the borough because it'd be too limiting if i can come back thank you very much for that mr eddie i think we've managed to get very quickly to the to the tension at the heart of this disagreement i think um you're describing the needs to um create a new policy with greater flexibility to enable these events but all with all i'm seeing as i'm listening to you describe what you're trying to do and what the administration is trying to do sorry that is greater flexibility to put the parks at risk to close them off to residents and to disrupt the lives of people that live near the parks that's why uh we're looking to add it back in to the policy the guardrails and the protections that were there in the first place perhaps um we're quite content with um the parks as they are protected as they are so they can continue to be a valuable resource for people to enjoy play sports walk their dogs um have the children play that's the primary use of the parks that people enjoy so much and that's what we're trying to stop being damaged by the reintroduction of these protections back into the policy did you want to come back on that mr eddie i mean i'm always welcome to hear feedback this is meant to be a consultation and um but none of the event days in any of these spaces are being increased they are exactly the same as what the current policy is so for you for there to be said that we're trying to increase it that's not the case we're trying to work within the framework that already exists um and i can assure you there is plenty of protections within this policy and more oneness on the licensing process of events to make sure that noise is protected and consultation is done but there's a legal framework for that to be able to to happen um if i may just one final point you said yeah you say that there's this um continuing protection but this draft policy removes the need for public consultation on changes to this policy in the future so this will be the very last consultation we have this borough ever sees on its open spaces events policy so that's a huge protection that's being taken away taken away the fact that we could ever weigh in on future changes at all so i don't see how these protections are protected if any future administration could revise the policy without going through the very process that we're going through now um it'd be helpful if you can point me in the direction of that because i've got it in front of me any variations to the or the event restrictions any material changes to this policy are only possible if they're approved by the council's executive non-material changes are delegated to offices and consultation and relevant lead member it says the executive it doesn't describe a public consultation process or going through the osc committee well the process we are doing that process now aren't we we we're going to go out to consult consult now that's that's the bedrock of how councils operate you know so i think councillor adolph as you were next thanks um and agree with councillor osborne around the the amendment to the wording and keeping it into the consult i think that seems like a fair and and fair point that we can discuss at the end so could you outline in a bit more detail how exactly residents are going to be consulted on this to kind of reassure people that it is it is very much draft policy we're going to take into account the views of the friends and the various different groups and the whole kind of range of residents to kind of reassure people how we're going to do that so the consultation framework is being designed now we have a meeting with all the friends and max in a week or so's time which was already arranged to get their first initial views although some have already shared some of those views but we will have a session with them the consultation will be using our normal consultation framework for the council but we will also be trying to get views from focus groups and things like that to make sure we get a broad view of the communities as i've said the our arts and culture strategy and the preparation for our bid for london borough of culture residents were telling us that they would like to see events in our parks and open spaces so what we're trying to do is create a framework that protects those really important green assets in our borough but allows controlled events within this framework for them to be able to enjoy and the consultation will work really hard to make sure we get to seek all those views across the broad parts of the council of the council and our residents just a quick follow-up can you describe how this will take into account the kind of the different events that will be appropriate for different commons because obviously not all commons have the same kind of level of infrastructure and they have different levels of biodiversity and i think that will be helpful to kind of have some reassurance that that's being taken into account so in terms of i would expect us if there is an appetite for events on these green spaces and and commons and parks we would restrict areas of those parks and open spaces because they are in our view very important assets for biodiversity or habitat development and the policy will protect those um in terms of um sorry what was the question i guess what i mean is how are you taking into account kind of the different events that will be suited to the different commons because they're obviously not all suitable for the same kind of events yeah so part of the the like i say it's been developed but we will ask the kind of events and the scale and the genre and the themes of the kind of events that the community and the residents would like to see on on their commons we would give them some guidance around what those commons can potentially do you know because it's easier to come from a list rather than just an open question but absolutely we we want to understand um what our residents would like to see if they would like to see events in all our parks and open spaces we might have a very clear message that far parks and open spaces are completely off off the table that's what the purpose of this is and that will really help us and the market and community groups and residents to be able to make a decision where they want to host an event because the people up our residents would have told us the kind of events they want so they'd already know there's a demand there so the market will be able to see very clearly if it's shakespeare in the park you know for example and things like that if people really want to see that that might come out in a consultation and if it's a goer then they'll be able to contact relevant organizations that could put on events such as that so it's it's consultation exercise will be really really helpful to inform our approach going forward all right councillor caddy then councillor i'll respond thank you very much chair um i think probably the first thing i'd say is that obviously the consultation document is what we're putting out or what the council is putting out as kind of the recommendations so it's something that we we should all agree with and as councillor brooks has said there are many areas in here that i i certainly don't agree with and i think will be really detrimental to the future of our commons i don't understand why we why we would be proposing some of these sort of dilutions to the controls that currently exist um just two areas that i'll just very quickly highlight the sports pitches the revised draft policy wording is that eventually minimize impact on the maintenance and operation of sports pitches i mean that means nothing minimize could could mean still a huge amount of damage and you know my kids play sport on those pitches and they are regularly closed because of too much mud or too much water or the weather so they're already losing those pitches for quite a significant number of events during the year and if they lost them for even more it it would be really really um challenging i think um to run some of those sports clubs and then secondly on the the decibel level i can understand um wanting to change it to to mean that smaller events um have to be quieter or more considerate but why remove the decibel level why not keep that in as a as a kind of upper level um and the final point i want to make is that a couple of times it's been mentioned what other boroughs do and i don't think necessarily we should be copying and following what other boroughs do because if i think about one of our neighboring boroughs in particular um with clapham common they let all sorts of ridiculous events go on there that residents hate that are really noisy and i've spent a lot of time working with residents on petitions to try and get some of those terrible events reduced because of the damage that they do so i don't think we should necessarily be taking lessons from other boroughs and what they do is irrelevant anyway and then the final final point you know i really love our commons and our open spaces and i really don't think they should be used as a cash cow and the thing that sort of hints to me that that's the aim behind some of these policies is the use of the word market demand you know we're we're looking essentially and and i i can see the irony of course i can councillor belton but i but but i but i really do i i really value our open spaces and i would urge if this committee is is happy to do so just dial back on some of the dilutions that have been talked about because i really really do think that they will be damaging our commons i really do do you want to come back on those points yeah no thank you and um thank you for your comments i am a very keen sports person as well and you know sports pitches we would not want to lose them but if if we had an event that came in that was of such high interest to our residents and that is the space that would not compromise any nature or biodiversity um then that might be the best option because it's flat and it's easy accessible i don't know but ruling out all the options for for events to be held makes it difficult but you've you've got to trust the process that it's not in the interest of the council to create uh an environment where pitches are damaged and any income that comes will help to restore those pitches and take them to a you know a better level if i just come back on the other one sorry leave the wording as it is eventually not be permitted to compromise the maintenance and operation of sports pitches that's fine okay so on the decibel element what the policy is saying is leave that to the licensing because that has more powers it's more you can be prosecuted if you don't comply with it um so yep it's it is it says events that involve significant noise generating sources must provide sufficient and suitable noise management plans and address the licensing objectives of the licenses act 20 2003 and follow the best practice for the event noise management included but not limited to the noise council co-practice of 1995 noise limits for events including licensable activities to be set through licensing process including the relevant stakeholder consultation and on your last point this isn't the attention of the council to create cash cow we're looking at local events most events don't break even for years you know and have to be subsidized and we are very passionate about making sure that events are inclusive and accessible which will mean that we will expect access for all principles where there's free or highly discounted access which will make it a challenge for anyone to deliver event that isn't subsidized or so that is clear that is very clear that is not the intention of the of this policy thank you mr eddie uh council osborne yeah look i'm trying very hard here to be consensual in our approach to this uh this uh consultation draft consultation document you know i look we could have a round i could drag up stories from the past about e formula one and charging kids to go into it but it's it exactly it's irrelevant and i don't want the party political uh division i that's the point i'm trying to make exactly i'm i'm trying to come up with a formula which is is we've got a consultation document we've got a draft there are bits in it which we're concerned about and your concerns are just as valid as the ones that i draw drew attention to earlier on and my formula was let's not try and fix everything with an amendment because i think that it all merits discussion including yours merits discussion over the coming weeks and months you have valid points and and they merit discussion i'm saying let's get those points uh made clear like my points about consultation versus notification and get them minuted after this meeting so they are very clearly highlighted as part of the discussion and part of the consensus here tonight and they go forward with a special status into the consultation process in the coming weeks and months because frankly we i don't think we're in a position to have this kind of back and forth negotiating here tonight in a committee meeting about the kind of detail which you've you've drawn to our attention that you're concerned about i don't think it's practical i'm not saying it's invalid i think you're making a very reasonable set of points and i want them to be discussed but i think the way to do it is to say let's have a highlighted minute from this discussion tonight and that's what goes forward into the consultation process i might add by the way it's a a technique which we've started to use in a number of uh oscs uh councillor jeffries will know that we've done it a couple of times i think in in general purposes uh we've done it in in some of the other oscs we're moving into a different style of osc i think as we go forward which um overview and scrutiny committee for those listening in um which uh respects the point of view of the opposition i have said a couple of times in discussions with the opposition i don't want to see a committee that simply lists decisions in its minutes when um an argument has been made by the minority party perfectly reasonable argument but which the majority party disagreed with i want prospect posterity to know what the the minority party was saying i want it minuted i want it to go into the record and so the minutes are becoming much more important uh in the way that we handle uh as our overview and scrutiny committees evolve i would urge you to do as i have done and say what i've said should be clearly minuted have a special status because it's minuted and lifted out of the discussion that we're having on this uh this draft i would say why don't you do the same with your points and let's almost as an experiment see if we can use it as a way of uh of moving forward and getting a proper discussion a proper discussion over the detail of what what you're saying because i honestly don't think that you or us are in a position to go into the kind of detail and come up with a valid decision tonight on on that those sort of items what do you say thank you very much councillor osborne and i appreciate what you're saying but i think for two reasons i i wouldn't agree with that and i think we should definitely amend it one is i think this is such an important and kind of permanent change that we should be looking to make an amendment so that the document that we give to people is our recommendation because everybody you know if you receive a document from the council asking for consultation the contents of it are essentially what the council is recommending so we shouldn't be recommending things that we fundamentally don't agree with and i think it's better to get the consultation document that we send out for people to discuss right than rush it through and i don't think there's any particular urgency this isn't a particularly urgent issue i think we've got time to put the amendment through make those changes to the consultation document and actually consult properly and and you know say what we really think when we're putting out the consultation document it's you know with the best will in the world a minute is a minute an amendment will actually go through council abouton council of spon's being bending over i'm amazed i'm this is a learning experience for me this evening um i'm amazed at council of spon's total reasonableness on this um this issue um uh and i i i can barely barely uh resist having fun about the marketization of public goods coming from the majority of minority party gosh nearly slipped up there um but i i haven't read it so closely i must admit does it say can i ask does it say somewhere in the proposal referred back or something like that that to the cabinet to the council's executive i mean i don't mind if this paper says the executive because we know whether that is but if it's public that is you know the actual the actual policy we're trying to get through then i don't think it should refer to the executive needs a change of government to change local government legislation there won't be an executive it'll be a cabinet it'll be something else it's just the council's normal decision procedures i mean we don't have to get stuck on whether it's the executive the cabinet the leader um all that sort of stuff does that actually say it though and what well in that case i don't think it should i think it should say refer back to the council or whatever the phrase is and the council will change it as necessary mr eddie did you want to come in on that that's fine um you know we want to make sure that if their material changes it goes through an open and transparent process so if that if the wording needs to change to reflect that or whatever successor um governance processor will be you know we can make that amendment okay um wait uh cancer why you also had your hand out did you was this related or was this like an extra point before we start talking about amendments yeah i mean there's there's one thing i'd like to speak positively about what's being said but also i think that i think a lot of the amendments are actually offering us a lot more flexibility and i don't think that uh yeah i agree people like the commons but that doesn't mean that they can't be liked in different ways and there are other groups that the the um that the uh demographics of of of ones are changing um and and i think that our documents must be flexible to reflect that uh so i support uh what what uh mr eddie has been saying there's one area though i think that the language does need to be tightened up and not up this one thing i would agree with you and that's on the sports pitches um i don't think our sports pitches are in fantastic condition anyway i mean you know with climate change i mean this this weather this winter has been absolutely awful um and um to start the season if you like already in a bad condition is is not going to be conducive to to um uh good uh sports playing i i presume that a lot of the matches have been called i probably haven't played for five or six weeks yeah so you know i think that adding to the burden in in that way isn't it is is not helpful so i'd like the language we can change the language it's fine but i need i think it needs to be tightened up and and protections for the sports pitches i think needs to be a big requirement here mr eddie you wanted to comment on that i'm happy to take that away but sports pitches we shouldn't just think about football it could be a cricket pitch why it could be a cricket pitch they don't they're not used in the winter and it's a space it's normally flat you've got we've got soft you know we've got other sports pitches that aren't used in the winter um so i don't think we should dismiss it completely if there's an opportunity for an event that we ask the event organizer to make sure they protect and mitigate any damage concede the point that we don't want to lose sports pitches in terms of football and rugby during the season so we can modify that to be more specific are there any other other comments okay so general point on amendments i know i know based on full council that last minute amendments are all the rage but i would say that it is i probably say in general more likely to get a more detailed hearing if it's we're able to see the detail and the text of it like in advance of the meeting because otherwise there's always the risk and the issues with trust and so that's just a comment that you know in future you know with a serious amendment it would be nice to get them further advanced but you but you you do have an amendment and do you still want to go hold of it right so it's an amendment to recommendation a um on page 188 so it now reads and i'll pass this uh to the clerk in a moment um to approve the revised drafts event policy for the boroughs parks commons and open spaces brackets excluding battersea park close brackets with the below protections from the 2014 policy included for public consultation grass areas shall not be used for events over the winter months between 30th of september and the 1st of april brackets with exception of that of barn elm sports center or events directly linked with winter sports or the annual boat race events events shall not be permitted to compromise the maintenance and operation of sports pitches a time limit of 10 pm shall be imposed on all events as per the 2014 policy wording there will be no cat c or cat b events at any site on the same park common or open space on consecutive weekends event days are defined as the day of the actual live event and event site builds and removal days maintain the existing noise limit wording in the current policy policy public consultation must be carried out and approval of the of the environment osc and executive achieve before variations are made to the open spaces event policy in the future and finally for category a b and c events retain the consultation with the relevant max and friends groups thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you i propose the amendment uh or did you still want it to just be meant to do it it's gonna it's gonna have to be an amendment i guess so i propose oh council well that that's a lot of amendments that's a lot of points and you're asking us to make a decision to to to amend uh why didn't you give it to us a 24-hour notice i mean why have you presented it now i'm not obliged to do that we don't have to i know you're not obliged to do it but it would be really helpful in the spirit of uh what councillor osborne said we could work on it we we could have had 24 hours to work on it back and forward and come up with an agreement um we used to and you remember when you were housing cabinet member we used to bring we used to bring amendments the day before to get to give everyone an opportunity to have a look at you always rejected them i mean you know you know you never accepted if i had a chance to read through all of the papers in so much detail you know earlier then fine but as i said i only got papers on monday and you know i had to schedule reading them but can you see what's happened that you we've we've gone from a very positive position of thinking my god how are we going to look at all of this in 10 seconds these are really uncontroversial well you probably do but the thing is that we haven't had a chance to have a look at them kim so i know but it's a bit of but it's okay i was i was about to come up with a wording for an amendment which says um where the uh draft consultation paper uh replaces consultation with notification we replace notify with consult the draft the draft replaces consultation with notification that should be reversed and we should revert to uh consultation as in the original uh original documentation original i'll second that yeah um so i think i think then councillors if uh if we take the the substantive amendment that councillor brooks has proposed and has been seconded and we take a vote on that as one block and then following on from that we will then if necessary then take the vote on the second amendment is that is that agreed yes okay okay so we've taken the amendment on all of the yeah this this list and then if needed yeah we'll move on to the next one okay so so opposing that so uh can we have votes for the amendment uh sorry um sorry councillor brooks's amendment so can we have the votes for the amendment it's four yeah and vote five sorry no it is for who was for yeah yeah and uh votes against six that motion falls okay so that motion is forward and then so did so sorry um uh mr reedy like to make a comment i understand sorry if we're going to do this procedurally correctly then we can open again at the whole debate because something else has been put we can't have jump in just because an officer feels they want to jump in we've got to take the vote now we started it well well was your comment as a result of the vote or was it did you want to say something before the vote and then it's now to i was i was going to say maybe i'm out of order but there might be some potential merit in refining some of the amendments and um because you know the sports pitches for one i you know could concede that but not all sports pitch sports pitches ones that you know um so it gives us the flexibility encourages people to want to do events can we just say that i think the list of the amendment was far too prescriptive uh but the cabinet member if she's who i know to be very concerned about getting all these things right will ensure that she goes through with the officers each one of those individual comments that have been made and checks and and sees whether any of them actually are worth taking on board in terms of the discussion next time round and so we're not necessarily rejecting it we're just rejecting that as a whole plate put as too prescriptive in one go yeah i absolutely agree and i think that's very much in the spirit of what councillor osborne was saying we can have these individual ones um potentially ministered to and then we as in these were these are the points raised in in the opposite in the opposition amendment so that can be put in the minutes and we can of course take that forward so councillor osborne did you still want to proceed with your amendment i just yeah sorry can i propose uh the amendment which i outlined earlier okay please so again to and that was councillor dobber a second yep yep and that was for more the changing of the words and notify to consul sticking with the old wording basically okay uh so can i have votes for the amendment it's agreed that's unanimous so that then becomes the substantive uh recommendation okay so now we have the substantive recommendation um in paragraph two of the report with councillor osborne's amendment so uh is that agreed okay so we're to take votes so can we have votes for the substantive that's six and votes against that's four so so the yeah it's carried supported so moving on we now have item number seven which is the leisure infrastructure plan um so i think i said that the recommendations and in paragraph two of the report all of them so were you against all of them so were you against all of them or did you want to separate by we were going to be four c but um so cc okay if if members okay so paragraph c is unanimous rest was um supported by six votes to four all right okay so leisure infrastructure plan item number seven paper number 25-54 um i believe um i believe it becomes the gases you wanted to just come in quickly and hopefully this isn't going to be quite so controversial so you know we've got a very ambitious uh program ones both moves together to get all our residents moving in whatever way they would like to get moving and one of those ways is in our leisure centers and in our parks and these assets actually need some investment they've not been invested in for a while so first of all we need to protect these assets and we're seeking a budget from finance committee not from this committee but this outlines what our plans are we need to protect our assets so that our residents can enjoy them so they're fit for purpose and actually we need to enhance them we need to be offering a lot more because we need to be competing against the professional gym the private gyms and all that sort of thing so we're also seeking budget from finance committee not from this committee um to enhance our leisure centers uh but that is what we call investor save that that funding because actually through the tender process which officers will outline we're expecting a new contractor to come in and generate some really nice revenue as a result of the investment we're going to make so i'll let the officers talk all about it but this is the next step in getting all our residents moving and fit and healthy and happier thank you councillor gasser so uh with officers like to highlight the paper thank you thank you chair um my name is rebecca towers and i am interim head of projects for culture and leisure i'm a colleague here good evening councillors my name is mark fisher i'm the interim head of leisure and contracts so i'm going to introduce the paper so we're really pleased to be bringing this leisure infrastructure plan to committee this evening so thank you for having us um so the plan is a really important part of onesworth moves together our leisure strategy as uh councillor gasser just explained um and the strategy is about inclusive accessible affordable sustainable facilities and this plan will help to deliver against that um the outcome of having those types of facilities good quality facilities that all our residents can enjoy um will mean higher physical activity levels and better mentor and physical well-being so um this plan we think is crucial for achieving the goals that we set out in the leisure strategy um and council gas already talked about the need to protect and enhance leisure facilities leisure infrastructure which includes indoor built facilities so leisure centers and halls um playing pitches parks and open spaces playgrounds and opportunities for active travel with sustainability being a cross-cutting theme really um this plan sets out an approach for the next five years and pulls out some of the priorities for years one and two um that are in addition to the schemes that we've already started um and we've had some real successes this year so we know we've got a capital program already um and we've opened paddle courts at king george's park we've had improved tennis courts or they're nearly finished um wonder recreation centers had some work done that means that um the carbon emissions have been cut so really important work there um we've started those grass pitch playing playing pitch improvements to make sure that they're not waterlogged and out of action during winter months so we've got a schedule of um improvements planned for many pitches across the borough so that that's really good um and this additional investment will unlock a whole load of other opportunities and more outcomes for local people and our planned approach will help to deliver more efficiency avoid loss of income um avoid disruption for users um and like i say deliver those outcomes for local people um so in this additional funding that we're asking for in the paper will link to the plan will deliver investments across leisure centers for example latchmere leisure center needs swimming pool roof uh repairs um and um we have a variety of other plans or proposals that will be linked to the uh leisure operator procurement exercise um which has already been mentioned that will bring a significant return on that investment so that's a very much linked to that process so we haven't got anything firmed up at the moment um we also need to improve um and protect um pitches such as buttersea park or weather pitch which is coming to the end of its life cycle if we don't replace it it will be out of use you know again lots of residents enjoy using that um so we want to avoid that kind of scenario happening and then finally looking at um schemes in parks for example the replacement of aging infrastructure such as cricket nets in parks again free at point of access and available to residents and residents really value that kind of facility so i'm just going to stop now and ask you to review the recommendations that are set out in the report and we're really happy to take any questions that you might have thank you very much uh so we can now open the floor to questions so counselor caddy i think you had your hand up thanks very much chair um yeah i mean i i think it's great that we're that we're investing in in these facilities i've got i guess a big picture question and then something more specific so on the big picture obviously 30 million is is the number but there isn't much sort of detail behind that and obviously we do have the action plan at the back and it would just be really good to have some numbers around things because i think um speaking to officers 30 million probably won't cover everything that we want to do and it would be really good to understand what we're prioritizing and why um and again where we're going to get the most bang for our buck so it'd be really good to understand how that 30 million is being spent and prioritized and i appreciate that some of it will be you know necessary repairs like the latch for latch mill edge center roof but it would be good to understand of the action plan what is actually going to be paid for by that 30 million and then the second um question was very specifically obviously with the demise of the winstanley york road plans um the leisure center there um and the new facilities there are not going to be built anytime soon um what plans are there to put in place something very specifically in that area to try and improve the delivery in that area because i'm very very conscious that people there have been waiting a long time for a an all singing all dancing leisure center that will not now be appearing i'll have a go at answering those first of all that's okay um so of the um 30 million um about 10 million of it is investment we're expecting through a leisure contractor so we are wait we will borrow the money but they will cover the financing costs and the return on the investment so we are in the middle of the last stage of the procurement process so we've given them feedback at the first stage of what they think they based on data and feasibility what they think we we should invest in so at the moment it's really difficult for us like i suggested the other day to give you that until we've got that back because some of the work that they propose might pick up some of the protect stuff which means we might be able to do more stuff um which means that we can re or deprioritize other things that we are planning to do most of the 20 million is being picked up through end or nearing end of life cycle assets so tennis courts all weather pitches roofs windows boilers all those kind of things but once we have a much clearer understanding what the leisure contractors are going to come forward with we can re-look at it with our f fm team and our design services team and go right if we phase these things and pull these things together the money will go further disruption to our customers will be less um so it's really difficult to answer that question but it will become much more clear when we come back to committee in june for a contract award report and includes what the investment will be as part of that because it'll be a contractual requirement of the bidder to be actually deliver it so they'll be contracted to do it including the return to the council so apologies if i'm i'm being vague but it's it's really difficult one to answer no that's really helpful and and presumably in june we can get the breakdown of what we're going to be spending whatever the balance of the 20 million is that we've got left on and what the priorities are just to sort of understand how much we can do with this action plan and what i should have said as well there's a safeguard is the money that is going to be asked for approval at finance committee is going into a development pot for us to make business cases against so it's not what we've got the money yeah it's not automatic so we will have to go through we internally have an investment and funding board and depending on that we might need further approvals after that so you know we appreciate a lot of money but we want to make sure we get the best back for our buck out of this and exploit all the opportunities of economies but also you know there might be an opportunity for external funding that might come across in the next three or four months we can go well we don't have to spend half a million on that we can can spend 200 000 because we'll be partner agreement so in one way it's good that we're not putting all the eggs in one basket now making commitments that we might need to change in the future thank you what wait sorry did did you want to come in on that second point or was that yeah well it's not okay okay yeah so get back to that second question before we move on so winstanley york road as part of our onesworth moves together strategy a key focus is working in our estates so we're piloting lots of things in um alternate roe hampton at the moment um and trying to work with other uh key anchor and partner institutions to open up access to facilities so we're working with ipstock school in alton to try and get access to the swimming pool we are getting access to the swimming pool in half term next week you know for people so we'll be exploring all those opportunities um we want to do more at battersea sports center which is just literally across the road um and coming forward we have the new nine elms community health and well-being facility coming forward which will have dance studios community kitchen sports hall uh 3g pitch so there is things in the pipeline but we haven't stopped not being optimistic about winstanley and york road as well so i will fight you know to get those facilities in in the borough as well thank you mr ed uh councillor white um thank you um yeah i mean it's sort of vaguely related to that really the um um i hope that there's enough money to to extend our offer you know i think one thing that this borough has always lacked is outdoor gyms for instance um and i think the uh impact um you know of those can be only traveling into merton if figs marsh you know it's constantly in use you know so um especially on council estates i mean going on from what we were saying there as well um so you know being close to areas where there might be low low activity would would be i think a really good move well joint show um so yes absolutely agree with that and i think um one of the things we'd like to do in year one is to do a bit of an audit and find out where we've got multi-use games areas i think outdoor gyms and activities on housing estates and beyond because um i don't think we have that level of detail that we can look at where the gaps are and where it would be useful to have more provision um so we'll start with the audit and then i think you know that is one of the areas that we would like to look at for sure so um that would perhaps come forward in a a later point once we've we've done that review thank you uh councillor annan yeah miss marty please i would like to know what you have what plans do you have for with standing estates because you know the regeneration has been put you've got a post on building of the leisure center and there is nothing in particular for sports for women and girls or even for even men over there i am the only one at the moment running activities for children and also for women like are doing chair yoga and table tennis and saturday activities activities like football and all those things for the children but what do you have because i'm a private like let me say charity small charity which i'm trying to involve and engage the people in the community just for them to keep up but as a council what are your plans because i will come after you i look forward to it um so i suppose it's fair to say that we're that they those plans are emerging because we agreed as part of when we agreed the strategy that alton roehampton would be the pilot let's learn the lessons and we've about we've started we're in the implementation phase which so we're doing learning but we will come to other key areas of the borough including winds down the york road um you know and no no asset is safe from me to get people you know um active you know moving um you know we are responsible for the libraries there is a hall there why can't we do more act why can't gll do more stuff in the library how can we get schools to stay open and allow their assets to be used so these are all key things so we're only six months into our new strategy um but i appreciate some of these things been waiting a long time but do give just be a little bit more patient and we're happy to talk to you and you know we're really pleased with the work that you're of supporting us with on women and girls we're ready to you know create a plan and how we can support more women and girls to be active as well um so yeah and the next stage for me is how do we make all our assets and our activities and services much more inclusive and accessible so once we've done the task and finishing group of women and girls let's look at how do we get more people with disabilities or or additional needs be more active as well so and that includes the assets as much as the activities so yeah be assured we're all very ambitious to support people to be active and keep pushing keep poking me with a stick to get it to happen thank you thank you and yeah i also noticed in the paper in the equality statement how um a higher percentage of women than men use our leisure centers and then so there must potentially be some lessons to learn there about why is that is that other legends are seen as a more trustworthy safe environment for for women because whenever i go to a private gym that's always very male dominated so i found that particularly interesting uh councillor belton i'm particularly interested in what councillor annan's just said i've been involved when stanley was in my ward or rather the boundaries changed and so i'm no longer but i was involved in that for a long long time and i still am because i still get involved in the win stanley discussions the plan was of course for a massive sports center swimming pool costing zillions um and it may still happen but it's such a long i can tell you from discussions i've had in from housing point of view it's such a long way off um i just wonder whether perhaps we should lower our sights in the interim and just have some outdoor facilities that would be relatively cheap and you could put in one part of the of the york gardens which won't is extremely unlikely to be affected by any of the any of the potential developments none of which have been resolved but there are some areas that clearly will stay as a grassland and you could put a bit of an outdoor gym there at a much lower cost than the big target yeah that's a a good point uh did you want to come in that and see only to assure the committee that i'm personally working with paul moore the director of place to make sure that we continuously exploring opportunities for meanwhile uses and opportunities while we wait for whatever regeneration is coming in in the pipeline so it's really important to us and um we're not resting on our laurels just waiting for the big ticket to come you know we appreciate that so there's a need now and and we want to meet it thank you uh any other comments councillor white it's just a very very quick one i want something that mr heady said that um about using schools in the evening i mean you know i remember going back years you know campaigning to get the floriat school open of an evening it's right next to the brockle banks in between the brockle bank and henry prince estate there are a precious few youth facilities for those two estates and it's in perfect position it was brand new great facilities and it was just locked up every night and then we had complaints on the estate about kids hanging around on the estate well where else were they're going to go all right thanks for that uh did i just want to come back on that yeah i just want to say i mean the autumn work is really going it started and it's going really well and i'm hearing other places that we can go next we haven't decided what we do once we have the prototype and the model that we take to other places i think we could explore a couple of the things that have been mentioned today and they sound really interesting as and they do need that kind of focused attention to find out what the opportunities the assets what the people really want and who are the who are the providers in that local area that can make things happen which is what we're doing on the altar and so it feels like there's some good um next steps for our state's work so thank you for that thank you okay are there any other questions i'm aware i'm very aware that we're meant to be finishing in 14 minutes and we still have two papers left after this so are there any other final comments or should we go to a vote okay yeah so um does the committee agree to support the recommendations in paragraph 1.2 of the report that's agreed unanimous moving on item number eight in the agenda procurement of a boriculture services paper number 25-55 um mr ed i think you're leading on this did you want to say say anything about it or should we go straight to questions i can do a short introduction um apologies i would normally have this all in my head but i'm covering a colleague who is fortunately sick today so please um um so onesworth council is responsible for the care and maintenance for approximately 60 000 trees across parks open spaces cemetery housing land schools and highways maintenance of our trees is really important if we want to protect their benefits for the future so these contracts are for maintenance including tree pruning tree felling stump grinding basal growth removal tree and climbing tree inspections emergency works and specialist woodland operations the current contract expires in march 2026 today's report asks for the committee to approve that officers can go to the market to procure new suppliers through a joint tendering process through the better service partnership of richmond and wandsworth priorities for the new contract are improving the quality of service for residents exploring options for efficiencies becoming more financially stable sustainable and securing the council's response to climate change and nature recovery the proposal is the new contract runs for four years with an option to extend for a further four years paragraph 14 sets out the timetable for the procurement paragraphs 15 to 18 sets out you talk the alternative procurement groups that could be were considered and a second report will come back to committee in the autumn to make the formal decision to a point to award the contract um just to reassure you because we've had quite a few representations about trees in in previous committees we're not waiting for a new contract to continue to improve um alongside getting ready for that new contract offices are working with members of enable who will be transferring across to the council from the first of april around service improvements including redesigning the business process across trees and highway teams to make sure it's better integrated because it need it is not at the moment um so i just want to assure you and also how we consult and communicate with our residents as well all those will be new processes from for early in the new for an actual year happy to take any questions thank you mr he and um i'm glad to hear about the more emphasis on communication with residents um since we have that deputation recently about it it is very important that we see an improvement in that so uh open the floor to questions any questions mr edy uh council about him i just wanted to comment on on the communications um i'm not sure how much i'm sure the officers are aware of it but just to make the point i had two very nice little trees um on the road outside me um i enjoyed them every year they came they they came to life in the spring and the nice autumn leaves etc etc both cut down very young uh removed and replaced um i would have liked to have been told without having to ring out the trees outside your house are going to be chopped down because they're not indigenous at least i might have had an argument with that but at least it's understandable just have them disappear without even being told i'm sure i'm sure lots of residents are irritated when trees just disappear without being told yeah and i definitely second that point i think it's important that we in future move to a system where the residents are given some advance notice before a tree is focused some people do keep care really deeply about it and it's good that they if they in future get that advance notice uh did you want to comment on that quickly i mean it's disappointing to hear because you know our contractors should be letting you know and i hope that has not happened in the recent past because we've been very clear five years okay well maybe i thought he's going to say four or five days i was gonna say thank god um we've been very clear with our with enable and our contractors that is not acceptable practice anymore so if that is happening please let my teams know and we will make sure that they're told categorically that's not an acceptable position thank you uh councillor jeffries thank you chair um how to forgive me um mystery you may not be able to answer this question but um i'm just interested to see the approximate figure for the sort of the stock of trees across the borough um we've got the thousand trees per year target which is is a great stat for a leaflet and whether that's uh when uh the labour party's in power or or us um if we're also cutting down 500 trees every year the stock of trees is only going up by 500 so i just wondered whether whether it would be possible and a more meaningful target to aim for 70 000 trees over four or five years well as you say the net gain is probably around 500 so in five years to do 10 000 that it's probably not that feasible but um what we're trying to do and what will happen when we have more control over the service is try and work with the communities to see if we can support the growth of trees so they don't fail um and you know friends of trees groups and things like that so they're regularly watered but we've heard today about how the climate is changing everything and while we want to plant trees we've we've got more storms we've got more flooding you know lots of things that are in the last couple of years has affected too many trees so we will learn from those i know my colleagues were went to a national event at kew about how everywhere across the country can support tree growth and protect our really important green assets thank you any more questions okay so uh in that case we can go to the recommendation which is to support paragraph two with the report is that agreed agreed all right final paper paper number nine that is um the revenue budget monitoring for a quarter three of 2024 slash 25 um so mr modern i believe you want to quickly say a few words on this and then we'll get through some many questions i will be very brief uh so this sets out the as you said the quarter three uh good evening my name is alex mollen assistant director for finance and performance uh this sets out the quarter three forecast for the current financial year um it will be becoming more familiar the the key difference for this report is that we've also included the um appendices for the draft budget that went to finance committee earlier in earlier in the year um the forecast is for an effectively on budget position which i'll be very surprised if it stays exactly it is but 2 000 variants is very very positive so we're we're quite pleased with that um in the interest of time i will leave it there and see if there are any questions thank you mr modern and i agree with a budget of 45 million only being 2 000 off is is is pretty bang on so uh congratulate the team on that councillor books thank you very much chair um we did discuss this briefly in the briefing you very kindly joins um on monday evening but um in the paper in the autumn of 2023 that outlines the beginnings of the food waste recycling program um it was outlined that the the council was looking to accrue 725 000 pounds a year in by diverting food waste from the general waste into the new waste stream given that the tonnage of diverted food waste has been low even with the 72 000 low-rise properties which is i think represents the lowest hanging fruits in terms of the people who are most likely to take up the scheme with gusto um and that tonnage remains low so at what point in the budget reporting process would we see a variation um of that 725 000 targets not being reached thank you uh thank you councillor um so yes so that 725 000 pounds as you as you referenced was for a an estimate at the time uh for the full year's worth of saving savings that would accrue as a result of diverting residual to food waste um we've not had a full year's worth of food waste service it takes a while for this to be rolled out it takes a while for it to be embedded um so on on that basis for the current year we will not hit the 725 000 that was referred but as we've previously mentioned that is a a full year's target that's not what we would have expected to hit this year um we have also at the same time rolled out an additional recycling round and we've been able to leverage the communications that have gone on at the same time as the food waste to encourage people to recycle and we have been able to generate significant savings from the um transfer into recycling over and above um over and above the the the shortfall in in the year for the food waste so actually for our disposal targets we are under our budget for this year any other questions mr mr chadwick you want to come on might i just start to off um so yeah so it's it's in two parts that we haven't rolled we haven't had a full year and we haven't rolled the food waste out completely but what what i do have in front of me figures which show that our food waste uh tonnages per month are increasing month on month and we've in january had our most successful month at about 300 tons which um in my terms is about 60 african elephants um and you know he's our he's our biggest ever month and that we see that pattern going up thank you for that um um that would be very interesting information to be shared in a paper at some point um might might we see that in the future would that be a also in the kpi paper or that's not actually kpi i'm sure we can find a way of introducing those figures into the commentary against the kpi so yeah okay no questions uh counselor about um what does that tonnage equate to in terms of money in terms of food waste uh tonnage uh savings that's about 45 000 per month that kind of order if you look at look at it in isolation from the rest is that is that right yes i think we've we've calculated that for this month as being 50 000 so if you rolled out across the year that's about 600 000 pounds but as mr chadwick mentioned the tonnage rate is increasing and we would hope it to do more so yes any other questions cancer caddy um it's not really a question it's probably just more of a comment and i guess this is in the context of seeing that leisure infrastructure plan um and all the kind of fantastic things that we could be doing and that we want to be doing it's just having a look at the numbers for some of the savings um efficiency savings you know we've got a massive budget of you know 45 million and we again talked about this in the pre-meet um seeing efficiency savings of kind of less than two percent across the board on on those kind of numbers you know it would be good to maybe be seeing more um and i guess the challenge would be is is there more we can do on efficiency so that we can use the the money to sort of spend on things that we really need to do okay so uh mr moredon do you want to come in on that uh thank you so um i think you're you're right it's a it's a good challenge um the number does seem small in the context of our overall budget um and i think it that number reflects the kind of almost day-to-day saving that in my role um we're trying to make sure that the services are delivering as we've heard today bang bang for our buck a few times um i think it's worth highlighting that a lot of services within the environment committee are typically characterized by the kind of the large and long-term contracts so we don't often see um a kind of an immediate efficiency saving we often see big savings led by by the kind of changing contract so the agricultural contract that was mentioned that has the opportunity to deliver um greater efficiencies and we would expect to as part of the specification process um and we also have services that are driven largely by our ability to cover the cost so we want to generate revenue to be able to cover a cost enhance the services support people so it is a mixture of income generation which again won't won't won't be part of that line but we would expect to see that increase in the future as part of key contract terms that come forward thank you thank you mr moore um as the committee's now been seen for three hours uh i now need to dispose of the remaining business on the agenda um procedural 16 um we can continue to debate item number nine for a further 10 minutes i'm hoping it will be a little bit less than that but we can keep going with that for now so does anyone else have any more questions for mr mooreland before we wrap up nope so that was completely unnecessary statement then so all right so um is the does the committee agree to note the report great thank you and that concludes the business of tonight's meeting so thank you
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