 Wel sy'n gweldlaf yma yma ernydd o sydd Siad C keysbynodaeth CRAF Cabinet. Gweithio coincidence ganhefn ac rydych yn y Cosiad Cresedig. R Jeju Puyddwn Seabed,ach tragen synth, ac yo Llymitraeth Prifysgwyl i'r senedl gyfan. 이렇게 mae'r unigamp ar hangar, ac mae'n cyflwymon, ...o atwetio yma yma ac mae'n ceisiau, iubachog. Diolch yn cy мнig rideitiad gan Y Cadababbanet is to take votes by affirmation and will continue with this tradition when we move to a vote on an item. I'll ask if members agree with the proposal. Apologies, that's the weekly fire alarm drill. Only members who are attending the meeting in person will be able to vote on any items. Members of the cabinet are entitled to speak before non-cabinet members. We'll start with those in attendance and then move to anyone online who would like to speak. Moving on. Are there any apologies for absence here, please? Thank you very much indeed. Item 3, declarations of interest. Are there any declarations of interest pertaining to items on today's agenda? No declarations of interest. Minutes of previous meeting. Members are asked to approve the minutes of the meeting held on Monday 6 February 2023. I move the approval of those minutes as a correct record. I think Councillor Brian Milne is going to second it. Thank you. Are there any issues arising from the minutes? No. Does anyone wish to vote? Do members agree to approve the minutes? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? Council therefore agrees with the approval of the minutes as a correct record by affirmation. Public questions. To my knowledge, we've received no public questions. Is that correct? Correct. Item 6 is issues arising from the scrutiny of an overview committee. Welcome to Councillor Anna Bradman, who is representing that committee. Councillor Bradman, would you like to speak now within the body of the meeting? Our main concerns in scrutiny and overview was that the data behind the decisions that were being made was clarified in a number of different places. That has been done in the reports that come to you today. We've got some very full notes at item 6, which explain our thinking. The only one thing that I just wanted to check was under the item, which is on page 19 of the agenda under the heading Shared Waste and Environment. It's sort of somewhere between point 15 and point 16. We were talking about reporting on recycling. It was pointed out under the KPIs that currently dry recycling and composting are reported as one KPI under ES418. But it would be helpful if it was possible that those, in order to keep a track of them, would be helpful if those for dry recycling and composting could be recorded separately. I think that was raised in the meeting, and I'm not sure it's here in the final report, but it's just a record that we wanted to see that. But otherwise, we've got a very full report from Mr Senior. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Councillor Bradman. Councillor Henry Bachelord, have you got any comments on that item that's been raised? Not immediately, but I can certainly raise that point with officers to see if we can help scrutiny and overview with that data. Thank you very much indeed. Moving on to item seven is the quarter three performance report, and Councillor Brian Milnes is going to present this, and I believe it's being seconded by Councillor Peter MacDonald. Thank you, Councillor Milnes. I've got the technology. Thank you. So yes, I'd like to present the performance report, and thank the officer Kevin Ledger, who has done a very good job again with the report between you. I think in summary, it's a continued good performance report. There's very little that have given us concern. We've been through this number of times, so I'm quite happy to recommend the report to Cabinet for approval. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Milnes. Councillor McDonald. I'd like to second it, Leader, and I don't wish to add any comments. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any Members of Cabinet who would like to comment? No. Are there any Members online who would like to speak to this item? I'm not seeing anybody, so we'll move to the recommendation. So the recommendation is set out at paragraph 4 of the report, and that's to note the KPI results and comments that appendix A, recommending where appropriate any actions required to address issues identified. So do Members agree with the proposal? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? Cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. Thank you very much indeed. Item 8, cost of living and options for continued support, and we've had some press releases out about this in the last few days. So Councillor Bill Handley is going to speak to this, and then I think Councillor John Batchelor is seconding it. So Councillor Handley. Thank you, Leader. Cabinet will recall that we agreed a package of support for the cost of living crisis back in March 2020, back in last year, and that support is due to end at the end of this month, March 2023. Of course, we're all very well aware that the cost of living crisis continues to have a major impact on all of us, and this report summarises very well the considerable support already put in place and presents recommendations as to how the council might continue to support residents through the next two financial years. It's an excellent paper, it's very clear. I'm not going to go through it in detail except to recommend to Cabinet that we approve the priorities set out in paragraphs 29 to 36 and the £206,000 funding which is set out in paragraph 38. Just before I finish, I would like to thank, as I said, this is a very well written report, very well researched, and I'd like to thank the officers in the community's team for it, especially to Chris Richards, who spent a great deal of time on the cost of living project and has been very effective in delivering the council's support. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor Handley. Councillor Batchelor. Thank you, Chair. Yes, happy to second this recommendation. We're doing all that we possibly can to help in the circumstances, even where we don't perhaps have a legal responsibility, so I think it's an excellent proposal, and happy to support it. Thank you very much indeed. Can I just make sure that we are miniting the Cabinet's thanks to the whole of community's team and also to Mr Chris Richards in particular. That team have stepped up again and again during COVID crisis dealing with Ukraine and now we've cost a living. One thing after another has been thrown at them, and it's not ever as if one of those issues has gone away before something else lands on their plate as well, and I'm immensely proud of the way that they've reacted to everything that's landed on their plate, so thank you very much indeed. Are there any questions from Members of Cabinet? Any questions from anybody else online? No, thank you very much indeed. Sorry, Councillor Bradman, did you want to add anything on behalf of Scrutiny's paper? Thank you. We had asked for more evidence of the need, which has been put into the paper. We utterly support the need to do this, but we were glad to see the additional evidence behind it in the paper. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's one of those things where we all know there's a need, but sometimes you just need a little bit of this extra clarity, so thank you very much for the contribution of Scrutiny and overview on that. So it's recommended that Cabinet approve the priorities set out in Paragraph 29 to 36 and the £206,000 funding set out in Paragraph 38 to continue to support South Cambridgeshire communities during the ongoing cost of living crisis. Do Members agree with the proposal? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? Cabinet therefore agrees with the proposals by affirmation and thank you again to Councillor Handley and to all of his team. So moving on swiftly to the new compliance policy and we've got to get used to using this word compliance rather than enforcement because it actually has a very different meaning. So Councillor Toomey Hawkins is going to present this and I think Councillor Henry Bachelet is going to second it. So over to you, Councillor Hawkins. Thank you very much Sharon. Good morning everyone. As part of the Greater Cambridge Shed Planning Service Transformation Project we have been undertaking a review of all the activities of the compliance processes which is formally enforcement. We review the ICT system, as you know, we've now migrated all our reports into the enforcement module of Uniform which allows us to improve the reporting of riches and helpers managed. We've also, as I said before, in previous meeting created a compliance webpage which has a lot of information on that including a video that explains what a bridge is and what it is and to help people when they think there is a problem. This is available of course 24-7 and enables them to give us documents and photographs which helps the planning team. And this policy document is the last stage of that process and I just want to thank officers for all the work that they've done in getting us to this stage. Now up until now the two partner councils that's Cambridge City and us had our compliance policies. What we've now done is actually combined. So now we have one so that the team works as one which is the whole point of the joint service. We're still keeping the register of enforcement actions and that's available through the public access system. I just want to say there's a lot in that document which I would encourage everyone to actually have a look at. It sets out what we will do in different cases and what can be done, what notices are used and when. Well at the end of the day enforcement is a discretionary action and each case will be looked at and dealt with on its own merit. So without further ado really I just want to ask Cabinet to support the recommendation that's set out in paragraph 3 so we adopt one unified compliance policy. Thank you. Thank you Councillor Hawkins, Councillor Batchelor. Thank you leader. Happy to have your second recommendations as in the papers as Councillor Hawkins has mentioned. We now have a shared planning service between ourselves and Cambridge City Council. We're working on a shared local plan currently so it makes sense to me anyway to have a shared compliance policy. Also this policy we see in front of us has been through both committees at South Cams and City. There have been some changes made to the original draft so I think it's safe to say it's very robust and I hope broadly supportive. So yeah I'm perfectly happy to second and would also recommend to Cabinet the recommendations on the paper. Thank you very much indeed and can we please minute a bigger pardon so Councillor Bradman. Thank you. I just wanted to ask has it been brought to the attention of the joint development control committee as well? That I don't know. Heather are you able to answer that? It went to both planning committee in South Cams and the city. It didn't go to the joint development control committee. I can confirm it didn't go to that. However everybody had the opportunity to feed into it and when we did the consultation we also sent out the consultation to every member including those on JDCC. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Heather I think that covers it perfectly well. So thank you very much to Heather and her team. I actually think this is incredibly useful document which I'm going to be keeping in hard copy actually because it's a manual for me as a member and I think will act as such for parish councils as well and part of the problem is that people often don't fully understand what our role is and what compliance means and this sets out in really plain English what we can do and what we can't do and what things we might need to intervene with so I think it's an extremely useful practical day to day manual for compliance. So thank you very much for that indeed. So if there's no other questions from Cabinet or from anyone else online. No okay which will move to the recommendation set out in paragraph three of the report to adopt the unified Greater Cambridge Shed Planning Compliance Policy. Do you members agree with proposal? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? Cabinet therefore agrees the proposal by affirmation. Councillor Bradlin. Will it be circulated to parish councils? Will the fact that it is now in place be advised to parish councils because they are the people who are most concerned about compliance? So Councillor Hawkins has said yes. Yes it is. Okay nods all round. Thank you very much indeed. So item 10 confirming arrangements for the four day week trial and next steps. So this is obviously quite a high profile item for us. Councillor John Williams is going to propose this and I'm happy to second it. Councillor Williams. Thank you leader. I'm very pleased to ask Cabinet to confirm the arrangements going forward for continuing the four day week trial and the way in which this council will decide in May whether or not to continue with the trial. So I'm just formally moving these recommendations. Thank you Councillor Williams. So this is just saying what the next make it very clear in two sides of A4 what the next steps and process are. Any questions from members of cabinet? Any questions from anybody else? Councillor Bradlam. The question is are we monitoring adequately the response from members of the public who might be trying to get through to officers? I'll ask the chief executive to respond to that. Thank you chair. Yes we monitor that through our usual KPIs on the performance of the contact centre. So that's how many calls have been received and dealt with and how long the calls have taken. We've already taken two reports to implement the staff and committee and strategy and resources in the city. And there's a third report going next week to strategy and resources in the city which includes that data. Councillor Bradlam. Thank you. And are the response to emails being monitored as well? So we have performance targets for responding to emails but that's a little bit more difficult to monitor. And we never have monitored that in the past in the same way that we've monitored the contact centre. What I can tell you is that during the four day week trial people have been required to include alternative contacts on the day that they're off. And I've had anecdotal feedback including from yourself Councillor that that has actually made it easier to contact people because there's always an alternative contact. Occasionally we've slipped up in terms of the alternative being an annual loop but we have tried to tighten that up when I've had that reported to me. So we don't monitor responses to emails in any sort of using IT so I don't have data on that. What we tend to see is if there were significant issues there it would come through the complaints process. As you know from our recent complaints performance actually that's not been an issue. Thank you. Thank you. And actually people are unhappy if things aren't dealt with actually landing my inbox and I'm not seeing an increase thus far. Thank goodness. So any questions in the room or online? No, thank you. Recommendations set out in Paragraph 5 but the report is to confirm the arrangements for the next steps of the four day week trial. So do members agree with proposal? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? So cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. And now item 11 is the 2022-23 revenue and capital budget monitoring for quarter three. I think Councillor John Williams is going to present this and I think Councillor Brian Milne's is seconding. Thank you. Councillor Williams. Thank you leader. I'm very pleased to bring this to cabinet. If you look at Appendix B variance for both General Fund and the HRA you will see that despite a very difficult year and very turbulent year our officers have done an excellent job of keeping in line with budget. And we expect the outcome to be pretty much in line with the forecast that we made at the beginning of the financial year. So congratulations to everyone. Thank you. Councillor Mills. Thank you. Certainly comparatively with other local authorities who are having great financial difficulties it's reassuring to see that we're getting pretty good scores on the doors for this. So thanks to Peter Maddock and his team particularly for maintaining that. And John who spends an audience of that time on these issues. So thanks to them all. Thank you. Any questions from cabinet members? Any questions from scrutiny? Anybody else online? No. And thank you very much for the clarity of this report and the really helpful explanatory narrative which certainly helps people like me to deal with all this. So thank you very much indeed to all of the team who worked so hard on this. So the recommendation is set out in paragraph 3. I'll find my way back to it. It's quite long so I'm not going to read it out. So in paragraph 3 do members agree with the proposal? Anyone wish to vote against it? Anyone wish to abstain? So cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. And more on money. Item 12 is the investment strategy. And Councillor John Williams is going to present this and Councillor Peter McDonald is due to second it. So Councillor Williams. Thank you, leader. The reason that we've had to make these changes because we've had some changing guidance with SIPFA. There's been some changes in government guidance. Of course we have the public works loan board change which has meant that we basically are no longer able to invest purely for yield. And as a result of that we have looked at how to restructure our investment strategy to allow us to continue to invest in social capital projects. And also those projects which are economically important to ensure the continued economic development of the district. And that we've done and you'll see that in the new investment strategy which is in the appendix A. This has gone through scrutiny and very grateful for the comments that scrutiny made. And I think this revised strategy, this revised investment strategy will continue to deliver us not only growth in the district. But it will ensure that the council continues to receive income to support its essential frontline services. I think it's worth mentioning that we, something like this year, over £5 million will be receiving an income from our investments which will help our general fund. Also I would mention that a lot has been said recently about our debts and how much we are paying in interest on some of the loans that we have made. Bit mischievous because most of that is to do with the HRA and the loan that we took out many many years ago. If you take that aside then actually our loan, the cost of borrowing is very very reasonable. We are something in the region of half a million pounds a year we are paying on what we have borrowed so far for the investments that we have so far made that are not connected with the HRA. So you know again I think this shows that this council has acted in a very prudent way, cautious way and has made some actually very canny investments over the past few years. This which has enabled us to receive a very good income from for example Irmond Street which is now part of our housing strategy and from our commercial investments. But as I say we have had to review this strategy to ensure that we keep within the new guidance set for us by the government. Thank you very much and thank you for clarifying the misinformation that has been out there recently about the amount that we spend servicing loans so that is very welcome. Thank you Councillor Milne's. Sorry Councillor McDonald I beg your pardon sorry. I would like to second the strategy just make a very quick comment because many local authorities and well residents can send many local authorities taking risky investments. If we look at our loan to value ratio it's still very good very healthy and so again that sort of mischief that's going out being circulated in some parts of the community residents can be assured that when they look at that loan to value it's very responsible. Thank you very much for the clarification. Any comments from scrutiny? Councillor Bradman. Thank you leader. At scrutiny we talked around the figures and came to our attention that there was an element in the table at 8.4.1 on page 132 which looked odd. This was row C in that table net service expenditure and in discussion Mr Maddock undertook to strip out an element of capital expenditure which he felt was inappropriately allocated there. He's corrected that in this table here but unfortunately I've just alerted him to that strange anomaly is still present in the table on 8.4.2 net service expenditure and I think he is happy to sort that out. That was one thing. It made the net service expenditure appear strangely high in 2023-24 and then lower in the subsequent years without apparent explanation so I think Mr Maddock can perhaps explain that. The other thing was that and indeed yourself leader you've alluded to the fact that it's sometimes quite hard to look at these data and so one of the things that we asked for in scrutiny and overview was training for all members so that we can all look at these data. This data with a level of having been informed about what it means. So that was one of the things that came forward. We had had very good training actually in earlier years and perhaps it's only COVID that's gotten away so we'd like to see more training in our investments. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your attention to detail. Mr Maddock do you want to comment on that? Yeah so the table at 8.4.2 we see the figure net service expenditure that should be 22865 as it does in the table at 8.4.1 which would then make the ratio 24.8. Thank you very much for pointing that out and that'll be corrected and on the subject of training absolutely the better trained members are, the better members they are. So we will always respond positively to requests for training. Are there any other questions from cabinet members? Anybody else? Anyone else online? So my thanks to Peter Maddock and Ann Ainsworth our chief operating officer for again considerable efforts into this which will just will continue to see us on a safe footing here. And as Councillor Williams has said you know delivering significant amounts of money to subsidise the services that we provide for our residents so thank you very much. So moving to the recommendation set out in paragraph 2 of the report to consider the report and if satisfied recommend to council the updated investment strategy attached at Appendix A. Do members agree with the proposal? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? So cabinet therefore agrees the proposal by affirmation and moving on to the last item. So this is the South Cams Limited Urban Street Housing Business Plan update. Now members please note Appendix A of this report is restricted because it's commercially sensitive. I don't anticipate that we need to discuss the detail of this but can you let me know now if you want to so that we can move into closed session. If during the discussion things change then we can do that at will. So this item will be presented by Councillor John Batchelor and seconded by Councillor John Williams. Thank you Councillor Batchelor. Thank you very much. I'd just like to make a few comments particularly on the social value that Urban Street actually adds to our organisation. They work as a close partner in our housing department. They provide accommodation for vulnerable groups, refugees and asylum seekers. For example we have two houses in Camborn which are used as houses in multiple accommodation and let by shire homes. They're used as temporary accommodation reducing the need for bed and breakfasts. There are a range of other added values. It's a solid business run ethically and with additional social value when opportunities arise. Rehousing another Afghan refugee family making for now that we're supporting. Working with partners and care providers in Peterborough to provide specialist housing for those with additional needs. Providing accommodation for asylum seekers and refugees via the Government Agency Circle. The company has been subject to a full range of audits specifically health and safety indicating good governance and full protection for tenants. The company has undertaken a green energy audit to improve the portfolio by way of energy efficiency measures. The 500 target that was set for the company was achieved back in 2022 having spent 94.6 million pounds within the budget of 100 million. The section 151 officer and portfolio holders for housing and finance agreed that the company could continue to acquire as opportunities were presented. The current total is 503 properties taking the total to 99.8 million. This provides an additional 30 letable properties. Any further expansion in the form of additional housing beyond the 503 properties will be subject to further agreement from the council within the agreement about future loan terms and rates. The company's activities will benefit the council by about 3.43 million in interest payments in this year. The council proposed an interest rise from April this year until March 2025 that would be at 4.25% which was accepted by the company and would increase the return to the council of more than 4 million pounds per annum. This is a really good news story from all sorts of aspects and I'm sure Cabinet would like to join with me in thanking Duncan Bessie and his team who have actually created this company from scratch and proved to be a huge success which is bringing benefits of all types, not least financially to our organisation. So my thanks to him and I'm very happy to move the recommendation. Thank you very much Councillor Batchelor. Councillor Williams? Thank you leader. I too are very grateful to Duncan and his team. This is not the same company that was in place when we took over this council. The company in the past was purely there to make money for this council. What we've done in the past five years is we've certainly a whole hearted support of the company and that is to ensure that it becomes part of the housing strategy delivering housing for everybody and within our travel to work area. So that's been helping us with housing and multiple occupation. As Councillor Batchelor said it's been helping us to find housing for refugees. So this is a company which is now yes delivering an income for this council and a very good income for this council but it's also providing housing for this council that this council wouldn't otherwise be able to do. I'm very pleased that it is helping to find homes for Ukrainians which will eventually become council houses. So all in all as I say this is not the same company that we took over. We have considerably developed it with the help of Duncan and his team and we look forward to it continuing to be a part of this council's housing strategy. Thank you very much Councillor Williams. Are there any comments from Cabinet? Any comments from anybody else? No, so thank you very much. Indeed the company has come a long way and all credit to Duncan and his team for their ability to move with the times actually and turn this into something which we are immensely proud of and the fact that it's now delivering social and environmental value as well as absolutely critical housing for those in greatest need is a source of pride to all of us and thank you very much to Councillor Batchelor for his very strong leadership on this, much appreciated. So if there's no other questions, the recommendation set out in paragraph 5 to note in their capacity as shareholder the urban street business plan for the period 22 to 23 to 31 to 32. Do you members agree with the proposal? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? So Cabinet therefore approves the proposal by affirmation. And that brings this meeting to a close. Members of the public were watching the webcast. This means the video stream will now end. Thank you ever so much for joining us for today's Cabinet meeting which has been quite quick, which was always nice. The next meeting of Cabinet scheduled to take place on Monday 15th May at 10 o'clock. So thank you very much everyone. Thank you very much officers for your participation.