Transcript

Michael issues require the meeting to be adjourned and it can't be restarted within a few minutes. Further updates will be posted on the Council's Democracy Twitter account, which is at LBL Democracy. Can I just remind those joining us physically in the room that microphones are fitted into the ceiling so we can hear what you say even if you whisper. Public speakers once called on are asked to take a seat at the public speakers table and once your three minutes up should return to the gallery. Just in terms of health and safety and housekeeping, the fire exits, you exit the room from either side of the door and go to the stairs to street level and toilets, there's an accessible toilet just outside the right-hand side of the room. We've received apologies this evening from Councillor Meldrum and no other apologies have been received. Do any members have any declarations of pecuniary interest? Thank you. I'd also like to confirm that I don't have any disclosable pecuniary interests in any maths to be considered this evening. I will ask when people speak and when officers speak to introduce themselves and their titles when they're called to speak. On that note, we do have a new member of the committee here this evening, but that is an item that we will come to so we can do the introduction then. Just also a quick note on the external speakers is we've had a number of external speakers registered to speak this evening. We do obviously have time constraints and you, everyone will have seen how busy the schedule is this evening and we have a lot to get through, including time for members and independent members to ask their questions of officers. So in the interest of that, I would be only taking one public speaker per item this evening. And also just a point to note on the public speakers, which has been raised in terms of obviously we have a councillor wishing to make public, to ask questions in public. Obviously, as a councillor, you have access to officers all the time as a councillor of the, um, as a councillor within the council. So you're obviously more than welcome to, to ask officers for sort of answers to, to questions that you have outside of the committee as well, and officers would be happy to respond to those then. So in terms of order of business, we'll move on to the agenda item two, which is the minutes of the previous meeting. Can members agree that the meeting, the minutes for the meeting held on the Thursday the 20th of February represent an accurate record of discussion? No, I wasn't here, so I can't call it. The 20th of March, sorry. There isn't any of the councillors in the apartment itself. No, I'm going to approve those. Okay. Yes, Chair, I wonder if it would be helpful if I made a bit of a suggestion around the minutes. I would recommend that after each of your items on your minutes, that you report the committee's view about the assurances you have received or haven't received. So for example, if you are considering an item like the internal audit report, you could comment at the end of that particular item that the following consideration and challenge of that report, the committee were assured around the effectiveness of internal audits and also were assured that management have agreed to the appropriate actions to address weaknesses and to show that you have received some kind of assurance rather than what was just discussed. Alternatively, you could also, if you weren't satisfied in an item, you could also comment that, for example, the committee were not happy about the number of outstanding recommendations and management's comments around those and asked for further information to be provided so that it could be assured that they were taking it seriously. So I just thought that might help and sort of summarise your your minutes and then help with your annual reports at the end of the year. Yep. I'm very happy to note that suggestion and do that going forward. That's noted. Thank you. So move on to agenda item three, which is, yes, I'm happy to take going to take questions. Have you an indication to speak on this item? That's okay. Thank you, Chair, and I appreciate you giving away and I appreciate what you said about we have access to officers. I did challenge the minutes and I was hoping to have a response prior to this meeting, but could it be minuted that I am still waiting on a response from Democratic Services on some of the correction I felt needed to go into the minutes as a councillor that was here at the previous meeting? Can we pick that up outside of the meeting? Thanks. I'm happy to pick that up. All right, so I'll move on to agenda item three, which is the Work Programme Action Monitoring Log. So I invite Leo Komabika, the Democratic Service Officer, to introduce the item. Good evening all. This is a standard report that usually comes to Corporate Committee. Appendix A is the Work Programme for 2025 to 2026. Appendix B is the Actions Log Update. At this moment, we have two actions pending that are being completed and this is actively monitored by officers. Thank you. Thank you. Does anyone have any suggestions for the Work Programme or comments on the Action Tracker? I just said one different one. Yes. Just to say that at the moment, obviously, the new Corporate Committee Work Programme is actually just for this meeting. But now that the dates for the future meetings have been, the future Work Programme will have those meetings where we've got standardised in spring. So that will be probably noted. Any questions from committee members? All right, in that case, if there are no further questions from committee members on that item, I suggest we conclude item three by agreeing with the suggestions made and move on to the next item of business, which is item four, the appointment of an independent member. So I'll invite Paul Rock, the Assistant Director for Internal Order and Counter Fraud, to introduce this item. Keep this very brief. We're really pleased to have recruited a new independent member for our Corporate Committee. And thanks to all of the community members and officers that were involved in that recruitment and selection process. All that is left is for the committee to formally appoint Paul Emils as our new independent member. Yes. And I would also like to add to that, that we're, you know, Paul has a lot of experience. We went through a rigorous interview process. We had a lot of applications. And thank you to Councillor Bryant as well for spending the time interviewing essentially independent members. We were very pleased with the response we had and we're very pleased to have Paul on the committee. I think we've all acknowledged that we've felt the gap over certainly over the last few months. So, yeah, we're very pleased to have you here and hold us to account. Thanks for having me. So, yeah, I agree. I assume that is approved. All right. So we'll move on to agenda item five, which is the council's response to the statutory recommendations. I'll invite Zena Cook, the Corporate Director of Finance and Governance, to introduce the report. This is a really brief introduction and I'm happy to take questions, but following the agreement for council that this committee would be the committee that would oversee the implementation of the response to the statutory recommendations, this is the summary level of response to the individual items that made up. The recommendations that were issued by extending the term and just draw your attention to the fact that some finance colleagues are currently in three financial years last year, they're currently around next year. So they'll say March 25. That should actually be March 26. So when we bring that, and apologies, then we bring that to you. That drives me by doing this financial year. There are operational plans being finalised and agreed across the council that support and underpin these. The intention is that this is a standard agenda item for this committee and anything that is considered noteworthy that you need to be aware of will be brought to the committee. The first formal update in relation to the statutory recommendations will be reflected in reports to cabinet in July. So late July we will have the final out-term report for 24-25. We will also have the what is known as the medium financial strategy update which sets out our assumptions and latest indications for the medium financial strategy and it is likely that we have the indications of the first quarter of this financial year. So I think actually just after the next corporate committee date actually I think it may be just the fourth but certainly I'm very happy to bring updates here. And yes, very happy to take questions, observations that I can either answer here or with that. Yes, thank you Zina. Before we move on to questions from the committee, we have an external speaker so I would invite Simon Morrow to give his representation. Okay, just to introduce myself, I'm Simon Morrow, I'm a Chartered Quantities supplier and Director of Landless People's Audit. This matter is not being treated with the seriousness it deserves. In 2018, one of our members warned the council about Homeshire Landless business plan, I quote, if I'd presented a business plan like this I'd have been fired on the spot. You didn't miss them and look what happens. So we're warning you again. The fundamental problem with this report is that the committee can't possibly monitor progress against the recommendations it's been asked to do. There's no figures for the committee to judge if the council is on track or not. So all the committee is being presented with a set of copied and pasted phrases from a set of due dates which kick all the issues into the long graphs. So briefly moving on to the specific issues raised by the auditors. Action one, savings to mitigate overspends in 24-25. You should know that by now. Why? So why are officers putting off telling anyone until July? Land savings for 25-26. Again, just words. There's no substance. There's no figures and the due dates are too far into the future. Where, for example, is the detail to the lump sum saving of £30 million that was waived through without scrutiny at the last meeting, the council meeting in March? Does it exist or is it just a figure plucked out of the air? The public and the committee have a right to know, particularly as it would probably mean job cuts and cuts to services. Action three, replenishing the general fund and HRA. This doesn't deal with the systemic issues. One of the principal reasons for the overspend on the HRA is the continued mismanagement of landless housing stock, which members of the public and the tribunal judge have been warned in the council for nearly a decade now. Only last month I was dealing with a leaseholder being charged over £15,000 for replacement windows when none had been replaced. So it's money out the door you're never going to get back. As this committee and other committees have heard from many experts and the Lambeth Homeowners Association, incidents such as this are not isolated, they continue. It's no exaggeration to say tens of millions have been overpaid to contractors over the last few years. Action four, reducing the unfunded budget gap. Again, no detail. Action five, HFL. Now for over two years, this committee has been asking for a straight answer to see the financial effects of bringing HFL in-house and it's never had an answer from officers. It's about time you got one. Officers know or should know exactly what the effect is, they just don't want to tell you because they're putting off the fateful day when it becomes public knowledge how many millions have actually been wasted. So I'll leave those thoughts with you and let's see what progress we can make. Thank you. Now that we have heard the report of representations, I'll invite the committee if they have any specific questions they'd like to ask. Council Brian. Yeah, mine was on this recommendation number five, I think one to do with the closure of Homes for Lambert. It was twofold. First, I'm curious because this appendix with the recommendations, there was a supplementary version which was published later and I don't know whether the discussion was trying to spot the difference between them, but I did notice on this item, which obviously I'm interested in the statute of recommendations, the due date which was on the original version, that the original performance was August 2025 for completion has now been slipped to October 2025. So the question was why is that two months delay and obviously this is such an important issue. And the second was you just talking there about an independent financial appraisal. The original one says an independent financial appraisal of Homes for Lambert is being undertaken. I think the revised wording was slightly different and the question was who is actually undertaking that appraisal. The dates in relation to both August and October relate to the timing of the audit in relation to 24-25. So there will be information available in the first and we will bring an update to the committee in terms of those particular items. But October is the drop dead date in terms of the November report that will come from the editors. So that is why I think those two dates are there. In terms of the independent financial appraisal that is being undertaken by an external company that has the requisite knowledge and skills in relation to housing companies and that financial appraisal should be concluded within the date. I would say through two weeks, once that's completed we then have to apply the assessment that they've made to the appropriate accounting treatment and again that has to be within the timetable for the 24-25 accounts and then obviously what the implications are for this year. So that's the reason for what might look like a difference in those two dates. With that, any other questions Paula? Thank you. I actually have loads of questions on these recommendations but I don't propose to ask all of those this evening because I think I sympathise with the gentleman who spoke that whilst this action plan provides us with an overview of the actions that are going to be taken to progress those recommendations, I don't think it gives us enough quality of information about whether or not those actions are actually going to be effective and what assurance we've got over those. Now I appreciate Cabinet are going to be getting into the detail in terms of financial position and I appreciate that there are very detailed action plans that sit behind this and probably reassure public that that isn't it that's written here, there's probably much more detailed plans behind that. But I think we would benefit for some more quality of information against each of these. So how effective have these actions been to address the risk and issue and because as a committee I think it's our role to seek assurance that those controls and actions that they are putting in place are going to be effective and are going to deliver the desired outcomes and what the progress is against each of these. So it's a great starter for telling us what is going to be happening but now I think I'd like to see in future reports more about well what has happened and what impact has that had. Now again I also appreciate from a new person's perspective that I'm kind of playing a bit of catch up here and I know that the recommendations were only issued to you in February so in terms of progress between February and now it's like turning a ship and you know it won't turn automatically you know straight away it's going to take a bit of time but I think the time we get our quarter one for the next meeting that would be helpful to have a bit more quality information about you know is the ship beginning to turn. I think that would be handy to have as a committee. Yeah and just to add that I mean the I guess the more granular detail and you know obviously there's a lot of information to produce but the things that that we want to see and for example if we look at this statutory recommendation too for example spending controls in place you know do we get to see a list of perhaps requests that have come in that have been have been rejected is that kind of kept so that we can you know we can see that happening. I'll take um yeah um first in July the expectation and the plan is to bring the delivery plans I believe that is for the committee so um as you said it was initially at the end of February early March that we got the special recommendations and the school council in large um agreed that the committee should um should be the overseeing committee for those but each of these there are a number of actions that the officers are leading on and that the intention would be to bring those and have those ragrated in terms of which ones are on track which ones are you know perhaps slipping what are we doing about facilitating that slippage um I think in relation to specific so things like the spending control panel for example um my assessment was that we would bring to you things like the number of recommendations we've made you know how many have been approved how many haven't um what type um reminding you of or setting out what criteria so for example there are four criteria involves then control so one is is it a contractual commitment is it required to safeguard a vulnerable adult or a child is it something that makes the financial position better is it something that stops the financial position getting worse those are the you know so I was assuming that that's the sort of stuff that I would bring for you so that you again as as Paula said you have assurance that things are being done in the morning just to add to that I have on my internal audit plan medium term financial strategy uh the spending controls and also a review of the savings and the cheap ability and plans etc so you'll get independent how the council is doing and delivering all of that that work as well so I think you'll get insurance but obviously you can address that at the time and obviously you know to make clear outside of the committee we can also request that information so it's not you know we're not we don't have to wait for the papers to to have that we can request to see that any other questions on this item you are welcome to ask um no because I think I think the questions that I've got here are quite getting into the detail and I think from what Zena has said yeah we're going to get that detail coming to us so what I don't want to do is waste time asking questions which seems going to say yeah that's going to be all in the detailed action plan and I think I think let's wait and see that and then if there's anything that hasn't been addressed can ask that at the next yeah yeah and I think you know between now and the next meeting we um you know we can have a conversation outside this committee to ensure that the stuff we do get the next committee all that we've seen is the detail that we we want rather than wait till the next committee and you know and don't feel like we've had the the detail that we would like any other questions from the committee on agenda item five in which case we'll move on to the next item item of business which is agenda item six the external order to progress update so I'll invite Rob Browning the assistant director of finance to introduce the report uh thank you chair I'm actually going to hand straight over to our auditors uh to walk through this report so um Paddy Suresha I hope you're in the room um over to you thanks Robert that was very smooth um um um it's actually Louis oh okay sorry apologies though so we yeah we've got a progress report giving you an update on where we are with the audit of your 2024-25 accounts um I'm gonna ask Louis to take you through the kind of audit update for the couple of things I just wanted to pick up on before I do that one is you will recall well you might have forgotten but you but we we issued a disclaimed audit opinion on your March 24 accounts that was following the government's statutory requirements in terms of backstop um one of the consequences of that is the how do we then rebuild assurance for 24-25 um we are still waiting for the national audit office to issue guidance to auditors on what that rebuild and assurance process looks like so until we get that assured that that guidance we don't know exactly what we need to do we have referenced the fact that there could be another disclaimed opinion for 24-25 if this guidance doesn't come out or if the guidance is to do a huge amount of work to rebuild that assurance and that might take a few years so that's just worth bearing in mind we've included uh we've repeated the value for money recommendations that we made in last year's audit because we'll follow those up and then on page 50 I've reported the fact that for the March 24 accounts we did receive objections to those accounts we were satisfied those objections weren't material to the accounts which is why we still were able to issue the audit opinion but we are carrying our procedures to investigate the matters that have been raised and we aim to conclude our investigations in August with a view to them providing a view to the relevant electors um Louis now just take the committee through a few parts of the audit update yeah um I can provide some details um around our approach for the 20 yeah the audit of your financial statements the year ended 31st of March 2025 if you turn to page 41 you'll see a summary of some details around the timeline um as Suresh mentioned uh the opinion for the audit opinion for the uh 23-24 financial statements was disclaimed but it brought us in line um with uh the financial year that we should be auditing so we have a plan to audit the uh audit the accounts yeah in real time which is something we say we've been able to do um fairly uh last few years uh we've started our audit planning process in during March to April um refreshing and updating our understanding of the council and its business processes um uh our risk assessment is almost complete we'll return in June to finalize that um or formally issuing our audit strategy memorandum to the committee in the next meeting in July um and before we commence the field work stage of the audit where we we do the work on the items of financial statements um and hope to conclude before the end of the calendar year um and again as Suresh outlined um we're unable to say at the moment um work we doing um on um financial statements for prior years and this audit plan is is is for the finalization of the audit for 24-25 um on page 42 i believe um i've got the yeah we've got a provisional risk assessment um of the areas of the accounts and uh council's finances where we will be directing particular attention um it's there are two columns um indicating whether we consider the risks to apply to the financial statements of the council by itself or to the financial statements of the the lambeth council group um london borough of lambeth group uh most of them are standard risks that the the first risk the risk of fraud to management overrides with mandatory risk on all audits evaluation of property filing equipment and the pension liability is again a almost a universal significant risk on the audits of local authorities um there's also a new significant risk which will apply to almost all local authorities this year around the uh yeah around the application of a new complex accounting standard um will uh um the council will be um yeah reclassifying uh uh the amounts relating to four pfi contracts um and the accounting treatment for that will apply particular scrutiny to particular items where uh uh consider the risk profile of lambeth in particular are around the risk of fraud in revenue and expenditure recognition this has arisen uh principally because of the financial position that the council finds itself in uh and the associated risk that punishment um could fraudulently manipulate uh accounting records to um uh overstate income or defer expenditure um we also have recognized a couple of risks in related which relate to the council in its capacity as as a group from an accounting perspective um firstly from the council's perspective um we will be scrutinizing the recoverability of the loan balances that uh outstanding with the hfl companies as at 31st of march 2025 um and from the perspective of the group will be paying particular attention to how the financial information of hfl is consolidated alongside the councils um finally on page 43 and be aware that we also audit financial statements of lambeth pension fund uh we have yeah we've identified yeah three provisional risks um two of which are standard again the risk of management overrided controls risks associated with the valuation of the most complex assets held by the pension fund uh and in particular um for um for lambeth pension fund in the 23-24 year um there are two items of account um the pension funds current assets and current liabilities which resulted in the pension fund financial statements being qualified um so that's not unqualified as vast majority of audits are but uh we're unable to get the sufficient assurance over those balances so qualified but not disclaimed um in the same way as the council where we were able we're really not able to get much assurance at all um so yeah suresh was there anything you wanted to add no we'll move to questions chair um would we thank you for that report and i'm sure we'll have questions um we do have requests to speak and i'm happy to invite scott ainsley to speak on this article yeah your three minutes starts uh thank you chair i'm councillor scott ainsley i'm the reader of the green group on lamb of council um i have a few questions regarding this uh auditors report and um i've gone straight to the appendix uh one uh page five it is and a question that i have so it's the audit update is that um i want to ask if auditors had a wash-up meeting after 22 23 were there any key learnings flagged at that point if so did any learning take place between 22 23 and 23 24 if so what or did you identify any significant uh weaknesses my second question is um on the same page um on the same page and it echoes what's already been asked by uh mr morrow who spoke earlier uh why are we waiting for july when surely the numbers are known by now um for the last financial year that's a question on page six uh the second item down the table of the audit update uh it says that uh the risk of fraud in revenue and expenditure recognition is to be confirmed uh my eyes are going to struggle to see this but uh basically uh this whole idea of a significant risk of material mismanagement um either over inflating uh income or under inflating uh or whatever it is i can't really make it out because my eyes are no good but um i would like that to be explained a little bit um why that is a significant risk when uh again mr morrow mentioned earlier on that there was there were risks of uh mismanagement on estates and why that's sometimes regarded as not a material and significant risk surely the accumulated effect of uh years of disrepair as identified by the housing ombudsman which was what this corporate committee must uh address because no other committee is going to address it um what is going to be done about that um and what measures are the council putting in place to ensure that this does not happen um 30 seconds left well have i okay well look uh i'll end by saying this um what if the only way to the value for money assessment what if the only way to to deal with a short-term fix of our value for money is to sell off land and assets that would take care of the long-term value for money for the people of lambeth because my concern is that key learnings have still not been learned from homes for lambeth um and i don't want a year-on-year repeat of mistakes thank you before we move on to members questions i don't know if um there's any items that you'd like to address point about could you take the seat back um open authority um finances are such that when you finish at the end of march there are what are known as sort of year-end transactions that need to be undertaken that will affect your final position so for example um we will be receiving we will be receiving invoices that relate to march during april and sometimes even in may we need to take account of those to make sure that we recognize them in the correct year we will also have the same with income that is due and related to the previous year we also have provisions that we need to set aside for things like bad debts we have to work out how much we think that will be that generally is done by the pilots team after the end of the financial year there are no longer any new transactions and certainly colleagues and service directors are no longer there have incurring costs but that process generally takes between 8 and 12 weeks because of the size of the organization the loan of transaction so um the reason that that is then formally reported into the july cabinet is by the time those figures are available you're usually looking for some time in june and so hopefully that that gives an explanation for answer i think that was more thank you um i'll invite committee members if there's any questions that ask out sir brian i had just one which i think louie tuck touched on right at the end was i'm particularly in the pension fund accounts because obviously um there was a qualified opinion on those and obviously that was something that what only came right at we were made aware of right at the end of the issue and there was a question where i suppose you couldn't tell us whether actually the issue that had arisen with identifying assets and abilities was a systemic one that had been going on for years previously and have have your testing to date be looking at that area and if so can you give our committee some assurance that actually the systems have been improved such that there's unlikely to be a qualified opinion in this but it's probably going to be a question is in any sense because we we haven't i think you're still working on resolving the matter so um we are we are looking at that because again and i think um our external colleagues hopefully would agree because of the uh backlog and the statutory um deadlines that we had that were much shorter um the reason that the qualification happened is that we simply ran out of time to be able to complete the work to give the assurance to the auditors the intention is that given we will be having our auditors join us very shortly uh for the 24 25 um audit that that information uh the team are working on that so that by the time the orders arrive in july we would we would be in a position to be able to show the progress that's been made the work that we have done to give them that assurance and we would then need to go through that process for the auditors to test that and they will they will they will draw a conclusion and advise you as the committee of coordinate a follow-up question the follow-up question are you confident then by july that you will have done enough work to demonstrate that the systems are are anchored to identifying that sense of arrival so i would say um from my perspective um they have um confidence in the team that they will do everything they can a slight caveat to that is that this relates to some very historic transactions that go back many many years therefore in order for them to unwind that um we do need to do more work before i can come back to you as a committee and confidently say yes we definitely have certainly for the more sort of nearer turn work we've been doing level is higher but i think that's my my only caveat i'd love to be able to say to you yes absolutely but we're still sort of midway through that work yeah final something you then who's actually brought information is you know do you have an idea of the value of these transactions that are around which there is uncertainty because of the their historic what the impact is on the pension fund i can certainly um certainly bring rob in to give you the sort of overall figures there are there are um there are totals then there are also sort of figures within that that are the individual transactions we could certainly give you a flavor of if that's if that's okay yeah so so the number if i was to tell you the numbers in in themselves they they might seem alarming but the nature of the way that we account for our uh debtors and creditors in the accounts means that basically they net each other off so i i think one of the balances in our sundry debtors that the auditors couldn't sufficiently sample was to the value of about 53 million something like that and our liabilities um was about 14 million um but but obviously as zina said that there's a lot of prior year historic balances in there which uh will take some time to unwind and which we're obviously working on now um in a bid to have resolved by by the end of june uh deadline for publishing our accounts thank you and paula thank you chair and i've just got a couple of questions if if i may and first one is around the neo guidance which i think you've sort of said you haven't received that yet and when you do receive that i'm assuming you'll be communicating with the authority about what additional work will need to be done have you built in enough contingency into your planning cycle at the moment so that that work can be incorporated i appreciate you don't know the detail of what that work is going to be but is there enough sort of give i suppose to be able to do part some of that um or is that likely to push the completion date i know we can't go beyond a certain point but push your completion date that you indicated into your report and i'm also assuming that there will be additional cost to the authority for the um work to reinstate assurances on previous years and and then you can answer those two and then my my other question um relates to the work that you've done to date so i understand you've been doing your walkthrough testing and identifying the processes and the systems as part of that piece of work that you've done so far are there any glaring issues that you need to bring to the attention of this committee now so that creative action in terms of changing systems or looking at improvements can be actioned immediately rather than waiting for your final report i think that those questions in reverse order i think in terms of any glaring issues i think we'll report those to the the next meeting rather than there are some findings that we have been discussing and things we've escalated to see you know to sort of uh to progress so we'll report those to the next meeting um in terms of the rebuilding assurance uh as you say until we actually get the guidance it's hard to know what the quantum of work required is uh we have got some contingency built into our resourcing and and you're right we've got a buffer of a couple of months in terms of the actual statutory deadline for 24 25 so that gives us a little bit of leeway but ultimately we need to see the guidance and it'll be a judgment call that i i will need to make in the discussion about what we can do when uh and yes there will be an additional fee for that additional work that we need to do lovely thank you and follow-on question that's no anything to have on this i suppose as perspective the team are working on the basis that are going to um provide for a full audit that um minimizes um to issue another disclaimer for this year now clearly that's outside of our control but certainly from from our perspective in terms of preparing our accounts and preparing for the audit um the team are working very hard to do everything they can to have the working papers etc because in essence in very simple terms um auditors need to be able to satisfy themselves the information brought forward from last year is sound in order to be able to give a view for this year so we are we are working what the team are working incredibly hard to do to do that now clearly if the guidance isn't issued till quite late and the auditors aren't able to do we will at least know that we've done everything we can to mitigate that risk thank you i suggest given that we um have quite a hefty agenda we move on from this um item so if we don't have any further questions from committee members um i suggest we conclude item six by noting the recommendations set out we'll move on to the next item of business which is agenda item seven which is the risk spotlight item and i will invite catherine eames is this director of regeneration to introduce this report thank you very much chair um so i'm actually going to hand straight over to my colleague luke parker who's ad for strategic programs um delivery just to run through the exact summary of the deck that was my apologies and he said yes david we'll send that out with the reflection yeah thank you yeah thanks very much so um i'm just going to go through the exact summary going to give kind of five kind of key points as to why we give you reasonable assurance about our ability to deliver on the target of 600 homes as set out in our uh and if the cabinet report will be able to deliver on um so the risk has reduced in the last quarter due to delivery progress and uh positive market response overall the risk has reduced to medium and that's driven largely because uh we're now scoring it as very unlikely to uh materialize in the sense we think it's very unlikely we won't be able to deliver 600 affordable homes and this is the lowest possible risk score we can give for this given that we still acknowledge that if we did fail a major impact uh across the budget so we don't feel it's possible to reduce it down for major at this stage given the housing crisis but we think it's very unlikely um it matters because our key early assumptions are proven correct um we think we um can drop it to very likely because developers are responding well deals have been secured to date and internal support for our delivery remain strong despite the market challenges so that's kind of first point second one is that we've got a recent track record developing and pipeline so we've got 300 homes that have either achieved pc or are signed to current agreements either through but largely through development agreements that have been signed recently we've got 18 active sites in the borough that are due to start on site or complete by march 2030 i'd kind of emphasize that start on site or complete point because we're measuring the 600 is measured based on on those two metrics starting and completing and this is important because it shows tangible delivery is well underway completions at roman rise and patmos lodge and fennec south this year show that we've delivered a7 social rent homes already and we've got fennec place due to complete in this current financial year all of those schemes are 100 social rent um and we've got major future capacity coming through from summer late road which has got a recent da uh development agreement apologies the and the decision reports around we're going to market for westbury state renewal and the new home six site so they're both inactive procurement the third point i'd say is that um we've got really strong proactive risk management and uh clear mitigations for those so we recognize that there are some real market challenges at the moment and strategic risks that we're monitoring routinely so this is to do with financial pressures building regulation changes internal resource registered provider appetite capacity but we're actively monitoring those with clear uh clear mitigations in place um and you'll see kind of that outside the exact summary the paper breaks these individual strategic risks down into more detail and the specific mitigations of the progress we've made against those um and just to give a few tangible examples the regulatory delays we might be anticipating we can mitigate through design sequencing summer late and roads first phase is going to be six floors so that it doesn't have reached high risk categories while we progress with the other elements and um rp engagement and funding strategies are being adapted in real time so we are responding in real time to these strategic risks and we monitor them every single month fourth point is that we've got robust government uh financial oversight and project management and projects program management that sits underneath the new homes program so the new home benefit the nhp benefits from streamlined internal governance a monthly program report and reviews and ongoing budget and risk monitoring and the housing delivery group and board which are officer groups that were set up in the last 12 months ensure that all projects are scrutinized before they progress through to other member forums like growth and investment panel and informal cabinet so they do get kind of internally scrutinized by senior officers with expertise in housing delivery before they progress and the annual nhp cabinet report that we produce uh is um reinforces the strategic priorities we have and the financial principles that underpin the delivery and lastly we've got clear long-term plan with um which is underpinned by resident engagement so strategic planning is well underway we are looking at the future pipeline beyond 2030 and that's supported by cross council land identification and a new officer group set up at the moment the investment group looking at how we uh utilize council land and this is important because it shows our commitment is not just to 2030 but beyond 2030 and some of the deliverables that we've introduced recently like the resident charters on westbury which we appended to our nhp cabinet report just to give an example of how we're working within uh for instance shows that we've got consistent engagement and that our development principles are aligned with community needs so i'd say they're the kind of five key reasons why i think we can give reasonably positive assurance around we will deliver these homes and that's why we reduced the risk it's very unlikely um thank you um i have no more questions i'm sure other members do as well i'm happy to invite um councillor ainsley's request to speak on this item if you would still like to speak thank you very much for the report um councillor scott ainsley bring group um so uh i mean look one thing that concerns me right from the off is that the hra said to borrow 40 million to uh how are we going to get out of that we were told repeatedly over the last decade and a half that we can't afford to build social rent so we can't afford to maintain the stock that we currently have because it doesn't produce enough return and despite on this committee challenging that on several occasions as well as challenging the whole sort of land both business plan my worry um around this and i would like to seek some reassurance around how we protect the long-term control of assets which will ultimately benefit value for money the council long term allow us to pay back the loans that we have the treasury management reports coming later we're at 1.3 billion i know we've got assets but if if we have to clear our debt by giving of the getting rid of the assets i have it would be good to have some reassurance on that obviously the uh long-term effects of uh pushing through homes for lambeth uh at the rate that it did and even peer reviews and um everyone else said look you're not bringing the public along with your vision what are you doing to regain trust i understand that you've got the uh you know you've talked about the residence charter to align with community needs but on some of the regenerate states trust is completely broken down what what what is your mitigation to try and um bring and really genuinely listen to people um from community level um i think some of the stuff that i've seen coming through on the pipeline we still have a lot of empty homes that read even registered providers are sitting on that are empty it could be filled um sorry one minute left one minute left thank you um um i see planning um uh applications coming through from developers where even london's level of 50 uh affordable and the targets for social 70 on public land are being squeezed and not being met can we not hold the line on uh and social housing and uh um and the definition over affordable as as i mentioned in the cabinet equalities impact assessment is not affordable it's very misleading um which has been something that's been flagged on many occasions um uh obviously there was no time to prepare for this it was a spotlight item thank you very much for the report and i hope you'll consider my questions thanks thank you um i will invite members to ask a question i'm going to start with the first question that i had in terms of when we obviously see um and as council aynes mentioned when we see planning applications come through and there's you know the target of affordable homes um often we see when the development starts and costs rise that becomes we're told it's less viable and a viability assessment has been done that they cannot be delivered and from i don't know what i've seen is that we have to trust these viability assessments and the number we see the number of social homes reducing as developers costs go up um how do we address that risk so um i'll kick off if i may chair i think it is a big challenge across the whole country so i read something actually the the other day that across the whole of the uk there's about 10 000 homes that are stuck in terms of viability so they are stalled sites where they're not being taken forward that will be on the basis of viability but there's also a real risk at the moment in terms of rp appetite so housing association appetite and ability to acquire affordable homes and so if a private developer comes forward they put in a planning application they get that application approved there's you know 30 percent or more affordable housing on there they need someone to acquire those homes in order for those homes to be built so either they will build those homes um and they may sit there without somebody to to acquire them and therefore they can't be let or they'll squeeze the viability and say the viability is really challenged now we're looking at a number of different so these aren't our sites these are across across slumber we're looking at a number of different approaches to that so firstly we are looking at um the viability assessments and whether we can actually inform those a bit more um based on baseline costs that we're seeing from our schemes at the moment so we've got we're out in procurement at the moment we know what largely the costs are coming back from our developers so actually to be a bit more informed in those viability assessments is something that we're looking at um we're also looking at the other side of it in terms of acquiring the affordable homes so actually what we don't want is affordable homes either stalled and not being delivered or sitting and not being sold we want to be able to access those so as part of the new homes program that's part of the cabinet report we are looking at ways that we could potentially acquire those homes um very prudently um in order to be able to access them for our own tenants so there are a number of different ways we're working with developers on that and then the final thing is in terms of the the acquisition of those homes we are we have really good relationships with the major rps in the borough but we're really going to be building on those and ramping those up it's really critical with these um developments that housing associations are engaged really early in order that they get stock that actually they want to acquire but also if they can't acquire that we are aware of that and then can trigger other routes to bring those affordable homes forward because for us it's about all supply not just that which can be delivered by the council thank you any questions from that's like having a one yeah thanks um i just wanted to understand a bit more about the risk rating of eight which i understand you're saying yeah it's actually um but i wondered you ever see a more disaggregated number because they're all they're all different sites that have different risks attached to them as well not we've got almost six you know social rent that pretty much done so we've already about to deliver yeah so we only need to find another 500 um so that's good news um so i just wondered where do we see actually it's going to be i don't know for instance the westbury renewal project that's most it's risk of delivering it and what those risks are is that something that's not that might be done at this reasoning i don't know whether i'll try to look at that for us um but yeah so i suppose it's just that it seems seems that we have an overall score something when potentially underneath that they're equipped yeah does that make sense yeah it does yeah luke do you want to let them i will yeah yeah so um the thanks very much and and so chair to answer that question the this is about program project level risks so this corporate committee sees kind of the highest aggregated corporate level risks and this is an overall reflection of our program so if we were to aggregate everything through the program we're saying collectively by scoring a we think it's very unlikely we won't be able to deliver the 600 homes but we recognize so obviously as the risk scores work you've got impact on one hand how bad would it be if we failed and then likelihood how likely is it or not that this will materialize we're saying it's very unlikely to be materialized but it would have a major impact i believe that's the reason the report says it can't go any lower because we're not going to reduce the impact because we know how important this matter is for the council um however if you were to look at the individual so we do routine monthly project reviews with all of the project leads so we've got senior development managers that own each of the projects individually my team meet with them a week monthly and we monitor the risks associated with each project which gets scored in exactly the same way so if you were to receive a kind of full highlight report from an individual project it would have a series of risks of scores against it and you're quite right pointing out that individual projects have a greater degree of risk than others but what we're presenting here today is what the aggregate risk across the whole program is and so you have oversight of those individual projects in terms of which is nice and everything does that go to housing this is where the internal governance that we've introduced in the last year comes in so we've introduced housing delivery group housing delivery board and investment group also complements those so those three groups um start at director level so there's director level oversight every month the projects as they come through uh corporate director level oversight with uh key expertise from finance legal procurement planning all in at the the table and then they push through schemes as they're ready um for um progress through to member forums and decision and each month a new homes program report is produced which gives a level of detail about the timeline of the program which is split down by projects the key milestones that's that start on site planning um completion etc so every project is broken down on our program plan and that is shared every month through those forums so senior council officers get monthly updates on our progress and individual scrutiny on decisions as they come forwards and that is connected to the member forums so that there's always member input as well as senior officer input into our decisions before they do you do you have any follow-on questions paula yeah thank you thank you um hearing your discussion about your governance arrangements that are in place i feel suitably assured that it's being looked at and challenged and reviewed and it would get in front of the right people if things were going wrong what i would like to challenge though is that score that that view of this risk materializing being unlikely because given what you have said we've discussed earlier about um the viability of affordable homes and how once things are built sometimes oh it's no longer 30 viable it's now only you know five percent and in previous organizations where i've been on committees of a similar nature and what we set out to achieve is not necessarily what gets delivered because of varying costs and and viability so my question is is this really completely unlikely to occur this risk or is it actually possible is it actually possible um based on based on that kind of but because what this doesn't tell me unless i haven't read it properly is you've got lots of stuff in the pipeline and that are going to be coming on board and being built etc but how many actual affordable homes is what's in the pipeline going to give us and is that over 600 or is it is it a lot over 600 is it just 600 because variability what could potentially come forward could vary in which case i mean if you're planning that there's going to be 800 affordable homes then yeah it's probably very unlike it's unlikely but if your projection is 650 then i'd say i challenge it so that that's kind of my my question okay shall i i'll kick off if if i may then share so in terms of um what in terms of the governance risk and the risk of it being unlikely i think it is unlikely though i think it is still possible development is inherently risky so you know we're never going to be there's no risk at all it's never going to happen we don't exist in a world like that unfortunately but we're talking here in terms of the 600 target we're talking about development of new homes on our land right so not what i spoke about before which is private land which is all schemes coming forward but we're talking about our land and with our land we have a lot of levers that we can pull and a lot of um a lot of ways that we can control delivery so first of all in terms of procurement we're very clear in terms of what we go out for and we have very detailed viability appraisals that we already have before we get out to procure the detail of what's bid back so most of our schemes at the moment are through development agreements the detail of what's a bit back then is then enshrined in our development agreements so a percentage you're right in terms of when it goes to planning but we're very excited on that because we're working very closely with the developer as part of that as part of that process so we're much more in control about what will be delivered and for us with this as well we've um for all of our procurements actually we're asking for an rp partner to come forward now i've already said about the risk around that at the moment and we're looking at a plan b to mitigate that risk in case that doesn't happen the really um great thing for us in lambeth as i said before we have some really active rps in the borough who still have money to spend on buying and acquiring and building affordable homes um we also have some really good land so it's very attractive for developers here and at the moment it seems to be quite attractive for rps so we have a number of levers we enshrine a lot of that within the contracts we're working very closely in terms of clienting our development partners um and it's our land and our land is pretty attractive so all of those are really good things um in terms of the but as i said at the start it is unlikely but it's still possible so if i said it was impossible that i would be lying in terms of the affordable homes um in the pipeline elite's got the exact numbers actually we're tracking both affordable but really critically for us we want to maximize delivery of social rent homes um so as you'll be aware with these mixed tenure schemes there'll be a percentage of private and then you know according to planning we're aiming for 50% affordable of which 70% of that would be social rent and the rest of it would be affordable um but are we're going out with a minimum at least a minimum of 35% so all of our schemes are procured in the same way and that's those objectives are set within the new homes program and we're achieving that in every instance and you know exceeding it in most instances um but in terms of the quantum we're looking at 800 affordable 900 affordable yeah so it's so one thing we said when we published the numbers with the cabinet report is that these are projected numbers based on the consented scheme to date but then subject to design and and and as we progress that the numbers may change now the pipeline currently has 840 homes in it um which is why we think just because there's a bit more slack that it's possible it's it's less likely it's very unlikely not to materialize in our opinion one because we've already delivered on some and two because we've got made some really good progress on some tangible schemes so we've got a da with some related we've had some strong bids um for westbury and um for the nh6 and so there's positive market engagement that gives us encouragement that we will uh achieve this however and very unlikely impossible can co-exist it is that they they both both two things can be true at the same time it's we think it's very unlikely but of course you're quite right the market is really challenged at the moment it's still possible i think yeah yeah happy you might and i think hearing those numbers gives me more confidence at the level of where you've pitched it whereas not not having known that you know if we were only talking about you know 650 being in the pipeline and being our ambition it's a bit more concerned about whether or not that was actually going to be feasible and achievable given the climate but i think you know i understand the the pods the concept of it being unlikely but possible at the same time yeah yeah and we've still got five years or 20 and you've still got so get naughty yeah yeah i have a question on the on the time frames of these so you've obviously said i think you mentioned that that kind of 2030 will include things that are in the pipeline so and what's i guess between now and then what's kind of the staggering of when things are delivered because i i think that is concerning if they're all kind of towards the back end and by 2030 they're they're ready then we don't know how long they're going to take we've you know we've seen before delays i think you know roman rise there was almost a kind of year delay which you know would have um would have been great had people we got people in a year ago so i suppose what's can we get assurance that it's not in past 2030 that these are supposedly delivered by which time you know we don't know what the cost of material is going to be and yeah so we are measuring from starts on site so all of our schemes will be at different phases but the numbers we're calculating are based on from starts to any point to completion in the detail program plan that luke referred to earlier that goes to our housing delivery board we have a really clear timeline in terms of when the schemes are predicted to start um and there are a huge number of factors that need to be considered within that some of those um you know in terms of building safety regulations where we have taller buildings which is taking quite a long time at the moment in london certainly to to um we're hearing from colleagues to get that sign off so we're incorporating all of that into the program plan at the moment and projecting our our program and obviously bigger sites take longer to complete smaller sites hopefully a bit faster but actually the developer the contractors might be a bit slower so we need to track all of that um they're not all going to be delivering starts in 2030 actually we're in you know summer late and we're in procurement in development now sorry in development agreement now due to start on site next march and actually we are you know the planning application was put in i i think two or three weeks ago so all being well they will start on site in march that's really important to us and very important to the gla in terms of drawing down grants so it's really staggered um but certainly we are you know very committed and very cited on our need for affordable housing particularly homes at social rent so part of this program actually though we're not talking about it here is actually looking at supply for temporary accommodation and this is all part of the continuum all part of the puzzle so we are really pushing hard on our own schemes you know on developer schemes on rp schemes in order to increase our supply in numbers thank you any other questions from members that's that's the brighton look those very basic ones well that's an end with enough on um let's see these 600 i was talking about the target they've all been built on council and is that being done through the housing revenue account will they be in the housing revenue account and then picking up councillor ainsley's question um are we confident that actually the rents that would be derived from those properties will actually cover the um uh interest payment so debt repayment that we need to make to cover the construction cost so they are all with exception of liam court road i think being delivered via um development agreements so um whereby we have some fee up front um some of them are actually general fund sites some of them are hra sites so we have a certain amount of money that we need to spend to get them into procurement at the point the development partner um starts they then fund all of the costs from that point on all of our development agreements now are being um are including recovery of our fees so if it takes if it costs us 100 grand 500 grand to get into contract we recover those fees from the development partner once the development agreement is signed um a number of them also include a land receipt so a payment back to lambus um on start on site or various other points in the program they are all and this has been a purposely um set in this way in a really prudent way they are all going to be all to be affordable we'll be going out to a housing association so they will acquire the homes and they will give nominations to the council in perpetuity at social rent so there is no impact on the hra they don't sit with us in most cases um the only one at the moment where that is different is liam court road where we are looking to develop homes which the council will acquire um but for those we're going to utilize um affordable homes grants a grant from the gla and the shortfall will be covered by payment loo so we have a payment a loophole in the council which developers pay to us if they don't deliver affordable so this is the challenge we have in terms of rps coming forward um so um in that instance we're going to acquire the units but there'll be a nil cost of the hra because we're going to use gla grant and we're going to use paymently our preference is self-delivery but at the moment we're we are taking a really financially prudent approach to delivering these new homes and enabling access for our tenants as opposed to prioritizing ownership will obviously have an impact on the hra follow-up question the liam court road development is out of pocket homes yes it is the bottom yeah back of the constitutional club water yeah further questions um thank you for that if we've got no further questions then i'm happy to conclude item um um to nine and move on to the next oh sorry item seven and move on to the next item which is agenda item eight the internal audit and counter fraud strategy and plan thank you um i'll invite paul rock assistant director of internal orders accounts for all to introduce this report it's a quick i'm actually talking about the progress update rather than last last committee was the yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's okay my appendices are going to make no sense um okay so um just briefly since the report was issued we've now issued draft reports on contract management for incidents and also business rates as well so those reports will have to make more pitch more progress towards completing 24 work um as you'll know and we've discussed here the audit project will now include the table of prior priority actions which are in progress but have become overdue the original target thing so that the committee can consider those and what action or involvement you'd like in terms of his purposes um we previously talked about in a very light touch way about the internal audit team entering into the shared service with another london borough that has expressed uh and we are in the kind of final negotiation stages of the legal agreements that we need in order to enter a shared service um it is a cabinet member decision uh it will be taken in consultation with the leaders of it or with the council's lead or the leader of the council but i felt it was important to bring at least a summary of what we were proposing to the committee so that you have an opportunity to reflect and raise any concerns you have and i'm i hope i will be able to reassure you that those concerns are being addressed um it's quite a brief summary on counter fraud normally you get a longer summary but that's deliberate this time in in july we'll be bringing an annual a new annual counter fraud report to give you a really good summary of the work of counter fraud over the previous financial year to accompany the internal audit report but be a separate standalone item because i think the work that we do in counter fraud recognizes that and it certainly it was one of the recommendations specifically as well um i referred to the corporate committee effectiveness review so some members would have seen uh draft reports and we've got a draft response uh together which um i'll be sharing with the chair and the cabinet member for finance and then the wider administration can reflect on what the council's response will be and what what recommendations etc we can accept and how we're going to address those and then we'll bring back the final report as it were in july for the committee um pleased to report there are two positive assurance reports this time around building safety which i'm sure the cap that the committee will be pleased to hear we're able to offer positive assurance on and also elmcorp school uh we've given positive assurance there are two limited assurance reports this time around so we've looked at the governance arrangements in relation to the public sexual health service i want to stress the opinion we've given is not on the outcomes it's on the governance arrangements of the twin part that's a partnership board that's in place that now receives um and also a limited assurance report in relation to leaseholder service charges i should say that ruth putt the director of public health is online and available to answer any questions on the public health sexual health public sexual health service reports unfortunately the officers in relation to these charges have had a significant change in their leadership three key members and they're in the process of reporting replacements so they apologize they're not here tonight but they are committed to coming back in july to provide the committee with an update on progress of those actions and to answer any questions that you may have um i'll stop there and i'll have to take any questions the committee may have thank you now we have the report um i believe we have a member of the public tracy gregory if you'd like to introduce yourself then you'll have three minutes um thank you i'm tracy gregory i've been a leaseholder in lambeth for over 20 years and i'm a member of the lambeth homeowner's association which is the largest uh membership organization in the borough and seeing as there's no officers here to respond um i'll have my say everything um the audit summary in appendix one of the internal report uh and fraud report for leaseholder services confirms that there are inadequate systems of internal control for accurate billing leaseholder billing has been issued a limited insurance report again the same limited assurance was given to leaseholder billing in the audit report of 22 23. leaseholder services checks leaseholder service charges formed a major part of the residents objections to the 23 24 accounts so this is not a standalone issue specifically the audit report notes again there is no formal log to systematically record lessons learned from upheld complaints and member inquiries so no service improvement and process refinement could be made for future years the report also notes that failure to act may result in error fraud or reputational damage the same findings as two years ago lambeth as a member of lambeth home knows association has over 1200 lambeth leaseholder members we have extensive evidence that there is there are continual errors and potential fraud when an incorrect charge is flagged by a leaseholder and confirmed as incorrect by home ownership corrections are not applied to all these holders in the same block as officers have previously claimed as the case and crucially no monies are reclaimed from the contractor in just one example 6.4 million of was overpaid to a contractor 48 leaseholders on a state got together had their bill reduced from 30 000 each to 4 400 each with errors identified 47 other leaseholders who did not join the case were pursued to pay in full and the council paid the contractor in full for the 205 tenant properties despite works being identified as not done done badly or overcharged we have hundreds of examples of incorrect charges continually being applied just a few examples ongoing maintenance of entrance barriers to estates that haven't worked for years standing charges for electricity meters that don't work multiple fire risk assessments in one year found to be unnecessary the list goes on so why has nothing changed lha submitted a full report to the assistant director of internal audit outlining all the issues and this report was shared with the chair of this committee in march why has no leaseholder panel been set up to help lambeth officers work to identify errors and issues implement systems for improvement something lha have been calling for and offering to help with for several years and how can leaseholders be assured they won't be overcharged for services and that more council money won't be wasted over paying contractors and how can we be sure that we won't be here again in two years time with a limited assurance on leaseholder bill sponsor thank you um in terms i mean we obviously don't have the officer here who can answer those questions if you can take some questions do do members have any questions that they would like to ask following on from that councillor cabinet but not related to oh okay um yeah if you have any yeah i think leaseholders bearing in mind the limited audit review i think i would like if it's okay with the chair for the um management to come back with a report detailing how they are going to address the audit regulations what progress is being done and also how they are seeing the concerns being raised by leaseholders um it sounds like there has been some senior management changes in that area and so i appreciate that they may need to have time to get up to speed with its bobs as it were and but i think it would be very beneficial if they could bring us a report telling us how they address how they're going to address the weaknesses that have been identified um and then depending on how that report reads and how assured we feel about that maybe we might then consider having updates regular updates um about that for us and i presume uh paul you'll be following up yes recommendations at some point in time absolutely through our standard process we'll be following up but if they become overdue they'll be reported back here as well if that's okay with you yeah can we make requests for that report to come with the officer at the next committee meeting do you have any comments on the leaseholder report if there were anything that would be useful i mean to have that at the next meeting with the detail that we requested would be useful all noted so i'm responding to in the back to you if through your agreement you know you think that that's we can make sure that those notes are recorded and we make sure that officers are made aware the meeting isn't going to utilize at the end of time to ensure that they have that so that they can provide that with limited audit reviews do do we routinely ask service managers if they've had a had a limited audit review to actually once it's been reported by yourself in the audit report is it routine for them to then come along to committee to then present what they're doing to and the progress that they're that they're making yes so so it's actually this is an exception so as you'll see um public health is online because there is the limited assurance in relation to governance so the expectation was set i think previously by this committee that if there is a limited or nil assurance report that the relevant director or corporate director would attend um it just happens to be that literally within the last i think all six weeks having the individuals that cover this area have have left um and are being replaced and that is why i don't have directed in that area asked if they could come back in july to then find that information but i think this will make sure that the specifics that are raised here are included into that yeah i just sorry chair and i just wonder whether or not it's it's great seeing paul's reports because obviously we get we get the flavor of what's what's been identified it would be useful for the following committee after we've received paul's report if limited audits we had a report from the service area telling us what they're doing against the recommendations to give us progress because i appreciate this is on mine now and she can tell us that she's accepted the audit recommendations so she's going to put in plan plans to to address those but what i think i'd like to know is again the the quality of thing as to well what progress is now being happening and i appreciate if reports only issued recently she probably hasn't had an opportunity to now be able to tell us well i can assure you committee x y and z has been done it's more like x y and z will be done so therefore could could we have something a little bit later giving us that assurance just on limited order reports given that brief has attended i don't know whether you did want to give a decision just quickly check in terms of what progress has been made yeah no that would be great and i mean the in terms of the leasehold report i mean the staffing changes is very unfortunate in terms of you know for us and not not having that i think you know as sort of a committee that this that feels like something that's not within our direct control at this minute um but it's clearly something that we will have significant concerns around and i think we really need an update on that at the next meeting but um with the other report that has limited assurance ruth i don't know if you wanted to give a quick overview on what the next steps are being done and how that's been addressed yeah thanks thanks chair so the quinpartheid agreement is an agreement across lamber southwark lewisham bexley and bromley and it started with the lamber southwark lewisham agreement over the last year we've added in the additional boroughs to that um so the limited assurance was was really relating to how the board's terms of reference fed it should function and what came to it and what actually was happening within that board so already we have met with the partners that sit around the board we've fed back to them what the audit has shown and are working with them to look at those terms of reference so they're actually both fit for purpose and for what they expect from us as their lead commissioner and as partners some of the uh issues that are raised for example around kpi monitoring um and finances are done in other meetings so it wasn't that those things weren't happening but they weren't happening as specified within the partnership board so we will agree with those boroughs where those things best take place and whether it is at the board or elsewhere and adjust the terms of reference accordingly um in relation to the risks around the sexual health strategy um the sexual health strategy has been delayed as has been pointed out in the report it is now out for consultation it is a strategy which straddles um most of southeast london so getting boroughs to sign off bits and get the agreement is sometimes um a bit challenging because it has to go through everyone's governance processes however that is now live it's on our website it's out for consultation and once we have that consultation feedback we will then finish and publish that report um but i can't i can sort of provide assurance that the actions as outlined in the report and the recommendations have already been taken forward by the commissioning team and it is usual practice that we actually do provide updates against audit actions um that have come through uh particularly where there's limited assurance but actually frankly for all audits we would always look at those actions and take those management actions forward um and follow up thank you any questions um if i'm sorry oh yeah that's the camera um it's kind of linked but maybe it's a broader question and i'm going to ask it again for a subsequent item heads up um what in the cover sheet for this agenda item it says child friendly lambeth applicable um and i just want to understand who's making that call so for instance if we're getting a report that's questioning sexual health delivery that surely has an implication for children in lambeth um and likewise if we've been doing um a report on a school um court that also has implications for children in lambeth so i wanted to understand the process for who who's looking at this from a child friendly lambeth point of view within council and so who's giving that uh conclusion that this report isn't relevant in certain aspects it obviously is no i'm happy to respond so um in terms of that that not applicable that was me i wrote that report i'm the author i didn't consult with anyone the children um and i think your points are entirely well made uh normally i would record something like internal audit supports the functions of and achievement of the capital's objectives and so undertakes audits in areas that uh where there are risks associated with those objectives etc so a fairly bland statement but i think it's a point well made i need to need to look at those in detail and make sure that i'm properly reflecting the work that i've done in the areas in in that report thank you okay that's right and each councillor has their has their pet topics and child friendly lamp will be my topic once i sit on this yeah this is exactly your champion to perform exactly like this i mean this is the that's the point of the role um so yeah i have to pick that up i'm just saying just and ruth may want to confirm this but as also at the outset this was about governance as opposed to delivery so in terms of child friendly for this particular audit there wouldn't have been any concerns raised or any issues in terms of not not meeting our commitments for child child friendly because it was more about where things were being reported in in the sort of partnership boards and other meetings rather than because it didn't align with what was in the partnership agreement so i just just thought that that was important yesterday but there was there was definitely no concerns around you know the delivery program and what was being what was being delivered across those boroughs sure may i make a request um yes you can move thank you point of information so um ruth was heading up housing for a while as an interim could they not uh could ruth not give uh an answer to the questions raised by them raised by the leaseholder i don't want to put ruth on on the spot she doesn't have the correct information prepared for this so just to say that responsibility is now with um fiona connolly who's now the cop uh return to her role as corporate director for housing and adult social care and um the so as somebody um has already mentioned we've had uh some of the key members of staff have recently left the organization so we have got new staff that are appointed and they will get up to speed and i think they'll bring back a much more comprehensive view based on the audit findings which i have not been involved in in any level of detail so i don't think it's appropriate for me to comment at this juncture and and typically we as a committee share the frustration that that we don't have the the people that there has been a staff change and we're not getting that information to this you know this is something that that we would like to be um we share the frustration is what i'm saying in terms of the internal order and counter fraud strategy paula did you have another yeah couple of questions if you don't mind and i've got one around audit recommendations and then one about the shared service so if i start with the recommendations one i think a general comment um and having been ahead of internal audit it was a bugbear of mine um trying to get management to provide us with timely and detailed updates against recommendations i don't think that the management comments that have been against the outstanding audit recommendations are sufficient enough for us i don't think um i'm able to say that i'm assured that those actions are going to be addressed have been addressed um because there's not enough detail there um so um i think it would be helpful if management could indicate if they feel that they have fully implemented a recommendation or if they haven't indicate what's left to be done and when it's going to be done by um a couple of them in in their comments have done that but a lot happened on that so we we know that the deadline has passed but i don't know if it's going to take another three months six months or a year until that weakness has been addressed appropriately so i would i would like to propose something chair if you're amenable is that maybe as chair of the committee um you might want to write on behalf of the committee to um all managers or senior officers who receive audit recommendations setting out that our expectations are that um when they implement recommendations within timescales that they have agreed because it's them that are agreeing that timetable with internal audit it's not something that's forced on them by internal audit so they should be thinking about how long it will take and then can they can they achieve that so implement within the timescales they've agreed and then where there are difficulties providing us with a bit more detail about what has been completed what's yet to be completed and in when it would be need to be done by and that they should be engaging with internal audit about extensions i know we want to know about when the original audit recommendation was made but they should be engaging with internal audit about extensions and where they can't um and then i think once we've got slightly more detail we as a committee can then question those managers a little bit more thoroughly and to seek that assurance i mean i've got questions on every single one of those recommendations i don't propose to do that tonight because i think if we got a bit more information maybe a lot of those questions would need to be asked and so if you're a meaningful chair i think that would be really handy and then we can then threaten managers that if we don't get suitable updates then we will ask to speak to them in committee about what's happening yeah that's that's okay and anymore we could we can take follow up with that absolutely take that recommendation and and then soon i was just going to say if it's helpful in between meetings we could come up with a suggested sort of expectation of this is what we have yeah if you as committee want to check that so that you also get it in a standardized way so people know what information you're requiring and they then provide that we can certainly do that yeah no that's that's really helpful and yeah i'm happy to yeah on that is yeah i presume we can probably provide them with more of a guideline of what we want some i guess key fields that they need to complete rather than some comment yeah yeah i don't think that's too much to ask um i think you had a question on the chance yeah just on shared services again um in in terms of my my experience in my role elsewhere i'm i'm very much in support of shared services i think it builds resilience um within our services um and it also um aids for development for staff and i think it's it's the way forwards in local government to start looking at shared services uh for particularly for audit and counter fraud services um particularly with recruitment problems that we have for auditors and qualified staff and it was one question is that could you just confirm to me that lab there's not going to be no detrimental effect to lambus internal audit delivery you're still going to be providing the same level of coverage to be able to give your annual opinion by entering into this arrangement and then secondly what do you consider are the key risks associated with running a shared service and how do you anticipate mitigating those risks sure so check if that's in terms of uh delivery of service yes absolutely um and the way that i'm confident in that is that both authorities are have their delivery supplemented by a third party they're both serviced by video and to support the delivery of the internal audit plan should we be unable to recruit to those posts then we can utilize that funding as it were in order to purchase more audit days to make sure that the level of delivery is maintained my hope is that we will achieve more delivery because we will have efficiencies across as you said the resilience across both teams opportunities to replicate audit plans and work programs and reporting arrangements etc so there's a lot of efficiency to be gained there so i'm confident that we'll deliver the same level of service and i hope to be coming through the service over that time in terms of the the key risks that i've identified to the shared service so the first is certainly about recruitment that is a tough market to recruit certainly qualified internal auditors when you're recruiting more junior internal audit apprenticeships there's a lot of a lot of great applicants out there we had 160 i think the last time we recruited so but of course we need those to be supported by qualified staff so there is that risk again in terms of impact on delivery which would be the fundamental risk i've got that covered through through bbo um there may be risks in terms of the rolling start so i need i need to be appointed in order to start making changes and and agree that the business plans and recruit to those staff and restructure the the team etc so there are risks around that um right now that is not impacting on lambeth at all all of the original team are still here still delivering um it's only at the point i'm appointed and then again i've still got bdo in place delivering the contract fully so i think we're we're we're covered in that respect as well i think those it's really about making sure we've got the right quality and of resources to deliver and the you know the mitigation in that is supplemented with bdo and both authorities have got sufficient budget to cover that and i'm assuming that you're generating some income as well for lambeth as a result of this yes so entering into the shared service in a full year will deliver around 150 000 pounds of saved so avoided costs i would say so it's reducing the spend on internal audit for lambeth but gaining through efficiencies of working in a broader team across two authorities that's effectively my salary is half recharged to southwark so i was just going to say you weren't a lot anyway a suggestion that is not the case um but yes that's that's that's helped it's really impressive thank you yes thank you um we've obviously spoke about this off offline and i guess i've raised the risks about the staffing risks and um i think to paul's point this is quite best practice it is something that um you know i've sort of gone away and done a bit of research into where's it's being done and feel assured that it's something we should be doing um councillor camber did you have a question yeah sorry and i if this is too granular question we can follow up outside the meeting it was on this point about savings of the shared service so we we hope to make a savings of 75 000 over the next four years but you're now saying that in fact we're going to be making saving 1000 oh yeah so we're completely over exceeding yes yeah okay which is good it's nice to be able to do that yeah no i just wanted to make sure i understood it probably so yes so we're making essentially an additional $173,000 over the life of the it's giving my choice yeah the cert said said shared services delivered in full over those four years yes but only we need to deliver it in one full year in order for the saving to be met as well yeah yeah yeah target saving but yeah if i can overachieve about that yes no great no i'm just wanting to check that i had that understood okay any further members or any further questions from members on this item in which case i'm conscious of of time so i suggest that we move on to the next item of business which is agenda item 9 and that's treasury management quarter for performance 2024 to 2025 um so i'll invite rob brown acting assistant director of finance to introduce this report uh thank you chair so i will keep it brief um so this report serves a dual purpose it's presenting quarterly performance from december 24 to march 25 it's also presenting the full uh financial year performance for the year ending march 25 um just to remind members in terms of reporting uh the the main treasury document uh by which we monitor or we set our strategy out is is the treasury management strategy that goes to full council every year uh along with the budget report and so within that we would set out our borrowing strategy our approach to risk management our investment strategy etc as well as a number of performance metrics um and uh more importantly as well the the limits on our borrowing activity so the purpose of this report presented to you tonight is to uh present our performance against those metrics um uh obviously i'm pleased to report that um we've a performance during the year is in line with the metrics and indicators within the treasury strategy that was uh agreed for 24 25 um treasury is also quite heavily regulated in terms of legislation statutory guidance and professional codes of practice and again um i'm pleased to report that performance during the year uh was in line uh with with that guidance and legislation um the numbers for the year are obviously there in the report in front of you so i won't say too much uh on those but i'm happy to take any questions that members may have um thank you i believe we have a member of republic to speak so we'll now hear from pete elliott you'd like to introduce yourself and then you'll have three minutes yeah pete elliott's green party um i'd like to address the key issues highlighted in lambeth council's treasury management the report reveals a total borrowing figure of 1.13 billion i believe over half of that has been incurred over the last six years with debt continuing to climb and interest cost place placing increasing strain on the council budget this raises significant concerns about the long-term affordability of our financial footsteps of our financial strategy for 14 years our labour council has consistently pointed to tori austerity as the root cause of our financial challenges and not its mismanagement however with the labour government in now in power it is crucial to assess whether the expected improvements are materializing unfortunately the current report suggests that our financial situation remains precarious and the anticipated support from the labour government has yet to yield significant benefits one of the key issues is the substantial portion of the revenue budget being spent on debt repayment and interest which amounted to 39.9 million in 2024-25 this is a considerable burden on our finances especially at time when we are under pressure to make savings across services another critical issue is the risks highlighted in the report including exposure to interest rate volatility liquidity risks due to falling cash balances and the impact of high inflation these risks need to be closely monitored and managed to ensure the financial stability of the council to address these issues are three key questions for our council of for our officers having just borrowed 40 million for the hra what is the strategy backed up by solid specific numbers to show how this debt will be cleared and when when is that due when it's due how does the council number two how does the council plan to mitigate the risks associated with interest rate volatility and liquidity and three what is the long-term strategy for ensuring the affordability of our financial strategy in conclusion it is essential that we take a critical and robust approach to managing our finances we need an inquiry into the failed homes for lambeth and ensure that the same mistakes and loss of control by the council and specifically this committee never happens again by doing so and genuinely learning lessons we should be able to build a more financially resilient and sustainable future for lambeth it's also imperative that we hold the labour government accountable for delivering the support and improvements that our council and community desperately need thank you very much before i move i don't know if if rob if you want to make any comments or i'm happy to move straight to member questions um if i'll leave it to zina to make any comments or pass the questions yeah that's part of questions it's fine any questions from members obviously um i think our role here for this particular item is around um taking assurance that um you have or the council rather has operated within its treasury management strategy and it hasn't gone outside that rather than challenging the the actual strategy i think that's something for scrutiny and for cabinet to do um but i did have some specific questions around um um the interest that has been paid in the report and please correct me if i have read this incorrectly and that i've got the wrong end of the stick because it is highly likely and i just wanted to confirm that it says here that we budgeted to pay 34.6 million in interest but we ended up paying 43 million in interest so that's like over 8 million more than what we had planned to repay to pay in interest and i wanted to know what were the reasons for this because it can't all be down to the pwlb borrowing rates increasing because obviously you would fix what you're borrowing at the time so when you budgeted what you were going to be paid back in interest why are we why are we out so much with what we what we budgeted for it's my question so so from from my point of view and xena correct if i'm wrong i i understand those budgets have um they've remained static for a long time and haven't been reviewed appropriately in line with our increasing debt portfolio uh and the interest rates that they attract so i think it's just a case of um yeah not not reviewing them sufficiently to make sure that they're they accurately reflect the actual interest that we're now incurring on an annual basis okay if i may check that gives me great cause of concern given the financial position that the authority is in that if we're not budgeting properly there's no there's there's that's why our spend is way beyond what we're budgeting so i would like to have some assurance back here around the budget setting process that takes these things into account so that we're setting budgets correctly and that we're achieving any efficiencies that are built into those budgets if you go back to the the item around the um statutory recommendations to be honest it probably links in nicely there but i have to say that that does cause me concern that we've allowed budgets to stay static for such a long time not taking into account the increase in debt that's eight million that been said somewhere else let's make a comment here so um my understanding is obviously budget setting happens in sort of generally it's confirmed by the end of february of each year and um budgets aren't always adjusted if there is in-year borrowing and then interest uh being applied but i think it's going to say um as part of the statutory recommendation so the specific recommendation the specific deliverable under the statutory recommendation related to budget setting we have already put in place um appropriate regular review of um of our indicators under the treasury management strategy to make sure that we stay within them and that that's a formal part of the the budget setting process when when the strategy comes and then obviously when the updates come to you to be able to give back that information but specifically around um reassessing budget assumptions and whether that's in relation to interest and debt whether that's in relation to the four-year effective activity that's previous year so that's the sort of detail that you can see be a good manager thank you um i'm going to make a suggestion we have a few more items and we're getting on to um the guillotine so our committee members content invokes standing orders to commit the meeting to extend up to 8 30 pm um great if we have no further questions on item nine um i will suggest that we move on to item agenda item 10 which is the approval of the trustees annual report for 2023 to 2024 the tower hamlets environmental trust um i'll invite zena cook the corporate director of finance to introduce this so this particular report um he was the sort of non-audit um part of what the committee is required and to um consider and approve um these are the annual trustee reports accounts uh for the virtual year 2334 they've been independently examined and um um we are going to be required for future years to file an annual return and the annual charity commission that is currently being put in place uh for this and to my understanding to see um relatively new but my understanding is that this does relate to a development agreement that takes back to 1996 um and whilst there are broader um obligations on organization as trustees this particular report coming to this committee is specifically around really change absolutely so in essence really um we are looking to um accept the um outcome of the independent review and to sign this council um thank you um thank you um thank you um just before we take the timing i'm the chair of the residents association give you a picture um yeah i have serious misgivings about the um governance transparency and accountability of this fund uh the town hamlets trust uh like the residents don't know what's going on they don't know about this account they have absolutely there's no information given there's no governance there's no decision making uh relationship with them at all for example residents didn't know about this meeting in the last meeting um a young person wanted to speak but because he was underage his parents didn't let him come here he wasn't allowed to speak at zoom neither was rebecca spencer at the meeting yet her statement was read out so it was just this imbalance is just huge between residents who are just like excluded and and people who aren't even here but allowed to just have their statements read out um in march 2024 uh i did a public notice question to the committee because there were serious mixed givings about the statements made by the officers who spent 118 000 kind of misspent on uh this basketball area and um they lied they misled they were inaccurate and i showed evidence in my public notice question and i just have not i just had this like we are transparent sort of generic statement given back to me so um i have serious concerns about the council having this fund having access to this fund who's scrutinizing it and um residents should be central to this it should be resident led there should be a body where the residents feed into the decision making they're not giving this tick box at the end of it do they want electric car vehicle points like absolutely ridiculous nonsense and the charity commission i i also question their ability to actually oversee this body i'm part of the residents association i have so many hoops to jump through and yet for this kind of something far more serious far larger it was originally 400 000 um there's just no accountability no scrutiny and just a quarter of it was just spent spent on equipment that is to this day not used so it's just like who and why and how was that allowed to go ahead do i have time to read your statement you have 40 seconds left finished because we didn't know only one person could speak you know we're told like right at the beginning of the meeting when two of us had hoped to speak on this but um that that is basically misgivings i have about you as a body you don't live on the estate rebecca doesn't live in the borough not the borough the ward let alone the estate i don't think this is is related to the item no no thank you but it is related to the committee thank you it is related to the committee i mean you're the gypsy could you please sit down this is not relevant to this item um i mean in relation to the accounts themselves this is i mean you might want to reiterate what the role of the the committee is it's not to um debate whether or not the play area is used by children or nox we also don't have that information if i may um i'm very happy for um myself and my colleague um from legal services we can ensure that um the accounts and any animal records that we may submit is very prominently available on the website and that we can make uh make that known um if that would be helpful in terms of that concern but certainly that's something that we can take away um really yes we we are answerable to and you are typically as the trustees answer to the charity submission and we do need to comply with them very happy to make sure that the accounts and the um be on the website very um accessible yes thank you do you have any questions from members on this item is outside of my remit this is part of your corporate committee not your organ committee so i just wanted to make yeah no no that's fine that's fine could i just ask them are the accounts audited so they have an independent examiner because of the value because of the vendors in that case i'm happy to conclude this item and move on to agenda item 11 which is the reader policy so i'll invite paul rock to introduce the report so the council is required to operate a policy in relation to directed surveillance and use of covert human intelligence sources and present that annually to the committee along with a report on any use of that legislation and activity you'll see from the report that the captain has not used directed surveillance or covert human sources for many years um the last inspection by the ipco was in 2023 they were satisfied that the council had appropriate arrangements in place should it wish to use those surveillance or covert human intelligence resources there is a new inspection due in 2026 um the role of this committee in relation to this item is is to approve the policy um and note the content of the report should there have been usage you would have been free to scrutinize that and ask questions etc but it's not something this council currently deploy i believe we do have a public speaker on this item and i'll invite scott ainsley like to speak on this my public speaker well i mean i have said in your role as a as a council you can get all this information through my offices outside thank you chair so uh this is i used to settle corporate committee and i used to uh oversee all these kind of reports this is the first time this one's ever come for corporate committee that i've noticed and uh i'm assured to hear from you that whilst this is something that is kind of um at the disposal of um the authorities to use i'm concerned that in the most most racially diverse place probably on earth but definitely within uh the united kingdom that um concerns around profiling and it being disproportionately affected um on um um global majority citizens would have been a concern of mine but i've just heard from your report just now and you're summing up that although this is a report that would cover the right to use such kind of big brother technology that we haven't actually used it um do we have any plans to use it do do we see anything on the horizon over the next couple of years before the the commissioners come in uh and what safeguards could be put in place to ensure that this doesn't disproportionately affect global majority citizens in our borough thanks thank you i'm happy paul if you if you want to take a seat back now if you have any comments or to go to comment on that um in terms of plans to use it from my own fraud team's perspective it's unlikely we in fact it's very unlikely we haven't used it in 2017 um that is because the majority of information we need into in order to investigate the types of fraud we do it's often available publicly it's available through other legislation we can use to tackle thing vitality fraud etc so we have no need to perform surveillance or operate covert human intelligence sources i have used sorry i have seen this used successfully in one of my last authorities an example would be using underage people to uh enter a premises and purchase tobacco and alcohol in an attempt in order to tackle underage sales etc so it may be that the council has plans to utilize this in the future i'm not responsible for that particular team so i'm not aware of any of those plans it's typically something that sits under trading standards so i've seen it used successfully in those circumstances but very rarely by kind of internal counter-fraud teams uh uh i think many that i'm aware of they're currently using this way so thank you councillor kavanagh that leads nicely onto my children's question sorry sorry was around um what safeguards have been placed uh no council can undertake directed surveillance or use covert human intelligence sources without judicial approval you have to go to a magistrate and seek approval so it's independently reviewed by the courts and you have to justify that you have effectively exhausted all other reasonable lines of inquiry before you want surveillance you have to demonstrate what um collateral intrusion is referred to so what other people might be caught up if you were to perform surveillance how are you protecting their rights it's a very documented regimented process with strong safeguards in place in this council we would have to seek approval from senior responsible officer and if we were in any way going to be using underage people or or impact vulnerable people the chief executive needs to sign up as well so we've got a lot of safeguards in place to make sure that it's only that we've used inappropriate circumstances and that includes independent review traditional reviews thank you that counts the cabinet sorry yeah sorry paul so i think that leads nicely onto my childhood lambeth question which again at the start of the report you said it had no bearing for job in lambeth but obviously if we're looking at underage selling of things to underage children obviously that in itself has obviously got some impact on children and then now if you said that actually if we were ever to do it we'd be using children to do it for us that also so it would be nice i suppose to have a sentence that if this were ever to we are aware that actually this might in terms of people who might be caught in the collateral yes it could be young people and for lambeth that could be young black and being fairly criminalized um because they are over representatives of our justice system so it would be good to have a under that child for any lambeth sentence but that could be changed that'd be great so obviously part of our role tonight is to look at the policy and confirm that we're happy with the policy and approve that i'm assuming as part of producing a policy you do a an impact assessment and which would show the impact that this policy could have on minorities and children everybody under the sun basically um which is which is it which is really important i think the committee to note that that impact assessment happens with any policy or strategy that the organization puts together so that those considerations can have been considered just because it's not necessarily it's not being it's not being looked at um i was going to ask about um the fact that we haven't used it and why have we used it because actually it's a tool in our in our in our bit but i think you've adequately explained um explained that um i wanted to to just link to social media here because obviously um authorities can use social media in terms of their investigations not just for um for investigations but looking at whether or not people are living in the borough and entitled to temporary accommodation and etc etc so is there a link between the ripper policy and a social media usage policy in terms of how we use social media and when ripper would apply those instances yes and in short yes there's a separate policy to deal with social media which sets up uh when ripper might be triggered as a result of viewpoint viewing of a social media site uh you know particularly of an individual etc you have to take into account whether the site is public you know whether it's closed you certainly couldn't sign up with a fake account and pretend to be a friend and try and be befriended that would be a covert human intelligence order there are absolutely rules around that and there's a separate policy i believe it's currently uh being reviewed by the unions and hr uh for it okay because it might be useful to see the two policies together going forward i think that they they do interlink any further questions on this item if not i will suggest um that we conclude the item and move to agenda item 12 which is the corporate committee annual report so i'll invite again to introduce the report chair um keep it brief given we've got 20 minutes left so um each year the the corporate committee is required to report its activity and how it has discharged its responsibilities under its terms of record as delegated by full council that's what this report seeks to do um it's i've recently adapted it to take account of some of the feedback from sipha's corporate committee effectiveness review and i've tried to set out in a bit more detail about what the committee discussed and agreed um obviously you've had an opportunity to review it uh council ramos has as well um i'll stop there and essentially this committee is asked to approve it in order to submit it to full council when they meet in july i believe um otherwise it's a relatively standard report that you've seen on a number of pages uh agreed agreed thank you um i believe it's got anything much like speed in this thank you uh so when i asked the external auditors earlier on if this council had learned lessons from 22 23 made the same mistakes in 23 24 um and then have issued statutory statutory recommendations because of that we're on the naughty step with the housing ombudsman we're on we're getting criticism from peer challenges peer reviews and public trust and the amount of court cases um and judicial reviews that are that are being made against lambeth are amongst the highest so um one when i did sit on the corporate committee i said look and when we were making when we signed off the disastrous business plan for homes for lambeth i said i feel personally responsible as someone that sits on this committee because having read the terms of reference i can see that the buck has to stop somewhere the cabinet was driving forward with a plan that no one else thought was going to work in history as this history has proved us right scrutiny were unable to fulfill a function because it's a one-party state so it made me think well this is the only committee that can handle the governance we're getting vague looks around all the time all officers have left there's there's not responsibility it's not me gov the buck had to stop somewhere and as a result we're in a really really dire situation so that's why the last time this came to the full council can you sign off the corporate committee report i said no because i think having made some steps forward and we did that kind of diagram to show where there's overlap between corporate committee governance risk and and and audit and scrutiny and there's a whole bunch of stuff in the middle we've made progress but then it just all seems to come back the the the members don't stay that there's some of the members haven't turned up tonight there's no apologies given but that i that i heard of at the beginning of the meeting and how can we say that this is an effective committee i mean i pushed for an independent member the first time they came on they didn't they won't listen to and i pushed for the independent member again frankly we've got one minute left so i just think last time i came to this corporate committee i was deeply concerned that people didn't even understand the terms of the reference of the committee they were on and i flagged that so i don't think we can sign off on well i'd recommend that you can't really sign on this because until this committee takes responsibility um or finds out and conclusively decides that it's not this committee it's someone else that can stop um the major risks occurring then um i don't think i think we have to be quite honest and not just sign off something willy-nilly without um you know all just patting ourselves on the back pretend just blaming someone else it's nothing to do with us gov it is this is this has been as someone mentioned earlier on this has been uh complicit on mismanagement and i think that we have to do on that as a three minutes thank you um thank you i i don't have much comments make on that um we you know and i i won't give you the credit for the independent member because that's something that we have worked hard on as a committee to to do to go through the process to to recruit um and i think we would take credit i don't think that was your suggestion i'm used to people taking credit from any other comments or questions from members paul yeah i think just a bit of feedback really for me um and i appreciate we're looking at the remit of the corporate committee and how because you're you're in a very difficult position in that your remit is an audit committee that has specific role to seek assurance or the comment that you haven't got assurance the buck doesn't stop with you your role is to report back to council to say we can give you assurance that risk management that internal audit are working effectively or i cannot give you assurance over this particular area because we didn't we didn't feel assured so you're you're giving your assurance to council the areas where you've got other responsibilities i think in future you need to split that yeah from the you know i mean i know there's the review of sip and you've got to look at how that will operate but if you keep it together we've got to separate out and make it very clear what is an audit committee role and function of how we should operate as members there and then how you as members should operate in your general purposes site committee role yeah so i think that's the first thing my second the second item is is and it's not for this report it's for next year's report and i'm happy to work with yourself and the authors on it in future is that it would be more helpful if this report concluded on whether or not the arrangements around risk external audits governance internal audit are effective or not so from what you have reviewed and seen are you able to give assurance that internal audit is effective and it operates within the standards because at the moment the report talks about what you've seen and what you've had and what you've been given it doesn't conclude on whether or not you're happy about that where you i think there is a comment at the bottom saying that you've met your own objectives so i've just picked out risk management for example just to kind of like illustrate it is is the committee happy that appropriate risk management arrangements are in place and that the policy and strategy um has been effectively deployed are you comfortable that risks are appropriately considered and that the action taken to make to manage those risks is within the authority's app at risk appetite and then what assurance do you want to give over those arrangements to council so i think that's what we might to look at in the report going forward and i'm i'm more than happy to work with the committee to yeah and i and i think that relates back to your earlier points but we spoke at the very beginning about the minutes and the item and the um and you know and i think again so we can pick this outside but to my view it's how how do we as a committee you know can conclude what insurance we've got and whether that's what assurance we've had sorry and whether that's something that we we take away or whether we we're sort of making that decision how we you know define what's kind of reasonable assurance and there might be things that we're assured that we'll get something or so it would be good you know you will have more experience you may also want to add in so for example i mean i don't know when the last time you looked at the risk appetite and whether or not you as a committee have challenged that if you might want to put in your annual report in future actually we've not looked at this particular area for a number of years so in our work program for 25 26 you know we want to include risk and risk appetite or we want to include looking at x y and z you know because your annual report should also include areas for improvement for the committee areas that the committee wants to investigate further and areas in which the committee wants to improve on yeah um so don't be afraid to say well we don't feel like we got that area right yes this year yeah we want to kind of work on that next year yeah yeah agree and and just address a couple of points the the audit and general purposes committee is then and i forget that you this was before you joined that obviously we'd had the discussions with sit for around that and it's been kind of ongoing and there's you know the just little considerations in terms of you know how often we can really expect members to to meet and you know having a separate committee is obviously very resource intensive so how we would split that and we did discuss kind of different different ways of splitting up as you said the audit committee from the general purposes um you know and making us more focused i think sometimes we felt that but you know that's this this is what is why you're here and we uh exactly and we will take we will definitely take that and following from the sip for review that we had we were pleased to have gone through any questions from members outside brian more snake which is following up from paul's point i would reach out i think it's it's very vital that the report does separate out our two roles of this committee is as an audit committee and um as general person's committee and the other one is probably i think it would be helpful if the if the draft of the report was circulated to committee members before i actually came to the committee because then we could input i don't think i had so many emails from paul it's possible i missed something i um it would just be useful because then actually these things about where we things that things that are missing we could actually say those before i actually come to the committee yep there you go um all right if we've got no yeah yes digestion on the current content i could do that and if the committee is willing we could you could sign it up in in outside the committee if you want to i'm conscious of time and we um we do only have 10 minutes and we've got the supplemental item item which is agenda item um 13 i notice sarah's here um it yeah i mean this is a topic that we have lots of questions on because especially us as counsellors come into but anyway we'll see where we get in 10 minutes and we can always take that so um i'll introduce the agenda item 13 which is the six monthly update on complaints members inquiries and um foi act requests um i'll invite sarah hedley the head of customer service to introduce the report thank you chair um and thank you um committee so obviously we've got very little time left you've got the full report so i'll just go through um a brief summary of points um for this period we received 12 137 new cases which is a reduction of two percent from the previous six month period but overall performance has shown positive improvement in the previous period local resolution complaints accounted for the largest proportion of cases at 44 but this period me's accounted for the highest proportion with 38 housing received 39 of all cases received whilst resident and enabling services received 27 for local resolution we saw a 13 reduction in volumes 23 increase in performance to 75 and we upheld 57 of complaints which demonstrates our willingness to accept responsibility when things go wrong for final reviews performance rose to 73 in this period despite a 20 increase in volumes again housing accounted for a large proportion 73 here of all cases and also accounted for the top five areas the escalation rate for local resolution to final review is 21 but for housing this rises to 37 with upheld at 60 of all final reviews investigated for the local government and social care ombudsman performance is at 100 we received more than three times the number of decisions received in the previous period 81 of them were closed after initial inquiries at the assessment stage without the need for a formal investigation cases received represent 11 of the complaints considered at final review stage and two percent of the complaints considered at local resolution stage and the upheld cases excuse me represent one percent of all final review complaints investigated which is indicative that we're getting better at effectively resolving cases internally at stage two housing ombudsman performance also at 100 we had a 14 decrease in volumes this period and responsive repairs accounted for 75 of cases received although volumes remain high it's encouraged to see a downward trend and the total number of complaints regarding responsive repairs as recent implement improvements are embedded in the housing service we've had 20 severe maladministration determinations in this period with members inquiries performance rose by 13 percent reaching 77 percent while volumes increased by 15 percent and 46 percent of me's concerned housing with resident and enabling services accounting for 27 percent and as you can see their housing accounts for just under half of all me's received and huge effort continues to go into reducing backlogs for freedom of information requests performance increased from 52 percent to 73 percent and whilst we've seen a steady increase in volumes the top areas were resident and enabling services housing management climate inclusive growth and children services we are releasing more information than in previous periods indicating greater transparency and accountability which is key in fostering public trust and lastly subject access requests we saw a 24 increase in volumes while performance exceeded the 90 target standing at 93 percent during this period 35 of all styles received related to housing 26 concern the contact center and then children services and resident and enabling services after that thank you chair thank you um we have five minutes questions paula right and i'll be really quick i found this report really difficult to follow and it's incredibly wordy um so i think it would benefit from having some sort of what tables included in it to make the statistics that you've just been through easier to read but what i think this committee needs to focus on is what are the assurances that the issues that are being raised are being addressed and that lessons are being learned so that the same issues don't get continually keep coming and i think that's what this report needs to focus on for this committee rather than all the statistics the statistics are great that's a snapshot that's fact what i'm interested in is what assurance can i be given and it probably doesn't come from the central unit it comes from the various departments as to what actually is being done to address this and improve performance so that we don't get these complaints so we don't get the number of fiys we don't get the number of member inquiries because things have improved that don't require it thank you um noted absolutely obviously a large proportion um is accountable to housing um and a lot of the improvements well luke mentioned earlier all the different governance and the boards and the improvement projects that are in that space um and they are obviously covered off in more detail in housing scrutiny subcommittee but absolutely i'm happy to expand on the lessons learned because we do report those back to the service areas um and recommend changes um from lessons that we've learned from the case work thank you any other questions from members well i've got lots of questions yeah i think it's easy to follow them up but i think it's really pick up all of them i think it's almost like there's a there's a lot of data here but not information and it's having that just an example would be that you know a large majority of the housing ombudsman complaints are to do with um responsive repairs south so there's obviously something kind of what's going wrong with that team but there's nothing in here to tell me what's why that is and what's being done about it i think that insight would be helpful thank you members uh two minutes to the deadline in that case um i suggest that we include item 13 by noting the recommendations um so we'll now close this meet of the corp committee um thank you and good night to few of members officers and the production team this evening's committee thank you thank you chef um um