Transcript

Welcome to this meeting. My name is Councillor Critchard and I'm the Chair of the Finance Committee. Members of the Committee, I'm now going to ask you to introduce yourselves, starting on my left, and switch on your microphone to confirm your attendance. Hello, Councillor Sean Lawless, Two-Thing Broadway Award. Good evening, Councillor Jeremy Ambash, West Putney Award. Good evening, Councillor Waryle, Shaftesbury and Greenstone Award. Jessie Lee, St. Mary's Award. Clare Fraser, South Ballam. Aled Richards-Jones, Northcote Award and Leader of the Opposition. Councillor Matt Corner, Nine Elms Award. Councillor Lindsay Hedges, Ballam Ward, an Opposition Spokesperson for Business Engagement, the Voluntary Sector and Culture. Thank you. Councillor Peter Graham, Wandsworth-Cottman Ward and Opposition Speaker for Finance. Thank you. We have Councillor Ireland here, who's the Cabinet Member for Finance. And we will be joined by Councillor Akinola a bit later. Okay. And we've also got several officers present who will introduce themselves when they address the committee. Now, the minutes. Okay. Item, right. The minutes as published. There's been a correction around Item 5, and we need to add in a line which is after right. So, Item 5 was the procurement plan. The third paragraph was asking, a member asked about the inclusion of employers' national insurance. Office explained the legal advice. As part of their accreditation to the Living Wage Foundation, there was a mechanism in contracts, which meant the Council would provide the uplift. As there was no provision, and this is the addition, as there was no provision for national insurance increases in the existing contracts, then no significant changes were anticipated. And are you happy to agree the minutes with that change? Thank you. Yeah, brilliant. Thank you very much. Excuse me. What I would ask, because Mrs. Mary and Miss Burstyn, you are hiding behind a chair. I know it. Would you mind? Then I can see you if you wish to say. Thank you. Thank you. Or you can move the chair and have a different one. That's a very big chair. I think they have your chair, so perhaps you'd like to swap. I don't care. I don't have large chair envy. Okay, brilliant. Thanks. Do I need to sign? Thank you. Last page. I have pavement envy from time to time, but that's different. Item two is declarations of interest, and members are aware of their duty to declare pecuniary interest and to keep their register of interest up to date. For the benefit of any members of the public viewing the meeting, any interest declared during this part of the meeting should be related directly to the agenda items and the decisions being taken tonight. Are there any declarations of either pecuniary, other registrable or non-registrable interests for anyone to declare? No? Nope. Brilliant. Okay. Thank you. And the next thing I'm going to say is I need to reorder the agenda. Before we commence evening's business, may I seek agreement from the members to reorder the agenda so that item nine, the setting of charges for environmental services, is discussed before item eight for the council tax. And the reason is that the council tax paper has the budget variations, and that's one of the budget variations. It just makes it happen in the relevant order. Is that agreed? Brilliant. Thank you very much. Okay. Our first paper tonight concerns the additions, the proposed additions to the general fund capital program. And Ms. Murray is going to say a few words about this before I open it to questions. Thank you, Chair. So my name's Fenella Murray. I'm the Executive Director of Finance. So this is the annual capital additions paper, which brings together the current approved capital program for the council's general fund, and then also adds in additional schemes which have been assessed as being of priority for the council. So the paper shows you both the existing program and then a summary of the proposed additions, and then it pulls those two together to set the revised capital program. And there's a summary of that in paragraph 50 on page 17. It also funds the capital program that's being proposed, and there are a number of different funding streams available to the council, which are listed in the paper. One change that you'll see with this paper compared to previous years is the introduction of the development pool, as opposed to the committed capital program. This is something that we spoke about at the December Finance Committee, where there was an appendix, B, I think it was, to one of the papers that showed you how we are going to use the concept of a development pool, new schemes being added into that pool, which will then track progress against feasibility studies, business cases, available funding, and things like planning permissions in order to then promote through these gateways, which are referenced via the Investment Funding Board and Internal Officer Board, to then be promoted into the committed capital program, and then that means they are ready to start delivery. I'm happy to take any questions, Chair, if there are any. Okay. Oh, excuse me. Right. Councillor Worrell and Councillor Graham. Okay, off you go. Councillor Worrell. Thank you, Chair. Ms. Mary, you've mentioned the Investment Funding Board in your introduction there. I'm just wondering, in relation to the workings of it, I wonder if you could just expand a bit more on how it works, but also how it actually makes the decisions and remains politically neutral, because accusations can be made, and I know have been made in the past, that certain investments have a political bias built into them. And I want some reassurance that the neutrality is there. Okay, thank you for that question. So, to be clear, the Investment Funding Board is an officer board. It's chaired by me with various senior officers in attendance. It is about ensuring that schemes are put forward in line with counsel and investment priorities. So, the bids will have been assessed independently and at the initial stage by the Investment Funding Board to then form part of the proposals in this paper. So, we've had a look to see that those kinds of things are the types of things that the Council's corporate plan, for instance, is looking to invest in, meet our net zero credentials and our investment priorities around leisure and open spaces, et cetera. It then tracks when schemes are working through feasibility studies, business cases, strategic business cases, getting funding in place. Some of the schemes that we've put forward are linked to invest to save. So, we will only progress those schemes through the Investment Funding Board when they have shown that they are saving more than they are investing. So, we may have to borrow for those schemes, but we will only progress them if the business case proves that that's the right thing to do. So, in terms of the decisions on what's added into the capital programme, that is a member decision. That is a decision that is made via recommendations from this committee into the Executive and then to the full Council. So, the discussions you're having are the ones that should be the ones that determine where investment is in terms of geographical or priority and services. Sorry, Councillor Weller, okay? Brilliant. Okay, Councillor Graham. Thank you. So, this administration obviously inherited a position where there was no general fund borrowing, where there had been significant general fund receipts generated by the Council's activities in previous years that in addition to still in Section 106 and grants and contributions allowed programmes to be funded. Obviously, the paper here now is looking at borrowing of the best part of 140 million by 2029-2030. I just wondered, for example, in paragraph 14A and B, we've got investment of almost 31 million in highways and public realm and 27 million, sorry, 30 million in leisure infrastructure plan and services and facilities. Of those 31 million and 30 million in A and C, what percentage of that money is going to be borrowed? Thank you. So, just to clarify the position on borrowing, we've been talking about the need to borrow since about 2020 and the figures in, I was just trying to check the figures actually when they first started to appear. But future year borrowing has been on the agenda since at least 2020. So, it's not that this administration has started to borrow or planned to borrow and that wasn't the case before. So, just to make that absolutely clear, capital receipts have been running down for a number of years. They've hit an all-time low and we've got a couple of sites in the pipeline that will generate capital receipts and when we get those, we will be able to apply them to capital programme. But that's a position that's been kind of on the steady trajectory downwards for a number of years, hence the need to borrow. The paper here adds additional borrowing on the additions to the existing programme. And as you say, it comes up with around 136 million of which some of that, as I said earlier, is investor save. So, that borrowing will only happen if those schemes are generating more than an equivalent saving in revenue to cover the borrowing costs. The specific schemes that you mentioned, borrowing to fund public realm investment is around 72% with the rest of it used to be funded from strategic SIL. SIL and on leisure about, we've assumed about 70% of that will be from borrowing with the rest of it funded from strategic SIL. We'll keep that under review because it depends on the type of works we do, how much of that we can use SIL to fund. Could I ask the cabinet member... Sorry, Councillor Graham. Did you want a supplementary, just checking? Okay, keep it brief. Could I ask the cabinet member in that case, the Council has promoted these schemes and the investment in roads and in leisure as a result of its sound financial management. Is borrowing over 70% of the cost sound? This administration is correcting years of historic underinvestment from the previous administration. And we're invested in schools, leisure centres, parks. With you, with your administration, the borrower is in decline. We think that we need to upgrade and the borrower is on the up. Now, the total borrowing on the programme is only about £264 million of the cost is funded by SIL and Section 106 receipts, which means developers are paying for that. That's 54% is paid for by developers. Okay, thank you. So, specifically, the two schemes that I talked about, their publicity, is over 70% borrowed. Now, you might argue, and I would disagree, obviously, with your characterisation of the inheritance in this borrower, but you can argue that, if you wish to, that you want to borrow, that there are good reasons to borrow. What you can't say is that the borrowing is a sign of your sound financial management, can you? You're actually introducing massive liabilities. The borrowing is affordable. That's demonstrated in this paper and another paper on the agenda. We think we need to invest in the borrower. That's why the borrowing is... Thank you, Councillor Graham. You've had a lot of sound. Excuse me, Councillor Graham. Thank you. I've got other people waiting to ask questions. Councillor Ambash. Thank you, Chair. I wanted to support one aspect of the paper, and then I wanted to ask some questions about the development pool for Mrs. Merrie. The bit of the paper that I want to support is para 14A, page 8 and 9, to do with highways and public realm, the 31 million that Councillor Graham talked about. And I wanted to say how badly neglected the public realm has been. And I'm pleased that this is the next six years, but this is part of a 10-year investment strategy in roads and pavements. And I think it will benefit the whole community, but particularly older people and disabled people, as well as cyclists and car drivers and walkers. So it will benefit the whole community. And I think that's a really worthy priority. The question I wanted to ask about the development pool, indicative budgets, was one, the improved access to Richmond Park. Now, when I became a new councillor in Roehampton 11 years ago, we were discussing improved access to Richmond Park, which would make a tremendous difference to people on the estate, being able to access the park rather than have to go the long way around at the moment to Richmond Gate. I wondered if on that scheme and on the Grunard Specialist Nursery Base, Mrs. Mary can give us any more details at the moment. I realize they'll be subject to a fuller appraisal in due course, but I would be supporting the merits of both schemes. Oh, yes, sorry, Mrs. Mary. Yeah, sorry. So I can't give you more detail than what's in front of you, Councillor Ambash, I'm afraid. But obviously the access to Richmond Park has been, I think, wrapped up in some of the Alton Renewal Plan work, which has been funded and that's included in the development pool. As we progress that forward into a full business case and go out to tender, et cetera, that's when you'll start seeing it progress through and updates will come in into this paper as part of that. The same with the Grunard base. But I can get more information for you outside of the meeting if you would like on those two schemes. It's reassuring to see they're there in black and white after 11 years. Thank you. OK, Councillor Corner. Thank you, Chair. I'd just like to ask a question around the investment of £27 million being put towards net zero decarbonisation. Firstly, it could be, I think it should be argued that that is not a glowing vote of confidence in our ability to meet net zero by our target date. So it would be interesting to know why we feel that that money is needed. But it's perhaps more concerningly being invested under this invest to save framework, which is possibly a new framework. So I wondered if Councillor Ryland could explain what the invest to save framework is beyond what those words in the title mean and how the success of that investment will be measured. So, excuse me, Councillor Corner, could you just point us to where the invest to save bit is in relation to decarbonisation? That was something I wasn't, I hadn't picked up. Apologies, it's page 9, paragraph 14, subsection B. Sorry, yes, I know where that is. I just didn't realise that it was an invest to save. Commitment by the Council to invest in net zero decarbonisation, improving value for money through invest to save. Sorry, I didn't see a commitment to invest in net zero decarbonisation with investment, reducing the impact on the environment and providing value through money through savings and utility costs. That was, I didn't see it as, anyway, perhaps we can get that clarified. Okay, so just as a follow-up then, are we saying that over 20, there will be over 27 million pound worth of savings in utility and energy costs over the next five years? No, so what we do with Invest to Save is we would look at the annual revenue cost of the investment. So, for instance, if you took out an investment and you borrowed for 30 years, does the net present value of the revenue saving of those 30 years mean that the revenue investment is more than the capital investment that you've expended in the first place? It isn't limited to the five-year period. That isn't how it would work. Okay. Councillor Hedges, I also wanted to check if there's not anyone who has anything from the other side. Okay. Councillor Hedges. Thank you, Chair. I may have asked this last year or the year before that, but where we talk about the general capital programme framework, paragraph 52, the page... Sorry. Page 17, paragraph 52, we talk about in order to minimise borrowing, the Council will maximise all external funding avenues. I'd be really interested to hear what the external funding avenues are and how much they will be utilised given how much the Council plans to borrow. Thank you. Thank you. So, we would look at things like external funding grants. So, a good example is a net zero decarbonisation spend that would be invest to save and we would borrow if that was the funding available to us. but if we manage to get some grants for this public sector decarbonisation grant, for instance, which we are bidding for at the moment, I think round seven. If we got some of that funding, that would help. So, that would obviously minimise our need to borrow in order to deliver the investment. Same thing with contributions from Network Rail, from Transport for London. The government's got a new pothole fund. There are different avenues that we will bid for. We've got some money for, for instance, capital investment in our waste fleet from DEFRA. There are different types of funding out there and we will always try and maximise that funding where we can in order to minimise the cost of the Council. Mrs. Mary, I just was thinking as I was hearing that discussion, presumably the other thing about this programme is this is looking ten years ahead, but we don't yet know. We aren't in a position to know whether further sources of funding will come through from other areas which we would then bid for. So, for example, six or seven years ago we wouldn't have known about the pothole fund. Yeah, we didn't know about that but we can bid for it and presumably if that happens that will make a change to how we view our investment. Can I just add to that as well? You might remember we've invested on a pilot two-year programme and we've got two fixed-term posts specifically looking at external funding funded from the change programme not just maximising our external funding bids and making sure our bids are as robust as possible going out looking for more external funding but also leaving a kind of a legacy of good quality external funding shovel-ready schemes. That's the idea here is to get some shovel-ready schemes that are kind of ready to go or would potentially sit in our development pool or our pipeline waiting for external funding sources to become available and we can kind of maximise those opportunities when they come through. OK thank you very much Councillor Lawless Thank you Chair I really welcome the investment in our schools in our leisure centres our parks outlined in this and the leisure infrastructure plan which is going to bring £30 million to our leisure centres including some in Tootin and Broadway in my ward is really welcome. Can we explain a little bit more about the benefits that residents might see? Yep Just checking the status of the paper before I referenced it so the leisure infrastructure investment plan effectively commits to ensuring that our current leisure centres are not just fit for purpose but are we've put additional investment into them we are going out to tender in the not so distant future for a contractor to run those services for a period of time and we will be working with the contractors to make sure that the offer that we put forward to our residences fit for the future and you know is a modern up to date leisure offer that as I said ensures the future of the leisure centres that we've got the external playgrounds that we've got the parks the sports pitches etc so this is about making sure that investment takes our current assets forward and make sure that they are not just fit for purpose but relevant to what our residents want to see and the leisure strategy which has been to Environment Committee picks out that by looking at our current offer and where our gaps are and what the move is and what people are looking for so for instance paddle courts are all the rage we've invested in that and that's the kind of thing that the leisure strategy is reflecting it's reflecting what we want going forward not just what we've got now thank you very much okay Councillor Corder thank you chair my question relates to paragraph four under removal of budgets from the programme we can see that Nine Elms highways pedestrian and public realm has been removed from the capital's programme to the tune of and that accounts for 21 million pound the Nine Elms park is being added to the programme further down the list to the tune of 4.6 million that's approximately a net removal of funding from Nine Elms of 17 million pounds now it was always the case that capital improvements were needed extensively in Nine Elms to build the sense of place and that the seal collected in Nine Elms would go towards making that happen and indeed businesses and residents invested in the area and chose to move there based on that assumption so it's quite alarming that such a large amount of money is being removed from the area could Councillor Ireland or Mrs. Mary as appropriate just detail itemise some of those projects and give a bit more detail as to the reason for that money being removed from the programme beyond simply saying that the money had been unring fenced which of course happened last year okay Mrs. Mary so just to clarify the removal of the majority of that funding is linked to our negotiations with Transport for London and the fact that they have agreed that our contribution is capped so any budget above that amount has now been removed from the programme it isn't necessarily linked to a reduction in the schemes that are happening in that area which I think is a slightly different issue around de-ring fencing of the seal so that isn't why that money has been taken out of the programme at this time okay thank you very much and Mrs. Murray just one other comment on this is I'm quite interested to see the Nine Elms Park which has been carrying on for a long time and people who have been on planning committee will remember I think you're sticking your hand up because yes I just wondered if we have actually got any idea about when the linear park is going to open or whether we can get some brilliant thank you right oh sorry I've spoke Councillor Graham thank you so I think we've got to the point where we'd established that the money being spent on public realm and leisure wasn't the beneficial outcome of sound financial management but rather the cabinet members argument was that it was affordable that that debt was affordable so could she tell us if it's affordable what the cost of the debt interest payments on that borrowing will be you asserted it was affordable so you must know so I'd like to know from not I would not like the answer from officers it was your assertion it's affordable so I'd like your understanding of the cost when you're talking to other members okay I think we heard the question let's sort out Councillor Ireland are you okay about I'll just repeat that it's affordable but I'll refer to the officer excuse me one moment Councillor Graham can you let her answer and let us all hear the answer okay excuse me Councillor for yes I'm satisfied that the boring is affordable but I will defer to the professional officer to give the technical details thank you okay before that happens I would like to have Councillor Ireland's understanding of what the cost will be not that it's affordable it sounds like she doesn't know the assertion of affordability was based on nothing Councillor Graham this is a lot earlier in the meeting where we get to this stage let us hear from the officer as well and then see what the officer says okay right thank you chair so as the officer that does have the detail of that I wouldn't expect Councillor Ireland to have at the top of her head the specific details of every single individual line the way we have presented this and spoken to cabinet members both before this meeting and as it's presented here is the quantum of this paper and the proposals in front of you are in my opinion affordable based on the assumptions that we have made now if you want the specifics of one line I can get that for you but I haven't shared line by line with Councillor Ireland so I don't think that that would be information that she would have to hand this evening has Councillor Ireland ever asked you how much it costs that one specific scheme no but we have 136 sorry yes yeah because that's part of the assessment that we've been making about the revenue cost of the additions and the capital programme so yes that's all part of our discussions around not just the medium term financial strategy but the council tax and budget setting paper includes an assessment of how much that capital programme borrowing is the rule of thumb is that £1 million worth of capital borrowing is around £75,000 of revenue cost per year that's the rule of thumb that we use as you know and I've repeated this a few times we will incurring that additional cost at this moment because we're not externally borrowing yet but that's the rule of thumb right I'm just going to ask follow up that with Councillor Ireland I think Councillor Ireland we've talked about how the schemes will be managed perhaps that would be something that would be helpful to hear as well about how the plan for the management of the schemes is going forward yeah yeah yeah please if the investment funding board considers all the schemes starting with any pipeline schemes that then if they require a detailed business case to move into the development pool and once the board is satisfied that there's capacity to do these schemes they meet with our priorities the funding is available then and this is supported by detailed business case then the decision will be made about whether to go ahead and then it becomes part of the capital program so the investment funding board will consider what's happening with the projects that are in progress we we have monthly meetings with the cabinet members involved the director representatives from finance to make sure the costs are monitored and the information is fed back to the investment funding board so they can take that into account when they're making decisions about whether the council can afford to fund them so this program will be very carefully monitored to ensure that it remains affordable and where it's necessary to take action we will do so thank you very much councillor Richard Jones had his hand up for a question thank you chair miss mary can i go back to page 5 paragraph 4 and councillor corner's question on nine elms so my reading of the table at paragraph 4 is that the previous budget allocation to nine elms was of the order of 21.6 million that's now been taken down to the allocation of 4.6 million for the nine elms park so there's a loss there of 17 million from nine elms I followed your answer earlier that part of that results from the negotiation with TFL to cap our contribution and that's also stated in the paper itself but presumably TFL is not standing up the full 17 million that's been taken out that the total envelope of investment in nine elms is being reduced under this scheme can can can you tell how much the total envelope of investment in nine elms is being reduced I don't know the answer to that so I would have to get an update from the team on that

cost currently we've spent about 25 minutes on this one if we have any very quick questions let's deal with them but they need to be quick very quick then if it isn't that will be it's a quick question so you yourself said this program was looking 10 years ahead the figures we have are only looking five years ahead there's already 136 million odd of borrowing there which are my estimates based on what Ms. Mary said is likely to about 80 million in debt interest payments on top what is planned beyond 29 30 in the five years that following these five years how much more borrowing is intended and what will that cost yeah so just to clarify this isn't a 10 year plan you're right Councillor Graham it looks five years ahead and we haven't plotted what happens in years 6 7 8 9 and 10 but obviously we would bring any proposals that come forward for those years to this committee this time next year and following that as well what we've tried to do which I think is probably reflected quite well in the quantum of the figures in here is we've tried to take an overall longer term view of the investment and I suspect that this will be a significant investment for instance with the leisure strategy this is about investing in our leisure assets for the next short to medium term into the long term so I don't expect funding requests but as I said beyond the programme here we haven't got to that stage yet we've got some good things in the pipeline that we would be working up in terms of additional investment we've also as you know got some big potential capital receipts or headroom available in the pipeline as well and so we would obviously bring those forward as and when they come together effectively so for instance releasing the Frogmore site when we get there if you remember this time last year as a committee you invested half a million pounds to move the Frogmore site and the contents of it to Sargent's industrial estate by 2028 that will then release Frogmore and then we've got potentially some additional resources that we can use to fund future capital thank you very much Councillor Richard Jones last one and quick there which is 24 just picking up the themes of negotiations with TFL there's a reference in this paragraph to the ones of town centre transformation scheme is it still being held up by TFL and has the council made any progress in trying to get TFL to stand behind its own investment on this scheme that is definitely beyond my knowledge I know that conversations are ongoing and we are still committed to the scheme as this paper says but I don't know the detail of that and again can get you an update I think that's been to transport committee rather than this one brilliant thank you very much no I'm sorry there's I would like to briefly explain our position on the vote right sorry what Councillor Graham sometimes I just quite like to chair the committee rather than right we're now going to move to a vote you normally talk about the benefits of those watching I would like to explain our position for the benefit of those watching so they realise they we're not necessarily against the schemes can can can tell us just explain what's going to happen we're moving to a vote you've got something to say about it tell me briefly thank you I should be very brief yes so as I say there are many schemes in this paper we are supportive of many of these schemes we would like to see all of them funded if possible however we do not feel able to support this paper because of the level of borrowing it involves combined with the level of borrowing elsewhere on this agenda we don't think this is sustainable we don't know what's going to happen after five years but it appears that borrowing will go on and we feel that the lack of progress on getting capital receipts from aspects like from things like the town hall I think your position is now clear let's move to a vote okay so I understand your position that you'd like to support it you don't feel you can now we've been asked there are four things we've got to deal with here the first one is to approve the updated capital programme which is in appendix A all those in favour please raise their hands that's five all those against okay abstentions I must have four thank you and I didn't vote okay B approve the additions to the general fund development pool bids with indicative budgets alongside the schemes as in appendix B all those in favour anybody against do I have four abstentions as well okay right the capital strategy for 2526 as in appendix C who's in favour of that okay and I guess against or are you are you against the capital strategy thank you that's four against five four and I'm not casting a vote and the seal statement in D hopefully we could all agree that excellent thank you very much okay thank you councillors okay right it's ten past eight we will move to paper 2585 which is the general fund revenue budget monitoring position we this is an update from the paper that we saw very recently so I hope we can handle this quite quickly miss Mary have you got any comments on this before we move to questions okay right so have I got any questions on the latest update on the budget monitoring please it's on page 41 I've lost it sorry two seconds while I find my page okay councillor Richard Jones thanks very much chair this is a preliminary comment before I've got a specific question it's disappointing to see overspends again reported to this committee of about 4 million when paragraph 5 on page 42 reminds us that it wasn't very long ago that actually an increased budget to accommodate overspends of 16 million was agreed not very long ago so we are in effect dealing with 20 million pounds of overspends but looking at a specific one paragraph 6 talks about the budget pressures in health what's what I found surprising that that paragraph didn't detail of course was the impact of the national insurance contribution increase because we know that in particular the social care sector is going to be very vulnerable to that and we know the industry is incredibly concerned about the cost pressures that that will visit on the industry which in turn will be borne in part by the council what assessment has the finance directorate and the adult social care directorate done to date about the additional pressures that are going to arise as a result of the labour government's national insurance increase so excuse me one thing I keep hearing is it's always said as an insurance increase obviously as chair I'm trying to be a part but actually it is changes there are significant changes to the national insurance policy and I do think we need to be obviously it's a different position from you but there are changes and some people are paying less and some people are paying more that's my only comment on that okay thank you go ahead mrs mary yes so just to clarify I think what you're referring to is the increase in employer contributions which is across the board and not linked to an individual employees position yes that comes into force from April 2025 which is why it isn't rearing itself in paragraph 6 because paragraph 6 is referring to the current year but in the council tax and budget setting report at the end of the agenda we have included an assessment of what the additional cost may be we've increased our inflation pressures contingency to reflect around 2.4 million pounds worth of additional costs potentially in the care sector we don't know is the short answer what that impact will be on care providers government does provide a market sustainability grant which is money that we are directed to give directly to the care market and so we are passporting that through at the moment and that will continue in April 25 so that could take some of the pressure off but yeah we've just got to see how much starts to come through on our contracts our contracts across the board not just care contracts are linked usually to an inflationary CPI or RPI or industry led indices which means that actually we wouldn't technically suffer any additional cost whilst we are in contract but obviously contracts come to an end and we go back out to the market the market will reflect the going rate which potentially you're right will incur additional costs to the council based on employers increased national insurance contributions thank you yes just on that point specifically so the as you say it's difficult to forecast what the impact is but it obviously will be inflationary and the market sustainability grant might provide some relief but given that for example the government grant relief to this council didn't relieve our own extra liability under the increase it's a fair assumption that the market sustainability grant won't do the same for these pressures but my specific question was where we're in contract we might be shielded from those the immediate increases that providers face unless the pressure so acute that there's a risk of them going bust at which point they would approach the council and the council mindful of its duties to the service users would actually reopen those parts of the contract to save them and in doing so would incur further budget pressures and that is something that we do we have been doing over the past few years particularly with some of our adult social care providers we have been negotiating contract price increases that are above the contractual amounts because exactly as you say we've been our priority has been to make sure the market is sustainable we work with contractors they know that we can't be the bank of last resort position because ultimately we cannot take all the potential cost increases on our figures so we will continue to work with contractors but recognising that where there is an unstable market we will have to have some serious conversations with contractors to make sure that they continue to deliver our services which is what we did during COVID if you think with our leisure contractor with our leisure centre contractor as well and our parking contractors as well in some of their discussions around hourly rates Thank you Councillor Ambash I'm pleased that the adult care and the housing department looking looking looking at their own budgets within their own OSCs and I'm pleased to see the management action that those departments are taking on page 44 and page 45 to try and reduce their overspends and reduce the overall projected overspend of £4 million I particularly wanted to congratulate on the finance budget because it's important that we look at the budget that we're responsible for in this committee to congratulate those who are responsible for delivering well and delivering more than we expected on the investment income that's made a difference to the department and the council but we do have some areas where we have some concerns and they've been identified on page 46 revenue services and 47 change in innovation directorate the customer care and particularly in relation to recruiting and retaining staff and particularly we've been concerned in this committee about customer care being the front of house and being challenged on the performance indicator of prompt response and all of that so I'd like to ask what are we doing for revenue services and the customer services in terms of recruiting and maintaining and retaining and do we need to do anything further because it's a challenging market I think thank you good question and I think the answer and actually the question are relevant to services wider than revenue services and customer services there are some really acute recruitment pressures in a lot of areas there just aren't enough people in the market good people but people tend to be quite transient some people can be quite transient and move around quite a lot so there is this constant churn in some areas particularly and we've got our great employer work stream in the change programme where we've been working on this for a good 18 months to try and improve the overall position and make the organisation an attractive place to work and that's not just about the salary that the flexibility that we offer the career potential the non financial remuneration so there's a great employer work stream that is working on a lot of that but ultimately it is still very difficult to get good quality staff to come to us and stay working on frontline customer services is a really demanding job nobody calls the council to thank them anymore so they are just really incredibly difficult roles and the same with council tax business rates rent accounts housing benefits within revenue services we're dealing with very difficult conversations day in day out so often it can be easier to go and work in a call centre where you're fixing someone's problems with their mobile phone or some other service areas so we're trying the best we can as I said but not just in as well as conditions of work are we looking at remuneration to make sure we have a competitive package and we're constantly looking at pay scales and how we reward good performance as opposed to less good performance but we are obviously working within budget constraints so a lot of what we're doing has to be about not just the remuneration but the wider offer to staff we are a large organisation and well regarded so that should go some way towards it I can't just uplift all my staff by 10% because I don't have the budget for it so we are constrained to that respect thank you very much councillor Graham yes I just wanted to echo your point about time so I am not going to ask a question I just wanted to reiterate what we've councillor Richard Jones was talking about and we are concerned that despite the demand management measures that are outlined here we're still seeing more pressure coming through that doesn't appear to be under control and indeed even Children's which was somewhat successful in getting its position back has got a 2.2 million overspend within social care and on the agency side so we are not confident that this is under control and we think that that is going to have an impact on the budgets of the set and have been indicated for next year because the way things are going the overspends we've seen so far are going to be repeated next year with additional overspends and action does need to be taken potentially quite radical action to address that actually given that I probably won't be complimenting the Labour Government too much at this committee they have taken in certain areas I mean they've got massive things wrong but they have taken some difficult decisions in certain areas and there are things that can be done to ease these demand pressures and to reduce some of the larger claims that are problematic and the burden that that's placing and also to ease some of the regulatory burden and stopping competition so I hope that given that all governments are a mixed bag we may see some progress on that that we did not see under the last government but if we don't I remain very concerned Thank you very much Councillor Lawless It was not really a question it was more of a point and I'm glad Councillor Richard Jones has returned it's a bit rich trying to pin all of the social care budget pressures on national insurance contributions if you look at what happened under last government like social care was there was no proper lack of funding increases year on year record NHS waiting this record ambulance waiting times record A&E waiting times like corridor care has been normalized you've got huge staff vacancies in the social care sector staff were demoralized devotivated and during COVID it was an absolute shambles and the way it was run so I don't think it's fair to put all of those pressures on thank you councillor fraser thank you chair I just wanted to welcome in the first paragraph of the summary that there has been a 315 thousand reduction compared with course two and just think about where it goes on to explain in there about this offset against the increase in housing overspend I think it's no secret and obviously it's talked about a lot at the moment the pressure on things like temporary accommodation which are absolutely crippling the costs of councils across London right now and just wondering if and think about that reduction so it's to be welcomed in light of some of those pressures on temporary accommodation but just on that is there anything you can share about I know there have been lots of reports about that market but about any changes that might be coming to councils or any pressures that might be able to be relieved in that area at all mrs murray yeah I mean so much work is going on across London on homelessness prevention and trying to reduce the cost of temporary accommodation I know there are some pilots not necessarily in London and specifically linked to housing associations about trying to take ultimately benefits that are paid on behalf of temporary accommodation clients so local housing allowance and instead investing that funding in purchasing additional properties in order to alleviate so there's a few pilots going on nationally but ultimately the government has put more funding in for homelessness prevention so we've got an increase in homelessness prevention grant and some rough sleeper grant we've actually we've got an extra allocation this week even in the current financial year so they are definitely recognising that costs are going up and that some of that is wholly out of our control and funding that but ultimately not funding that gap in full which is why you're seeing the pressures coming through thank thank you very much and councillor Ireland I noticed you were thinking of saying something okay that's brilliant okay well thank you very much this is a paper to note is it all agreed okay thank you very much councillors right we now move on to the treasury management policy I think looks like mrs mary still in the hot seat this is a bit like I promise I will leave after this paper so I have just got three very quick things to say about this firstly thank you for recognising in the previous paper the great work that we're doing on treasury and the investments that we are managing to achieve in this paper it shows you in paragraph 11 that we're currently achieving a rate of return of 5.2 percent and all that hard work is obviously not down to Catherine Burstyn who's sitting behind me and her team so I'm pleased that she was here to hear you say that that was the first thing I wanted to say the second thing that I just wanted to point out was that this paper comes to you and you see a few of these updates during the year and you're probably sick of seeing them this one specifically is about approving the Treasury Policy Statement for the coming year which is effectively the Treasury Bible that we work to as officers and there is one change that I have been asked to explain in that policy it's pretty much as it has always been but on page 69 of the pack paragraph 3.4 we've shown the track changes there of the change and apologies to any lawyers in the room but some of that deletion is linked to very legalistic wording that doesn't make sense in practical terms but what that change is recognising that when we need to go out to borrowing which is becoming more of a reality now than it has in the past we will be guided by the current interest rates when we decide how long to borrow for whereas previously the policy talked about making sure an overall average borrowing length of period of around six years we all know with our mortgages that if interest rates are high we are not going to lock in for 25 years are we we will go for a short term rate and then go back to the market after that has ended so this is doing effectively the same thing saying that the interest rates will guide how long we take borrowing out for that is the only change of any significance to the policy statement Ms. Merrie did you also want to say something about the liability benchmark sorry and then of course the favourite appendix which is the prudential indicators now these have to be set by the council each year based on the sit for code prudential code and they are very defined in their definitions some of them make absolutely assume things that haven't yet happened and we don't plan to happen and I'm sure there will be some discussion on particular ones one of the new ones that we've had to include is on page 81 which is called the liability benchmark and there is a graph on page 82 which if you're printed it's in black and white so let me just get my screen because I've got the colours on there so I'm really pleased actually that this slightly impenetrable graph has been included in the prudential indicators because actually what it shows is that the council's ability to avoid expensive external borrowing continues until at least 2028 so what this is showing is the red line at the top is the borrowing it's called loan CFR but it's a quasi borrowing line and that's how much the council will need to borrow over the next 8-10 years and they're the figures that we recognise from the reports that we've been talking about it then also shows how much cash we've got which is the orange line and assuming that we want to keep some cash in the bank we don't want to run our bank balances down to zero that's the dotted line so if the dotted line hits the x-axis that's when we need to start externally borrowing because our internal borrowing headroom so our cash is running out mrs mary we're just attempting to put this on the screen which is going to be quite radical in colour is it got there yes right so I will very quickly so the red line at the top is borrowing you see that goes up and then it plateaus because we don't have any plans beyond year 10 the orange line at the bottom is our cash so we've got more cash than we've got borrowing and the dotted line is the cash that we would like to keep about 200 million in the bank because we don't want to have to redeem volatile money market fund investments so we are going to have that buffer so as soon as the dotted line crosses the x axis yes there we go that's when in theory we would need to start by externally borrowing so every time I come to you and say we will of course minimise our external borrowing by internally borrowing this graph proves that we've got the headroom to do that okay thank thank you for sharing that on the screen okay do I have questions on this one please right I'm going to let Councillor Lee go first and then Councillor Graham I think yeah it's a really positive paper with as you mentioned the rate of return the emphasis on prudence and our use of internal borrowing where possible to minimise the external debt costs I think you sort of answered my question because I wanted to ask about fluctuating interest rates and how we will adjust our investment strategy to optimise our returns while minimising risk question so when we approach treasury management it has to be there's something called the SLI principle which is in priority order security then liquidity then yield so return so absolutely our security minimising risk is priority and our treasury policy and our strategy statement they hard code that assessment of risk into the parameters that we as officers work to so we can't put too many eggs in one basket we use money market funds because they have a good rate of return but as I said they're quite volatile so we have minimised the risk on those by putting aside funds to protect us in case those capital values go down at any time so we've got what's called an investment volatility reserve so our risk approach is linked to the quantum of cash that we have the more cash we have the more we can put more into those money market funds but as our cash balances reduce we would obviously adjusted accordingly at the moment local authority into lending is on the up it went down to pretty much next to nothing about 12 to 18 months ago that's very safe debt because ultimately a council has to repay its debt so our whole risk approach is linked to the spread of our investment so when you look at that rate of return whilst the average rate of return is 5.2 percent you'll see that there are different types of investment different profiles different risk profiles and different rates of return on the back of each of those and that's how we manage our risk time okay thank you councillor graham yes i'll deal with the internal debt first and to borrowing as whole if that's possible so just on internal i obviously accept entirely what you're saying that borrowing internally is preferable to borrowing externally and that it may be possible for a few years to come to continue to borrow internally likewise i figures is absolutely the right thing to do can you just confirm though that even when the debt is internal there are still revenue implications and implications for departmental spending and other things and that there is still interest that has to be covered on these the debt that's taken yes a good question thank you so there isn't interest that needs to be covered what you've actually got so effectively what we're saying with internal borrowing is we have got cash in the bank and it's earning as you know from this treasury paper it's earning interest if we choose to fund capital from our own internal borrowing effectively what we're saying is we're not going to get a loan to fund that we're going to run down our cash balances so we've got less cash in the bank which is earning interest that's the charge there isn't another charge on top of that there are then accounting entries that sort out all that out which are linked to average rates of return and weighted averages etc but there isn't actually an interest charge there is an accounting entry interest charge but ultimately the net impact is that our cash balances are lower and therefore the interest that we earn on our cash balances are lower as a result I was using that interest as a shorthand for MRP and all the other things that are here so I accept that so was that not answered did you have more then I just I wanted to turn to the amount being borrowed right so obviously on page 77 in appendix G sorry page 79 in appendix G we can see that the gross external debt limit set in other words the credit card limit is 1.3 billion pounds before we've even got to the end of the period in which borrowing is anticipated I appreciate that that is in effect the credit card limit rather than the amount to be borrowed can you confirm what the total amount to be borrowed by this administration will be in terms of what has been approved and what has gone before the council in papers yes thank you and I will use that phrase credit card limit to explain that figure in future thank you that's a good analogy it isn't what we're planning to borrow so we've mentioned before and the housing committee received the HRA business plan last month that confirmed the investment in the thousand homes program and our development schemes incurs debt of around 780 million that's a figure that has increased it's increased largely because of the switch from 60% affordable housing in the previous administration's borrowing plans to 100% social rent under the current administration and then as we saw in the capital paper at the start of this agenda there was 136 million of general from borrowing over the next five years so some of those two figures would be I think what you were referring to thank you we never get just one question right did mrs. mary not answer your question satisfactory mrs. mary did and I have a follow-up question thank you well let's wait for that one let's let's leave it okay councillor richard jones wanted to say something and I'm sorry to ask this can we get the graph back up the page 82 graph because I've got a technical question on it okay right I'll just explain it if you can't get it no no no we will we're very excited with this technology but it just takes a moment to come up we're thinking this is this is something we should be considering in the future when we have graphs because we like graphs so my question is so miss Mary you explained really well that the orange line at the bottom is the cash that we have the red line at the top is the total borrowing requirement and so if you like the dotted line is the difference between the two you explained that the reason the orange line never goes above zero is because we want to keep cash reserves and you said that was 200 million 150 million in the general fund and 50 million in the HRA but looking at the orange line where it plateaus it doesn't plateau at 200 million it plateaus at what looks to me to be 50 million so is the graph there just showing the HRA or is it showing something else or have I misunderstood yes very good question so you have slightly misunderstood what I said or I've not explained it very well so the orange line is the cash line and the cash does carry on with a positive cash balance although it's a negative on the graph because the graph is kind of upside down isn't it borrowing is showing above and cash is showing below so the orange line cross the x axis we will be in trouble the point I said about we want to retain reserves we want to retain cash balances we want to have the flexibility not to have to cash in our money market funds because this graph is telling us to so we are setting the dotted line as our marker of when we think that cash balance will be expended and therefore external borrowing will be required which is why that so there's a 200 million gap between the orange line at the bottom and the dotted line which is your 50 million you mentioned and then the money market funds sorry can I just say so that means because that 200 million is investments that and I mean I would say we're incredibly lucky as a council to be in a position where we're gaining money from investments but those investments are so lucrative would that be worth saying is we really don't want to or are they just long term investments and there be a I can see this person nodding in the background they're long term investments and therefore if we cash them in there would be a fee to pay or a no so going gosh please don't quote me on this but it's like crypto it's it's the kind of thing that you want to you don't want to be forced to sell it you want to sell it when it suits you and when the market suits you so we don't want to cash these out because the cash borrowing position is making us do that it's not about there being penalties on cashing them out and it's not about them being necessarily long term but the point is you've got to ride the market and we don't want the cash borrowing position to force our hand on those investments which is why we will always want to keep a minimum level of investment in those so we can choose when to class question yes if not I'd like to ask the cabinet member a question that she should be able to answer because I've put it to in several council questions but the answer hasn't actually been in her answer to those council questions but at least means that she must have been aware of it and put the question herself even if she didn't provide it so we've heard that there is total over 900 million pounds can she tell us what the revenue cost on the interest cost but what is actually as technically as Mrs. Mary has pointed out the revenue cost of that will be and whether it is more or less than the principal borrowed sorry Councillor Ireland you're referring to the HRA I'm referring to both HRA I can give you the figures if you like 780 million the interest on that over 50 years is 885 million on the general fund we're borrowing 136 million and the interest is 81 million I would like to say that if the previous administration had taken advantage of zero or near zero interest rates we wouldn't be forced to pay these high interest rates and if you think these figures are scary try £60 million a year on temporary accommodation which is money down the drain right sorry councillors just a reminder is when you finish speaking can you turn your mic off because we've just been having a little bit of glitches due to too many mics being on cancer I think actually I've got to the point where we stop on this paper I would now move to a vote so we are being asked can I clarify again no let me sum up what we're being asked first okay we're being asked to approve a change to the treasury policy to approve the operational boundary of so the treasury policies in appendix c to approve the borrowing limit an operational boundary of 210 million in paragraph b to approve the minimum revenue provision in appendix b approve the prudential indicators and to note the new liability one which we have seen plastered on our screens okay so taking them in order you to note our position which is simply that we just tell me how you're going to vote please okay we actually can stop please do not talk over me you have had ample time to state your position up till now thank you very much we're now moving directly to a vote you were having questions not time for stating positions and I was cut off before being able to tell members that the implication of this vote is that they're going to cost £1.9 billion excuse me councillor graham please do not do this right I've asked you politely we're going to move to a vote on this okay those in favour of item a please raise your hands that's the treasury b oh sorry that's 10 the item b the local government agreed on that everybody okay those in favour raise their hands on item b that's six five and those against oh sorry councillor corner are you for this or are you just anticipating I'm about to say that okay that was nearly three and a bit against four against okay see the minimum revenue provision those four please okay and against abstentions thank you to note the updated prudential indicators those in favour five against okay thank you for and no I'm not casting a vote and the liability benchmark today we're all happy with the liability excellent we do like a graph thank you very much councillors okay we are now starting we now have item six which is connect to work and we have also been joined by councillor canola who is the cabinet member for voluntary sector business and culture okay nice to see you councillor canola and I hope the trip in piccadilly went well councillor canola are you happy for mr diamond to go straight through on this one or you yeah of course you might if you want to say a couple of things piccadilly was amazing and I'm really really pleased that I know but it really was amazing so hopefully you'll see the footage on the council website bit later and also the event this morning which was just so wonderful I'm so proud of all of us actually because it was a cross-party agreement that we would be borough of culture so I'm looking forward to sharing that all with you but on to connect to work which is also something really proud of we all know our work match team do a really great work and we were the first organization sorry the first council in London who said that we really want to deliver the connect to work scheme ourselves using our existing work match team and this paper just sets out how we're going to go about it how we're going to support people with disabilities and long term sickness through the program we're very confident that we're going to be able to meet the numbers because this is how work match operate already it's their bed and butter bread and butter sorry and I'll pass it over to you Steve yeah Mr. Dimes is there anything you feel you need to add or should we go straight to questions just a couple of quick points so Steve Dimes assistant director for economic development just to add I suppose on that in terms of planning this there are some key changes to predecessor programs perhaps the critical one is in the past this was contracted out to providers and the risk delivery risk was passed out as well which I think tended to mean that perhaps those who were most in need of this support didn't receive it this new program isn't that sort of payment by results model I think it's much more of a collaborative approach with DWP which is very welcome so just to reiterate Councillor Echinoda's point I think it's something that we can really work to ensure not only this reaches those who need it most but it also reflects the conditions on the ground in the borough itself and that sort of devolution approach is one that we think is really important and we're really excited by but perhaps I'll just take some questions can I have indications for questions hold on right let me answer hedges okay Councillor Hedges would you like to start with your opposition speaker yes thank you chair and Councillor Echinola my sincere apologies for not being able to make it this morning unfortunately my day job took precedent but had I not had that I would definitely have been then I'm glad to hear it was a success Mr. Diamond thank you very much for this paper I really do welcome it and I think it's a really really good scheme to get individuals with disabilities the support to get back out and to have suitable employment so thank you for that just one quick question for me on it's more around the comments from Mrs. Merry actually it's on it's in paragraph 32 which is page 89 we talk about it's important to ensure that expenditure is monitored closely so that we don't exceed any grant funding so just just wondered what the monitoring was going to be on that point in terms of expenditure yes I guess some of the figures that are in here which are actually a bit of a work in progress at the moment reflect the approach that will be taken so there's a unit cost approach to this and that determines the budget that's available obviously behind that we then need to turn this into on the ground delivery work match itself is is very very much used to working with external funding and reporting to funding bodies we will report to dwp through through the city of london that's the accountable body for central london forward and i'd refer back to the fact this isn't payment by results and to some extent built into the process this is close involvement to dwp and other partners on this to understand who is receiving help and how that is reflected in terms of the resources that are available here so there will be close we will be closely monitored on this and i'm not going to go into all the details there are very prescriptive and i think that there will be close um crm systems that need to be put in place it will be monitored through dwp um administrative systems so there will be very uh close um understanding of how we're delivering against that how we're meeting those targets um but also it's not very it's not a hands-off program by any means and i think that if it looks as though um uh if it looks as though um uh if we're talking to different client groups as we mentioned in here and the numbers are slipping there is scope to understand how to rectify that which may be shifting shifting provisions to meet the numbers or it may be that dwp accept that the um um uh that it's better to try and uh work with a particular group at the risk of lower numbers that's the sort of narrative that we're getting on that we're getting on this and um which gives us confidence that it will be delivered as i say we could sort of slip into that old model of being a contracted provider and make will always make the numbers work and i think i think that misses the point of what this program is trying to achieve uh so hopefully that's the best way of doing i've talked a lot about the governance in here and there are a lot of obviously this committee is an important part of that governance but will also be porting to um uh health and well-being board and and and icp uh governance as well as well as central london forward um so there'll be a lot of monitoring on this is is the best way to put it but um um uh as council raccoe was saying i think this fits well with work matches current approach in particular how we engage with employers i think their involvement in this is is is really important as well thanks and and look forward to the progress on this thank you okay council warrell thank you chair and i really welcome this paper i think it's um yet another tool to help people who are often on the margins of society and excluded in it through different ways so it's really good i just want to pick up though on what you were saying about the mechanisms used to um involve people in within the program so in paragraphs 19 and 20 it outlines some of the mechanisms used to find people so linking in with social social care um and within the wp however in your introduction you also mentioned this will also work with people with complex needs and you mentioned people who are care experienced uh refugees and i work and and i assume that's people with recourse of public funds in relation to that and victims of domestic violence who might not be on disability related benefits which would be on the criteria that you'd use people who might be at um at high need but might be on mainstream universal credits so i i suppose i would be interested in more detail about that mechanism of actually engaging with people and finding them um because they come from very dis from very different strands and how it's all coordinated uh yes so in terms of the core of the program as i said is people with disabilities and with health conditions and there is a model whilst it's a devolved program there is a delivery model which is actually quite prescriptive and we will be monitored on that it's a model that comes from largely from the health service uh ips and um that is about delivering the employment support within a a um health related or community related um delivery context this is part of a service that that individual may be receiving that isn't in a job center it isn't as normal employment support so i think that will drive this and part of the eligibility are a group of individuals who um will have particular um it would be particularly disadvantages in the labor markets the group that you've mentioned which they may not be disabled or have a health condition maybe from those groups um i think the key things they talk about eligibility here but they also talk about sustainability so it has to be suitable for connector work i think that delivery model is really important uh there are benefit conditions as well so it tends to be people who aren't on universal credit or or work-related benefits it tends to be focusing on on the economically and active also those who are actually in work but may be at risk of dropping out and heading into that so again a slightly complex response about that i think on some of those groups how they operate outside of the normal health nhs sort of derived model we're still to work that out but um but they need to they need to follow follow that model and that's probably the the main sort of uh parameters about who we help um through in that group okay thank you uh cuts rambash and i was just going to say is i hope you know we can if we're positive about this that we can be deal with the questions quickly sorry i agree with councillor hedges and councillor worrell this is good news um so one of the choices was to have at borough level and you've come up with a borough level scheme and said that there are advantages of delivering stronger outcomes and responding to local needs and so i'll be interested in in what you think the benefits are and why we can deliver stronger outcomes and two or three things about the development of the program what training will work match staff have on the needs of those in particularly with health or disability or other conditions and paragraph 20 talks about integration of frontline with frontline health and care services how how will we make sure this happens happens within the onceworth context thank you yeah thank you for that so uh on the latter point we've got a new strategic lead for the program the critical part of that is precisely that integration agenda as i said um we we have to follow a particular model that embeds that but we will have to be taking on someone who will be engaging with the panoply of of health and care services that are out there to identify suitable delivery uh locations and contexts um if we weren't delivering this if this was delivered through um the other model which will will exist which is a sub-regionally contracted um provider that's work that they would be doing um and that's a choice that other boroughs have made but i think our view was that it was it was much better to do that in-house and not least because i think it probably it provokes a whole wider range of of of discussions about the role of employment and improving people's position in the jobs market as a key component of their um of their own health and and well-being uh so this is a really important broader agenda and i think we saw this as a really good opportunity to do that within the borough close to frontline delivery and really broker those close relationships with the um with other service providers and of course the individuals that we want to help oh sorry jeremy you i can't remember you pressed your buzzer all right okay thanks um okay councillor fraser oh sorry councillor cannoli you had your hand up do you want to say something at this point or yes i just wanted to add and the other thing is that it's it coincides obviously with our london borough of culture year which also offers that creative aspect that we can offer to some of the people that need employment so we have that additional um we have that additional accolade and work that we're doing that other boroughs don't have so that's the other reason we decided to do it at a borough level okay thank you council fraser thank you chair excuse me um i just want to talk about paragraph 12 talks about um connect to it will require changes to the to the current advice model could you talk us through a little bit about what those changes are likely to to look like that are different to what's in place currently uh yes so the fun the fundamental um change is to follow this model and excuse me i did not respond to councillor ambash's question about training so that is something that will be required of staff some staff have been involved in in this before but other other staff will require more uh more training um in it will be about delivering in in these different um settings they could be gp surgeries could be with occupational therapists or physiotherapists for example um we uh i think it's fair to say you can see that in some of the output target was talking about that this is likely to be more in-depth support with the individuals than we might have been used to we would have probably helped um proportional work match clients would have fallen into these categories but we'll be doing more working with um uh people who uh face bigger disadvantages i'd say in the labour market so in the end it's more in in-depth work with the um with the clients which is the big the big change change okay thank you sorry um from council appraiser was yours okay okay um and council richard jones i gather your question has been answered so thank you very much you're obviously thinking as a great mind with somebody else but we won't find out who jeremy okay uh if that sums up the questions could we move to a vote on this uh basically it's about um we reckon we're noting the purpose and content of work match agree that work match is the right place to deliver this service note the governance note the program requirements and reporting and delegate to the director of place in contact in consultation with the executive director for finance approval to enter into financial agreements are we all agreed with that i get the impression we are excellent thank you very much okay right um we've now got two no we've got another we've got a meaty paper coming up and then we're switch we're doing the environment one so we're now going to um we've got the new voluntary sector strategy which is paper 2588 um and i believe the cabinet member wanted cancer canola wanted to say a few words or okay excellent off you thank you yep um so this report is um a culmination of loads of meetings with uh the voluntary sector it's an agreement between the voluntary sector and the council about how they want to see and how we want to see should we say our voluntary sector grow um i think it's a really great strategy actually and something that we're going to build upon and it will be delivered by the um well in partnership with the voluntary the community voluntary organization that's going to be commissioned um to deliver our voluntary sector service so these are these are the voluntary sector's words um i'm really pleased with that really okay uh and mr evans do you got a couple of things to add on that before we move to questions um thank you um chair and thank you councillor canola and i think just to re-emphasize this is a culmination of a a couple of years work really of investment um from the um current administration into our relationship with the voluntary sector um we've also got um as members will recall uh a tender out at the moment for a new uh infrastructure service for the voluntary sector so a cvs type uh service which really will be a step change for the support to the voluntary sector and capacity building in in ones of uh going forward and actually that infrastructure service will be a key plank of how we deliver uh through the strategy and the strategy is about it's not just about what the council can do it's about how we can support the voluntary sector and the voluntary sector can support themselves as well um in delivering a an even more thriving uh voluntary sector in the future thank you right i'm just going to say mr evans when we talked about this earlier you were also very enthusiastic and i think perhaps we should i should say i i felt this was something that you were very keen to see happening and i remember you saying this was a new thing for particularly for onesworth and quite groundbreaking for us in terms of how we're dealing with the voluntary sector and you were very excited is that sorry if my excitement didn't come across in my introduction but i am genuinely and you know we we've done loads it's been a fantastic journey with the sector and we've enjoyed it's been challenging they've challenged us and we've challenged them um and as as councillor can all that will know um and you know i think we've got to a really good space now where i think the sector uh uh talk very positively about the relationship we've we've gone on and we've got still got a journey to go there's no no doubt about that but i think this strategy really um uh resets that puts in a good position uh going forward so yes absolutely um it's a it's the first of its type in in ones of um that i i can remember and certainly with the investment into the the cvs service studies a level of sort of investment into the into our corporate relationship if you like with the sector um that we've not seen for a long time okay thank you very much australians right i'm going to go to council worrell first because you were first last time council worrell councillor hedges council corner okay off you go and if anyone else wants to speak thank you oh councillor ambas is going to say something as well excellent great thank you um i suppose a starting point just congratulations to everybody in putting the strategy together um having been involved in some of the early discussions around this and reading through the um initial needs assessment i know how much work has actually been involved in this and um and the um the way you've engaged with the voluntary sector and i think this is a useful example of co-production in taking place um strategies like this um are can be living documents and i think this is an example of a living document continuing to work with the sector developers set um measure um targets and measurement structure as as you go along so i must say a huge um congratulations and a big welcome to this so um but one thing that i was wondering about is that the paper and the and the document here is um has quite an interesting um i wouldn't say bias but highlighting more the care sector and i understand that because the health sector plays a big part and the linkages with icb um as part of this of part of the initiative i was just wondering if you could comment about the number of organizations and the breadth of organizations that are involved in in a strategy like this besides health because i know we have environmental and other organizations as well and just as um as um you might not be able to answer the second part of my question and i'm happy for you to go away and come back to me is on page 98 on paragraph 24 you talk um if you highlighted work with the with different um around ethnicity and around age um i have a question about working with lgbt organizations as we form nearly six percent of the borough population i was just wondering if you'd comment about the work with lgbt organizations as well thank you that's all mr evans uh thank you councilor um yeah so um obviously the health um social care sector is um a particularly important uh part of the um uh sort of one sector ecosystem in the borough and certainly uh we've worked closely with the icb um uh health health partners integrated care board for those thank you thank you councillor critchard and um they are co-funders of the um uh well at least a contributor to the um infrastructure service that we're sort of co-commissioning in effect um so uh that's important but absolutely the the breadth of organizations has been really across across the board i mean we've had and there's um youth organizations health mental health advice faith children families older people uh sport food refugees environment art lgbtq as well uh groups engage in it so we're pretty confident we've got a good spread of that sort of engagement on your second part i'd have to come back to you on the specific side that's okay yeah okay thank you um sorry excuse me can i are you are you able to elaborate sorry cancer i can only oh yeah cancer i can only just if you can help with the answer then yep absolutely um one of the first things that we actually did when we well every time we brought everyone together was ask everyone to raise their hands it was a way of them networking but also a way of seeing who works in which sort of area and what we actually found was that most organizations across the borough work with a wide range of different people obviously there's organizations like free to be that work specifically with the lgbt community but most of that most organizations will work across with a whole range of different um groups and protected characteristics which is really wonderful actually for a borough like ours that people are able to um accommodate people from a wide range of backgrounds okay thank you council hedges thank you chair um thank you councillor akinola and um mr evans for the all of the hard work that's gone into this really appreciate it um just wanted to say uh i really do um welcome the work that's gone into it and i appreciate this is a strategy document but it would be great to understand what what um in terms of measures of success i know you've got there's a lot of information here but what would really good look like be what would really good look like to you thank you so um council hedges you're um absolutely right to say that this is a sort of a positioning statement strategy really and we wanted something that was a living document that everyone could get behind and and and use that doesn't sort of sit on the shelf and uh doesn't help us sort of drive forward that relationship in terms of um sort of you know deliverable actions then clearly a lot of the stuff in here we've said we'll develop action plans but we'll do that co-produced again with the sector so we've got we get shared understanding of what what good looks like in this space because what we don't want to do is you know for what the council might think is good it doesn't necessarily mean that is a a shared endeavor across sector things like the infrastructure service will have very key outcomes and kpis attached to that as a commissioned uh contract so we're very clear about what we're trying to achieve on that and actually this committee received a lot of detail on that um back in the summer uh last last year um but but ultimately i think the uh the test of this will be a continued dialogue and feedback from the sector um as well as hard measures about you know the group frankly the growth of the sector support we're giving it um the uh the level of inward investment essentially into into the sector and they're things we can measure and get a bit of a handle on so um yes hopefully that helps uh some of your points thank you uh councillor corner i think was next thank you chair and uh uh very interested in the answer to um councillor hedges uh question really i wanted to go on the um the um the um success criteria of this strategy as well but given that the answer you've um you you've given um what funding do you envisage will be required to meet all of the council commitments in this um in this strategy and if you could just give a ballpark figure that would be helpful um and um has there been any work done on um kind of value for money um measures at this stage uh chair um thank you council corner so one of the most in reality the investment uh to deliver on this has already been uh delivered by um by the by the council um so an investment into the team in my area that supports the foreign sector um you would also uh have agreed a budget variation investment into the the infrastructure uh service that the um or supported that recommendation the committee did at the committee in july last uh year and that is about 330 000 pounds annually into and into that infrastructure support which will go a long way to delivering um a good chunk of this uh strategy and um uh much of the rest of the rest of the strategy were delivered by us as officers and engaging the uh capacity we've got across the organization because actually we don't own that relationship with the voluntary sector corporately actually there are strong relationships with children services with adult with adults across environments as well and this is about trying to make us all point in the same direction actually which i think is really important to make you know uh without being too cliche great in the sum of our parts okay yeah uh counselor ambush good i wanted to congratulate counselor akinola and mr evans in terms of the strong partnership way that we've worked with the voluntary sector but i think what's been very interesting is as mr evans just said it's not just been his team to who work with the voluntary sector in the chief executives it's been staff across the whole council in different teams who you brought together who've worked with it so i i think that's very exciting and a different way of working with the voluntary sector um what i was wondering about the future and particularly with the discussions the in the democracy review about the slightly different way that osc's might work in the future whether we might have a session in three or six months time looking at how the action planning is developing across the seven areas that you that we're working in and possibly having representatives of the voluntary sector presenting it as well as officers um i kind of think the committee might have something to very interested to see how it works but also something to contribute yes do you think that's going to be put that that took the words out of my mouth cancer i think that's fine obviously obviously i can't prejudge the the decision on the uh democracy review but um the uh the in terms of how this osc might work in the future that feels a very sensible uh and we usually have done haven't we any for the osc if we wanted to report in six months time or whatever i mean do you think the one question i would have about that is do you think there'll be there should be enough to further report by july which is six months away we will uh to an extent yes of course we'll be in the early stages of the infrastructure sort of onboarding at that point so um let's let's take it away and we'll come back to you and perhaps that's something we can discuss about when we'll be an appropriate time if that also suits other committee members obviously who knows who's going to be on the committee in after the changes okay in answer to my question did you say the budget variation was 330k a year or 30k a year 330 no i said the investment in the infrastructure is 330k the budget variation was a a smaller amount reflecting that there was already some budget there and some contribution from the icb but it was a net contribution from account of an additional investment from the council it's back in the july 2024 paper which i can send you okay thanks for clarifying yep uh council richard jones thank you chair it builds on councillor worrell's question and to an extent councillor ambushes as well but it's about reach and and the the breadth of engagement with the with the vcs i know that trying to get balanced and and broad engagement is always a challenge in in pretty much every area of the council and i noted in paragraph eight so on page 95 um approximately 60 attendees um uh attend the uh attended the launch of the bimonthly vcs network meetings and then paragraph 11 of course 48 respondents completed uh the survey uh on the online consultation there are council i can know they could tell me better than i can but um there are hundreds of vcs organizations in the borough um and i know you've been working hard to engage them uh but how can we get those engagement numbers up um so something that we spent sorry yeah yeah something that we found out is that actually quite a lot of people that work for um for voluntary sector actually work for many different organizations so whilst it might be that we had 48 respondents people like um sarah rackham for example work for several different organizations and we'll give a viewpoint back from that i actually think that our very first meeting we had like over a hundred different organizations in um the civic suite which is incredible um yeah having 60 people online is actually like them taking an hour out of their day is actually really incredible and that's every every other month um because they have so much to do and get on with to actually deliver services so i think we have a really high um sort of connection rate and communication rate with the voluntary sector and you know we had like 500 people at the event this morning which was also really incredible they do want to be in contact with us and you know having a point of contact to meet and talk to the council directly to officers to councillors is really really important and once they once the vcs hub opens then they'll actually be in the town hall which is again another way that they can connect with the council i think it's evident that they just they they want to be they want to be our partners and now we're opening the doors to them and um i'm really excited about how we move forward with the strategy thank you uh mr evans you wanted to add something i think yes only um that we're really pleased that the reach of our newsletter is about a thousand uh subscribers which i think is fantastic and actually the response rate to the the final consultation being 48 obviously 48 groups so represented there but actually the groups had that there was no surprises there they'd been on a journey they recognized we were consulted back on them with something they had all been engaged and involved with so um you know we've we've the engagement we've got during the process has been has absolutely fantastic so we're really pleased with that okay yeah thank you i think that that seems right thank you all for your discussions on this um so we've been asked uh what we're being asked to do is agree the new voluntary sector strategy uh in appendix a are we happy to agree it i think we're all happy to agree it okay unanimously brilliant thank you very much okay we're now going to take the setting of charges paper which was um which was item nine but it's now been moved in front of the council tax because we need to handle that um before we look at budget variations okay uh who is no right so we're going to just take excuse me questions on this let me find the page okay so are there any questions on the excuse me on the environmental services papers okay for the charges okay uh sorry two seconds counts graham yes as i said page 161 uh paragraph seven uh talks about the national rate of cpi reducing substantially to 2.2 percent in august 2024 uh i mean it actually fell to two percent in june uh but i'd assumed when i was looking at this that that we always use august as the benchmark month for setting charges but when i double checked back to last year's paper we'd used september last year to set the equivalent figure and in september of this year inflation was not 2.2 percent it was 1.7 percent so why has the month been moved and as which is being used as a benchmark and is it purely for the purposes of cherry picking in order to put up fees and charges by more than the equivalent amount last year mrs mrs mary oh and actually what i forgot to say because you didn't have an introduction this particular set of fees and charges is to do with regulatory services so it covers things like moths and getting rid of um and uh getting rid of bed bugs and also what else does it you know um and planning fees as well as other things so mrs mary uh yeah thank you chair um so you're right cancer grain we do try to be consistent between years in order to kind of preserve the uh the 12-month rolling nature of the indices this particular paper i think has been linked um last year to the environment committee increases which went through in november rather than january february and i think therefore used august rather than september um what you'll see actually and and it is a guide in that that paragraph you referenced does talk about council costs um not necessarily being limited by an increase with cpi because obviously we have other costs beyond that that that work to different indices but you'll see that the charges that are being proposed are a mix um some have gone down some have gone up some have gone up by more than the indices it's been referenced uh some of some of them have gone up by considerably more so it's a mixed bag of actual increases being applied to individual charges um but linked to inflation as the kind of starting point rather than the actual final figure if that makes sense the consistency with this for next year to make sure that we don't fetter that 12 month rolling um inflation figure thank you and mrs mrs mrs mary i was just going to check is some of the charges also directly related to officer costs and presumably those charges have gone up to reflect the um the pay increase so the charges the full value of the officer time is recharged yes that's right no i'm just a bit concerned because it does seem to be entirely arbitrary the the point of that we're using to set these fees i mean if if for example this time last year we just used the rate of cpi at the point closest to the start of the financial year that increase would have been considerably lower as it happens if we did that this year it would be higher reflecting the fact that inflation is now going up um post the budget so but that would be fairer if we if we can take any point in time why don't we take the current point in time each year because to go back six months and then charge people more or less than one could and then to vary that between years it just makes the whole thing seem entirely entirely arbitrary and unfair right okay thank you for your comments um is there is there a reason why why we can't take it as as each year as as the point ccpi at the point closest to the financial year in question i mean council graham the one thing i would say is i understand your point but the proposed increases in terms of the income we generate from some of these things the total is around 15 000 a year is is what the increases would give us over and above because some of these charges here are particularly specialist i'm sorry absolutely do you have your hand up or no council critcher i realize that these are very small amounts and that within the context of the overall budget is practically de minimis however the principle of the thing does seem decidedly off i mean 15 000 pounds for the same reason is something that could have been swallowed by the amount the administration seems to be wanting to take out of reserves uh you know without even noticing it wouldn't even be a rounding error yet we are charging people more and we're charging people more than we would have done on the equivalent basis last year okay well thank you very much okay is there any further comments on this one or right okie doke well in that case we've been asked to agree the new charges that have been set out here uh and apply them for the first of april and we have to approve a negative general fund budget variation which is going to be picked up in the next paper all those in favor of this change to fees and charges please raise our hands five okay all those against no any abstentions yeah okay and as ever chair didn't cast vote right thank you very much um so we've now moved to the last paper uh we've got there in the time i thought slightly differently which is the council tax paper and i just would comment one of the reasons this is coming last because it also covers the um it covers budget variations and we always take budget variations last in this committee okay i'd like to ask um miss mary would you like to do a brief introduction for this one please uh yes thank you so very briefly uh this paper as you have said is the annual council tax and budget setting paper that will go to full council in march for final approval it builds on the paper that came to this committee in january which set out the proposed committee service spend for the coming year and that paper has been referenced earlier um flagged a number of areas where we are continuing to see significant um service pressures and cost increases so this paper takes that term that service committee position forward and uh it also reflects the final local government finance settlement that came through um the previous paper had a projection in there but not the final figures uh the final settlement was more or less as we thought it would be um and so that figure hasn't particularly changed uh for this version of the report but it still does um show the government's um increasing core spending power being six percent um of which onesworth has benefited um above average although the six percent includes an assessment or an assumption of a full council tax increase which obviously is not what's being proposed in this paper um it then this paper then also um looks at um our use of reserves and it revises our projections on um planned use of reserves so we've got a number of initiatives being funded from specific reserves particularly around uh our cost of living response um the access for all program and some of our refugee and uh homelessness asylum um response and this re-profiles some of the spend between years um it also um assumes an increased business rates as i said in line with the local government finance settlement but recognizing um the impact locally on retained business rates and it um concludes with um a planned use of reserves of around 16 million pounds for next year as i said linked to cost of living access for all the change program and refugee support it also then balances the budget with the use of reserves this is something that we spoke about in january um it is a reasonable thing to do in the current climate i think particularly with those cost pressures to rely on reserves that's what they're there for we've done it before um and the suggestion here is that if there is a freeze in the main element of the council tax we continue to take the adult social care precept increase of two percent which we've taken every year since it was introduced in 2016 um and actually linked to as we talked about adult social care pressures that feels like the right thing to do um the balanced uh budget use of reserves reserves is highlighted in paragraph 19 in the table there um of just under 11.3 million for 25 26 the paper then um shows what the um average and um majority bandy bills will be based on that um that revised level for ones worth also referencing the um wimbledon and putney common conservators increase and the greater london authority um it does flag that there is a continuing budget gap beyond 25 26 so we've successfully balanced the budget in 25 26 but there is still a um a budget gap beyond that that we will need to deal with um it flags the um proposed funding reforms from government which we will know more about the detail of that in the summer that should include multi-year settlements but i think um it as we mentioned in january it does uh pose a risk for boroughs like wandsworth particularly in london um compared to the national um distribution uh formula the paper then briefly talks about um the introduction of the second host premium and empty property premium being brought uh forward from um a two-year window at the moment to applying from one year and the second home property premium of um a hundred percent increase which was agreed this time last year by council but will be implemented for the first time from the first of april um i am happy to take questions if there are any okay uh okay all right thank you very much all right okay right let's start with comes quarter thank you chair clearly um this budget is proposing to use reserves to um balance the budget um to the the tune of 11 million um pounds uh 11.3 million pounds um what is that as a percentage of current reserves that are usable um at the present time oh this is very you yep it's about five percent so 204 million is our current balance okay thank you council worrell yes thank you um i just want to take you to page 120 um paragraph 42 which is about the council tax reduction scheme um in terms of the this paper can you just elaborate a bit more about the impact of this in terms of those most vulnerable and who we're trying to support thank you so the council tax reduction scheme um was amended if you remember um and the current financial year is the first year that we've had that revised scheme which was um simpler to understand still complicated but simpler but but more generous than the previous scheme and removed the requirement for residents to make a minimum contribution that does mean that somehow some households the lowest income households in the borough will pay um no council tax bill um and particularly those households even with the proposals in this paper will continue to pay no council tax yep uh okay council richard jones oh thanks i've actually got a quick question as well if i may just on the back of councillor worrell's i'm really in sync with councillor worrell this evening it seems um on the revised council tax reduction scheme um i did note in the paper the the claim that it's simpler if you recall the consultation the majority of consultation responses thought the proposed new scheme was more complicated than the scheme it replaced so i wanted to know on what basis does the council say the new scheme is simpler and what has been the experience of administering the new scheme given the uh the apprehension that the response to the consultee consultation clearly felt um thank you so my recollection of that consultation response was not the um the conclusion that responders found it more complex they found it difficult to understand which is not quite the same those people that did understand the scheme found it simpler and fairer um so what we concluded from that was it is still as i said it's still a difficult scheme to understand if you remember the reason we chose to move um away from the way the old scheme works was because that was absolutely going to be impacted by um almost monthly universal credit changes so what we've seen is a simplification because we haven't had the number of um reviews that we need to do on a monthly basis based on those households have got variable income based around their work um salaries which then impacts on universal credit and that's why we made the change so that's how i know it is simpler because i know that we are dealing with fewer uh reviews on the back of the change that we've made oh and sorry just following up from that um i noticed that i think we had a paper in july last year we had a paper at some point last year about the um effect of the counts of the council tax reduction scheme are we likely to see anything or would you be able to provide us at by the end of the financial you know early next financial year some sort of indication about how well it had worked um well we can give you some stats the definition of how well um i'll need to think about how i can evidence that um i think as i said the number of uh in-year reviews will be an indicator of whether we've managed to simplify the scheme and of course that was one of the drivers um but also we have um done a lot of work over the past 12 months on increasing take-up and making sure that people who are eligible for uh council tax reduction um are claiming what's in what they're entitled to so that might come out in the figures as well but yeah we'll we'll we'll look at what we can do and bring something um yeah would that be i'm just thinking about the the council richard jones would that sound like a reasonable thing to do from excellent and and i think i interrupted you before you carried on the rest of your question thanks that's a fair answer i'm glad to see that the scheme is working out um my main question then is page 115 so paragraph 14 uh raises the spectre that we've been worried about for some time which is the uh funding formula review uh which is likely to be predicated on the principle of council tax equalization that's going to be nothing other than adverse to ones worth um what this budget does it's as far as i'm aware it is unprecedented because it is a raid on the reserves to maintain an artificially low increase in the council tax my understanding is always when this council has dipped into the reserves to balance the budget it did so only after it took the maximum council tax increase it was able to do so so that is a that is a radical departure from the previous policy of of sound money and sound financial management but surely given the contents of paragraphs 14 and paragraph 15 this is the worst time to be raiding the reserves to keep the head just the main headline artificially low when we know that we're going to need those reserves probably very soon uh when the funding formula is visited on this council by the labor government right mrs mary yeah thank you um yes so it's a fair point that uh we know that council tax equalization is going to impact on onesworth there's no doubt about that the point here is we just don't know to what extent that will happen we don't know whether council tax equalization will be applied in full uh to the whole or part of the formula and with what speed it will be um implemented and what transitional protection um and what caps on cash uh cash um floors and ceilings there will be um so we just don't know um so notwithstanding that um the point about using reserves to balance budget we've spoken about before you know that's what the reserves are there for we've got work to do in order to tackle what is a continuing budget gap but as i've said before we've started to see some good stuff come through particularly on our digital investment plans uh that we hope will tackle help us to tackle that um and the point about um forgoing council tax income is a fair point um not taking the full council tax increase uh means that we forego um 2.2 million pounds worth of um council tax income and as you say that would um by definition therefore be taken from reserves instead the point about the council tax level and um what we set that at relative to the reserves that we've got available and all the other factors that are being um taken as part of that decision all play together and i think come together in this report as referenced in the cabinet members comment and um um probably that's all i can say on the overall position okay thank you very much councillor lee um um i suppose yeah i think that despite the fact that that councillor richard jones has pointed out the fact that we're using reserves it is another year of a balanced budget budget and we are prioritizing important services for our residents whilst also maintaining affordability for our residents um i wanted to ask about the cost of living reserves which we will be using uh and ask if if there are any specific projects or reasons um for this use oh mrs mary and possibly the cabinet member that that's the reserves in page 126 and 127 um yeah thank you so specifically in relation to the cost of living reserve um this committee has seen a number of initiatives over the past couple of years that have drawn on that reserve we're looking at uh how much of that funding and the initiatives that we've put forward we've managed to hard code into our mainstream business and where we have that's fantastic where we haven't we need to consider whether that's something that we want to continue to fund or whether whether we want to deliver something differently or or stop doing things so that review is going on in the in time for next financial year sorry for 26 27. one of the things that we are still working on um that will be funded from that reserve is our response to the cost of living commission report and there are a number of initiatives um that have come on the back of that of which uh quite a few of them have already been put into play we were already doing some of them and we've got a an action list of things that will come forward as part of um making sure that we continue with that cost of living commission report and its response okay thank you uh council peter graham you were next um yes i mean this there's an 11 and a half million pound hole in this budget it's not balanced this hole is being desperately plugged from what are in effect savings and when you are in a position where you are funding your day-to-day expenses your outgoings from your savings that is the very opposite of sound financial management that is what most people regard as profligacy now the hit on reserves we see here is over 37 million in just two years uh the hra is being hit by the reserves there going down by 53 million over the same period so that's 90 million just um april 2026 however for the hra we know that the plans for the following two years will add another 60 million being taken from reserves take away you know deplete those reserves by another 60 million so that's producing 150 over 150 million that the labour administration wishes to spend and remove from savings can the cabinet member finance tell us what her plans are in those equivalent two years uh for general fund reserves what are the plans for 2027 and 2028 thank you for your question i i think the paper talks about the planned use of reserves we've just been speaking about that um we are not we are working very hard to reduce the projected budget gap and we don't anticipating anticipate having the budget let me say how can i say this we are working very hard to reduce the budget gap and we will not know how much reserves we need to use until we've done done that calculation okay if i can come back then it so it sounds like that actually this is going to continue because that budget gap relies at the moment on the council spending no more in the following next financial then it is in the one coming which has never happened before and i very much how it will happen for the next year to save that situation so we're now looking at a position where this labour administration is borrowing over 900 million pounds at a cost of around 1.9 billion pounds and is emptying reserves at a rate that is definitely over 150 million and could be more like 200 million i put it again to the cabinet member how can she describe that as sound financial management you may disagree with what the cabinet member says but i would like you to listen respectfully to her please i think the code of conduct between members asks us to do that and i think we have all been listening respectfully to you so please moderate yourself sorry thank you now thank you has some of the highest financial reserves in london and and these reserves were built up largely during the pandemic because saving on reduced activity mainly in adult social care now we're experiencing a catch-up in that activity now which is what's which is what's um causing the unprecedented demand for these services now we think that we need to invest in our adult social services and we need to make sure that we fulfill our statutory obligations now people tend to think of wandsworth as an affluent borough i mean it is fairly affluent but there are nearly 36 000 residents who are experiencing income deprivation across wandsworth and i think nearly 23 000 households on universal credit and keeping council tax low is the single biggest thing we can do to help most residents now we think this is a proportionate use of reserves this money shouldn't just sit there this money was built up from the people of wandsworth it belongs to the people of wandsworth and we want to use it to help our vulnerable residents thank you very much cancer island councillor hedges was first but there's a factual answer excuse me no councillor hedges was first okay i'm sorry councillor graham but i actually councillor hedges has been waiting politely listening politely it's her turn to speak thank you chair um i've got a cup i've got one comment and one question on uh page 119 which is uh which refers to the comments of the cabinet member for finance so councillor island um some points for you um i'll make the comment first on um on paragraph 40 uh we've said that or you've said that we have frozen council tax for uh three years now um you also just mentioned that there are 36 000 residents with uh income deficit so i think for some of those residents they genuinely think that their council tax has been frozen when in actual fact it actually hasn't because they will there'll be money coming out of their direct debit which is actually not going to be the same it's not flat it will go up and then they've also got the mayor of london's precept as well which has gone up so i just find that slightly misleading and i actually feel for residents and i get what you're saying you want to help residents but this is this is misleading because it's not actually freezing the whole of the council tax so that's just my comment i just wanted to say i'm thinking about that 36 000 percent 36 000 number that you said about the income deficit when it's it's not strictly correct then the other point i wanted to raise was um your point about high inflation on on paragraph 37 and the question to you is do you regard um the inflation rate of 2 as high i just want to say that if you read um paragraph 40 again you will see that my recommendation is to freeze the main element of the council's share of council tax so that's very clear i'm not talking about freezing any other bit it's the main element so i think people can read that and see that's clear um two percent inflation i think that's more or less the government target i don't consider it high but what's happened as a result of previous high inflation is that a lot of our services including our statutory services are experiencing higher levels of inflation and this is because of actions taken by the previous conservative government okay on on sorry on on what the previous conservative government did okay just firstly just to say that um i appreciate what you're saying on the point that you're not saying that you're freezing the whole amount but literature that has gone out or um social media that has gone out has said that you're freezing council tax for the third year on on the trot and that's not strictly true so i just wanted to make that clear um and then your point about um this trust by the way which happened in 2022 and it only went up one point for one month so i really you know i think we need to sort of stop going back to that point because it's really you know it's like becoming quite ancient um but i'd like to know what you think um you would classify as low inflation please actually i'd like to say something here is um i'm old enough to remember about 15 inflation um and that's quite high actually so i would all i would say is most of you there are some of us in the room who are old enough to remember this and some of us who aren't but that is was crucifying actually when it was that high so i think that two percent is it's obviously not ideal maybe but i think you're remembering the previous labour government council critchell no actually i think it was under madam thatcher actually it was never 15 percent inflation only reached that level in the 1970s i am also yep i think this is sorry are you describing me as no okay right holes in digging no right okay cancer iron do you have any comments on that no just to say that the 11 inflation that we experience then is in our base you know we are still feeling the effects of it and i would say a lot of our residents are still feeling the effects of the cost of living crisis created by the previous government so there are some um fortunate people who might not be in that position anymore but there are a lot of our residents that are struggling so it does affect them which is why we think it's so important to maintain as low council tax as we possibly can but yes the 11 inflation is baked into our base costs right thank you very much um actually i just think i want to take something from councillor lawless if i may and then i'll come to you council corner as we'd like to sort of share it out of it thank you um we are freezing council tax this year and i think it's been it spins as just otherwise four years ago after a finance committee meeting councillor graham tweeted ones of council have frozen council tax this year accompanied with a graphic a leaflet that you guys produced as well yeah he's smiling because he remembers it that year the social care preset went up by three percent but all of you guys were saying that you've frozen council tax um so i think my question would be to councillor graham uh sorry councillor island councillor graham um does she know what the party opposite will do will they abstain like they always do on this aspect of the paper has she heard of their plan for council tax would they freeze it or would they put it up by the maximum amount no no i haven't heard what their plans are it sounds as if they think that we should not be freezing the council tax hopefully we'll find out shortly but we're going to hear from councillor corner next there's an impressive councillor corner thank you has been waiting patiently again thank there's a lot of patient waiting going on there yes there's been some impressive uh double speak around the table today but my my question um refers to um paragraph 51 uh which refers to the consultation um on the uh premium measures now it says whilst there is no requirement to consult with residents before bringing in these measures as a listening council and to inform the policy residents were nonetheless asked and we can see the results in appendix uh g now if you look at those results it shows that for the vast majority of proposals residents agree that the changes um should be made um but then this listening council um as it states in paragraph 51 proposes um to keep the to not alter um or add to the discretionary powers provided so can the count cabinet member this explain how that is being a listening council when you go against the results of the consultation that you commissioned in order to in order to um inform your policy sorry uh cancer corner i think mrs merrie was actually keen to be asked about oh i just want to clarify um there are statutory exceptions we have consulted on whether they are appropriate and residents the only issues that they've raised with us in the main are already covered by the statutory exceptions which means we've chosen not to introduce discretionary exceptions on top of the statutory ones so could you could you clarify for us the difference between the statutory discussion and the other one so for instance statutory exceptions around probate properties in probate okay if the property is empty there are statutory exceptions around charging a premium for those properties so if account if a for anybody watching or listening if a property becomes empty because somebody has died and the uh family are waiting for probate we don't charge a we can't we won't charge a second uh a home's premium or an empty home's premium simply because we're they're waiting for probate and that's elite that's a statutory exception is that correct yeah excellent okay and those are all covered in our paper sorry is that answered your question councillor corner council corner excellent thank you very much um i have councillor fraser next thank you chair um i just want to say thank you for laying out on page one two six one two seven the uh specific uh general fund reserves as well it's really it's it's nice to see them laid out in that way to make it clearer my question is on page one two six on the waste reserve it's my intention that that's being put in place for for more national measures we expect to come down the line that's correct thank you all right has that been answered yeah okay uh councillor rich jones i thought i saw a hand being waived thanks uh well there was a planted question from the administration about what our plans might be about council tax um i wouldn't say that's necessarily planted i mean come on you always used to ask us that so so let's just say it's you know what goes around comes around yeah the i mean the absolute dog's breakfast that this paper is is that there is an 11 million hole in this year's budget because spending is out of control um now you have you can't separate the budget requirement which has been driven up by this administration with then the revenue raising options that are available to you to try and keep the depletion of the reserves under control this is a really difficult issue like of course we like low council tax i mean we made this council famous for low council tax it's the reason why we led this authority for 44 years because we kept the council tax famously low what this administration has done it's taken the reserves inherited from us it is burning through them to try and create a political headline because it knows it struggles with credibility on council tax so it is straining every sydney and it is reaching for no limit of the reserves to try and maintain that on that issue i think we will be abstaining on this because this is not a um a budget requirement that we can possibly work with there is time to salvage this as as you know chair the deadline to set the council tax rate is the 11th of march uh the executive could go away uh and revise its budgets uh and get them into order um and then we could vote for a council tax freeze a proper freeze uh not the freeze and just the main rate um on the basis of sound finance at the moment that is not possible with this paper uh we'll be abstaining on them okay thank you very much council warrell you had yeah could i could i just ask fellow councillors to recognize that whilst they might disagree with contents of the paper to call papers like this the dog's breakfast it's actually quite insulting to the officers and staff members council mr jones please let me finish it's to recognize that these papers are not written are written by actual council officers and council members of staff so whilst i say you might disagree with contents of the papers and we all and you know we all have feelings around that to be insulting in that way to to actually council officers in the way they've actually written such papers these stressed papers i think is very disrespectful council richard jones yeah i'll reply if i may i mean that is a pretty transparent deflection it's actually beneath council to say that if i may reply as i miss mary is probably the council officer that you know i rely on the most and have possibly the greatest respect for though i have respect for a lot of our extreme respect for a lot of our council officers the criticism of this paper is obviously the policy choices underlying it which poor mrs mary and her officers are constrained by as a technical matter she has done the best job possible on this but she has to work with what she's given and what she's been given is absolute dross by this administration she's been put in a terrible terrible position and you know it wasn't actually etiquette it wasn't you know propriety for council wall to try and shift this onto the office actually i think that's beneath him i think he'll regret that probably sorry right actually i'd like to say something here when you said that i was actually quite disappointed that you use that phrase there are clearly policy differences in how we do things right and we may not like the pay you may not like the paper you obviously don't like the paper that is your opinion but as council warrell said and i think he responded he crystallized what i was thinking it is very difficult the officers do as you know they they are carrying out our job as their jobs as he um as we are the administration and actually the paper is is pretty clear you may not like it you may not think that is the appropriate use of reserves what i would say is sometimes we have discussions in this group that indicate there are clear differences in policy between us and the cabinet member has articulated that the difference in policy is that we think the reserves at this stage are best used to help support the initiatives we have and to help us with difficult issues we have whilst keeping our council tax low that's our policy position that is a rather different one obviously to yours you are entitled to yours but i would just say that in the interim of this it is i would not describe i would think we should try and keep the way we discuss it to what it is on policy and not how the papers have been presented please okay i'll just respond to that very briefly look i don't think anyone in good faith was imagining that i was criticizing the officers drafting my my criticism was directed at the policy choices behind this paper and in fact what it is it is an abuse of the council's long-term viability and its ability to deliver resident um services for residents for our most vulnerable residents for short-term political gain and headline that was the object of my criticism as i think of colleagues on the opposite so i do appreciate it right thank you for saying that uh counselor ambush i wanted to come back on what counselor richard jones said we could do in the next few days we could revise the budgets and we could have a a real freezing council tax so mrs mary told us for six years you took the adult care precept from 2016 to 2017 through to the end of your administration so i really wanted to ask council richard jones did he mean by a real freeze that he would not take the social care precept and you've changed your view about that considering your administration took that because of all the pressures on adult care and we have have them continuing we think it's very sensible to take the adult care precept so it's it sounded rather trite when you said you will have a real freeze of council tax what did you mean we meant a funded freezing council tax we would take the adult social care precept as you say it's our long-standing policy okay thank you very much thank you all right oh sorry someone's that's okay uh right cats graham and hopefully then after that we can do this to a close thank you um so well since i was though i wasn't asked but i was mentioned directly um i don't think it is uh unreasonable it's certainly outside the um relevant codes on publicity to describe a freeze in the main rate as a freeze we did so i have not criticized the council for describing it in that way what i think is wrong is present council tax as a whole as frozen when leaving aside the enormous increases from the labor mayor council tax under this administration will now have gone up over six percent that is not frozen now regardless of the fact the main rate may be frozen the amount of council tax being charged by this labor minister administration will have gone up after this budget goes through if this rate goes through by over six percent that is not a freeze over three years that is a six percent increase regardless of what your talk on the main rate may be or may not now i want to turn back to something the councillor ireland said because i sat on this council and i have voted for freezes i voted for overall freezes i have voted for um cuts uh both here and um on three other occasions uh in hammersmith and fulham in fact in hammersmith and fulham council tax was genuinely cut by 20 which is a real terms um cut of over 38 percent uh during the period that i was there but i've also as said voted to increase council tax because fiscal conservatism is not about cutting tax or freezing tax for the sake of it it is about doing the responsible thing in terms of balancing expenditure with income the reason we have reserves here is not what councillor ireland said which is because of money piled up in covid it is because for decades this council despite the fact under the conservative party it kept the lowest or lowest average bill in the country voted to increase council tax when it was necessary to protect the reserves that is why we have reserves because when we couldn't find the means to freeze or cut without using reserves we did not use those reserves we felt that was improper that is how reserves and financial management is actually conducted responsibly this is irresponsible you have decided you're going to freeze the main rate before you've even looked at whether it can be paid for and when you've found that it cannot be paid for instead of trying to do that you've just smashed open the piggy bank so that that money goes that cannot be regarded as responsible it's even more irresponsible when your own government is talking quite contrary to you about punishing councils that set low council tax rates punishing them to the extent that one reading of the consultation document which was put out over christmas is that actually that if you don't set the average rate nationally you basically your funding will be deducted to deducted to that level i doubt that will happen in practice but were it to happen it would see council tax here more than double right well thank so we simply do not accept these characterizations okay thank you very much councillor graham that's been quite a long spiel i think i'm now going to ask huh yeah i'm sorry dog's breakfast is is unacceptable language but spiel is is fine i mean you're very sensitive on the one hand and then quite happy to dish it out on the other that sorry excuse me let us i will make a comment councillor graham is we were talking about dogs break we discussed it i'll be very clear about this in terms of the officers who do not have a right of reply you can obviously say to me as you have just done if you don't like what i've said that's slightly different i'm protecting the officers thank you very much for your comments i wanted to ask a question at the end of it but i let no um what i'm going to do now is i'm actually going to ask councillor island to sum up we've actually had quite a long discussion on this one probably nearly three could be we've had quite a long discussion i know it's very important but i'd like councillor island to sum up and then we can move to a vote thank you very much councillor island thank you um yes just to say thank you very much to the officers for all their hard work i know how hard how difficult this was uh we are freezing the main element of the council tax for the third year in a row and that means our residents will continue to have the lowest council tax in the country and the average band d will be under a thousand pounds i think will be the only council that will be doing that now i said before wandsworth has the highest among the highest financial reserves in london and i've got some figures in front of me that prove the point i made earlier actually but i would like to say something i've lived in wandsworth my whole life and i've been alive a long time i was born in balham i grew up in tooting and the idea that i would push a budget that i didn't think was sustainable we know it's going to be challenging is totally insulting i'm not here today gone tomorrow politician that flees from hammers and full into wandsworth for instance just because i lose i well that's a fact too so thank you very much okay i'm gonna have to come back on that no no actually that's the ground cancer graham we've had a lot of coming back from you thank you and and i said we had a right of reply you're now denying me mine you said unlike officers if you're insulted you have a right of reply well where's mine i have actually think there's been a fair bit of insulting traded both ways enough is enough at this point i now wish to move i don't wish to insult but i do wish to respond well fine that's your wish i'm not allowing it okay we also have more questions we have questions about what's going to happen on these reserves given that the the administration's abolishing decision that is enough you excuse me there is a moment where there's point about using your questions wisely and what you say i've had we've had a long discussion over this there are multiple important points in here that we wish to raise there is time why are you trying to curtail debate because we've talked about it for quite a long time no i've just this is the most important paper we discuss of finance every year we do have 15 minutes left it does seem unjustified to bring this to an end i think i said what i said earlier on was i said i'd hear from councillor graham then cancer island was going to sum up and then we would move to the vote so i'm now moving to the vote councillor critchard why are you running scared of questions on the budget which is as councillor richards janice has said it's the single most important thing we are doing we are seeing a situation enough in which your administration is going to bypass constitutional principles to take decisions under a million pounds out of visibility we are what to ask this is not this is not that paper no you are going to spend 7.7 million out of the cost of living reserve next year not a single decision that was made within that would now have a decision notice no record excuse me no publicity you are talking about something that is not in front of this committee okay it's not been in front of any committee of this council against it excuse me if you continue to argue i'm going to have to ask you to leave i would prefer not to have to do this now i'm bringing the discussion on this to a close and we were now moving for a vote and i know why when we have time left are you shutting down sorry because i think you just asked for my reason it's because this is the most important matter before this committee every year our residents do pay us to come here and ask questions i don't understand why we we have we haven't even hit the guillotine we haven't been sitting for three hours yet in in all this arguing we could have actually yeah we've had an extended period of you trying to shut the debate down in that time we could have actually put our questions fine but you should have been quicker before i'm now moving to i mean we should have been quicker you said we couldn't ask them regardless councillor critchard you are this is fundamentally anti-democratic i don't know why the cabinet member is laughing we just want to ask questions we have questions that remain i really don't i really don't understand why the meeting is being conducted this way we have we've come here we have questions to ask the officers ready the cabinet members are ready you are curtailing the debate i don't understand why i mean i would just like i think has something to raise chair i asked that the question be put okay thank you very much procedure for that councillor ambash councillor critchard when when thank you excuse me when this administration was conservative not only did it balance the budget right but it never once shut down opposition labour opposition councillors in this way not once this is outrageous behavior on important financial matters and you are refusing to allow questions to be put in a way that was never you were never treated in this way by us it's a disgrace and then when you're bending the constitution taking stuff to the executive there will be no oversight of these decisions excuse me by anybody on this side or outside again if the executive votes the way that it's supposed to be on monday we have had we are not allowed to ask what the alternative arrangements are we weren't even allowed to ask a gp what those arrangements were excuse me this is an affront thank you i hear i've got a point of order i have had an ocean no there is already you're always allowed a point of order i've got a point no i'm sorry no you can't you you actually have a councillor richards jones before your point of order i have had the question now be put to be moved my point of order is related to the motion no my point of order is related to the motion you have to take it first it's related to the motion no i don't think so you do i'm sorry you in that case you have to take the advice of the clark you have to take you have to take the advice of the chair guys about how we run it i will discuss this with my committee clerk who is able to advise on this and i would appreciate your side letting me take that advice however right first my committee clerk advises me that you need to tell me what's the point of order which standing order your point of order is under sorry which what the breach of the standing order is the number please yeah it's the same number that councillor fraser quoted if councillor fraser could remind me what that number was i didn't i didn't quote the standing order i asked that the question be put yeah then she has to move it she has to move it under the standing order right it's under 23 okay so what are you suggesting under 23 so understanding order 23 as you know the chair in their discretion can refuse not to put that motion we've now got 10 minutes left of the committee we have genuine legitimate legitimate questions we want to put you as the chair can refuse this motion which is just the purpose of which is just to curtail the debate you can do that you can let us you let the opposition do its job you can let the administration answer questions and then we will be out of here by half past right thank you for that however what i would comment is this is i had actually previously announced my intention to hear from councillor graham then hear from councillor ireland and then move to a vote what has happened is that colleagues have said have actually agreed that this is how we would do it it's what i said initially what's happening with the 20 excuse me but we didn't agree that i am prepared to accept that motion under standing order 23 i'm sorry chair we we never agreed this arbitrary council graham would speak the cap member would sum up we never agreed that you didn't have to agree i chair the meeting and i was clear that was what i was going to do if you thank you at the start of the meeting you just declared you were going to move to a vote after 15 minutes we wouldn't agree to that what has happened is i'm allowing the motion understanding order 23 to stand so please chair chair do you think this is in accordance with the nolan principles do you think this is a transparent do you think there's a transparent way to discharge your role of chair okay the the rolling of the chair on a point of order is final and should not be open to discussion that's right right i'm now moving understanding 23 a point of order no yes i'm entitled to make it are you saying and is is the administration council saying is cancer fraser saying that you have so much confidence in your budget that you're going to vote to remove our ability to ask questions about it is that really the confidence you have in your figures that you're formally voting to shut air of the committee you've been rude you've been misogynistic to the chair so i voted to stop you doing that and so that we reject that that is an outrageous thing to say i totally reject that suggestion the chair all evening you've been rude and disrespectful i'm not going to respond apologize you've been rude take the motion that she's decided to take please yeah there's no breach right i'm going to take the motion of those in favor of moving to the vote under 23 please raise their hands thank you thank you that's five is it and those who are against that please raise their hands thank you right we will now move to the vote okay we have to take several things we have to okay i'm sorry that you've decided to leave right in that case we um probably have a more straightforward we've made it to stay here as you were placing to get to the park oh well anyway and actually it's probably worth saying thank you very much mr o'riley for your support okay right for those of us who are left in the committee uh we now have to vote on recommendations a through f on the council tax those who are in favor of this please raise their hands right i think that's unanimous yep okay thank you right thank you very much councillors do you want to end the meeting oh yes i think i probably um uh no thank you very much i did actually i did say thank you mr riley then said since he's been um chief executive we've had two walkouts so maybe all right okay thank you very much and i'll end the meeting now is that off we off okay you