Transcript

Good evening, and welcome to this meeting of the Cabinet. As usual, before we start, are there any declarations of interest or apologies? Councillor White. I'm a volunteer at Saccru, but I draw no enumeration or any financial benefit from my involvement. Thank you, and we also have apologies from Councillor Henderson as well. Grant, well, welcome to May's Cabinet meeting. Thanks for coming. For those watching along online, I'd like to welcome Councillor White, our new Cabinet Member for the Environment, to the team, and also Councillor Gasser to her new role as Cabinet Member for Children. Before we talk about the decisions we're making this evening, I just want to give a brief update, as usual, about the month that we've had. We had Strictly Wandsworth, which is a fantastic kick-off to our year as Borough of Culture. It was amazing. I know a number of you in the room enjoyed dancing along with Oti Mabuse, with Gok Wan. It was brilliant also to have Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, along in his favourite borough. It was a day of fun for so many residents, and it's just a kind of spectacular, joyful event that we'll see much more of in our year of Borough of Culture. The last month's also seen the launch of our Access for All scheme. We've expanded that and launched new digital membership cards. Access for All was already a huge success, with more than 80,000 people taking part in free gym and swim sessions. And we've delivered thousands of other free and discounted experiences from our residents. So that's those gym and swim sessions, welcoming park run to Battersea Park, free swimming lessons for under eights, just to name a few. Access for All is helping residents live more active and healthier lives. And now we've expanded this across more of our services and activities around the borough, ensuring that support is available from the day-to-day essentials to life's key moments. So for residents in those Access for All eligible groups, services that they must access, we provide 100% discount. And for services that they choose to access, we provide a 50% discount. So that's 50% off your allotment, your bike hangar rental, and in fact, people are now getting married in the town hall, 50% off your Access for All weddings as well. And we've made the process of signing up and accessing these offers more streamlined for residents by launching that new digital membership platform that drops into your Google wallet. It's like a sort of train ticket. And if you're not online, you can get a physical membership card as well. So I'm incredibly proud to say this is now Britain's best concessionary scheme. We're breaking down barriers, we're expanding opportunities, and we're creating a fairer Wandsworth. And finally, we had VE Day just last weekend. I know the borough was home to dozens of street parties for VE Day. We waived the fees for those road closures and also handed out grants to the community to make sure everyone could celebrate the 80th anniversary of this event in real style. And I know most of us were able to attend events local to us, and it was great to see the mayor of Wandsworth get round a number of them herself. I'm proud we were able to provide grants to groups like Age UK Wandsworth to bring VE Day celebrations to some of our less mobile residents and support celebrations like the one at St. Mary's in Battersea. VE Day was a time to bring communities together, and that is central to what we're trying to do here in Wandsworth. Some great photos on our website, and if anyone wants to see the celebrations that took place, along with some incredible stories of Wandsworth residents who were here on the original VE Day, please go online and look at those. So that's what we've been up to in the past month. You can also see in the packs in front of you, we've got three papers that we're considering this evening. So the first report that we have for decision tonight is the spending of the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, which is our NSIL fund, and NSIL is Neighbourhood SIL. That's a contribution from property developers for us to spend on local infrastructure projects, which is, of course, part of our decade of renewal. And as part of becoming a more outward-looking, collaborative council, we've spent the last year consulting with residents and organisations all across the borough to get their feedback on what their priorities are. We've been doing that online. You've probably seen a big map at the leaders' drop-ins. We're doing it by email, by WhatsApp, finding out what priorities are and how we can benefit local people. So I'm pleased to say we've ended up with a great number of projects, and it involves us working with some incredible community groups. So just wondering if we could take a closer look at the paper. I don't know, Councillor Akinola, do you want to talk us through some of the community projects we have in this list? Yeah, absolutely. So NSIL is going to fund some work at Carney's Gym, and they do great work with boxing in the community. We're very proud that they're in our borough. But they're also piloting a bike project, so we're going to help refurbish the workshop there so they can get going. So I look forward to seeing, visiting them then. Refurbishing other community centres, including KLS, who are celebrating 100 years with their film at Battery Arts Centre later today, or even like this very minute, yes, the Doddington and Rollo Centre as well. And I'm very pleased that we are investing in the Wandsworth Property Partnership, which is a partnership between council, local people, that we've been working on for a couple of years with platform places, and hopefully we'll be bringing one of our empty buildings in Wandsworth High Street back into use, particularly for cultural and arts uses. Fingers crossed. Amazing. Thanks very much. And I know that transport and infrastructure is a huge part of what we're investing this money in as well. I don't know, Councillor Yates, if you could say a few words about that. Yeah, thank you, Councillor Hogg. Yes, I'm really pleased. There's a lot of investment going into making our transport network safer for everyone. We're installing speed indicator devices across the borough, targeting areas where residents raise concerns over speeding and road safety. We are improving the walking and cycling provision on Queenstown Road. That's a very important scheme. The section of the road from Queen Circus up to Chelsea Bridge, which is a very, very heavily cycled road. We're widening the footway and providing segregated cycle lanes. We'll be doing the same at Wandsworth Bridge, making the temporary scheme there permanent with proper segregated cycle lanes that meet today's standards. We're looking carefully at how best to carry out those works, given that's a key river crossing. And obviously, we don't want residents to be disrupted. So we'll be doing some of that work at night to minimise disruption. Using NSIL, this will also be making a contribution to two push-button crossings we're doing on Garrett Lane, just near the Henry Prince Estate. That's following resident feedback about lack of crossings by the estate. And of course, as we know, Garrett Lane is a very, very busy road. So these are just part of the improvements to our roads and pavements that we're making as part of our decade of renewal. That's great stuff. Thanks so much. And I know, Councillor White, there is quite a lot under your portfolio of environment here as well. But I appreciate, given your links to crew, you'll probably sit this one out. But is it okay if I run through a few of the things we'll be doing? Because it's obviously a huge priority to use these developer contributions to make leisure, exercise, getting outdoor more accessible to people in the borough, and particularly those who are currently underrepresented, and there's some great steps towards that in this neighbourhood renewal fund. You'll see a grants programme specifically aimed at increasing the participation of women and girls in sport. And we're going to refurbish outdoor play equipment right across the borough. There's 15 playgrounds included in this report for refurbishment. And we've got outdoor gyms at Tooting Common, King George's Park, and Wondall Recreation Centre in there as well. And just to say, we're not going to replace those playgrounds like for like, not just rusty equipment with new equipment. You know, we know some are used more than others. We know demographics have moved on, that play equipment has moved on since we last looked at them. So we're actually employing an officer, and there'll be a proper team that will go through looking at those playgrounds one at a time. We're going to replace the athletics track at Battersea Park Millennium Arena, and crucially spend £50,000 providing community activities over the next two years to make sure that there's truly access for all there. We're replacing the Battersea, all-weather artificial turf pitches, and delivering community activities there over the last three years. So congratulations on a fantastic, wide-ranging offer. Councillor Henderson isn't here, but he would want me briefly to mention a few of the community safety elements of this paper. I know he's very pleased about the three rapidly deployable CCTV cars. They'll enable us to respond immediately to reports of antisocial behaviour and crime, and to act as a proper deterrent. We're going to add 150 hours a month of extra CCTV monitoring to our network, already one of the biggest in London. And we also have money here to pay for three additional community safety officers over a two-year period, operating across Falkenbrook, Nine Elms, St. Mary's, Battersea Park, and Surrey Lane Wards. So Wandsworth is already the safest in the London borough, but we know that this is because of the hard work of our police, of our residents, and our investment as well. So just wondering if anyone has any other comments or questions about this paper? Councillor Ireland. Thank you, Councillor Hogg. I'm really pleased to see money going out the door here to improve facilities, but I was just wondering if residents or any community groups come forward with any suggestions about gaps in the provision, how easy would it be to expand on this list? Oh, very easy. Please come forward, please say that this is £9 million worth of spending this evening, but there's another £3.5 million in the pot. I think the Gas Holders site, which got planning permission last month, had something like £20 million worth of sill attached as well, so obviously a few million pounds of neighbourhood sill there. So areas are still open, officers are still listening, so the next tranche of funding will come through very quickly, and you'll see pretty much all of the schemes in this paper being delivered within the next year. Lovely. Thank you. Wonderful. So are we happy to approve the contents of that report? Thank you. Thank you very much, and thanks to everyone who's been involved in it. Now, the next item is the Wandsworth Borough Sanctuary Community Fund Round 4. Councillor Akinola, do you want to take us through this? Yes, I'm actually really pleased. I'm really pleased about this. So I think this is our second or third year of delivering, of handing grants to community groups for Borough Sanctuary. But what's really important this year, and I'm really pleased that we've actually managed to do it, is that the grants were first assessed by a group of people with lived experience of sanctuary and refugees, which is really building on the work that we did with, well, we've been doing with the LBOT champions. So they assessed it first, and then they joined the grants committee to ratify and agree and rationale their decisions together with councillors. And that's actually how these awards have been made, which is a very positive step, I think, for all of us actually handing over power to our residents, especially our newest ones. Also, funds are going out to KLS, CARIS and Power to Connect, who are doing events for Refugee Week and other work, which is skilling up our newest residents and helping them to really assimilate into our wonderful borough, as I like to call it, Wandsworth, and more of this over the next year. So I hope everyone can make it to Refugee Week events in June. Thanks so much for that, Councillor Akinola. Are there any comments or questions? If not, do we approve that paper? Thanks very, very much. And then the final item for this evening is St Anne's school closure proposal, and we're fortunate to be joined by the Executive Director for Children, Mos Popovici, this evening. I wonder, would you be able to say a few words of introduction, and then we'll hear from Councillor Gasser, if that's okay. Happy to, Councillor Hock. Thank you for having me tonight. We know that financially it's been challenging for our schools in London, but also here in Wandsworth. We haven't been immune to the very real impact on our schools of falling pupil numbers. As a council, we've worked tirelessly in partnership with our schools and taken a strategic approach to manage this with careful place planning, with forecasting, and through capping and formally reducing pupil admission numbers. And although this has gone some way to help our schools, to strengthen the financial health of our school system, it hasn't really been sufficient to avoid some difficult discussions, like the proposals here today, which will always come as a last result. It's very sad, yet it's not a surprise that actually the Governors at St Anne's have approached us with their careful decision to consult on the closure of the school. And I want to start by thanking the Governors, the headteacher, our colleagues in the school and the dioceses for their bravery and unwavering commitment to do what's right, even when that decision is difficult, emotional, and potentially met with disappointment and challenge to an extent. Their willingness and desire to work with us in partnership and be the best partner they can be has made this process and decision one which has arrived at with kindness and, I think, full transparency for the communities involved. At the heart of this decision is a school, a community with a distinct and cherished religious ethos, which has educated and nurtured our children and been a professional home to countless of talented and dedicated pupils and teachers alike. The school experience is so special and a defining period of a child's life, bringing with it opportunities for learning and growth, a sense of belonging to the place, friendship groups, and the foundation for future successes. And this is what this Council wants for all children in one's world. I know that. And that is why it's crucial that the decision on the future of the school is made in the best interest of the pupils at St Anne's, to ensure that they can receive the best possible education, the most enriched experiences, and have all their needs met and experience opportunities of growth to enable them to drive and grow further. So whilst considering this decision, Cabinet members, I hope that you can embrace the loving and inclusive spirit of St Anne's in your hearts and reflect on how its legacy can live on in every success story of its current and former pupils. Thank you, Councillor Holt. Well said. Thank you very much and thanks for your work on this. Councillor Gasser. Yes, thank you. Just to add to what Ms. Popovich said, I'd just like to thank the Governors for all their work and all their care on this. This is a horrible decision to make. Nobody wants to decide to close the school. But as Anna said, it's about the best interest of the pupils, actually, because they know that the school is now no longer financially sustainable. And that's no reflection on the quality of the education or the quality of the service there. It's a lovely school. But the pupil numbers have been going down and down. Currently, they only have 58 pupils across all the year groups, of which 26 are year six. So they're going to be leaving anyway to go to secondary school. They've had only, I think, two first-place applicants this year. So it's just not viable. You can't make the school work on that basis. And they have tried everything. They've been innovative and creative, working with our officers, combining year groups, doing this, doing that. There just were no more solutions. So they're now facing a possible deficit of $300,000 if they carry on. They've spent up all the reserves. And you can't maintain a school on that basis. So they very sadly made the decision in recommending to us that we decide to close this school. They are sure, and we are sure, that the children will be able to thrive and prosper in alternative schools. We are looking very closely at alternative provision. And those schools will be able to provide the support and the development that those children need for the rest of their time. They have done consultations, both formally and informally. They've reached out to the community. They received five responses in the formal consultation, of which three were in favour of closure. So they do feel that this is the right thing to do, to propose the closure. And if this is decided tonight, we will start working, the governors will start working, to look for alternative school places for those children. And for the staff as well. This is very emotional for the staff as well. We're going to support them in the transition, of course. And we would really like to keep the staff with our own family of schools. We want to keep them in Wandsworth. They're a lovely team of staff. So we are confident that there are enough places locally in good or outstanding schools for the local children. So hopefully we'll keep the disruption to a minimum. We're going to try and make this transition as smooth as possible. And Councillor Sarah Davis, the local councillor, has also offered to meet with and support any families that might need her. So thank you again to the governors, to all the council officers that have been supporting this and been brave enough to take this, recommend the paper that we recommend closure. Thank you, Councillor Gasser. Are there any comments or questions on the proposal? Thank you very much. I was just wondering about children with special education. They will also have a smooth transition to the new schools. Thank you. Yes, thank you. There are actually four children with the HCPs who would transfer to other schools and officers have already been looking into this, taking it into account. They're planning where children will end up and they're confident that there are surrounding schools locally that can cater for their needs. Thank you. Councillor Yates. Yeah, thank you very much for all the information, and I understand the difficult decision. I imagine parents in the surrounding area might be wondering about the impact for them and their children. So would you be able to say anything about that? Thank you. Yes, so fortunately, there are 13 other primary schools situated within one mile of St. Anne's. And based on recent vacancy returns, there are currently 453 vacancies across reception to year five. Good for these families, not good for the future, because we do have spaces, which is a worry long term. But yes, we are confident that everybody can be accommodated locally. So the transition hopefully will be smooth for the children and for the schools that they join and shouldn't put any undue stress on the local system. So, yeah, all the schools, as I said, are either good or outstanding, really good staff. Everybody will be mobilized to support the children as much as possible. Thank you. Are there any other comments or questions? If not, thank you, Ms. Popovici and Councillor Gasser. Are we agreeing with the decision that's put forward in the paper? Yeah, no, it is difficult. Thank you very much. So that concludes the formal business for this evening. I know that was a difficult decision, but I'd also emphasize we've put £9 million of investment into our communities, and we've done it by listening to local people that they want investment in their leisure facilities, in their playgrounds to make their streets safer. So thank you all very much for your work this month, and I look forward to seeing you next month. Good evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.