Transcript

Please note that we're not expecting a firearm test this evening, so if the alarm is sounded, please follow my instructions and evacuate the building. Please remember that this meeting is being broadcast live on the council's website. Please turn your microphone on when speaking and remember to turn it off when you've finished. To make sure that you can be heard on the broadcast and in the chamber, please speak clearly and directly into your microphone. I will now ask my fellow members and the officers to introduce themselves, starting on my right. Emma Taylor, Clark, to the committee. Councillor Floor-Williamson, Executive Member for Health and Adult Social Care, which covers sport and leisure. Barry Inson, I'm the Head of Park Sports and Physical Activity. Barry Inson, Executive Member for Environment, Air Quality and Transport. Wayne Stevenson, Corporate Director of Environment and Climate Change. Andrew Bedford, Assistant Director for Green and More Active. Mikhail Kiviniemi, Community Sports Manager for Greenwich Leisure Limited. We run the leisure centres in the borough. Thank you very much. So, we have no apologies, I don't think. No, I haven't had any apologies. And no declaration of substitute members. Any declaration of interest? No, thank you. The minutes of the previous meeting, can we... Apologies from Councillor Phil Graham. Thank you. So, the next meeting, sorry, the minutes of the previous meeting, I'm asking you to agree the minutes of the previous meeting, which was chaired by Councillor Hayes, actually, on the 25th of February. So, committee, thank you. And public questions, we will take public questions after each agenda item. And the order of business is unchanged. My report is, this is the last time that I'll be chairing the Environment, Climate Change and Transport Committee. I'd like to give my thanks to Emma. She's supported the committee so brilliantly and reliably. And, you know, this scrutiny that we review, the second dispatch today is evidence of her really efficient work. I'd like to thank the officers of the Climate Change and Transport team and the Environment team. And just one bit of business, one item that I've put in there, that the deadline for Islington and Bloom is the 5th of June. So, we're going to start with the presentation on leisure facilities in Islington and with Barry Emerson and Andrew Bedford and Councillor Flora Williamson. Thank you very much. Great. Thanks very much, Chair. I'm just going to give a really, really brief bit of a summary before I hand over to Barry Emerson, who can give you a lot more of the detail. So, in Islington, we want Islington to be a more equal place. And a really key part of that is around improving our residents' health and well-being. And a really important part of that is our sport and leisure offer and getting Islington residents as active as they can be in the way that works for them. And so, the sport and leisure offer is a really, really key part of that. I think in Islington, we've got something to be really proud of. We've got some really good activity rates amongst our residents. So, we've got the second highest activity rate for adults in London. The eighth, yeah, it's the eighth across England. And looking at it the other way, our inactivity rates are low. So, inactivity is people doing less than 30 minutes a week. And we've got the lowest in London and the sixth lowest in England. So, I think we've got something to be really proud of that we are really getting our residents active. That may just be walking to the shops, but it could be sports and coming to our leisure centres and being active in that way. So, I just wanted to sort of set the scene in that. And before I hand it to Barry, I would, you know, I think it's really important. We've had a big milestone in terms of our leisure offer this weekend just being in that we finally have the Soba completely reopened. It's been quite a long journey. But, again, we are now getting lots of children and young people coming in. We've had 97,000 visits to the active play zone between the end of October and the end of April. So, it's proven to be really popular with families and children. And we know getting children and young people active is really important. Hot off the press, I can tell you that the new multi-active zone, which is aimed at sort of teenagers and young adults, only opened for the first time this weekend with no marketing and it completely sold out. It is an absolutely unique facility. I have now tested it twice and I can highly recommend it for levels of fun and getting very hot and sweaty and out of breath quite quickly. So, I just recommend everyone going down. It's a really unique facility and I think, you know, praise the team for getting that through. I'm now going to hand those to Barry, who can actually go into much more detail on the whole sports offer. Thank you, Councillor Williams. So, I think how I'll go through the presentation today, which we've all had in advance and I'm sure have had an opportunity to look through. So, I won't go through every slide and talk to them all in detail. I'll just highlight a couple of the key things that we're working on and some of the key achievements we've had over the last couple of years. Just to say, as a starting point, what's driving our services at the moment around activity is our Active Together strategy, which is a strategy we developed and launched in 2022 and it's aimed to run through until 2030. And this is about how we get the most inactive members of our communities active. So, yes, we do have some very, very good activity rates, but we have a lot of people who are very inactive and are missing out from those health and wellbeing benefits. One of our key drivers as a council is around that prevention and early intervention. And, you know, being active is a great way of living a healthy life no matter what age you're at. And so, that strategy is really focused on delivering those outcomes. And it's not a strategy that we are delivering in isolation as a service. It's something we work very, very closely with the public health team and a range of the schools team, the Bright Start teams, and basically it's a council-wide delivery program. We also deliver it with external partners, GLL in particular, access to sports and other community partners. So, it's very much a partnership plan and document aimed to get those who need to get active, active. Sorry, and that plan centres around five sort of key outcomes around active facilities, active communities, active environments, healthcare and social care, and the different ways to be active. And I'll talk a bit about some of the successes in those areas now. So, just in terms of our sort of formal leisure offer, these statistics are sort of tracks, the user groups and the visitors to our centres. As you can see, we've had a 17% increase in visits to our centres over the last financial year. So, that has been driven in part by the reopening of certain facilities. Iron Mungeru bars obviously was closed for a significant amount of time. Because of the fire, we've been able to reopen that, which has been a real success. And with Sobel reopening partially, with the squash courts initially, then the active play, and now with the full offer, we're going to see those numbers jump up. And I'm hoping that'll grow to 2 million plus comfortably by next year. So, as Councilor Williamson said, we've reopened the centre fully now. That includes the sports hall. Oops, sorry. I didn't move this much. That includes the sports hall, which we're now able to offer a range of new sports. We can now offer netball and handball as an offer through that, because we've been able to move a lot of the gymnastics programmes to the new dedicated area we've built for gymnastics. That's freed up a lot of programming time, and we've been able to put on new sports, which has been a really, really good success. We also offer specific sessions for children with Zen needs. So, if you go to the active play, and this will also happen in the multi-activity zone, there are specific times where we turn off the music, we drop the numbers to allow those with sensory issues, those who don't respond well to very busy environments to still have an opportunity to use those centres. And we also work with the Bright Start team. At the moment, every Wednesday morning, they come down, and we have 50 families using the active play for free. So, I think it's fair to say that's their most popular session they offer currently. Some other successes, as I mentioned, Iron Mungerboro Bars reopening. We are also working on decarbonisation of the R2A Leisure Centre. That's an external grant coming in, so that obviously covers a couple of the different work streams for this committee. Those works are underway now, and we hope that they will be complete this year, which will be a really big hit to the Council's net zero ambitions. Some of the other facilities we've opened over the last year, we've completed the renovation of Barnard Park, which has allowed us to put in a new 99 AstroTurf pitch. This was a really, really positive improvement for our facilities, because it allowed us to look at what programming we put into that facility. We know that, historically, boys' and men's football has dominated our sport and have long-term bookings. It's been hard with the growth of the women's game and girls' game to find capacity. What we did with that facility was target the programming around those groups, and we've been able to expand our women and girls' program quite significantly by prioritising the programming time at that facility. We can now also offer rugby training in the borough for the first time, but we've never been able to do that because of the shock pad that's been put underneath it. So that's been a real, real positive. We've also been able to open up some new pitches in the borough with the No More Red campaign. So it's only got King Square there, but we've also been able to open up a new 3D pitch on the Mildmaye estate and the Harvest estate. So those are new upgraded facilities for locals for the community to use, and those are free access pitches for the community. And then just to touch on it, we've also secured funding through the Playzone project to upgrade two of the multi-use games areas in the borough, one at Caledonian Park and one at Highbury Quadrants Estate with the new state-of-the-art multi-use games area. And that's going to be 75% funded by the Frupa Foundation grant, which is really good positive. Just to touch on some of our community activities, so the council fund free swimming programs, which GLL will support and deliver on our behalf, and those have been really successful with over 2,700 children having at least one week of swimming lessons and school holidays over the last financial year. We also offer free lessons to 60-plus people, and we've had 190 applicants for that. And we also do a family swim, because you realise, well, while we can get young people swimming, actually one of the biggest barriers to them actually staying active and getting more swimming is that their parents are resistant to take them, because they can't swim themselves. So we've set up a family swim program, which actually doesn't just teach the children how to swim, but actually the whole family. And that's been a really positive success, and it's actually shown that it's getting a repeat usage of those facilities going forward. So as I mentioned earlier, we've been focusing on women and girls football throughout our Islington Football Development Partnership. Islington Ladies Borough Football Club has now got 400-plus members, and of that, 75% just come down to have a social activity. So it's not like it has to be structured league football. This is just people getting out on a weekly basis, being active, building those social connections. And of the Football Development Partnership, 65% of our offer is for females and participants. So that's a really key driver behind the Council and the Football Development Partnership. So I should just say that that's a partnership between the Council, Arsenal and the community, and GLL. So we've also secured funding and run an active girls offer for girls, some primary schools in the north of the borough, but all secondary schools. A key group that are inactive in this borough is particularly teenage girls. They tend to do quite well at younger ages. Then when they get into teenage ages, they fall out of the physical activity, sort of normal sphere, so clubs and using facilities. So this program is about retargeting those young people and getting them more active. And that's been really successful. So there's over 650 bills taking part in those facilities, those programs over the last year. I'll just skip over this. So another thing just to highlight to the committee is the health bonus program that we have, the Council see funded, but it will become self-sustaining from a funding point of view in about two years' time. This is a program that GLL deliver on our behalf, and it allows people who are inactive, have health conditions, but would benefit from getting into physical activity, but need that support and actual instruction on how to achieve that. So they get referred to the Better Health Wise Liaison, who then puts them through a 12-week program of activity. I think we have had 135 people take up that offer so far, and that's exceeded our expectations initially. The idea is after that 12-week program, they then get access to a reduced membership offer, which they can pay on a month-to-month basis, with the idea that that membership fee then sustains the costs of running that Health Wise program going forward. So it's a way of, yes, bringing in income through new members, but also a way of sustaining that whole program from working. Because what we used to have exercise on referral before, we found that actually the cost of delivering it, the success of sustaining it, and keeping people active was actually quite low. And this has been run by GLL and other boroughs and actually shown to be quite successful. So we're quite excited about this. GPs in particular have really jumped on board with this, and as you can see by the referral numbers. We've also set up a new GetActiveIslington page. So this is a way for people to find out about all the different activity options, whether they are sort of formal activities, free activities, community-based activities within their areas. So it's a new webpage that we've created that members can feed their information to. It works on smart technology, so it can draw information from partner pages straight into it. So it's just a really effective way of keeping residents up to date on existing offers within their area. And they can filter by different activity types or area-based or cost. So it's a really effective way of making people aware of what is available in their area. And we also work with Age UK through their communication channels to their users to promote the different activity offers available to them as well. So what's next for us? The key driver for the team going forward is to modernise the existing Finsbury Leisure Centre, protect and improve the sports pitches, and make them more accessible and inclusive to maximise their use. And also we're looking at whether there's an opportunity for a new neighbourhood health hub. Now that the housing development's not going ahead and the leader's given the commitment to protect that facility, one of our big projects going forward that we need to jump on is about how we make that happen. And actually, just to continue to work on our Active Together Action Plan, as I said, that's a strategy up to 2030, and changing people's behaviour and keeping people active is an ongoing challenge that we just need to do. Thank you. Thank you very much, Barry. And any questions for Barry? Councillor Hayes and Councillor Boffman-Kwashi. Councillor Hayes. Thank you very much. It's a really interesting report. I've got several questions, but they're mostly early, hopefully they're easy to resolve. So on the activity rate, it's really brilliant figures. That's really encouraging. And I know on this committee we've had plenty of evidence in the past as well about the huge benefits of people being able to be active for their own well-being and for their longer-term health. Is there a breakdown? I'm also aware that I think in some other context that Islington has quite a high number of people who are on receipts with disability benefits. So it seems like that should be a particularly good achievement because we have a base where people may experience more barriers. But I just wondered whether we've got an equalities breakdown on that. On the activity rate performance, I was also interested that for adults it's about 150 minutes a week or 30 minutes a week. And then for children it shoots up to 60 minutes a day or 30 minutes a day. And that seems very stark and shifts. So I was just interested in what the thinking was whether it was because for young people if they're in school it ought to be easier to ensure that they're active. But I was just interested really in why there is that significant difference. And then, apologies, because I have just got a couple of other questions. So under the section on Priority to Active Communities, I see that there's eight fitness classes in community centres delivered by DLL instructors. And it's probably more a question for Councillor Williamson, but I was just interested in whether we were looking at through the community asset review opportunities to put activities in local areas. Particularly given at the end, the target is for us to be looking at young people and people over 60 who may also be groups that face bigger barriers in travelling further afield to get to a leisure centre or a swimming pool or whatever. And my final question was about the HealthWise programme. And very interesting, the points that you made, Barry, about it becoming self-sustaining. I was just interested, given that it seems that a lot of the participants have experienced mental health issues, that they may be people who are not in paid work. And so is there an issue about people being able to afford, even if it's a concessionary rate, to remain within the programme and might that impede the opportunities for it to continue to recruit new people? Thank you very much. I've got a question there, Barry. We'll take those answers to them and then come to you, Councillor Bossman. Can I just double-check that I've got all the questions? So we've got the differences in the amount of activity hours measured for kids and adults. I've got the GLM instructions and community centres and I've got the HealthWise and affordability. Did I miss a question at the beginning? Yes. Sorry, thank you, Councillor Linton. It was about the, do we have an equality? So it's fantastic achievement, so I in no way would want to not commend that that's brilliant that we're supporting so many residents to be active. But I was just interested in whether we've got any kind of equality data that sat behind that. So essentially, are we getting some people super active and are some communities not being as active as we might hope? Okay, I'm going to try and answer them but I'll probably refer to Barry for some bits of them. So on the equalities breakdown, we've definitely got an equalities breakdown for users of sport and leisure facilities. I'm slightly looking at Barry because obviously somebody being active doesn't necessarily mean they're going into a sports centre and that's absolutely fine. They could be running in the park and things like that and that starts to become a bit harder to start getting accurate and monitoring. But we can almost certainly give the committee something but whether we can get the whole is slightly different. So the Sporting Active Lives survey that this data is based on is actually a very small sample size. So what we generally will do is use this data over a couple of years because depending on who you ask you can get fluctuations in it. What we've seen though with these figures and why we're actually quite happy with them is they're actually quite stable and actually are heading in the right direction in a consistent way. They're not fluctuating. We do have that survey does provide data for the England as a whole because I think they don't do demographics breakdown on a local council basis because the sample size isn't sufficient unfortunately. They do do it on a national basis and we can share that information with you. What we can comfortably say though is based on the health data that we work with our public health team and we know about that there are definitely demographics. If you've got a disability you are more likely to be disabled. If you're one from an ethnic minority again your chances of being inactive are much higher than say a white resident. So we know that data on the local level because that's part of our health data. So that's why again as part of the active together strategy and action plan we are targeting those groups to try and get them more active. and girls and teenage girls in particular going to be in that. Go back to your other question. So the difference between the children and adults is that data is collected by Sports England and it's based on what are the recommended levels of activities people should be having. The recommended activity for children is much much higher than it is for adults for their health and well-being. So that explains the difference. The GLL and structures in community centres I can take that way but again GLL is just one partner who helps us with activity levels so things like health in the community do tons. We know we've got loads of voluntary sectors you know there's the parts of health strategies there's activities happening in parts so you know GLL is just one way in which we kind of work to get people people active but I can take that way as an action. With health-wise around the affordability I might refer slightly to Barry but the health-wise the concessionary gym membership so the health-wise programme is quite interesting because it's around the person and the individual and around how to support them to be active they're not necessarily always going to be in the gym it may be that their way for them to be healthy and active is to be going for walks and exercise and be outside as well but I'm just going to defer to Barry just on the actual costs. So yes that is a potential barrier and any cost any charging for a facility will be a barrier to people sorry I'm just getting some info here I think what we would do though is if someone couldn't afford the gym programme and jump in here if I get it and it was wrong but what we would do is signpost them to other activities we do hold a range of different free activities across the borough that people can get involved in so there's I think what the Healthwise facilitator would do is go well if you can't do this here are the opportunities available to you refer them to our activity finder which will then show them all the opportunities they have in their local area we've got green gyms and outdoor gyms and quite a few of our parks now around the borough so again it's about activating those spaces those are free to use and hopefully you will have seen some of our residents using them it's lovely when you go past them and see that happening so it's about making sure people are aware of their opportunities can I just add to that that also actually paying a membership actually encourages participation so even if it's a discounted because actually on exercise and referral one of the problems people because it was free didn't then actually turn up or start the sessions and then drop off what this programme just because you've paid for it even if it's a lower amount it actually encourages participation and sustains that so we're hoping it actually supports participation but there is still that alternative for those that really can't afford anything Councillor Bossman-Kwashi Thank you Chair and thank you for your report Barry I've seen you on many emails so thank you for your hard work behind the scenes really good report and thank you Councillor Williamson for your report as well my points may be comments but just probably supplementary to councillors Ruth's point was about you mentioned geographical financial social and physical impacts to residents and just taking a last point which I've made a note on about these spaces where some of our housing partners have utilised on the space that was not used before is how much work are we doing as a councillor to pick up this data because we know that at the moment there's a little need for us to get fitter and be healthier we all cycle etc this is what the whole manifesto page politically for us is but from the national statistics what we see in Islington that has maybe changed changed in terms of being in this thing of people being inactive because of their background or because their parents can't take them to the gym or because they can't access it because of financial insecurities and then another point was about training and recruitment and how much of our people at the service providing point are from those backgrounds where we see those hard-screwed communities that don't often want to go into the spaces because they don't see something that looks like them and also about the active office so I know we have like our is cards for like using libraries I'm just wondering if there's a thing that we could maybe think about going forward where residents are able to use their cards to access these facilities and get discounts I know that back in the days we did have something that was offered I know in Bunhill Ward the Old Trip District have a card that SMEs can use I'm just thinking about that buying offer for residents here at Missington Council for our SMEs to get people more active and so that it's a thing that we're all doing it together as opposed to just different groups if that makes sense and we're kind of led by data as well from the last census that we had thank you I might start answering and then you can chip in with more accurate detail so I'm going to slightly broadly come together your questions if you don't mind so the way I'm in touch with them is basically how we're getting people active who may not fit demographics and more like to be active and then around discounting and cheaper ways to be active for residents so there are a lot of opportunities within the sports centre so I should again I feel like I'm going to keep repeating myself sports centres are not the only way that people can be active it's not the only offer there's so many different ways and just entering a sports certainly is also not the only way that you can play sport in the borough but within our sports centres there's actually a lot of opportunities for people to build up the confidence possibly going in so there are basic sessions for example so that people can come along and find out the basics of things we're running adults and junior sessions so those with child care needs can come and bring their children and still use the gym we've got loads of more sociable sessions so people can take a more sociable take on sports you don't need to be an expert badminton player and you don't need to be unconfident if you just want to play badminton you're not very good for example there's things like walking footballs on offer so for people who have got mobility issues and older demographics so that they can still participate in sports there is a lot of activity going on like that within our sports centre to address the very issues that you raise we've also got a free session certainly for the new facilities in Sobel for our schools to come in so again at that early age getting people across the threshold from an incredibly young age to know these facilities exist like to get in and know what's on and to know what's on offer with regards sort of activity sort of for the ability of activity I really recommend going looking that isn't an activity finder there is so much free activity that happens in the borough there are loads of free ways that people can get involved in sport and activities in the borough like it does not need to cost you money to get active in Islington as Barry's already said we have gyms in our parks but we also have like weight like there's weights in parks and things like that there's loads of weights and there are no costs to people getting active but there's also more organised walking groups and things like park run and lots and lots of different ways that people can already get involved in sport that don't require you to be particularly sporty I know I'm not and I participate in those sort of things they don't require you to be sporty and they do not require you to have money the only real requirement is probably to have a pair of trainers sorry chair so I get all the things you're saying but I'm saying how we collect that data to like help us in the longer term I think that's probably I didn't explain it enough because I was talking more specifically about the data and how we're driven so measuring that people are accessing these spaces which is really great I see all the time on an estate but how do we feed that into our planning the numbers that we pick up how office is going to be measuring it I don't know if that makes sense I'm going to just first for the intricate details of exactly how we monitor numbers it's probably the biggest challenge we have is and through the different programs we have different success around this so you would have seen through some of the slides today people like access to sport they are delivering programs of activity specifically for those groups in the borough that are marginalised that do need wouldn't get involved in normal activity channels that wouldn't be able to attend a holiday sports camp unless it was free so those groups and because of the way they are set up you have to register we are able to get that data through that so we get the data on those things I mean obviously as you said through our leisure centres those attending we've got some really good data around that the positive news is actually the attendance with our leisure centres is actually better than our borough demographic in terms of we've got more higher minority groups using our facilities than the borough average that's not to say we don't have more work to do we've still got huge health inequalities we've still got to get more people particularly with disabilities getting active and a lot of those particularly older people with long-term health conditions so what we are doing is again through the Active Together Strategy we are working with our health partners to get the data on who we need to target and how we do that through working with our different partners so again walking football is a great example that we've listed a few times here about getting people who would have been very inactive and there's a guy I've forgotten his name now unfortunately he suffered a stroke he was very inactive went down and started playing walking football he's now on the barra team and it's transformed his life it's those little stories that we go right that's the case that's why we keep doing this and that's why we've got to keep focusing on those jobs but we need to be more data driven is the other yeah oh the other questions yeah in terms of training so GLL access to sport and our other partners all run training programs for young people to get them more involved in sort of formal coaching qualifications and Michael jump in here if you feel like there's any specifics that I miss out so they would run programs for swimming training either becoming instructors getting involved in life saving Arsenal community run a huge range of football coaching programs as well so does the football development partnership and GLL have a very good track record of employing locally as well I think it's 52% of their workforce is in this local isn't in residence which is a little bit higher than the council's average so they're doing quite well there but we need to keep making sure that it reflects the borrowing and then the last point around discounts of cars I think we have moved away and jumping because you might want to time this we've moved away from discount cars but we do offer a range of targeted discounts for different user groups across our memberships so there's loads of junior pricing there is senior discounts a lot of off-peak time programs particularly for your sake park tennis courts if you're over 60 you play for free during the day in off-peak times so we've looked at our offer of how we make our chargeable facilities as accessible as possible did you want to come in on any of those points yeah so every summer we work with we get funded from Middleton Council and we run courses that we promote through Sunversity the holiday program so that's the MPLQ course which is like the nationally recognised lifeguard course and an STA level 2 in swim teaching so we've had a lot of local young people that have come through and now staff at our leisure centres so we deliver at least one course a year and then we also put on some extra swim teacher courses as well depending on the need for teachers at the time so yeah that's great thank you very much so I'll go to Councillor Russell and then Councillor Pots thank you I just wanted to pick back up on the disability piece I think Islington has higher than London average numbers of disabled people the London average is 13.2% of the population and in Islington it's 16.2% which is about 40,000 residents so with 16.2% of our residents being disabled we've just got 3.7% of them using our leisure centre facilities and likewise older people if you take over 45 the over 45 plus the 60 to 74 and the over 75 that's just 21% of the population so older and disabled people are not being attracted to use our leisure centres it would appear perhaps they're getting their physical activity through walking to the shops walking in the park or whatever but I just wondered whether you've got a kind of strand of work where you are thinking about how you make what you are offering more attractive to older and also to disabled people because it just feels there's an awful lot of emphasis on all the amazing stuff for young people which is great and young people really need stuff but also disabled and older people really need support too and particularly people who are dealing with conditions like arthritis where regular exercise really helps people to stay mobile as they get older which also helps them to remain independent in their homes so that's my question I mean in terms of getting older residents active so the active strategy really is around getting the least active people in the borough which will include some of the demographics that you've just described active in the way that works for them so they are almost certainly being missed off the leisure activity because they will be encouraged to be walking to the shops and getting active in that way having said that there is we've got things like free swimming for older adults there's a lot of other free activity we've put on things like cricket for people with disabilities so that real kind of accessibility making sport as accessible as possible to our residents but I'm just going to hand over to Barry on the cricket point because I think for some disabled people it's going to be kind of almost more physio type daily exercises that it's really good for them to be doing and it's good to be doing it with other people because you kind of get that mutual support and everything else I'm sure cricket for disabled people is great but it's more that underlying every day and stuff I'll get Barry's going to be more specific of the office I think that's well picked up on that point but you're right those groups are very underrepresented particularly disabled people I think there are huge barriers to disabled people getting active and we are doing a lot in this area but there's more to be done so for example and I think it's also about not necessarily about us as the council solving this issue it's working with our partners and there's a lot of charities out there as well so for interest sake at IRB we provide pool time to a charity called We Swim sorry yeah they are a specialist charity who provide really high quality support for people with complex disabilities to actually get swimming and they're a charity that have specifically been set up to do that they've got really good quality volunteers they've got good training around it so we enable them to use the facilities and come in and do those programs now that wouldn't necessarily be captured in the customer profile but it's about how the facilities are used likewise with the Arsenal community might want to come in on this we run a lot of community based programs targeting older users to come in and do a couple of sessions low impact stuff but also have that social element with it so have a cup of tea at the end because what we find even with that people won't just come for the activity a lot of the time they may come for the first time but they'll keep coming back because of the social connections so we have to look at how those offers are made what we're also doing again is working with our partners and going well we've got day centres we've got care homes what's happening in those spaces because some of the times the barriers to those groups is actually getting out of their spaces physically calmed transport is expensive so how can we bring those activities to them and that's one of the things we looked at that our last working group and we're going to be working on three actors together strategy going forward so that's just a step there is more stuff that I probably haven't covered and if you want to add anything there just on the stats I think I agree there's certainly probably more work we can do to engage with people's disabilities in the leisure centres in terms of the statistics the way our data capture works if they don't answer the question on whether they have a disability it will come up as not listed and not show in those stats so I'm not saying we're representative but it could be slightly higher than those stats are reflecting in terms of the other offers we've got an inclusive membership which is £26 per month which is a UK wide membership where you can access any of our centres across the UK so that's a heavily discounted membership for people with disabilities and then also as Barry another thing we do as well if they need a carer to come with them we'll allow the carer to access for free as long as the carer is in the capacity of supporting the person with a disability and Barry mentioned We Swim which is a partner so we also work with some other partners so we work with Metro Bryan Sport who deliver VI tennis at the tennis centre and we also work with the Elfrida Society who deliver some sessions for people with learning disabilities as well in terms of 60 plus we do try and engage as much as we can with the 60 plus community so Age UK is going to do a lot of work helping us promote our sessions so we do we've got multiple low cost activities which are £2.70 a session which are we've got two multi sports sessions at Sobel which are now moving back into the sports hall which allows us to introduce badminton short tennis to the session so those are going to get busier we've got one at Finsbury we also do walking football and stuff like that so they're all sort of your £2.70 low cost sessions which you can attend as a non member if you just pay your £2.70 and yeah also the 60 plus off peak swimming as well as another offer but yeah agree always more we can do but yeah that's some of the things that's going on at the moment there are also free swimming lessons for older adults aren't there yeah so a council champion wants to come in and then I'll go to council pots as Laura says I love the activity that we know that people do sort of built into their days and one of the real pieces of work I should know the committee has been told about is the work of the active travel team who are really expanding the range of people who have access to cycle trainings to give them confidence to go out so this year it's included cycling for people who are over 50 but also and I think crucially work with children with SEND needs and also we know that not only that's about activity it's actually about doing people independence so anything we can do in this space to join up and the other thing that again the cycle teams have started doing is offering social prescribing in the same way they're also doing that so yeah there's a lot of work we're doing we're trying to join it all up but yeah I agree it's really important that we get people give everybody the opportunity in any way they feel they can access thank you chair and just a couple of points to me so I think that obviously the archway legislature decarbonisation is a really good scheme but I just want a bit of reassurance for residents around any disruption to that in terms of the opening hours etc obviously really good scheme really important but just to make sure that disruption is kept to a minimum if they need to close the centre to actually carry out those works so just some reassurance on that would be my first point and the second one is a bit more of a kind of thinking so obviously we talk a lot about parks and we talk a lot about the actual leisure centres and other facilities I'm just wondering if there's anything in terms of more informal spaces on streets and on estates in which we could potentially look at to try to encourage some more activity in some of those ways because obviously I'm thinking on some estates I'm thinking on certain streets for example if there's any kind of thing maybe maybe not but the idea of the no ball game signs I think recently we've actually rid of the no and actually try to encourage some more sports and physical activity on estates and streets so yeah that's just one idea but maybe there's a piece of work there that we could look into to encourage more informal sports and recreation on spaces that probably we wouldn't even think of these days as being for those sort of activities I'm happy to take the second question and then I think the first question Barry can probably go into the more technical detail so yeah obviously this council we had a what was it a fair future commission which taken down the no ball game sign was one of the recommendations which has happened in a lot of our estates I know it's not happened everywhere and there's still some more but that's often to do with what local residents and those estates have requested obviously I'm slightly straight not into my portfolio area here so I'm also back to Australia not into my portfolio area but council champion is right here so again as part of this getting people active it is active in whatever way possible so a lot of the Liverpool neighbourhoods work is really about that and I know some of the newest schemes are looking at how children can use outside space as like incidental play you know I'm sure I remember being children like walking walls and things like that so how do you make things a bit more fun and just build it up in every day to day life in terms of more slightly more not formal but like action facilities I guess obviously in a lot of our states we've got multi-games and sports like pitched on the state there's been a lot of work with Arsenal and community for their no more red campaign and upgrading some of those I remember going to Mayville on Mayville estate in the summer and they had a lot of sort of more playful activity and improved and also the football no those aren't in the state those are in the parks so there is some space for more incidental sport to happen you'd probably have to ask Council Champion for a bit more detail on out and about yeah it's absolutely crucial to the work we're doing because making streets quieter make it easier for people to walk and cycle put the infrastructure in really benefits those people who wouldn't normally feel welcome in those spaces so we know that if you're a woman you're much more likely to be concerned about road danger but also if you're caring responsibilities if you're going to allow your children those streets have to be much quieter and that's actually walking and cycling as well fostering independence among children again young people if we can make our streets quieter safer we can do the safe connections between areas that in itself is enough but also making those streets interesting as Flora says so incidental play absolutely I mean there's some quite interesting work going on in the modern neighborhood around the schools so Wolseley Road you go there there's things like stepping stones going through some of the spaces but also things like making streets more interesting so we know that we're looking at whether or not we do St John's Street for example which is massively in the old historical gateway to the city is how can you make interesting for people to walk around the streets and then of course the most important thing for people who've got limited accessibility is seating shade so there's a number of things that you have to do to make streets more accessible it isn't just having a few stepping stones places but we're absolutely looking at that this is a really cross portfolio piece of work and I'm very grateful for all of the officers here who are actually contributing to that piece of work but it is children friendly we have to look at how we change our streets and enable people to move around safely and activity levels to increase so I promise you it is absolutely front and centre of what we're doing with liveable neighbourhoods and beyond thank you so I mean I'm an over 60 swimmer and I can you tell us a point about the archway legislation sorry carry on yeah cool thank you yeah so the disruption to the users should be absolutely minimal through that project you may not have noticed already but we have already replaced taken out the old boiler system we've got an external temporary boiler that's eating and running all the facilities that was done through an overnight shutdown reconnection with minimal disruption we didn't remove the existing boilers until we were comfortable the new boiler was working the new air source heat pumps will be and the solar panels will be going on the roof so again that should be accessed from outside and the plan is to connect all those up and get them running without hopefully with minimal disruption to any users if at all obviously if that changes and there will be any disruption the project team are working closely with the centre managers and we'll make sure communication goes out to users yes so as I was saying I swim at Highbury and through all seasons and it's been beautifully done up it's a really lovely pool to swim and I just noticed that when it rains really heavily there's several leaks in the roof and it's a bit disappointing because it's just been recently refurbished and rebuilt so I just wondered how the repairs are going on that and the other thing people are being asked to take their shoes off as they go in there's just a notice saying please remove your shoes but where I swim places in Europe in France mainly and in Edinburgh when you take you have to take your shoes off but there's facilities to sit take your shoes off and then you leave your shoes and pick them up on the way out and so it doesn't really work having that notice saying take your shoes off because I never remember to come out I always put my shoes on before I come out when I'm in the changing area and I know it's a hygiene thing and I just wondered if there's any plans to improve that so if I start with the roof repairs so as I'm sure you're all too aware we did have a little fire at Highbury and that allowed us to replace most of the roof as part of that insurance work unfortunately it didn't mean that we needed to replace the whole roof and what we do have there is quite large areas of the flat roof are existing and they have been for some time and unfortunately those are nearly their life hence why we have a lot of the leaks now GLL are doing their best to patch repair those but ultimately that roof is now in need of full repair the council is the landlord so that falls under our responsibility to do so and we have already started a project to redo that work it is quite a big job because there is all the air handling units air conditioning units on the roof and the flat roof is underneath that so we're going to have to go through a process of lifting those units off to replace the roof underneath and as part of that process we'll look at replacing some of those units as well so it's not just a simple roof repair and replacement it's a really complex job you've got specialists looking at it and part of their remit is about how we can minimise the impacts again on the users while we continue those works we're hoping to be in a position to carry those works out later this year later this year and just regarding the shoe issue I actually had one of my team look at that issue today it is a hygiene reason so it only applies to anyone using the wet change room for the pool it obviously doesn't apply to anyone else using the dry change room it's been brought in for hygiene reasons GLL are improving the signage to make it clearer as to why they need it where you need to take your shoes off from they're also looking at putting in a few more bench seating to make it more accessible they're not that keen on having places for people to put their shoes because what they're finding is actually most people are going there for a swim so they'll put their clothes in a locker with their shoes anyway and or they'll take it with them there's obviously a risk if you start leaving shoes in a location they may go walk about so we can keep monitoring that but we are looking at improving the signage and the seating thank you did you want to come back in Councillor Bussman Krashie thanks chair I just wanted to go back to Councillor Potts who's remark about residents being updated if there's any sort of closures and it's not just about obviously sending out leaflets within that area but it's also about other users from other sides of the borough I know that it's something that lives in the north of the borough I often access places in the south so it's just about how we're getting the messaging across in our comms strategy and it's just about the signage because I think Councillor Williamson you said correctly it was in our Fair Futures commission and report and actually I've gone around the north and the south and quite a lot of the signage hasn't come down and if we're thinking about how we make this borough more children friendly you know sort of borough it's about those signage and how it makes young people and children feel when they're living in the community where it actually says to them you can't play here because that is what we're ultimately saying not us now because we've got a commission that we were commissioned by the public to do so I just would really urge different committee members or the exec to really work together with Councillor Mitchell in to push that forward because I've been asking since Councillor Richard Watts was in post thank you I was just going to say it would be helpful if the clerk can just do it as well because it would be Councillor Wolfe and Councillor Champagne who will need to pick up on the signage thank you very much excellent presentation and I'm really proud of our leisure facilities in it and I think you're doing a wonderful job and really appreciate you coming to the committee and filling us in on what's happening thank you very much and I recommend going to the Sobel to see the active play it's absolutely brilliant Andrew gave me a tour of the Sobel and the sports facilities are looking wonderful as well and it's buzzing the place is absolutely buzzing if you'd like to have a special scrutiny held at the Sobel I'm sure we could arrange it thank you that's a great offer yeah let's do that brilliant thank you very much we'll just have a little comfort break should we say five minutes review our recommendations which we we had a meeting an informal meeting of the committee and we came up with the idea of having the three points that we have been working on cleaner greener and accessible and putting recommendations under each of those headings and Emma has produced this wonderful summary of the work we did at that committee at that informal meeting and added lots of other witness evidence so what we'll do is go through the recommendations and if anyone I've asked for people to send in any further recommendations if they've got them and so I don't know if you've had any further recommendations no so we're going to look at we've got the conclusion which is pretty straightforward there at the beginning and then we've gone on to greener streets and what the first recommendation is expand and enhance green space on estates and Emma provides evidence and then the second recommendation is empower community stewardship of public spaces and then the third recommendation is leverage planning and developer contributions and so any comments on those three recommendations for greener streets and anything you want to add yeah councillor bottom question yeah and just one point to add was just about timelines or time frame frameworks that we have to work towards so just including that specific kind of adding so I know we have a budget and we have different sort of departments that need certain support so it would be good to just put in time frames for when we want to deliver things just but I think they were all for me personally spot on thank you chair I'll just check with Emma I think the time frame is usually until the executive gets the recommendations yeah so the report will go once the report's been completed and confirmed at the July meeting it then goes to the executive once it's been confirmed there we a year later will then have an update report from the department on how all of these recommendations and things have gone what they're still actioning what ones have been done etc so yeah it's usually about a year after so for example we'll have active travel our previous review coming back this October because it will have been about a year since they started actioning those okay does that help yeah yeah thanks yeah just a quick one just in the conclusion it's probably best to do this by writing but I just want to make a couple of changes to the conclusions it's best to do that in writing yeah I'll do that then in writing would you want to tell us what they are yeah so basically it's just around because I think we say cleaner greener and more accessible twice in two sentences so just if we just change it to say isn't a counter aspire to make and invest in cleaner greener and more accessible streets full stop but this not only helps meet environmental and net zero carbon so just yeah just kind of makes it a bit more concise and a bit snappier if you could send that in that would be great yeah no sorry I was just going to say from the process point of view surely we need to know what the change was tonight but we already do so that's right anything anything else on greener streets no move on to cleaner streets and we've got recommendation one to review and reform enforcement practices and the committee you know commented on the enforcement activities at the previous meeting and we've come up with some recommendations to actually explore non-punitive alternatives and avoid penalties for those facing financial hardship which I think is good and prioritise efforts on persistent issues like dog filing I don't know if anyone's got anything they want to add to that yeah councillor Russell I'm yes the consider reducing excessive fines can't we just ask them to ask the exec to get rid of the excessive fine because I mean it was quite worrying when we heard the amount that people were being fined by those people who were out and about on the street I mean either we want to remove the fines or we don't so I just think it sounds a little bit kind of like we're not quite sure but it does say review and reform so I don't know if we want to monitor it and just you know trial it really because I think it does say on evidence there that there's you know not fining it says there's you know avoiding penalties for those facing financial hardship but it also does say that first 7% of the fines issued remain unpaid so it's not you know we are I think that's the reason why we should be thinking about not fining people for dropping litter because if 37% of the fines are going unpaid that may well be down to hardship cases I don't know whether you've got evidence on that but anyway there's only one of the you can all vote it down so it doesn't matter but I just wanted to just double check that we didn't want to say can you have a look at getting rid of the fining system I mean dog fouling is something that people get fined for anyway don't they if we can catch them I would like them to really as it says prioritise on that and there's also people that are coming in to Islington and just dumping out of their cars I mean that's happening all the time and I'm sure they can afford to be fined you know they've got big cars a lot of them and so there's some I would like to really keep this policy of avoiding penalties for those facing financial hardship but really target people coming into Islington and dropping litter I would like to target maybe add that into one of the into the priorities yeah yeah yeah chair and just to councillor Ross's point because we're not an administration that is you know hard on those that are the most vulnerable in our community I think and this is not a political point I'm making here but I think it is about maybe the language that what we're trying to do so could re-say what you've just said and put in councillor Russell's point because we don't want people to feel that accidents do happen kids but it's just about those that are coming into our bar that are dumping in our local parks at lunch times and things like that so in my ward I know I get countless emails so I just wanted to make that point if I may chair please I think as I said I'll repeat it looks as if it's not proving that successful getting the fines you know they're not getting paid they're not being paid so it's something that we need to really keep an eye on and what's the committee think about this are you suggesting not having any fines at all council champion go ahead I mean I think it is I know what people say about littering but actually littering does cause a real issue for us including the borough tidy and we know that people dropping litter encourages other people to drop litter as well so I really do think it is important that we have these things as an option and I would just say it isn't just about people coming to the borough it is also about people who just do drop litter or who are making streets untidy because it does have a real knock-on impact not just on the cost of actually cleaning the streets but on people's behaviour in streets and obviously people's experience is their own streets as well so I absolutely agree being sensitive to those who face financial hardship that actually if someone is doing that then there should be a sanction I also completely accept the fact that we should be having more campaigns around avoiding it in the first place but it is quite an important part of what we're doing to try and make it cleaner so is the committee happy with this recommendation one as it is yeah okay thank you recommendation two is foster civic pride and cleaner streets which is pretty similar to what we've just been talking about promote a shared sense of responsibility for maintaining clean and tidy public spaces through community campaign and positive messaging are we all agreed with that one yeah yeah go ahead and just to put on record our amazing substitute councillor Gary Heather who's always banging on about civic pride I think is really important thank you for that so recommendation three promote love clean streets app campaign invest in public engagement to raise awareness and encourage active participation in keeping streets clean are we agreed with that one yeah thank you we're going to accessible streets and recommendation one monitor doctor spikes program responsibly any comments or anything to add on the doctor spikes I was just wondering if we could add something on monitoring usage and making sure it's not negatively impacting doctor spikes usage so I didn't think that was an note maybe I missed it so you want to could you just repeat that again please something about monitoring rate for doctor spikes usage and making sure that we're not deterring people from using it okay thank you yeah that's simple enough yeah councillor boss mccarthy and then on that specific point because we've had a mixed response in terms of like the rollout of the bays if the next committee can think about having a timeline where councillor can come in and talk about the positiveness of it and the improvements that would be really good so that we are showing that we are on their side especially those that have invisible disabilities thanks chair you want to put something like monitor the use of the bays yes please chair I see council champion has got a hand up and Wayne I'll come to you next it's actually factual so it says 250 desirated parking bays have been rolled out we're in the process of rolling them out 250 is the end is where we want to get to in the end Wayne did you want to come in thank you chef I was going to point that out as well but there's also just for the evidence factor there's a memorandum of understanding in place with the bike companies so I think that's an important part of the evidence I'm not quite sure what you mean by that sorry it's a formal agreement between the council and the companies in terms of the conduct and the rules they have in place and the rules that they impose upon the users of those bikes to ensure controls in place without a formal firm contract between the council and those companies so are you suggesting we should put in something like to monitor to check that they are abided by the agreement with the council thank you yes thank you it it brought up in my mind your comment mine that when we had the evidence session there were concerns about the cycling behaviours as well as the parking issues and there were some assurances given that the companies would be looking at how they use tech themselves to give feedback to people using the bikes to encourage them to follow the highway code and behave responsibly I don't know whether we are able whether those memorandums of understanding include providing some feedback to the council on how well that is going certainly I've seen a load of recent near misses with bikes just coming round when it's green for pedestrians at busy junctions and just going straight through which I appreciate the companies cannot actively please in the sense of but if they have got my understanding was that they did have some technology that would give them information about how the bikes were being used it would be very useful for us to have that information I did say at the committee at this informal meeting that I had actually seen someone on a line bike going the wrong way down Seven Sisters Road not on the cycle track knocked someone over at the crossing actually knocked a woman over and luckily she got up but you know how do we enforce proper use of those bikes It is very difficult when anyone behaves on the road whether it's someone who's driving or cycling on higher bikes they completely accept the point it's probably quite difficult for the companies to know if someone comes through a red traffic light they have undertaken to do safety campaigns which is really quite important and obviously there are areas that particularly concern we can talk to the police about getting someone down to have a look and they sometimes will do that say for example we've done joint actions with them on hybrid corner but I think it's a lot about trying to make sure that people's behaviour complies with the highway code and I think the companies have said they will do that and I think they're going to start a campaign in the summer and that absolutely is something we can monitor and we can ask for feedback on that and how they think it's going I've just got two small mini edits under the evidence the first bullet there has been a rapid increase in bike usage that's all kinds of bikes I think it should say dockless higher bike usage and in the fifth bullet concerns were raised by physically impaired residents and campaigners about e-bikes again that's any kind of e-bike it needs to be dockless e-bikes I think it's almost doubling every year so we're now it's about 5.3 million journeys in Islington on dockless higher bikes moving on to recommendation two on accessible streets 2 stroke 2a improve pavement accessibility and enhanced cycle infrastructure is everyone okay with those recommendations councillor boss mcquarshie thanks chair just one adding about when we have utility companies coming into our borough there could be just one line that's added because I think sometimes what I'm noting from various case which I'm sure my colleagues are experiencing this as well is when pavements are left and even our gutters with lots of debris from building and construction and I know the team worked really hard to keep everything clean in green so just that one point pretty pleased I guess we need to contact I guess the people the team that deals with utilities working in our borough need to be strongly enforcing that utility companies using our streets and working in them should improve it just to add that I'm not just making this up on a wood walk about and this isn't a coincidence but literally a pavement was a tyre could have taken out a whole load of people on this one small pedestrian pavement pavements in Bunhill and even across the borough sometimes are very small you think of cyclists dismounting going on their buggies not everyone's as cognizant of their area so I just think it's something we need to pick up on as a council I was just going to just if I understood correctly I think Councillor Bosco M'Quash was just asking for something to be inserted about maintaining pavements after utility works it it feels to me for these recommendations which are about accessible streets that that's possibly going into too much detail because then it begs the question why aren't we going into other kinds of reasons why pavements need to be repaired so the way it's written at the moment seems to cover issues of maintenance broadly and we're making the point about it being important that pavements are accessible so that disabled people can get around safely I wonder if we start adding in about making good after general digging up Thames water type works and stuff whether that starts to raise the issue of what else do we need to add in because we do our pavements I've seen pavements being done the tyres are tying over our pavements I think it's reasonable to just make sure the teams that deal with the utilities enforce the contract of whatever is involved in that contract of cleaning up after them I could go back to cleaning streets yeah council pot you got a thought yeah my suggestion was going to be in terms of an actual form of wording we might want to say apply consistent standards to pavement repairs including by utility companies yeah you can tell I've been a senior researcher I'm used to this kind of thing so just to reiterate then to pavement repairs including by utility companies to avoid patchwork solutions could I completely understand I think this is what was said so the evidence is accurate recognition for a borough wide pavement improvement scheme is restarting I think it's probably fair to say that the pavement improvements have continued I think what Matt was saying was that it's going to be accelerated but I think he did actually say restarting so if we're sticking to strict evidence I think he was looking at the work that his team was specifically doing around an additional resource in to do it but it hasn't really stopped we're going to move on to the evidence for recommendation 2-8 no we don't need to go to recommendation 3 can I ask does the committee agree to 2-8 and enhance cycle infrastructure yeah I agree that thank you and then recommendation 3 ensure early and inclusive engagement that looks like a very good one everyone agree with that one yeah well that's our scrutiny oh councillor Hay sorry very many apologies this is only just leapt out at me but under recommendation 2 under cleaner streets the evidence it says officers outlined several upcoming initiatives including a mute community weeding programme and I wasn't quite sure mute didn't seem quite right maybe we could just delete that word thank you sorry I spotted it when we'd already moved on but apologies thank you so I think that concludes the recommendation for this scrutiny for this year and thank you very much for all your work on this scrutiny and to council champion and yeah could I just formally thank you for chairing for the year because I think you've done a really brilliant job and it's really good to see this piece of scrutiny that this report going back to the executive which I think has much clearer recommendations than I've seen coming out of scrutiny generally in Islington I think it's a real evidence of the work that's gone on to try and improve the scrutiny processes so I just wanted to say thank you and I hope the committee agrees said I think it's been a very inclusive process and we've been able to really delve into some of subjects so thank you very much for all your work and as we saying thank you I want to say thank you as well to say that you've made this such an inclusive and innovative space especially for someone that's been new on this committee and thank you so much and from the bottom of my heart and for actually championing the fact that it's okay to be green and it's cool and you've done such amazing amazing work honestly and I think even on the new title that we've got that we came up to together with council Williamson just thank you so much thanks a lot yeah lovely thank you very much and good night