Transcript

Transcript

Welcome to the meeting of the overview and scrutiny committee. These meetings as you know may be recorded and broadcast and you may be included in the broadcast by attending or speaking in person or online. Council recordings are covered by the Council's privacy note which can be found at www.varnet.gov.uk. They are all very familiar as members and speakers about how to use the microphone. If you need any assistance, just look amongst the person who is with you. We are going to begin with the minutes of the previous meeting, which need to be agreed. This was a meeting on the 30th of January. I have not been notified there are any changes to be made. On that basis, I intend to sign them. In terms of absence, Councillor Ella Rose and Councillor Peter Zinkin have sent their apologies and they are replaced with the meeting with the meeting. Councillor Catherine McWherk and Councillor Luke Wakeley. Councillor Wakeley, I think it is your first meeting, so welcome. No, no, you have been here for much too long. Are there any declarations of interest in relation to any items? No, thank you. No dispensations were required by the monitoring officer. There are no public questions and comments. There are no members items. Is the officer? Right. So we are going to move the agenda. There is an officer who is delayed on a train, the one who is dealing with timber framed homes. I am moving, if we can, to Borough of Sanctuary update. We have Councillor Zara Begg, who is the Cabinet Member for Equality's Poverty Reduction in the Voluntary and Community Sector. We have three minutes to present her report. I believe she has got Jess with her and Sue is online. Thank you. Now, just to remind you, this is a report that we asked for, wouldn't necessarily have come here, but when we were still young and naive, we asked for yet another report to come to us. So I'm delighted that this report is, in fact, available to us. Councillor Begg, the floor is yours. Sure. Well, Councillor Begg just logs on. I'll give a very quick summary. So this is a report, as the Chair advised, that was requested to give an update on the wide range of work that we've been doing to support refugees and asylum seekers in Barnet, and on the progress since our accreditation in July 2024. We're seeking to provide you with an update on the status of some of the central government grant-funded schemes and the arrangements in place for those who seek sanctuary in Barnet. We're outlining the arrangements for grant funding, as they are attached to specific schemes. So, for example, the Afghanistan Resettlement Scheme and Homes for Ukraine. And this funds the resourcing required to administrate them and includes the provision of things like education, English language lessons, and social care. We also outline the grant funding received by the Council for the Home Office Contingency and Dispersal Hotels, of which there are five. And that funds the outreach support, public health initiatives, and the staff that we employ to support the coordination of the programme. And we also highlight within the report that the Council is experiencing pressures around housing services at the point that people are granted asylum in the same way that we have been historically at the point that people are granted refugee status and are therefore able to access any local services in the borough that they are, and we reference how we're seeking to mitigate some of the pressures through the use of the existing grants that we've secured through those schemes. We've been able to divert some of the government funding to support this, but there does continue to be a substantial pressure on us and many other local authorities around the long-term housing solutions for former asylum seekers. As I say, this very much predates the borough of sanctuary work, and it is reported by all other councils who have similar hotel arrangements. So, we also go on to talk about the action plan that we have in place under the borough of sanctuary work, the borough of sanctuary network, the work that we do with partners to support people who come to Barnet seeking sanctuary, and the important community cohesion work that we are involved in, making sure that we celebrate the positive contributions of our refugees and asylum seekers to the community. So, can I just add in there, the purpose of our borough of sanctuary, so the hotels were already there before we came into power there, and I don't believe there's been any more, but there has been movement in and out of the hotels. That's nothing to do with the council, it's a home office directive as to who comes in and who goes out. As Jess has said, we are funded by the home office, so there's no core funding that's coming from the council to support our asylum seekers. There's many benefits of being a borough of sanctuary, but one of the main ones is that we are able to collaborate with other London boroughs in how they're managing the asylum seekers in their hotels and exchanging really good business practices as well for there. We will outline, if necessary, the kind of activities we are doing. So, in the Borough of Sanctuary Network, that's a collaboration of lots of charities, public sector organisations, volunteering, and we discuss together what we need to do to improve the lives and spending lives of our asylum seekers. Thank you. Comprehensive report. Anybody make comments? I've got some questions. Councillor Wakelean and Councillor Cornelius. Councillor Incenti, Councillor... Thank you. Thank you for your report. I wanted to ask about, you touched on it briefly, about what actually being a borough of sanctuary means for Barnet, and you said about that collaboration with other councils, which sounds really positive, although I guess in theory you could do that anyway, reach out to other councils. I just think it would be helpful to residents if the Cabinet member could outline what's the difference for Barnet now that we're a borough of sanctuary, other than the collaboration which you mentioned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The question was, are there additional benefits from being a borough of sanctuary? If I can start answering that, and then we do have Ella, who's the head of service responsible, and Sue as the service manager online. The borough of sanctuary network does bring together all of those local authorities, and that is an additional layer of infrastructure and support. So, that isn't something we'd be able to access if we weren't a borough of sanctuary. There are existing arrangements across London and more widely, but that proactive network where they're sharing best practice actually wouldn't be available to us otherwise. So, that's a real benefit. There was work done by the London School of Economics in 2023, which did reflect that one of the ways that councils could work more effectively to make use of the existing arrangements, because we are subject to the decisions of the Home Office without being able to influence them in a major way, was by sharing best practice and recognizing that individually we don't have the same opportunities that we do as if we are sharing the practice that other local authorities have developed. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, she did. Ella, can you hear us? No, it seems not at the moment. Oh, hi everyone. Can you see me? Hello. Can you hear me? Hello. Can you hear me? Okay. Did you hear the exchanges so far? I did, yes. Sorry, it took a second to comment on the public domain. I did. a second to come off mute I don't think you want to add anything but Councillor Wakeley asked specifically about the benefits of being a city of sanctuary yeah yeah definitely so I think like with any external accreditation what it also gives us is access to that kind of external view of what we are doing and kind of guidance and advice about where we could improve where we could work more effectively and I think the other benefit has been giving a bit of a kind of platform for all the different parts of the council who work on this area to come together under one under one network and it's kind of prompted our borough of sanctuary network to also grow and include other partners so yeah I think having that kind of wider perspective has been really beneficial I suppose my question is are the neighbouring boroughs pulling their weight on this if if the number of people coming to Barnett is effectively determined by the Home Office are the Home Office allocating similar numbers relative to the population to Enfield and Brent or are we as usual picking up a greater burden than other boroughs and I guess that's that's my concern whilst it's Home Office funded of course it's a great thing to do but if people then become a burden on well that's the wrong word it costs the adult and children's social service budget money which they can't afford then there's an element potentially of unfairness there so all of the costs that are associated with the individuals who reside in the hotels is covered through the grants that we receive so there are significant but then there's a but with the improvements with the determination regarding asylum lots of people are getting refugee status now and then the budgetary consideration is something serious yes so the the pressure that is being felt is a pressure on housing services and because the other costs are covered and that is a position that the council historically has lobbied on and if they weren't concentrated in the hotels it would possibly be even more evenly spread but it's quite clear from from what the Home Office has told us and from some of the exploratory work so I've worked with staff to look at a comparison between those places that are receiving incoming residents and those that aren't and it's entirely done to the availability of accommodation so it's out of London boroughs that have available hotel accommodation as they did during the pandemic and so it it there's no other determining factor and it it isn't necessarily about an equal spread because it is determined by what they can find and and some of our neighboring boroughs don't have hotel accommodation yeah so as i was just um saying um councillor cornelians um so we have no say over which asylum seekers come in to the hotels or not um that we don't have any of those conversations there um the expenditure as we already said comes from the home office grant in the main at the we also have our um commissioned agencies that are working in both of our hotels they make so they have their own charities so they make funding applications in their own name to help the asylum seekers that's nothing to do with us they have partners in the voluntary sector that they might say actually we want to have an iftar uh celebration or we want to have an eid celebration they make those celebrations themselves by funding from the public nothing to do with the council i appreciate that i think that's the question i don't wish to speak for him please do is what happens when uh somebody is given asylum they then they then can make an application to barnet for housing i think is the point i think he was asking so when they are given refugee status they are the same as you and i they have those rights so they present to barnet homes for accommodation they are assessed in exactly the same way as a homeless family would there the single people generally do not qualify for housing and they make their own arrangements the families are are eligible for housing but they don't have any preference over any other family about nearly 77 80 percent of the asylum families when they become refugee families are placed outside of barnet just like anyone else outside of barnet and in fact it's so difficult for them because in a couple of years they've been living here in barnet and we are very welcoming borough um they have made their friendships at school in the hotels and suddenly they find they're ripped out of this and gone over to luton or watford and we've had cases where they are completely isolated um so it's not an easy journey for them at all um sorry to labor the point i guess really the point the the point thank you uh chair for translating my garbled uh vocabulary and making it simpler but the i guess my concern or my wish would be that there is lobbying uh at the at the back end of the process as if we if we could if we could if we could be sure that we were taking our fair share into the uh into the hotel accommodation it would reduce the burden that we face with housing and i appreciate you know unfortunately it's a fact of life they will be housed outside barnet maybe in in luton or wherever however that that faces all of us if we were seeking housing as well and to a certain extent that's tough but it's still housing that could go to barnet residents i guess that's the point i'm making it's fine thank you just to respond to your your question around um formulas so there is a formula um both for asylum seekers and for unaccompanied um children um and barnet is below the threshold on both of them um as opposed there are other boroughs hillingdon and hounslow would be too that are um above that threshold i suppose the the issue is that there are going to be some boroughs that are even further below that threshold um but but we are still we still haven't hit that point um thank you chair i've got two questions around homelessness have we seen since the move-on periods increase to 56 days have we seen a reduction do we know in the number of people who are left homeless after they've obtained their refugee status and the 56 days period has passed do we know if that's improved from before and the other question is is it possible to get i i i saw in the report that it's we don't have an accurate we don't have accurate data for the number of homeless refugees in barnet is it possible to get that data um for those at least that are leaving the hotels in barnet it possible to track people it just seems like such an important big piece of data those are my promoting question i don't have the data or the kind of information to ask you but i certainly get it i suppose there are two issues so the first is it is looked at a london level um and there is still very much an issue around single men because the reality being that they're very unlikely to meet housing criteria um the issue with tracking people at the point that they receive their refugee status obviously it's up to them where they choose to go and we we we don't have a relationship with them unless they choose to approach us and and to talk to us about things so it would be difficult to know um so i do wonder if it's one of those things that we could probably look at a proxy or talk to the rest of london and i'll understand how they're doing that work to identify people but it's quite hard because we we don't know what we don't know so if people haven't approached us we won't know if they're at risk of homelessness does that mean we do have a single homelessness team in barnet homes um and they do work with them to see what they can do for single asylum seekers that have received refugee status as well as other people in the public in the same room so once this 56 day period is over and if they haven't received any accommodation in barnet so the 56 days gives them longer to approach us but at the point that they haven't they are we've executed our our responsibilities really i mean it's probably a question if we need to dig into it more that we can go back to barnet homes on um because they're obviously the the experts so we do have an arrangement with barnet homes they do come and visit in the asylum hotels um and seek advice they are always told um by our commissioning agencies in the hotel that as soon as you receive your letter your 56 days start and you need to approach barnet homes as soon as possible we have had a couple of cases where people don't either can't get appointments or they don't book and it comes to the end of that period so the 60 56 day period was from recently it was 28 days gone to 56 days in the summer that's going to be reviewed again by the release thank you chair and thank you councillor beck for the wonderful work you've done with the power of sanctuary program i think it's one of the courses which are quite close to your heart you've also amplified and stressed the point about working with partnership in partnership with other boroughs uh community cohesion with in barnet is an issue what have we learned from other boroughs how we can uh community cohesion being the boroughs i'm talking with refugees and asylum seekers thank you i think we might have lost sound sorry hello just to be clear would you like to introduce yourself again oh sure yeah um hi everyone sorry not not hearing all the sound but i think i'm getting most of it uh my name is ella gosrock i'm the head of commissioning for communities prevention and technology so i'm the head of service um overseeing the sanctuary team um and i heard the question so it's about what did what we learned in terms of community cohesion is that right thank you yeah no problem so um we are just starting a campaign at the moment probably some councillors will know about this more than me a community cohesion comms campaign uh which is which is all about kind of celebrating positive stories and contributions and that's really a theme not so much we've heard from other boroughs actually but that we that we hear within the borough of sanctuary network and from our partners is that the kind of focus on positive stories um is really powerful um it's something that we can yeah we'll continue to kind of pick up as part of the networks um and often uh yeah we kind of we hear from others about their experiences of um hosting people in the hotels and what happens afterwards so that's really helped us in terms of good practice and move-ons and that side of things but yeah we definitely pick up the community cohesion point as well council mcgrath uh council mcgrath and then council incentive yeah thank you 61 years living in the london borough of barnet i've always a faith space seen this as a place of sanctuary the tag borough of sanctuary releases home office funding but doesn't mean that the last 100 200 years that this place in north london hasn't been a safe place for people to find sanctuary and i think we all of us agree that we are most welcoming and looking after those who are most vulnerable and i think you know it's what what the work you've done and we as it sanctuary is for everyone business borough and i think our officers and our team are absolutely delivering that and i thank you for it the one of the things um i come up said housing always comes up and you could put me and ross in a room for about 200 days and we'll talk about housing till the cows come home the one thing is is particularly is in primary education where i've come across before we became a borough sanctuary is the moving of children particularly in primary education how was you working as officers with borough actually working within our schools because the the change of schools people who are that young is far more detrimental to their future i am absolute believer in early years education and i hope as a borough that we're working with our primary educational services to ensure that those children who've had major upheaval are being help and support i know what schools are doing i've done case work in schools which is so frightening i'm not going to tell you in this tonight but i think as a borough sanctuary is good i think we shouldn't victimize supporting and it shouldn't be pointing fingers at all that borough is not doing as much as we are i think that's wrong these are human beings who need help and support i think we're doing good but there is a thing the primary education stuff i think and i think anyone who is a school governor worked in schools had kids or grandchildren you know that is you know is one where you can change people's lives i just don't know whether what you're doing to that but i think you're doing sanctuaries for all sorts of things can i just ask a question about comments like major focus of this did you want to did you want to comment on that on on what you just said my comment about i i'd love a response and i think we do need i think basically we don't work in silence we work across the board in barnet well i'll just start off and then if i can hand over to ella because i know she's got um she's been working quite closely with bells um one of the things that was identified very early um when the hotels were opened was actually that barnet was able to find school places for all of those children remarkably quickly um and it was recognized as good practice and actually the way that we have worked with um unaccompanied minors and with children was recognized in our recent ofsted um as an outstanding practice um the work with bells you know where there has been costs attached to it we've been able to divert migrant funds towards that work um additional investment into family services um but it has enabled them to be really proactive and make sure that we are undertaking our corporate parenting responsibilities and really supporting those children and ella will have a little bit more if we want to um yeah so that was uh mostly what i was going to say as well i'll just add um that we have always worked really closely with early help and kind of children safeguarding so kind of picking up any challenges really early not just in the hotels but also homes for ukraine scheme and other resettlement schemes and public health have always been really proactive really involved so kind of running sessions particularly about children's health vaccinations so i know quite not exactly your question but yeah i think that kind of wrap around and support is really strong and the motivations of of officers is really there so thank you for for saying that it's just i mean you've got numbers against afghan refugees you've got numbers against um ukrainians i just wonder there's a reference at the top to hong kongers do we have a still a reference number of those still for that i don't have it to hand um i can just we can check if ella and sue have easier access to the information and we can certainly provide it to the committee okay thank you now thanks jeff um when will we know when if we're successful with getting another asylum grant for 25 26 it's so late in the day now when when are we i mean it's extremely late in the day i imagine this is april to april so any idea when that will come through and do we have a contingency plan if we don't get that grant it's very late in the day it's not surprising unfortunately our experience of many government grants is that they are quite late notice we did receive confirmation from the home office this week that they were going to tell us imminently so one hopes that that is soon um it wouldn't be unusual for us to have the information um sort of during the first quarter of the of the year so in sort of may june time so the fact that they're indicating at the end of march that they they are going to let us know shortly is a good sign um there are additional grants we have unspent grant monies on the assumption that we would need to carry some forward to ensure that we could maintain existing services or or wind them down safely um so it doesn't place any of the existing infrastructure at risk um but obviously if if we were notified any later and if the grant if the arrangements were to change we would have to wind those services down and we would then be you know having to have that communication with the home office about the fact that without the additional funding we won't be able to afford to have those services in place thank you now to david with the generation of uh sanctuary sneakers that we've had and those that have moved on how do we review experiences and have we had any um what have we learned working with them and in the way we work with them and how does that feature in our future decision going forward so the generations of the asylum seekers that have moved on so when they leave our service and are transferred to what's their general experience how do they review the experiences they've had and how have we learned and what have we learned from them that we can use to influence future decision making so once they have left the hotel yeah how they speak about the experience while they were in the hotel yes um we don't really do like an exit strategy exactly but what we do do is speak to the asylum seekers while they're in the hotels and they tell us um quite openly if they are comfortable they're not comfortable they're not comfortable the food the experience that they're having so we're kind of picking that up all the way through not just at the end um there but as we kind of said once they are told they have to leave the situation becomes very rapid and we are trying to deal with their homelessness the schools trying to find new schools but we don't have too much data i don't think on um once they leave the hotels but it is connected as they're there and we've also invited um former uh hotel residents to to join the sanctuary network um in the hopes that that will enable them to share that experience um and quite a lot of the people that work within the outreach services so um within the community uh sector provision and some of the people that work within the existing team within the council are either former sanctuary seekers or with experience family experience it may well be why they were drawn into the work to begin with and everything that they can bring in terms of their lived experience informs how we work with people thank you in first of all thanking you for the report and more importantly that the report is about are there any recommendations the committee wishes to make other than to thank the thank the report writers and the team for the work i should have declared an interest that i am the treasurer of a uk welcomes refugees and we do a lot of work we think it's very small small numbers less than 50 but we will less than 50 yes they're fine and i don't need any further data would i get support from the committee in putting forward to a recommendation that to cabinet that they should be mindful that barnet is treated fairly relative to other london boroughs if i did as mildly as that if i understand it that's already the case that the officers in consultation let me just be clear in discussions with the home office are trying to make sure that that that when people leave this accommodation barnet doesn't take a disproportionate hit in terms of um you know if you place people in a bar and you put the kids in the schools they're likely to want to live in the borough and there is a challenge about that and i think that's i think that's was has been communicated to the home office um but i'm sorry chair i was going to say i mean i i wouldn't necessarily think it's like cabinet can ensure that we're treated fairly that's a home office decision rather than a we don't cabinet don't decide who comes here it may be more that cabinet should be mindful that huh lobby yeah but i think it's not unreasonable to ask the cabinet to consider whether or not it needs to make further representation of the home office about um the implications of of where you know because in practice if they decided to place them all in scotland clearly less of them would be homeless in barnet i'm not in favor or against that all i'm saying they might quite like it i think i think there is what i mind is the education thing is it's not just a cabinet decision it's not just the bar of sanctuary decisions and the cabinet members there is their children and families and i think i would assume that this is these conversations are happening on a regular basis but let the committee work is quite a liberty to to remind the cabinet that it that it should consider strong lobbying to the home office we might be entitled extra money if people are going to be in the bar or whatever and that where they place people does have implications further down the mountain would that be sufficient that sum up the will of the committee we're to move back to item seven which is on timber framed houses we've got councillor ross houston of course the cabinet member for housing and other things and deputy leader we have susan karen who's the head of strategic housing belinda liversey is the head of housing regulatory services luke ward the director for housing economy and placemaking helen phillips online who's the project manager and councillor kamal gurum who's represent burnt oak ward wishes to speak and i have consented to this i'm not sure about the order but he will have three minutes too so i think we're going to answer the room first okay he has been waiting patiently you have three minutes to tell the committee what you'd like to tell us okay thank you chair good evening to all my name is kamal gurum and i'm one of three councillors of burnt oak wood timber framed housing the burnt councils welcome the work that has gone on to identify and agree cheaper bible options for burnt oak resident but note that this has taken a long time since the first communication a year ago and been a successful a stressful period for burnt oak resident we have liaised with the officers and kept in touch with residents we are aware that although the letters have been co-produced with residents that the last letter outlining the different options has been confusing with people unclear which option should be taken and of next step in this process they are also waiting for information on any launch process so an update letter to resident is needed to give greater clarity and also to advise when the meetings will start with the resident including setting of sessions for owners to discuss potential specific issues pre-meditation options and the council loans available thank you thank you very much councillor uh i know we'll stay on the the line from on the um whatever it's called system while we ask councillor houston to uh introduce the report and maybe then he will respond some what you've had to say all right thank you yeah thank you chair and uh thank you for everyone who's uh joining us online and in person i i think i one of the things i just to to just remind committee of is that this this is a situation that arose because of a fire in mosshole grove in uh summer of 2023 and i the chair of the committee and myself will remember that day after the fire when we were both they went down there and obviously council mcgurk is very much aware of this as well but we we spent a whole day down there with residents affected and uh and it was an horrific it was an horrific uh fire actually and four people lost their homes and almost all their possessions it was uh and i am convinced that had it been a a night time of fire it would have been potentially more serious because i did the fire spread with alarming a speed across the whole terrace and i as a result of that it basically alerted us to the fact that something like this can't be allowed to happen it's not you know there was something wrong with the way that that fire had had spread so quickly and so we were very keen to get the uh you know to make sure that actually we fulfilled our duties as a borough and made sure that there were no a similar properties elsewhere uh and so it started a long process uh and uh you know we had briefings with uh council canelius and uh and uh opposition councils and and ward councils in the various wards about this and i and it has been a long process and a lot of work has gone into to getting it to us to where we are today i updates to cabinet on 12th march 24 and taking forward a plan of work i the part of the process has actually to be you know to just to look at where i we have similar properties that needed investigation i across the borough and one of the and that having identified a those properties to carry out a sample inspections and what we're talking about basically is and what we found during those inspections was that there was what is known in housing world as a category one hazard a under the housing health and safety rating system which was introduced as part of the housing act 20 2004. now that system of of housing regulation has been around for a long time it's well known like actually one hazard is something you cannot let stand as a local authority you have to make sure you take action to deal with category one hazards once they're identified and often you know we've often had these discussions in relation to the private rented sector and licensing and actually you know raising standards because somehow there are some a private properties that and actually occasionally not private properties but public properties that are in falling condition not in barn when it comes to our own housing stock so a series of pilots were undertaken and a lot of public meetings and i went to a meeting over in burnt oak and as you'll see from the report the vast majority of the most affected ward is burnt oak in terms of the numbers of properties that that are in scope for this hazard i and i went to a very packed meeting which the some very good local residents associations sprung up out of you know responding to this and the ward councils were at and one of the things that was very clear when i spoke to those people was that the the majority of people affected as the report will and the numbers are in the report are obviously freeholders and not council tenants and one of the things they said very clearly to us was you know we want to get our properties safe there was an acknowledgement of that but but cost was an issue and they and and basically you know they don't occupy and the council has to make sure they don't have category one hazards but looking at practical ways to make sure that the the risk to them was lowered a to an extent that it would not be a hazard under category one of the hhsrs i and so basically what we did and very strong message that was taken back to the officer team was to look for practical solutions to try and make sure that this was a a solution that was affordable but actually also under solution that that dealt with getting rid of that category one hazard there were some remedial actions that also would took place as a you know we obviously a we we provided smoke detectors and fire safety advice to all residents there's a communications plan set up and and there's a dedicated web page set up a which is updated regularly and meetings with presence groups barnet homes put in place personal emergency evacuation plans which is a housing a term for basically a in high-risk properties to have something in place for the fire brigades but if they attend the site that was done for barnet homes residents but also the the high-risk private residents a we have commenced work in relation to barnet the homeless properties on the highest risk properties and the inspections on the freeholder sites a to the steps starting with the highest risk properties are underway they i think one of the things that is worth saying and obviously and actually we've one of the things that we've we've procured an external provider to do the the inspections they they one of the things in relation to the you know important part of this report and i'm conscious that council rad radford a at this meeting is the cost a to the council a general fund requirements they were expected to be 13 million this is now reduced to 7 million because we found a more affordable option a that's that's a provision to allow us to to give loans to those people that are affected should they require a loan the loan will have to the loan and repayment scheme will be available subject to certain conditions to to help residents who meet the criteria to deal with the category one hazards it's subject to interest and will remain as a charge on the property until it's paid but so we will eventually get that money back but as we've had it done in the past when it comes to large-scale leaseholder and fielder a bills we the council has tried to help with the paying of those bills a the housing revenue account a deals with the cost of remediating council properties a that has gone up slightly from 33.6 million to 5.1 million i that's partly due to and the report does cover this that there were a potential legal challenges and the decision was made that actually the most cost-effective way was to deal with the council dealing with the party wall a issues a rather than getting into legal disputes i all pepper potted around the whole of this the properties affected a and actually that's that that that that money is not easily recoverable so there is a slightly increase in the cost but actually is a it is actually a money a money saving a sort of a a reason that we're doing that a and finally just to say that i think that you know we've briefed the central government the gla local councillors local mps i and i you know basically i want to just commend the commend the the officers for the the effort that has gone into getting us to this stage where we're now going to plan in place and a way forward thank you councillor i know you've got a bit more than three minutes but it's a very important topic and thank you very much providing reassurance i hope to don't focus councillor guru is still there yes and others who are affected actually councillor guru do you have specific points you want to make to councillor houston otherwise i have a question but the chair are you asking to me yes is anything that council houston has anything you want to say to the committee or to councillor houston that's not been said no i don't have anything chair there are four councillors i think in this meeting three of us are here one's online properties affected and the the fire at mossel grove shocked everyone it's absolutely devastating mine is you're talking about the funding we've got complications i think i brought it up at all over in this chamber is that where you've got leaseholders freeholders council tenants and then people who might have then let the properties on it's you know how can we as a council and any future applications the right to buy my views on the right to buy well documented in this chamber i just think i think how we need as a council to aid to ensure that we as a council are actually doing financially properly looking after our tenants and actually alerting anyone who is a leaseholder or a freeholder or who in future may want to actually purchase properties that we're not going to go down the 1980s small print and actually alert where there could be problems the first ever council meeting i sat in this room for stone grove and large panel system which is a history of the making and that was the love that was the first meeting we ever sat on so there are issues around the right to buy at least freehold are we confident that we can actually of the securing that we can advise people without compromising our position if you want i i can i can kick off i mean i think the i mean obviously one of the things that is very i think fair to say is this is an emergent a risk that no survey could have identified when people would have purchased those properties i think it's fair to say and also we are not going to be the local only local authority affected by these sort of properties we have alerted national government we've alerted the gla we're doing the remedial action we think is appropriate we've got a good history in barnet of actually being you know with the response to fire safety we wanted to be you know deal with those things exemplary and i think and we've done that with damper mold as well i think we have to be this is a category one hazard of nerve here and that's that's why we do have to act i i think this has been a problematic a a solution and i think it's something that actually i it is fair with people who have been left in the position that council mcgurk has raised that we put in together our financing a position that allows them to potentially pay for costs that they they weren't expecting and i think that that that is a fair thing to do we don't have to do it as a local authority but we we have done it in the past and it was fair to do it in this case a council one of the things that we will do and i think particularly in burnt oak is is we you know we are going to be having meetings with individual residents to take forward what's proposed in their particular properties and i obviously i think those meetings should involve the local councillors and the local mps and where they want to be involved in those meetings i but to some extent it's probably we'll set up briefings for ward councillors in relation to now that we're at this stage where we go forward i but yeah so i think that's why we put the financial package together and i think that's the fair way to deal with this thank you chair obviously this is a very specific problem that affects very specific properties but what has been learned from this process and this kind of crisis that can be used in the future if something equally as serious were to emerge in our housing stock it's a really interesting question um i think it's it's been a particularly complicated project i mean it's run kind of in tandem with the rack issue coming through and you know we know there's going to be other similar issues that that do come across our books over time i mean obviously we've had grenfell as well so this it's been it's been a process of of um kind of evolving and learning particularly in relation to fire safety over the past few years i mean i think i think in relation to this this this project particularly had to be quite agile in our thinking to try and think of so i'm a you run a housing enforcement service we do with landlords and tenants this is not dealing with landlords and tenants this is this has taken us into kind of other considerations in relation to things like um how it might affect people's insurance in relation to the properties how it might affect yeah people sell their properties we've had to i think we've we set up a team with people for the skill sets and um basically it's been making the best of those people in the skill sets and taking it in the directions that the projects had to go we've had to be agile we've had to change it has taken time which is obviously to the frustration of the residents and i i don't think we're there yet um but i think the learning is that when you are doing things on the move we've just had to evolve and change and just all of us have had to be very flexible in relation to what we're doing and it's just been i think i think probably what we've learned or i've learned more than anything else is when we think as we've we've um heard from the counselor earlier when we think we're doing a lot of comprehensive communication with residents it's never enough and it's never even though we've consulted with residents we never get it right um so it's it's just that constantly knowing that even though we are we're doing everything we can to get it on point it's never going to be quite right we're always going to slightly miss the target and it's how we then kind of steer it back to somebody raising oh you didn't hit the target how are we going to get it back on track so it's that constant checking and rechecking you know keeping things going in the right direction i think i think yeah i think that's right i think um definitely the resident learning but also i guess ways of working between the council and ban at home and i think you know through this process that has i mean it was almost good but i think that has improved and that should help for any future situations that may come councillor masenti thanks chair i just wanted to ask something about the loan um so as i understand it's a loan of up to seven thousand pounds um if what happens firstly do they have to pay interest on that loan secondly what happens how much is the average amount that they would have to pay because i mean talking to some residents it was 15 000 if not more what happens to residents who have to do this in a certain amount of time and the loan isn't enough um so we have reduced the loan offer to reflect that we've got a cheaper more cost-effective solution now so the loan should fully cover the cost of the misting system now the slight caveat to that is we don't know what an individual situation in a house may be so if there is full electrical rewiring needed there may be you know that may not cover that but we will need to look at that as that comes up but we do believe that the cost of the log will cover the cost of the listing system it's been set as higher than we think costs should come in at to give kind of a headroom in case other issues are found but from the inspections the inspections we've done so far have been very split between properties that are really they're fine and then sort of nothing to hear properties that actually have quite a lot of issues to be looking at so um so we're very alive to the fact that set a number around what we know so far but there is going to have to be some level of carryouts to accommodate circumstances where people find themselves and they have bigger bills and they think they're going to have and how we're going to kind of assist people in helping with those issues so for most people it will cost not more than seven thousand uh for residents as the council resident so this remedial work will it affect their rent going forward no yeah so just on the the loan obviously the paper said they'll be secured against the property now obviously these homes similar homes with cladding issues very difficult to to resell and might resell below their market value we will obviously be a charge on the property beneath the mortgage normally because of timing um what's in place to ensure that we do recover as much money as possible should someone foreclose and the property sell below market rate it is always a risk of putting a charge on any property um but we are doing checks before the charge to put on the property to ensure there's enough um room in the amount on the property that they could still be it will still be paid um if it's not paid during the process but on the sale of the property i mean our our obviously our hopes that these are paid over time as opposed to paid on sale that should only be in in the most extreme of cases really trying to find a balance between um being you know respecting the council's financial position and also trying to provide them as much support as we can to residents who are you know obviously very worried about this so it's trying to strike that balance is anything the committee wants to recommend on this report or just notes it notes it anything on the comms to residents we heard from councillor guru yeah absolutely i mean i think we need to take you know i think belinda is exactly right you can never do too much comms i think another round of comms is is needed and i think you know face-to-face meetings some of the best changing director of this came as a result was face-to-face meetings i i i think it's appropriate for me in particular to to to thank the residents groups and in burn talk in particular who have been very uh really really good at engaging with this process and actually being constructive realizing there's a genuine issue but realizing there's a cost to residents i and i and so how about this so it's a big thank you to them but we will take forward the comms so how about that the committee acknowledges the way that our residents have responded to this um tragedy and to the to what follows thanks the team for the work they've done and ask them to review again communication to make sure we accept the point there are some of us who put leaflets through every door in a ward and somebody says you never sent a leaflet to me i know i've got a leaflet through your door the fact you never read it or don't tell me so we know that there's there that some people need more than one and we we ask you to just make sure that you're doing the very best that you can given that budgets are limited to communicate with residents and particularly with those uh councils in burnt oak brunswick park and west virginia that's sufficient for the committee thank you very much indeed we move now on to item number just before we begin make a statement the statement is this members on both sides of the the chamber that is labor members of this committee and conservative members committee and do not believe that we got all of the budget scrutiny perfect and that it could be improved now rather than have a long debate about that i would like the committee to acknowledge that at the beginning ask its new chair to work with governments to look at budget scrutiny and not spend the long fruitless half an hour debating whether we could have done it better or not done it better but ask the new chair with the vice chair um to look at better ways or improved ways there may be dispute about how much we actually did we did some but that we could always do more and see if we could do it more effectively within the program that's available to us would that be acceptable to circumvent the debate thank you but we do want to have a look now at these papers so we've got simon radford online we've got anisa dar on nine we have a finance person with us so i mean i think most of these um figures are already known to you i don't think there's anything unusual in them or dramatic in them i don't know whether anisa sign wants to update us in any way yes um so maybe a short update either from simon or anisa or both as you decide i'm very happy to to start because then i can take the low-hanging fruit and anisa can do the difficult bits um thanks for having me with you today and yes i'm very happy to to echo councillor richard's point very happy to work with new chair and vice chair to make sure that there is sufficient scrutiny i just say when it comes to the budget scrutiny is very welcome i think one of the first conversations which i had with anisa as a new cabinet member have been going through the whole budget was asking questions about what exactly does this mean what exactly does that mean um and making sure that the budget which we published was understandable by a resident logging on and looking in as far as is humanly possible and if there are any further thoughts or comments about how we can lay things out so it's more readily understandable i would very much welcome them in terms of progress since um you saw me last or we we discussed this topic last um you know that in the papers it shows um some of our kind of ongoing work to make sure that um you know what we don't have um a huge amount of reserves there's not a huge amount of wiggle room nor frankly should we um you know presume that there is we should treat it like we're trying to sort of um save every penny where we can and spend it very wisely because ultimately it's not our money it's the um council taxpayers of barnet's money um and in order to make sure that we are doing that we're taking a a series of actions we've set up a series of um boards internally doing deep dives in particular areas where we know there are um big areas of spend or potential pressures we're making sure that we are looking at those areas um double and triple clicking when needed to get under the hood of these areas i've been working with anisa to start thinking about how do we put in place what i would call early warning systems um i how do we find out um any emerging pressures as soon as it would be possible to discover that so whether there are amazing change uh you know emerging changes in demand unit costs or supply chain supply changes in terms of market provision which we would later rely on we want to make sure that we are not identifying this in q2 and q3 but we are doing this um as soon as we possibly can um part of that ongoing um monitoring means you know identifying areas where we can work with services to try and see how we can um do things differently um i'm pleased to say that some of those changes in terms of for example of commissioning on adults and others have already yielded um good results and we're looking to how we can spread best practice we're also looking to bring in an improvement partner which will add capacity i think to really do understand some of the processes understand where there's potential replication or efficiency or productivity gains where we can bring in potential tech where necessary in order to save cost and drive outcomes um and we've been reviewing the capital budget to make sure that it's both within um the sort of envelope of what we can afford but that it's also having the biggest possible impact and we're also reviewing um our asset base to make sure we're sweating every available asset so if you were taking over a business you would kind of make sure you were making the most out of your balance sheets you'd make sure you're monitoring your cash cash position and that's what also we've been doing in terms of monitoring our debt position make sure we're managing cash as efficiently as possible making sure where the treasury function is going as well as it can we're making sure that um you know we're paying our pensions on time our services as efficient as they can be um and that we're trying to work with people to drive more sustainable change i think that's probably enough to sort of set the scene i'm sure there's additional smart things anisa might want to say but hopefully that gives you a bit of a picture in terms of the areas of concentration and where we're putting in a lot of work to really get to the bottom of things and make sure that we are doing everything we can to turn around about its finances in very challenging times for councils across london and across the country benisa do you want to add anything uh yes i just wanted to draw um committee's attention to the paper so it's specifically um showing the position at q3 obviously that is at the end of december 2024 um so it is out of date and what i can update the committee on is that since then in terms of monitoring figures we've seen for month 10 and month 11 it has shown that there has been a reduction in the projected the forecast overspend um not massive um a couple of million pounds but that is to do with cost control measures that have been put into the council um spending control panels which operate four days a week um and really trying to improve that culture across the organization of the fact that while this is a sector-wide problem from a barnet perspective we still need to try and get onto a financial financially sustainable footing um as committee the the the last thing i would just like to draw committee's attention to which is in the cover report and not in the substantive report is that um earlier this year we were alerted by government that they had accepted our exceptional financial support um bid or application rather um and that has been approved for 55 million that is the basis on which we have obviously set the budget um but that is a short-term breathing space measure um and again uh councillor radford and his cabinet colleagues along with uh council officers are trying to work to ensure that the 26 27 budget is as sustainable and robust as possible we're happy to take questions thank you anybody council cornelius council why so that's the product that's the incentive thank you um thank you for the explanation um i suppose it's i'm slightly off beam here but the concern is of course that there'll be it's it's the unexpected things that come along that that that that can dramatically throw a budget and it's not only the spending i mean i do is is there a change in accounting for some things that will be adverse i'm thinking particularly of the send funding and also i'm wondering about the um birmingham equality issue um if that is if that is now a risk to barnet as the budget goes forward please those two issues anisa do you want to take the um send question i can come in on yeah so the the the um there is a lot of press at the moment about uh something called the dsg statutory override which will impact councils that have an overspend um or an ongoing deficit on their dsg barnet currently does not have a deficit on their dsg we do in fact have a positive reserve that we've been carrying forward in respect of our dsg we will this year um for 24 25 have a deficit but we will offset that against that positive reserve and going forward into 25 26 we also while we're forecasting a potential overspend the um the kept the the reserve should be able to contain it um there are about two-thirds of london boroughs that have got a deficit and it will impact them but it doesn't impact barnet at the moment um and just to add on your second point to make sure we don't miss that um yes i guess we could you know you could do the whole rumsfeldian unknown unknowns uh and i can't give you a good list of them because they're unknown but they're it's it's very wise to say how do you deal with the unexpected i think there's um i would hope to say that normally when we've had the unexpected it tends to have always gone in one direction which is always quite interesting i'm hoping there might be some unexpected in a positive direction um obviously we've seen some good news on inflation coming down and the bank of in uh back in bank of england cutting rates again i know i know the sort of guilt tends to follow quite closely the us treasury rate and us treasuries have started coming down as well so um while we must guard the sort of the unexpected risks um you know i'm hoping to celebrate some unexpected rewards potentially as well um that being said birmingham so one of the things which um you know i've made sure to do in terms of batting my eye in as the new cabinet member is to um sort of study and look at reach out to colleagues from other councils to understand um various bits and pieces so one of the things i did when i looked at the most the first um budget paper which obviously inherited was to also look at how other councils have set fares out to see whether there's stuff which we can take on board birmingham was one of them and as part of that i've kind of looked into that i think in terms of the um equal pay claim in birmingham and the oracle claim clearly those two things have got a lot of press just as it's fair to say that um our issues with oracle have been nothing compared with birmingham's i would also expect that any issues with equal pay would also pale in comparison to what birmingham had to go through and so i think you're right to raise it as something which is worth keeping a watching brief on but um i'm confident that it's very far from crystallizing into something that would need to be reflected in a budget or anything at this point um and that's probably the the most that i can probably say at this point because it's there's no real clarity over even what the issue tangibly is let alone what the implications for it might be um but that being said i appreciate it being brought up because it is something that is um on the agenda as an ongoing issue that i'm keeping an eye on overspend what are we doing to kind of watch those budgets that are under but approaching so that we can try and stop the problem before it happens like a traffic light system of a green budget an amber budget a red budget and when it's amber can we are we doing enough to not let it get to red in essence um great question um anise will tell you that this has been a bit something of an obsession of mine since i started um i think one of the the challenge i think that we that we have set the organization and it's it's a challenge which has been really readily accepted which has been brilliant is that because i think everyone is focused on um you know financial let me let me put it this way it is in some organizations and in some councils no doubt um the job of financial sustainability falls on a finance team that can't be the case in barnet and and shouldn't be the case and won't be the case um it'll be it's the job of everyone and the entire council to that end we need to make sure that we're getting the right data the right information as early as possible around the right risk factors to be able to head off things as early as humanly possible so as part of the boards which i mentioned where we're doing deep dives in um across the council on lots of um the sort of areas which i think we feel like we need to do that work part of it is um putting together a kind of what i would call an early warning system other people you know might say is a dashboard or a tracker where we're getting as close to real-time data on all the variables that matter um as far as is humanly possible and that allows us to track it against previous years against tolerances and also with the context and the qualitative data that people in those services can also bring to bear in terms of putting some context and some perspective around those numbers and then that allows us to work with that service to say you know what are you seeing here is this something which we can um you know triage and address as soon as possible so i think it's again a a wise question something that um has certainly been um close to an obsession of mine since we started and something which i'm i'm pleased to say and can genuinely say has been a really exciting area of collaboration across the council to make sure that we're doing as well as we possibly can thank you chair i'm just a bit baffled as to what the value of bringing this paper to the obvious scrutiny committee this evening is the budget's already been approved what are we actually trying to do here without being provocative you might want to ask your own leader whilst i think for the paper to come is that correct we receive all quarterly reports and quite rightly the vice chair was vigilant this one should come this is the only meeting could have come to i'm happy to curtail the discussion if there isn't much discussion i think it leads to a bigger discussion around best practice democratic scrutiny to bring it to over your scrutiny after the budget's been set and perhaps there's a question for the head of governance which is maybe a bit unconventional this evening but whether he believes that the current process needs to be re-evaluated i made the comment at the beginning that both parties had agreed that the way we would scrutinize the budget was could be improved and that that would be one of the tasks of the new chair to work with governance and the vice chair who i don't know is changing so i assume it will be leaving the opposition to um to improve that with all due respect to the future chair and vice chair the question really and governance the question really should perhaps be addressed to the officers that are putting governance in this position and just for a bit of context um so so this committee does a set piece budget scrutiny meeting around november december every year um and the vice chairman picked up that there wasn't a forum where the quarterly out term reports were being monitored and there was a request for them to come to this committee um i think in the the circumstance of this report there's a timing issue because the q3 out term report has already been to cabinet as pointed out the data is old um i think there is a value for this committee to leave the court to the out term report so the question is probably more of the timing of these meetings and getting it at the right point in the cycle but a function of this committee absolutely is to have a look at the out term reports and to scrutinize it and to say where there's identify where there's potential overspends or underspends and to challenge and scrutinize that that's an absolutely critical function of the committee because that's something that got lost when we um changed the committee structure so the vice chair who brought that to the attention and brought the the quarterly um reviews back is was absolutely in my mind absolutely correct in that it's more about the the budget function here and as you mentioned it's it's all data and uh again my question really is whether officers are presenting agendas to governors within sufficient time for governors to turn them around to committees if that's the case and if so i think your point is well is well taken as i indicated in my opening remarks and it will need to be explored can't be explored today so if there are questions you want on today's even if the day to someone out today i'm happy to proceed of course you can put a resolution that we move straight to note the report and move because for all sorts of reasons i'm not sure that will be objected to by many members of the committee so would you like to put that as a possibility council well to be to be fair i've got councillor mcwork council incentive council amber and councillor cornelius again so you can either all have your questions or you can uh second councillor praga's possibility that that we just know we move straight on to other business i promise not to take it personally chair can i just say is that i think there there is an issue if you're putting your fails forward as a member of the opening committee there are times when you might have to i know you could put a pressure on governance there are things will happen where you might have more meetings to actually do the scrutiny properly the calendar doesn't necessarily always meet the diary of meetings doesn't necessarily meet the calendar of finance so i think we need to be as a council more flexible the as someone who's been a chair of account of committees a cabinet member chair of the scrutiny committee and been doing this for some time there needs to be some flexibility and i think simon has agreed that i think and when there's urgent things that come up when changes that come up we need to have something in the system whereby it's not a full overview scrutiny committee that we need to have somewhere that we can do it i think we know that it wasn't perfect wasn't perfect but i think we need to have flexibility okay look let's we understand the procedure has not been as good as it could have been or might be it approved but i think these these figures did in fact go to a previous meeting are there any questions i know councillor senzi had one and councillor ambay had one and councillor cornelius had one on the set which most members have already seen at councillor david let's get through these relatively quickly and then we can move on i would say councillor incentive's question thank you chair my question is on revenue generation i i feel like i've sat in several meetings now where we've heard that we need to look at different income streams and develop yeah new ways of generating income um can we be can we have a report or something that tells us what what's been done over the last few years about diversifying our income streams um or if this hasn't been done yet what we have in place the next few years it's just something i've repeatedly asked and i haven't seen any proof of yet thank you so we could put that as a recommendation i think that um at some stage we'd like a report on income generation over historic income generation and what's happening thank you councillor uh but or you've done yours thank you councillor ambay thank you chair um sorry uh my question was more to was more an explanation for what dsg meant so i think we've more conversation till now uh anisa yeah dsg stands for dedicated schools grant it's the funding we receive um for primarily funding schools but we also fund uh early years block and also high needs from it thank you it was just the um acronym yeah apologies i should have used the full term before using the acronym thank you um councillor comes david did you indicate of i imagine that no you did sorry um i was just looking through the bad debts written off and i'm aware that uh this was being looked at how we can recover as much as possible and reduce um has there been an improvement in the area um so in respect of bad debt as you all know our biggest debtor is uh health so the icb and in respect of the changes that were announced um in the last couple of weeks in respect of changes to nhs england and also um icbs i suspect it will be it will become harder to engage with them uh however we are working really well across children services adults public health and finance to ensure that we have got um a good record of like all the agreements uh that are made um the debt they do owe us invoicing on time chasing up etc um so unfortunately just on our biggest debtor i suspect being realistic things will get a little bit worse while they're going through a period of uncertainty um but the assurance i can give you is that we are absolutely working together um to ensure that that is that the performance on that is improved because that's a key risk um especially around um getting health income for children with high needs packages thank you for that thank you that's a good build-up um building on councillor weiss's point and also councillor prager's point cancer rapid with the new data that you're getting and the early warning system and the figures would you put that online so that we can all see it i mean in the interest of transparency i i remember when we decided we'd publish all spending over 500 quid all right it's all right no history sorry i'll shut up thank you would you do that please um it's it would probably be bad practice to make um glib and and and off the cuff promises what i can say is um at the beginning i said i welcomed scrutiny and welcome the transparency it's helpful i think for us to get that information what we can share which isn't proprietary which isn't um problematic to share i i don't see why we wouldn't look to do that so um why don't i promise to to look into what else we can share and and tell you that i think some of it probably is it's a large part of it is just pulling it together i know for example in barnet open data there's an expenditure um reporting um for 24 25 which i think we can share with everyone so we still publish expenditure over 500 pounds um but if there are additional things which we can put together and share of course we will look to do that um what's the old cliche sunshine is the best disinfectant i think that probably while it is a cliche probably remains true so we're going to note this report by but we do want some more information on income generation we note the commitment to be as open and transparent as possible and the third one of course is to review with the new chair of the ovun scrutiny committee and relevant officers how we can do this all do this more efficiently and effectively that okay for everybody before the actual recommendations go out they get sent to the chair and vice chair now that's something i've introduced but to make sure that both um parties in the chamber are reasonably content with and recommended i haven't summarized something but let's then move on you anisa and uh councillor edford anisa dar and councillor edford thank you very much indeed for your help this evening thank you all we move swiftly on to item number 10 task and finish groups supplementary agenda fiona ray thank you very much fiona ray overview and screening manager um so this is the standard task and finish group progress update report um with a few extras um so you might have seen we've got our usual table of how things are going um the sort of the green bar of progress and you might see that it's significantly greener now which is nice um and similarly attached to the report as appendices uh d e you'll see some cabinet responses to task and finish groups um so these are just being reported uh for monitoring purposes for information and if there's any uh changes the committee would like to request or suggest they're very welcomed uh in addition we also have the food security task and finish group scope which is attached for your agreement and i'm happy to answer questions on any of those any i think we just need to note this report sorry council weissel um i think i've raised this before that we i know that we had some problems in year one of moving things forward at pace topics that were agreed nearly a year ago by committee in our first meeting after the last agm are now just being scoped how are we progressing with moving these faster because i know we've just put out for sort of ideas for the next round if those are going to be agreed in sort of june and they're not dealt with for almost a year they're often then out of date by the time we're actually agreeing them at committee and how are we getting better at being more responsive well everything that's currently allotment management fostering food security and sustainable travel were agreed at the beginning of this council year by this committee as task and finish groups and they're only at the beginning of the green bar rather than at the end we'll be asked to agree new topics in our first this committee will be asked to agree new topics in its first meeting if those are then still coming back at this sort of stage for scoping we need yeah can we speed up finishing basically so so uh working with fiona and the screening team we are working on trying to speed these up um so in terms of in terms of scoping what we've what we've done is instead of waiting for a committee or subcommittee to agree the scope as long as the members are on the group have agreed the scope then we'll just push on with that um taking the example of the allotments management that that has only started fairly recently and we're expecting the work to conclude at the end of april um and moving to a one stage process is going to speed things up a lot and because what we found is some of the initial task and finish groups have taken a lot longer to complete their work report into cabinet and get reports back um than we would have liked so we are working on speeding everything up there have been some externalities which have affected um the progression of some of the groups so i think on sustainable travel the team weren't quite ready and they kind of pushed us back a couple of months before that start so um there wasn't anything to look at which has been unfortunately a reason why it's been delayed so there are various factors but we are working really hard on getting them started and finished a lot quicker which i've said this before we we have tasks we don't get to finish as as it are sometimes the tasks too big a scope to actually finish so so when we're going through a task and finish i think making it more narrow and more direct and actually feasible is probably a better way it's a better use of counsellors time and officers time then and if you can't think you're going to finish just say we abandon it i know i know myself but alison paulini has abandoned let's also be clear without being defensive that the committee's only existed for three years and we're getting or two years actually we're beginning to learn how to do things better or we can all learn to do things differently it can be better of course sometimes it's worse but we hope it will be better so i think we're all conscious to do more um but so they have resource limitations we need to get volunteers to sit on these groups commercially to make sure that we doubt them and we're trying all of those so i think we're great for the comments they're noted and i want to move on if i might to camera forward planning plan yeah sorry can we just confirm that people are happy to agree the committee's happy to agree the scope for the food security task and finish group yes thank you thank you very much indeed that's agreed cabinet forward plan so i won't go too much into the cabinet floor plan we do have a number of items that have already been highlighted from previous cabinet floor plans on our upcoming work program um but if anyone has anything they'd like to add or find out further information please let us know thank you that's noted we now move on to item 12 which is the overview and scrutiny committee work program i will say as an introduction that um we're a pretty hard working committee we get probably still more papers than we should do and um as you know in other barriers there are more committees doing this work and more staff allocated to it but we work within the resources that are allocated to us by whoever allocates them and you have here on item 12 pages 67 to 69 to 70 something six and you'll also note a couple of references one on cyber security must be only to use cyber security barnet homes repairs and residence communications brent cross project thank you jake um so on cyber security you may remember at the december meeting the committee asked us to look into whether it was necessary for this committee to look into the issue and because it is covered by uh the governance audit risk management and standards or gams committee um and we've heard back from officers that they do believe cyber security risks and measures um as they're reported to gams the committee and through regular corporate risk updates they believe that's sufficient um so if the committee is happy to accept that we can remove it from the work program alternatively if we'd like to keep it on and it would be useful to have a focus um for the paper so cyber security you either join donald trump's cabinet or you can go to gams does that agree thank you i'm rather donald trump's cabinet yes i think you're probably right okay that's okay now on barnet uh on barnet homes and repair uh repairs and versus communication there's obviously a connection between those two things and i think the suggestion we bring it together as one report rather than two i think that's sensible brent cross project garms are recommended that the ob of scrutiny committee and cabinet should have break cross project as a regular item on its agenda so i was trying to say that if brent cross region is part of the committee's work program could we consider what send them so part of it the reason i say that is because uh this came has got loads of not just saving problems but serious issues so fine comment and then others will come in i mean i'm i'm trying to take things off the agenda not add and that includes bread cross and western the matter i'm not making the two of them um i am just a bit reluctant and if we're not careful on every group and i i don't say this about anybody here but committees and individual councils and groups which think something is important and probably is will think aha send it to the overview scrutiny committee and we will we already have an unmanageable agenda and i think we'll have an even more on that man that's what worries me that's not about the there's no comment about west hendland or about brent cross it's just about the principle of adding all these things to the agenda so i hear i see councillor mitra and then councillor weissall thanks thanks chair i i agree with what you said i think there are a number of major schemes across the borough that becomes very very difficult to have them all come back every time um i think it's worth reminding captain rambe that he can bring a member's item to this if he wants any particular updates on any aspect so as as things progress he can always do thank you um i may regret this so i haven't had a conversation with the leader about his plans for next year for licensing and general purposes chair but i do know that the forward plan for licensing and general purposes is light that general purposes is a broad description and i don't know if there's any work that is done here that's a noting of things that could maybe be dealt with by that committee um just to keep an eye on and then could be referred back if it needs to be because there's a point of concern i know that that committee has reduced its number of meetings a year from three to two because of because of the lack of agenda items and as i say i may regret this in my other role i think i'm not unhappy to accept that provided there's some kind of recommendation that ensures that the issue is taken up properly at cabinet that things are screwed we we have the duty to scrutinize if we can add value to and i'm not sure that putting breadcross on regularly will do that absolutely so can we agree that we're not accepting that you'll communicate that back to where appropriate uh we also have fun to happen very closely to the end so don't get overexcited 20 mile an hour policy and transport strategy i think um the governance manager the overview manager wrote you and asked you whether you would like an additional meeting which most of you said no and that um we would do deal with this by email or other so that will come to you in the appropriate way at the appropriate time and if i made sure the same goes before there was a request to add the draft supplementary planning document sustainable design and development guidance um and due to the timelines it's likely that that will be in a similar position and where it'll be sort of um between meetings scrutiny if you will and then we can report it to the next meeting and the recommendations can go where they need to go so you get the papers you can respond to me or to be honest you choose until the 20th of may and by the way it's not a formal committee meeting i will be the chair of the committee uh you can come back to me on those things there are no other urgent items i'd like to there is uh this is your last meeting can i extend our thanks and i think i may have just beaten richard um for the last two years of chairing yes i'd like to thank you you know it's very difficult being in opposition it's not much fun as the labor group know and we don't like it but you have been very fair and uh i thank you for that and uh the the committee meetings i believe have added value and they have not been intensely boring so thank you very very much thank you excellent staff and excellent staff and excellent so thank you all and go home