 We take no. We take no. Thank you. Is the cabinet meeting of South Cambridshire district council. We have some people joining us remotely. So obviously they will have the same rights to speak as everybody in the room. The normal procedure at Cabinet is take vote independence by affirmation and we will continue with this tradition. When we move to vote on an item I'll ask if members agree with the proposal. Mae cyrraedigaeth o'r byw. Y cyrraedigaeth o ble yma yn gwasanaeth at yr ennill ac yn gwasanaeth sy'n gyntaf. Mae cyrraedigaeth o'r byw yn gwasanaeth o'r byw yn gwasanaeth o'r byw yn gwasanaeth o'r byw. Mae cyrraedigaeth o'r byw yn gwasanaeth yn gwasanaeth, roedd yn gobeithio yn y dyfynol, ond rydyn ni'n gobeithio yn cwmpas. Ond yna nhw ydych chi'n adreffwn i'r bydau i chi'n gyfer gwasanaeth? Gyda'r bydau o gyf manllai ar rhyngwlad, mae grannu farsaf. Thank you, my apologies. I think Councillor Henry Batchelor has had to take a work call. He'll be joining us as soon as he possibly can. We've got no apologies for absence, apart from Councillor Batchelor, who's almost here. Do you have any declarations of interest? Any members have any interest in relation to items of the business on this agenda, please, to declare? No, okay. If any interest subsequently become apparent, please would you raise them at that point in the agenda. So we're starting off with the minutes of the previous meeting, which I would like to propose, and I think my Deputy Counselor Brian Milne's is seconding. Are there any issues arising from the minutes please? Hello Counselor Anna Bradman. Thank you, Chair. A Lleedr, I just wanted to confirm that there's no dispute about the minutes at all, but I just wanted to ask if at item 12 on page 9 was that scrutiny and overview. As you know, I'm reporting from scrutiny and overview, and we requested training for members on investments and cabinet confirm that this would be very useful. Ac i chi fod yn dweud hynny, dwi'n dweud eich bod yn mynd i mi llawer mewn amser? Yes, yes, it will be. I don't know if anything's been actioned as of yet. Yswhatspŷs a ysgrif sydd f wedi ein sucki. Thank you, Chair. We haven't got that in the dywi yet but we are planning it for the near future. That's great. Thank you very much. Thank you for your touch to a broad. Thank you. Okay. So any other issues to deal with in minutes? Allwch i'n gwirio i chi, maes uch 했어 i'n byw derogwch y dyfodol? Yw'r gwleidio, yw'r gwleidio i chi'n byw derogwch y dyfodol? Roedd yr oedd yn eu cyfnod, rhaid i'n fwyfodol, mae'n cissio i'r gwleidio o'r gwleidio gyda'r rockazu cyикаu cyfnodion. Oedden nhw'n hynny dechrau cyfoesgw sy'n dechrau mynedog. Rwy'n dechrau i'r gwleidio i chi chi'n i'n mynd y dyfodol o'u gweithio ar gyfer hyn. ac yn ei wneud i'r peth iddynt ymddangos. Rydyn ni'n oed gyfectio o'r pwysigau ar ôl, yn ymweld? Yma, rydyn ni. Cymru Aber媽nol o'n ni'n meddwl o'r hyn tolio ddod o ddwy i ddim i'r Rhywgr Caerdaeth Corp Beradr yn my afterlife. Rydyn ni'n meddwl i ddydyn, nid rhyw grwp hynny i ddweud y dyfodol o'r ffawr Mae'r unrhyw gweithio mewn clyw. Rwy'n rhaid i'n ffroedd y ffroedd yng nghylch o'r ffroedd yng Nghymru. Rhyw p'r bwysig, rhaid i'n ffroedd y clywed o'r team yng Nghymru a ymmwneud o'r team o'r ffroed o'r ffroedd yng Nghymru. felly, mae'n ddweud o'r rheswr o'r swyddiadau, not jumping the queue for south cancer councils, social housing. We had been advised that Ukrainian guests have the same access to home link as all the slapped other residents so it was a level playing field for everybody and it was reassuring. felly mae cyhoesweithio bod yn meddwl i meddwl i'r amser a meddwl i'r mwyaf yw hyn yw'r eu ddoedd yn ei ddechrau, i meddwl i'r amser a meddwl i ddweud wahanol, fel pob i wneud o'r wneud ar gyfer a'r amser nad oedd cyhoesweith cymeroddau ar gyfer iawn, oherwydd i'r chyfwyr ac i drywyddoedd, sy'n meddwl i'r amser, i meddwl i'r holl gan anod. Ie dweud gwneud rhywunio bod yn gweithio cyd-abau yn ymgrifiadol cyw bells chi. We will thank for that all this had been made easier because the Government provided the necessary sufficient funding swiftly, which we were very relieved about, that was just the element from the Homes for Ukraine. So, I was just going to ask him Councillor Bill Handley wanted to comment on how we have been yn llwyffydd y bwysig yn ymgweld i'r bwysig yn yw'r cyllid gennych, a'n rhaid i'n fydda i'ch byw yw'r cyfle i'r prosesion, cael y cyllidon yma, nid yn ymweld i'n bwysig? Rhaid i'n rhaid i'n rhaid i'ch bwysig. Rhaid i'n rhaid i'n rhaid i'n rhaid i'n rhaid i'ch bwysig i'r bwysig i'r bwysig, ond we are looking at ways forward, and that's what's presented to scrutiny and welcomed, so, yeah. Thank you very much. Yes, do you want to continue, Castle Bradman, with the rest of the scrutiny report? The other element was about the collection changes to our waste system. Did you want me to do that now? Are we going to come on to that later? Well, we're going to talk about the waste service, so shall we bring you back in then? That might be more relevant, actually, if that's okay with you. Thank you. Yes, Councillor Batchelor. Thank you, Jen. Could I just make a comment on the Ukrainian situation? Inlet is perfectly correct that, you know, those going into social housing go through exactly the same process, but we do have another route in that we've had funding from the government to purchase 40 houses, which in the initial stages will be used specifically to support Ukrainians and Afghans who in those houses come back eventually to our rainbow stock. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Batchelor. That's helpful to know. Thank you. Thank you. Right, so moving on then to item seven, which is street naming and numbering policy, and Councillor Tumie Hawkins is leading on this one. And I think Councillor John Batchelor is seconding it. Thank you. We've got Heather Jones online. Hello, Heather. Thank you. Tumie, do you want to crack on? Thank you, leader. Good morning, everyone. As we know, the address of the building is so important, as it's the only way it gets found by anyone and everyone, period. You probably will realise that some have had delivery companies send messages saying, we've delivered your parcel and you're standing there going, no, I don't have it. And then they send you a picture and it's not your house, especially in new developments. So, confusion with street name and number or something has happened in that case. Now, street naming for us is under the function of building control. And in the past, as you know, building control is shared between our city and Hauntondon. And it council had its own way of doing street naming. We're a joint service, so it's important that we have a process that works and is efficient and is with our communities. So, a review was carried out to create one policy and one approach. And this is what we're presenting to you this morning. You will find the full policy in Appendix A, which kind of outlines the process that is followed. Now, it is quite detailed. But it's just saying that new names, which are suggested by developers, come with appropriate fees. And building control makes sure that it actually follows the naming conventions. And after that, the suggested name is sent out to the fire service Royal Mail us councillors as well. And those of us who have had new developments in our wards probably will realise that you've had something that says, do you like this name or not? Interested in naming conventions, which are outlined in paragraph 6.3, actually for me makes interesting reading. Because you've got so many suffixes from sort of a venue to where there's 39 and it's not exhausting. And that's included the usual road, court, clothes, etc. Anyway, the important thing is we now have one unified street naming and numbering policy for all three councils. And it is one that I recommend that we adopt today. Thank you. And of course I've got Heather who will be able to answer questions, specifics that I can't answer. Thank you. Heather, is there anything you just want to add at this point, please? I'd just like to say that this was basically not many major changes. So we're aligning the three policies. So it's very similar to the policy for Southcams anyway. It's just that we were aligning all three in the same way. So to make the point, it's not very much different to what we had in place anyway. Thank you very much. I don't realise how complicated it was actually. It really isn't an easy thing to do, is it, to get all the ducks in line. Are there any questions from any cabinet members? Councillor Mills. Thank you, Chair. I'd just like to thank Heather and the team for the improvement in service over the last couple of years. I think a staffing issue rather plagued the service levels that we were able to deliver. And that's now very much resolved. And this refined policy will make things even better. So thanks to Heather and the team. Thank you. Very appropriate. Councillor Heather Williams. Just a couple of clarification on request. I recently have a new road, which is a big event in my ward. I think it's the first new road for probably a decade perhaps. We don't get them very often. And when it was on Thompson's Meadow and they wanted Thompson Meadow close because it was coming off of that. And they were told that they couldn't have that because we'd never have a church lane and a church close next to each other. But of course, historically we do. So I'm just wondering, this then caused utter confusion. And whether it be possible for us to make it clear that the guidance has changed in our responses to people. Because they sort of felt like they wanted to go up to not war on this subject. But they were quite determined that literally round the corner you had church lane, church close. So if we could perhaps have some guidance on that. And the other thing is the request that when we have street naming come through. Is there some way of communicating that to the waste disposal a bit quicker? Because the issue I've had because we often have infill houses is everything's fine till their bin gets missed. And they can't actually log it because our waste collection services aren't coming on at the same time as the address is. So just wondering if there's some joined up opportunity there. Thank you, Leader. Thank you. So two points well made. As I live in Church Street and I constantly get parcels for church end, which is quite a long walk away actually to have to redirect them. A very interesting point about bins. Shall I bring in Heather? Heather, could you respond to that one please? Yeah, thank you. Yes, we will make that clearer, Councillor Williams, about the difference and the fact that in the past there were names that were very similar. But precisely the point that things get missed is why we don't allow that now. In respect to the waste team, we actually have a meeting that we set up with waste to try and resolve this issue. So we meet sort of approximately every couple of months to try and improve on our processes. There is something about the sequencing of the system. So it's the data migration from one system in from the street name in a numbering and then into effectively into the waste system, which is Yota, I think. So we are working on that and trying to resolve that and make that better. So and we do meet with them with and with council tax as a whole every six sort of six to eight weeks anyway. So. Thank you. Councillor Bradman. Thank you, Leader. As an erstwhile member of employee of the Ordnance Survey, the complexity of this does not surprise me. But thinking also back to our previous member, Councillor Douglas Delacy, I know he was very concerned about where sites cross boundaries. And this in the policy is at item 14.1. And I remember there was a request that because we have Eddington, we have a development that crosses the boundary between the district and the city. So a perished area and a non perished area. And so those sorts, so suppose you had a concern about obviously some things are common across the so waste for us is common across the boundary as is planning. But there are some things that are not like environmental health or licensing issues. And your first query about street lamps might want to go to either the city or the district. And so he said he had asked whether in developments, whether there is a potential for confusion like that, that people don't actually know whether they're in the district or the city. He said he asked whether there could be some signage on the road to indicate in the residential areas where the boundary was. So it might be that this was Newnham Ward or this was Gerton. So that was one thing and whether we wanted to do anything like that. I think people haven't necessarily been wildly enthusiastic about that, but I just wondered if it might help people. And the other one was in this section A, the legislation and it's section 65 on our page 37. And it talks about individuals having an obligation to mark their own house with a number. And like many other members, I'm sure I've struggled looking for house numbers in the past. And so I just wanted to clarify, I wanted to ask Heather what clarification. If houses are not numbered, obviously in new developments it's easier because the developer tends to do that. But what recourse do we have if people don't number their houses? Can we require them to do that? Just a question. Thank you very much. Heather, would you like to pick up those points that Councillor Bradman has made, please? Yes, thank you, Councillor Bradman. So in respect of the site signage which you're talking about there between whether it's city or residential, I think site signage, we deal with South Cam site signage and city have their own team that deal with it. So street naming and numbering is a different element to that. But certainly that's something that we can have a discussion with our colleagues in city that do street name plates themselves to see if there's something that we can do to make that easier. But obviously it would have to have members agreement and go through the required processes. In respect of house numbers, I think the difficulty is with displaying the numbers on the house itself. So what we say is we ask them to display the number on the house, but quite often it's a personal preference whether they want their number displayed on the house or not. So that makes it very difficult. And it isn't something that I'd have to check, but I don't think we would ever take enforcement action on the fact that someone hasn't put that their house is number 11 simply because out of preference they don't want that number on displayed. And that is a person. And we have had people who specifically say they're not going to display their number, so it is a kind of personal preference. Thank you very much. And I imagine most of us in this room have done an awful lot of deliveries of things to houses that we don't know what their numbers are either. You want to come back quickly? Thank you. Just a quick one. I was just thinking about the Eddington example, but it's going to happen in other large, might happen in large developments, but it's useful. If you think in London, it says West Street, London Borough of Parangay or something on the side, just so that people know where they are, which borough they're in, it's so that the resident knows whether they're in a parish or whether they're in the city. Thank you. And it's a point well made, but of course that all goes wrong when the border is in the middle of the street, doesn't it really? And nobody's going to thank us for sticking up notes of saying you are leaving South Cambridgeshire and entering Cambridge City quite honestly, because that's more... Crossing the road in Trumpton. Yes, more street clutter, which we're trying to do away with. Councillor Hawkins, do you want to say anything else? And then I'll come to your seconder. No, I think we've said what there is to say really. Thank you. Councillor Batchelor. Yeah, thank you, Chair. Very thorough report and very happy to second. Thank you. That's lovely. Thank you and thank you very much indeed, Heather, for all your hard work there in battling your way through the complexity of this. So if there's no more questions for anybody, do members agree with the proposal? I agree. Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? So Cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. Moving on to item 8, which is the Oxford-Cainbridge-Pan regional partnership. So the recommendation is that Cabinet confirms its membership of the Oxford-Cainbridge partnership, as it becomes formally recognised and funded by government as a Pan regional partnership, and the appointment of the leader as the council's representative on the PRP. So that's a recommendation. The concept of Pan regional partnerships was in the levelling up white paper. So it's a government model that has been adopted by some of the leadership of the councils in between and including Oxford and Cambridge, but also involving the leps, the growth boards, and the all-bar one of the university, no, actually I think all of the universities as well. So it's a very, very good model of partnership. Now obviously we've had local elections recently and so the political make-up of some of those councils has changed and we haven't yet had conversations about whether that actually makes any difference. Having said that, a managing director, it was an MD, wasn't it Liz? Managing director has now been interviewed for and a really exceptional candidate actually has been offered the job. I think they've described it as they're still dotting the eyes and crossing the T's before there's a public announcement about this person, but hopefully that's going to be quite soon because I think then we end up with a figurehead who will continue to drive this through. But the difference between what we have now and what we inherited back in 2018 is this is very much a bottom-up model. So this is led by councils, district and county, by the leps, the growth boards and the universities identifying what is in the best interest of our organisations and our residents. You'll be aware that there are now only two work streams. One is economy and that's currently being chaired by Peter Horrocks who's the chair of CEMLEP. Again quite what the future of CEMLEP and the other leps are at the moment we don't know. And then the environment work stream which has been led by me with huge assistance from Liz. We now have an employee working with our work stream called Nathan who's putting together a really exciting programme of environmental enhancement projects and also projects looking at water and energy supply on a regional scale. So solving some of the problems that none of us can solve within our own small organisations but which can be delivered at scale across borders and which will hopefully be attractive to funders. So as I say the recommendation now is that we stick with it and hopefully next time I report back we'll have more idea about the partners in it. Whether they're still there, whether there's less, whether there's more and whether they're still as supportive of the vision as it stands. Sorry that was a bit of a ramble. Any questions from anyone on cabinet? Any questions from anybody else in the room? Capsule Williams. Thank you Ada. Just to clarify that this is a partnership I appreciate and everything else. But the leader won't be able to take any decisions that affect this council without coming back to us so it's not a decision making process. Absolutely. So the panel regional partnership has no powers, it is not a decision making body and it has virtually no money. There was a small amount of money given by Mr Gove I think to allow it to employ some staff, get itself organised, get a website up and running which will hopefully greatly improve the openness and transparency from just about nil to know what our expectations are that it should be. So a small amount of money but decision making rests entirely with the partner councils and universities and leps. We take it from there but there was no decision making and there is no plans for regional spatial plan or anything like that which gets people very heated and unhappy. Liz. Yes. Thanks and through you chair. Just for absolute clarity the funding that the PRP has, it is to fund projects in the PRP. So for example in the environment work stream we're looking at replicating a potential project that the RSPB has run up at Uspen. Now if that were to be the case that funding could be approved by the board without having all, having many councils and universities kind of have to ratify that. But decisions that are kind of more fundamental to each council so for example planning authority decisions, strategic regional planning decisions, those obviously remain in the sovereignty of each council and would need to be made by each council. So it just wants to clarify that the board will be able to make some decisions about the funding that they've got and how they want to use that funding for specific projects but not anything that remains in the kind of sovereignty of each council. That's good. Thank you very much for that clarification. Thank you. Any other questions? Councillor Mills you're seconding as well I think. Yes I'm happy second and I just noticed that for example the changes in local government arising from the recent elections actually probably make the note to this meeting somewhat redundant now there will be changes so perhaps in minutes we can reflect that. Thank you. So I think the thing is because in councils where there's going to be a change of administration haven't had their annual meetings yet these things aren't finally decided. So as far as I'm aware this is correct at the point of going to print right but obviously particularly things like item 14 members of the shadow board when we bring this back to you that undoubtedly will have changed. But it's correct at the time of going to print. Okay good. So so Councillor Mills you're happy to second this. So there aren't any more questions. Do members agree with proposals? Anyone wish to vote against? And anyone wish to abstain? Thank you very much indeed. So we're moving on now to item nine which is the results of the four day week trial and next steps. So I think we've got Salianne Hart on the meeting as well and you chaired the Employment and Staffing meeting at which the recommendation was made to bring this back to back to Cabinet. So hello, good morning. I'll bring you in in a little bit. I just want to make a statement. John Williams is going to present the paper. I will second it but I just want to make a statement before we get going. So last year I was, as I've said a number of times, I was asked at a local government association conference. I was on a panel talking about the workforce challenge, which is the challenge of recruiting and retaining people within local government, particularly in really expensive areas like this, where it's very expensive for people to live and where the private sector pinch all our people because they can pay them all. But I was asked whether a four day week could help solve some of our critical recruitment issues. And my kind of knee-jerk reaction was well, yeah, it might well do. And actually there's absolutely no reason why we couldn't give it a go. And I was talking about we in the sense of public sector, but I was specifically talking about we in the sense of South Cambridgeshire District Council because we are innovative, we're not afraid to try things, we're ambitious and we're not frightened of trying things that might fail when we have good justification for doing so. So now remember we are the very first UK council to trial this way of working. And there was no blueprint from us to work from. We didn't huge, say we, our officers did a huge amount of research working with the private sector where their considerable number of trials were moving forward very successfully. So there was an awful lot of learning to be gleaned from the private sector. But there was no blueprint for other councils. But we're very well aware that we have a huge waiting list of councils who want to come and speak to us, to come and visit us. Liz Watts and I have a huge list of conferences where we've been asked to speak and we've been holding everybody back until this minute, really, at which we've got a reasonable amount of data to help guide us as we move forward. So recently there's been some commentary nationally and locally which relates to the PhD studies concerning the four day week which our chief executive has been undertaking. And this commentary is meant that our chief executive has been forced to endure to put it mildly, really, really unpleasant couple of weeks and this has made certainly all of us on cabinet and I think I can speak for all of my group. Actually really, really unhappy quite honestly because it's been very unfair and it's fair enough to attack the likes of me as a politician. It's very unfair for anyone to attack our officers and it's something that I would never ever condone. So, you know, we have a chief executive who's doing a PhD. That is something to be absolutely celebrated that we have and, you know, we have a number of other senior staff in this organisation doing high level research for high level academic qualifications. And, you know, in some cases we help sponsor this. Our chief executive has chosen not only to pay for this herself but to spend just about every weekend and every day of her holiday doing her research. So that is something to be completely celebrated. And I'm really pleased that we have a council where we encourage that sort of personal development of all our staff throughout the organisation. So it's perfectly normal for people to do this sort of thing. And very, you know, most often this sort of academic study involves what people do within the council. So, you know, let's say somebody within the Waste Service wanted to do a masters in recycling, you know, using their work based experience that would be something that we would celebrate because then, you know, we would benefit from it because, you know, we then have different strategies. We have different strategies for increasing our own recycling levels. So, you know, this benefits, the council benefits our residents and it benefits businesses. So just to be perfectly clear, our chief executive studies were never dependent on the council trialling a four day week. We have a very well respected, quite high profile chief executive, very well connected to other councils, you know, quite a few of whom I gather would have bitten their hand off to run the trial in their own organisation. But fortunately we got in there first because we understood how much we stood to benefit from it. We had the only expert in four day week in the public sector running our own organisation. So, you know, why would we, why would we not do that? We welcome the insight and the expertise with open arms. And our chief executive has always been completely transparent about her studies. The verbal advice was sought from the monitoring officer last year and that has been reaffirmed in the last two or three weeks that there was nothing to declare when it came to these studies because it was self funded and it was done in her own time. So because of the kind of bashing from certain quarters recently, you know, with hindsight I accept that actually if we put that information in the original report it might have saved us all from some of the unpleasantness that we and in particular this has had to go through. So hindsight is a great thing but as somebody said to me back in 2018 the only way to avoid making mistakes is to do nothing and we're not a council, we're not an administration that does nothing. We do stuff and sometimes, you know, sometimes there's lessons learned which given our time again we would do things slightly differently. But actually it would have made no difference whatsoever to the trial but it would have ensured that the studies were more clearly stated for everybody. So I want to say we simply wouldn't be where we are now without our outstanding chief executive supported by, you know, all the other colleagues within this organisation at every level. And so, you know, so the wealthy experience including of course matters related to the four day week and the council officers under her leadership have delivered a pioneering trial which has international attention. I had a call last week from LeMonde asking to do an interview with me this week. When we first announced a trial I got a phone call from Radio Canada. So, you know, so, you know, we are being watched because we are being ambitious and innovative and we are being world leaders on this, not just national leaders on this. So in any other walk of life it's clear that when you have an experienced leader who's gaining firm knowledge about something that's very relevant to the work it is a good thing. And in my mind and our minds it is a good thing here. Just to pick up on some of the minutiae that's been raised this morning, particularly in relation to answering the phone. This last three months of the trial has been the busiest time of year for the phones and actually the contact centre has performed better than in previous years at the same time. So I'm afraid it's just simply incorrect to state that it is now during the trial it's taking longer to answer the phones. You have to compare with similar periods in the calendar and actually it's improved. On planning, again some misinformation about planning, we're all aware that planning has been through an enormous improvement programme over the last 18 months in particular. The average householder application is being completed under the eight week target. So that's marvellous. In the report you have in front of here we've been completely and utterly open about the data. Just one other little bit of misinformation I want to address is the Bennett Institute from Cambridge University who have been doing the analysis for us. We didn't commission them. They approached us and asked us to do it at their cost. So this is truly independent data analysis. So we will now move on to discuss the results of this pioneering three month trial. The proposal is to not to think that we've cracked it and that we are going to announce today that we're going to become a four day week employer because we know there is still much work to do. So the proposal is to extend the trial for a further 12 months to allow us to crack the nut. To get iron out all the creases and the wrinkles and get us to hopefully in 12 months time a position where we have even more positivity to shout about. So I'm going to hand it, so again that was rather long, but I think there's some really important things that need to be said just to refute misinformation that seems to be being banded around with rather gay abandon at the moment. So I'm going to hand over to Councillor Williams now to introduce the report please. Thank you leader. The report asks and I hope and I'm delighted to move this that we've approved an extension of the trial until March next year 2024. I refer you to page 65 of our report pack and the introduction to the four day week trial pamphlet that's been produced and you'll see in that second paragraph the reason why we introduced the trial and I think it's worth repeating because it seems to have been lost in the noise. It says not being able to fill vacant posts or having to use agency staff to cover permanent roles is both costly and disruptive to services for residents and businesses. Now the short three month trial has already identified £300,000 worth of savings. We expect that in the fall year we would save a million pounds in not having to employ agency staff. That's a million pounds that we can put towards supporting our frontline services at a time when we are facing like everyone else of the inflation rate of over 10%. It's not just our residents who face inflation of 10%. We also face inflation of 10% in purchasing our goods and services as well as employing our staff. So it's extremely important that why would we not look a gift horse in the mouth and go and see if we can achieve that million pound saving not just for this year but for every year onwards. The other point of the trial is to reduce the disruption that is caused by us having to use agency staff and the fact that for many residents particularly with planning but also in waste collection for example, that the fact that we have staff shortages and have to employ agency staff at three or four times the cost of what it would cost us if we employed those people directly. That surely is good news for our taxpayers. So we're not doing this trial simply to improve the health and wellbeing of our staff although that is a really important outcome of this trial. But we're also doing it to improve the quality of our service to our residents and to provide us with savings that we can then put back into our services to ensure that we can maintain our services against a backdrop of very high inflation rates. So, as Lleida has said, we've done a trial for three months. It looks extremely exciting and looks as though it is meeting our objectives and the Bennett Institute has actually confirmed that at a truly independent confirmation by the Bennett Institute that we appear in three months to achieve those goals. But clearly there are some areas where we need to ensure that we make sure that the performance keeps up. And to do a 12 month trial enables us to look at things more closely, give staff a more certainty about how they're going to be working over the next 12 months. And hopefully at the end of the 12 months will give us the evidence to make a decision and the council will make that decision, not just cabinet, as to whether or not we want to make that permanent. But as I should stress, as Lleida has said, that we are not today adopting a four day week for this council. What we are doing is extending the trial, which so far has been, you know, has indicated that a four day week on this council will bring us the savings and will tackle the staff recruitment and retention problems that has bugged this council. Ever since I've been on it since 2010 because Southcams is probably the powerhouse of this country at the moment. We have high housing costs. We have high living costs. And if we are to ensure that we can deliver a high quality and efficient and reliable service to our residents, then we need to be looking for a different way of going about our staff retention. And it looks like from the trial so far, and I hope that the extension will show that this is the way that we can tackle it. So I would urge my colleagues to support the extension to March 2024. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Williams. Are there any questions from members of the Cabinet? Actually, could you forgive me? I'd like to bring in Councillor Sally Ann Hart, first of all, my apologies. Good morning, good morning Lleida. Can you hear me okay there? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. Would you just like to represent the views that were expressed in staffing and employment please? Yes, sure. Thank you. Good morning everyone. Thank you, Councillor John Williams, for the report that came to employment and staffing. Having sat on employment and staffing in the previous year and feeling concerned about some of the vacancies that we had that we were finding it hard to fill, it's really pleasing to see that we now have a way of attracting staff. We have a way of helping staff in terms of them wanting and being able to stay in jobs that they obviously like. But as Councillor John Williams said, their area is very expensive to living in. The recommendations from staffing employment were to obviously approve an egg ascension and really very mindful of in order to get an accurate picture of the differences making. Whilst it was great to see how much savings were already made in the NHS staff, it would be great to see this over a 12 month period. And we have asked that there will be regular reports that come during that 12 month extension. Also mindful that's how we can extend this to the shared planning service, and that feels very exciting. A way of finding different ways to work. I'm already mindful that the optimisation of the routes seem to have made a difference my end. No longer being woken up very early in the morning with my bins being collected. It's about later, which is wonderful, and they're being done. And how we can offer that opportunity to all staff. So that feels very exciting. So there's also this idea that we will recommend that we approve a three month trial for the facilities management. But I just really want to put that reassuring view on that. This is, as I say, it's not just about staff wellbeing, but that is so important that we look after our staff and the wonderful job that they do for us and offer them choice. So that flexibility and choice that's built into this again feels very exciting to me and what a wonderful thing we can do if we can find a way that in the public sector we can offer these options. So the recommendations from the committee are there. And we'll hope that Cabinet accepts those. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Councillor Hart. And thank you for chairing that meeting as well. So Cabinet, any questions? I'll take Councillor Hawkins first, then Councillor John Batchelor. Thank you very much, Leader. It's not a question really, it's just to sort of perhaps emphasise some of the points you've made, especially for the planning service. Actually, it's been good to see, to introduce this for us, because what we've been able to do is actually come up with better ways of working. You know, simplified, you know, the way in which the templates for our reports, but very importantly, because this is a service that is very customer facing, actually, the applicants, especially those householders, you mentioned earlier that we're now determining the applications in less than eight weeks, which is the statutory period, actually 6.3 weeks as of March this year. So that is an improvement. We had a peak of applications, which you will see at the beginning of January, where there was a high level of applications that we dealt with. And of course that falls through to the quarter, because we had things coming in December, lots of people trying to get things in before Christmas, so you have to deal with it. These, when you look at the trend, it's actually improved. And I would like to see a lot more of that, plus we're now finding that we're able to attract more experienced planners, especially because we're now looking at this four-day week. The point is that the output is getting better, and we have proof of that. Not to mention we now have a compliance team, and I've been able to actually recruit into that. Again, it's a better service. So I take a point against what was said this morning on radio. It's a service that is great, and it's improving, and our compliance levels have gone down. In my inbox it's not as heavy as it used to be, so there's positive there. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Batchner. Thank you, Chair. Firstly, I'd just like to make a comment coming back to the Staff in Employment Committee, where Councillor Howe made a very clear statement of support for officers. I personally would just like to thank him for that generous thing. So thank you for that. Now, in the real world, nothing ever goes right, does it? So at the moment, we've got an indication that is encouraging on the three months. We're not actually hitting every target. We have challenging targets, and it's the case that in some areas, including my own housing area, we have had difficulties in achieving them. So that's not likely to change overnight. So we need to expect that we will still have difficulties in certain areas, but we mustn't be put off by that. We're always going to have difficulties because that's the reality of running businesses. So the only question before us is, is it worth carrying on with this, and for me clearly it is, and let's get on and test water and learn more, because we've still got plenty to learn. Thanks. Thank you. Wise words, as always. Councillor Milnes. Thank you, leader. So we've had some very promising and yet to be reported on in full mystery shopper exercise, which has disavowed this idea that our response rates are going down, in fact, they're improving. So we look forward to seeing detail of that coming forward. It's a very sad situation when we're having to argue that we shouldn't be out of base in terms of performance rather than ours based. I'm very mindful that there's a former government minister who really couldn't cope with the concept of people not sitting at their desks. And there's a sadly reactionary feel to a lot of the criticism that we've endured for introducing such a radical and positive scheme. I was minded and just looked it up. The Americans have the need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys, so William Priest, chief engineer of the British Post Office said in 1876, which is an era that that government minister seems to aspire to. So we look forward to this extension of the trial and that it will put us in a radically different place addressing those issues that Councillor Williams has outlined this morning. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Handley. Thank you, leader. I'm really sorry that we've had the lead officers have had such a difficult time recently. I think some of the people have been wading in their sort of professional purveyors of misinformation. I better not call them Luddites, but you know what I mean. The fact is the four-day week is becoming more and more popular in the private sector, so why shouldn't we give it a try in the public sector? As you said, people are watching with great interest how it goes. I think it's responsible for us to continue the trial, to allow it to bed in more so that officers, and we can monitor how it affects, improves a lot of our officers. Absolutely 100% behind this, and as I say, I hope we can go forward with less of the negative stuff. Thank you. Councillor Henry Batchelor. Thank you, leader. Just to echo what some of my colleagues have been saying around the recruitment and retention issue, obviously the next item regarding the refuse collection I will be asking Cabinet to support a trial of a four-day week in the refuse collection. We have similar issues in our service area there, i.e. we still don't have a full roster of permanent staff, so I have to use agency and temporary staff, which is always a drain on resource. I would be hypocritical if I wasn't keen to take this trial forward for the office-based staff in Camborn and extend that. For me, I think it's a bit of a no-brainer, and I will be supporting this. Thank you. If there's nobody else on Cabinet, I'll go to Councillor Bradman and then Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you, leader. I just want to say that I have found the data that we've been presented with extremely reassuring, both in the depth and the quality of the analysis that we've received. One of the things that struck me about this when it was first started was these very regular feedback from the staff and their honest uncertainties about it at the beginning have been gradually transforming into really positive comments. At the county council, we've had a system where we've chosen projects and the Cambridge University Science and Policy Exchange programme has done in-depth studies on those subjects which has informed our policymaking going forward. This is, again, the same process looking at something that can really improve or to try and see if it will really improve our working arrangements. The other thing, and looking at the data and taking it and understanding it, you've said to yourself, leader, that we are ambitious and innovative, and we're in an area of the country that's looked to for innovation in science and technology. So I'm really encouraged that we're looking at this in terms of business management as well, and I absolutely applaud the project. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Bradman. Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you, leader, and I'll start by saying that all my questions will be addressed to the leader and cabinet, and I will be obviously holding you to account personally for your decisions. So I have a series of questions, as you can imagine. Would you like me to do them by topic of which they're for or altogether leader? I'll lose track. Let's take them one by one and do the best we can. I can probably group them into four themes. First of all, I'll start with asking the leader if she could clarify some of the things that she said earlier on her radio interview. You referred to many other councils considering this and taking it on. Just wondering if you'd be able to provide some names to the councils that were looking into this. Whether cabinet members or the leader did due diligence and discussed with them beforehand as to why they chose not to pursue it. That would be the first thing. So I'm going to answer on the first instance, and then I'm going to ask Chief Executive. I think it would be really, bearing in mind, we know that embarking on a trial like this can be a bit of a political hot potato. I think it would be really inappropriate for us to name any other councils. I don't think we'd be thanked for it, but I'll just go back and go to Liz Watts. Thanks, Jane. I think that's probably the right approach in terms of why did they decide not to do it? I think lots are waiting to see the results of our trial and I still have the intention to undertake a trial. I think they just want to learn from this council's experience. We have been asked to speak at the local government association conference in July. There is cross-party interest in this, but we can't go naming other councils, I'm afraid. If I could just come back on that thing, the issue we have, leader with that, is how do we scrutinise what you're saying? How do we hold you to account on that? Can we have a number of family councils or could you tell us privately which councils? Because how are we able to actually really, you've said other councils are interested, you've given no reasons really other than they want to see us take all the risk? In your position, what I would be doing is I'd be contacting the Conservative offers at the LGA and asking them for information about which councils they know of who are interested in this currently and how many might be, but this is confidential information. I can't give it out naturally, Councillor Williams. You're just going to trust me, right? I don't do lying. Just trust me on this one, please. I'm sure as a former leader of the opposition you'll appreciate, but we do have to challenge leader. I can see I'm not going to get any further on that one. If you do ever want to give me a number of the total amount of councils that we're interested, that wouldn't give anybody's name away, but it would give us an idea of context. I'll move on to performance. One thing I'm completely aware of, leader, is that a lot has been said about the savings of agency that this could bring. However, we are currently paying agency workers at this council to do five days of work a week. They are doing five days of work a week if their contracts do so. Given that, and then combine it with page 152, where only 61%, so a fair chunk of people cannot say that they have managed... Would you like me to pause, leader? Or shall I carry on? Okay, so agency workers at this council on five-day contracts are still working five days and have been throughout this trial. Page 152 clearly shows that only 61% of officers on the trial claim they can actually manage to do their work within four days, and others have been working beyond we can see from that page. So how can our performance statistics be accurate when we do not have everybody working a four-day week? Could it be that those people that are working five days still, including the agency which we're apparently seeking to see the savings from, I don't understand how that happens. We were paying them for five days a week. How do we know that the performance figures are accurate of this trial? And I would also note that 35% of staff found their stress increased. So when we talk about the wellbeing, on a page 151, 59% of those found that it had adversely impacted them. So I think we ought to be really clear, leader, whether Cabinet is happy with that 59% of people being adversely impacted and are Cabinet happy that these figures are a true reflection, given that we have numerous members of staff and agency workers still working five days a week to achieve this performance. Would you like me to continue to the next? No, no, no, I'm going to stop because you've covered an awful lot of things then. It is complicated. I'm going to bring in Liz Watts. She might suggest that we bring in Nina from the Bennett Institute as well. But the very complexity of your question shows that you can't, within a three-month trial, it's a very short period of time, it's not sufficient to iron out all the problems. And when we look at staff who've struggled with this, what was really interesting was that a little bit more detail was gone into. Some of those people just like working five days a week. Some of them needed just more preparation. We needed to do more work with them to get them to adopt these smarter ways of working. And for some of them, really interestingly, their job was just too big, and it was too big as a five-day-a-week job, so it absolutely is too big for a four-day-a-week job. So there's a problem that has to be solved, that those people's jobs need to be changed to make them manageable because they weren't manageable to start with. And you and I know that quite often the reward good people get is they get given more work and more responsibility. But what we mustn't lose sight of is that the day off a week is a gift, and it's the gift for being able to work smarter, work much, much more intensively, and get the job done in that four-day period. Now, that level of intensity, I have no doubt, is not sustainable over five days. And we only have to look to the disasters that are happening in the health service at the moment where people are pushed and pushed and pushed, their stress levels go up and it's not working. But any change takes some adaptation to. One of my sons' wives, I've had a baby two weeks ago, they're stressed because they're getting used to a new way of working, a new life, and it takes time. And that's the rationale for extending this for another 12 months. But I think I'll go to Liz Watts for some of the detail there, which I'm sure she'll explain better than me. Thank you. On figure 14, Councillor Williams, that you referred to, I think I'd advise you to read figures 12, 13 and 14 together because they follow on from each other. So we were specifically interested in whether people found that their work intensified. And that was that the results are shown in figure 12. But not only that, whether that was seen as a positive or negative thing for colleagues. So question 13 asked if your work did intensify, did your stress levels increase? And actually, if you look at figure 12 and 13, you'll see that the vast majority of people said that their work intensified, but also the majority of people said that their stress levels didn't increase. And then figure 14 is only a subset of those people who did say that their stress levels increased. So it's not correct to say that 59% of people in the organisation were at the inverse effected, although I wasn't sure whether that was what you were implying or not. I just wanted to clarify that point, Councillor Williams. So the thing we have to address is your question about agency staff and how accurate the data is. I think I'm going to have to defer to Liz on that because it's quite complicated. But we also have to realise that every time we have a vacancy, there's the cost of agency staff who are necessarily quite expensive people, but also the cost of recruitment. It costs tens of thousands of pounds to recruit new staff. So that churn, that turnover of staff is wasteful of money in a way that doesn't need to be. But I'll let Liz pick up on the detail which I can't answer. So you can always unpick data and kind of challenge it. I think on agency staff there is a minority of agency staff in the planning service, which is where the majority of agency staff are. So if you look at the planning data, the data has definitely improved. I think we've got around about 20 agency staff in that service and the service is about 130 people. We could potentially do an exercise to try to identify work that agency colleagues are working on separate from permanent members of staff. But I think there comes a point where going into that level of data probably is not necessarily that productive. I think the trajectory that we're seeing particularly in planning is a very significantly improving service. And not all of that has been a result of people on the four-day week, but quite a bit if it has. Because what the four-day week has done is really encourage people to kind of radically think about how they're doing their work. I think, as I've said in the past, it feels like we saw more transformation in the last six months in this organisation than we've seen, certainly in the three and a half years that I've been here. And that's because we've given people some real agency in terms of how they can change and improve their work and therefore their productivity. So I take a point on agency. We could do some further digging in terms of the data if you'd like us to. But I'm not sure how useful that would be. OK, next one. So just to be clear, I did ask before you started the trial that those people working five days on agency would be taken out. That hasn't happened, we've not seen that. My question was whether Cabinet are happy with the data knowing that people in that data are working five days that the four-day week is going on. I haven't had an answer leader as to whether Cabinet is happy with what it's seeing on that issue. So picking up on this, what's his comment about how agency staff are a relatively small percentage, yes, we are happy. You might guess that I'm not. Next one is cost. At the moment, bear in mind, we've put up council tax here. We've put up social rents, garages, everything you can think of. And some people are working harder than ever in the current cost of living crisis and we've talked about this and we've looked at provisions to support people. And some people are taking on second jobs at the moment and they're working all the hours God sends to make ends meet. And then they see this council giving everybody a day off. Does the leader and Cabinet think that, as she's referred to earlier, all the press or the media, the glamorous speaking at LGA conference, is that good value for the taxpayer given the fact that we're not saving those agency costs that keep being referred to because we are still paying them for five days a week as I've made earlier. So is all of this worth it for the taxpayer? Or are they right to feel really let down by this council for what they're doing and feel insulted by it? Sorry, so when you say they, who are they? So I'm sure you did listen to the radio this morning. Actually, most of the people who chose to Twitter in or email in or text in actually said really, really positive things. So there is a cohort of people who are using the argument that this is bad news for the taxpayer. The majority councils in the last six months put up councils of all political leadership. The majority of them put their council tax up by the maximum and put up their rents by the maximum. We spent considerable time saying that actually what that rent increase actually represents is a reduction in income for us to continue with our improvement programme and so on because it doesn't represent the increased costs of managing our housing stock. So most councils have done that. You know, you're an accountant, you understand what the consequences are of not putting up council tax and then never being able to catch up and we're already one of the lowest charging councils in the country. So actually we represent extremely good value for money for all our residents. And things are tough, absolutely things are tough, but we also now offer 100% council tax exemption for those in greatest need and we've also increased the number of people who receive discounts on their council tax, purely in acknowledgement of how tough things are at the moment in this country. So I think we have to focus on where do we want to get to here? We want to get to a position where we don't have agency staff, where our staff stay with us, where we can fill all our vacancies throughout every element of the organisation. You know, I've said numerous times that we are competing with the private sector on a very, very uneven playing field. Now again, we heard on the radio this morning from Joe Ryle, who leads the four day week campaign, that actually, you know, his reckoning is that most of the private sector by the end of this decade will have moved to a four day week. So the playing field gets even more uneven for us. How on earth do we compete with people who are offering a shed load more money, a BMW and that gift of that extra day off. You know, we have to stay ahead of the game and one of our promises back in 2018 was that we would be a modern and a caring council and modern is in part about modern ways of working and these are emerging modern ways of working and the caring obviously, we know, we're caring about our residents, we're caring about the cost to our residents but we're caring about our colleagues working in this building who are the people who will be serving our residents in their best interest. You may be pleased to know I'm on my final topic, leader. So taking on from what you've said when I referred you asked me about who is they. Now they are people who have approached me and I will be honest, I've had one person, one person in my ward come to me saying that it's an interesting idea, I think that's as positive as it's got and everybody else including online and everything else is very, very upset and angry about this. So what would be great is to hear what the cabinet's plans are to consult with residents because you've used an interesting word when you just said there, leader, about our colleagues. Now I've said I will direct my holding to account to councillors as is right and as is proper but we must not forget that we are here sat in this chamber to represent residents at this council. We are not where we can respect the divide between members and officers but we are not here to be the council to the residents, we are here to represent our residents at this council and given the vast range of questions that I've had, the comments that I've had and I'm sure all 45 members of this council have should this not be that cabinet put the choice to full council where every single one of our residents would then have a voice because today that is not what's going on and I appreciate I will get the same argument it's a trial but we've seen trial creep already it was three months and then it would extend to 12 now we're having the 12 on top of the three how do we know that after 15 months we won't just need a little bit more information have to go to 18 months this should be debated by full council cabinet should have the confidence to allow all members to vote as to whether they want to take this trial forward on behalf of their residents will the leader agree to giving all residents a voice so cabinet will make the decision today whether or not to extend the trial as is right and proper whole council will get to make the decision about whether as a result of the evidence in that trial we become a four day week employer and that's where it's going to be but the leader accepts that disenfranchising people for this 15 months and does the leader not accept that there are other ways to come across the hurdles that we face in recruitment other than giving and people a day off there are so many other ways you can look at council Williams I assure you that both I and other council leaders throughout the country if there was a magic bullet to solve the recruitment retention problem we would have done it and we would have implemented it we do not have the freedom to compete with the private sector who just pay more and more money we are restricted by this government how much money we can pay to our staff as you have already referenced council tax we can't wham up council tax in order to be able to pay people the sort of salaries they get in the private sector so if you have a bright idea shame you haven't told me already quite honestly about how to solve the recruitment retention problem which is believing every single council in this country of every political persuasion everything else has failed we can't compete this is an experiment to see if this allows us to compete on a level playing field with the private sector by doing something a bit differently that's all and fine if we stand out as one of the very few councils doing it once of course everybody else jumps on the bank wagon then we're rather back to the start again of us all competing and I think there will be others following quite quickly but if there had been other ways of solving this problem we would have done and we have tried over the years just about everything our offer to our staff is great all the support we offer I think most people would admit we're a good employer, we're a good place to work but at the end of the day people have mortgages to pay and children to feed and lifestyles to fund and it's very very tough for everyone in local government Councillor Richard Williams Thank you very much leader I've got three points I'd like to make first of all I have to say I was shocked to sit here and hear the leader describe the deterioration in some of our KPIs as minutiae and on the radio this morning again they were described as really minor issues it's not a really minor issue if you apply a housing benefit and the council now takes twice as long to process your claim as it did before it's not a really minor issue if you're trying to phone this council and you're on the phone for longer it's not a really minor issue if you're a creditor who is owed money by this council and you've not been paid because we've now dropped below the intervention target I think we look extremely arrogant if we stand here and we say that the very real deterioration in our KPIs is minor or minutiae and somehow doesn't matter we need to be honest with our residents there are concerning drops in our performance and the council needs to acknowledge that and not pretend that it's trivial or that it somehow doesn't matter on the question of planning we've heard a number of comments this morning about how well performing the planning service is as many members will know for the last two planning committees in this council we've been finished by quarter to 12 in the morning which is unprecedented because we had two planning applications in the last meeting we had two planning applications in the meeting before and in both of those meetings we only had one of those applications because they were officer applications the work for planning committee is clearly drying up I went and looked at the number of decisions going through delegation committee eight planning applications were considered in the delegation meetings in the first quarter of 2023 29 planning applications were considered in delegation meetings in the first quarter of 2022 and 21 planning decisions were considered in delegation meetings in the first quarter in 2021 when bear in mind we were in a lockdown there could be various explanations for that o'r ffordd o wneud i'r ffordd o'r ffordd â'r awdurdod cyntaf. On o'r clywed o'r ffordd o'r ffordd, rwyf wedi cael ei wneud o'r cyffredinol y mae'r Llyfrgell yma o'r cyffredinol. Rwyf wedi cael ei rhaid, rwyf wedi bod oedd y grôn ymgrifennu'r cyffredinol e ffwrdd ymol rhannau yn llwygo o ddweud o'r cyffredinol, ac nid oedd yn mynd o'r cyffredinol. ond rydyn ni wedi cael y cyfryd beth. Rydyn ni'n fyddwyr hefyd, yna yn Cymru, ond gennymonol rywbeth, ond mae'n gymryd ichi eich yr ysgrifennid, i fednig erbyn a'r gyffredinogi byddwn ni'n edrych a'r ffordd a'i midwch yn geispo yr ysgrifennid, Rydych chi'n meddwl yr ymddorol. Mae'n ei wneud i eithaf gweld yn dangos y gyfryd o wasbodd yr unrhyw o dod o'i cyfrifnig, sydd â'r cyfrifnig ymddorol for her, if we hadn't felt able to do it, but it's something to be celebrated. This morning in this Cabinet the leader said that she was pleased we got in there first? Both of those comments raised very serious questions on their legitimate political questions for the administration of this council about the motivation for this four-day week trial. was it presented and was it seen as part of a PhD project as the comment the leader made on the radio this morning suggests, I repeat, and she has numerous other councils who were prepared to run the trial for her if we hadn't felt able to do it. I think the leader needs to explain that. So, in a word, the answer is no, right? Going back to the other questions, I'm going to say we cannot have been more transparent about the data. We've published it all, so we know which is why you are able to interrogate it because we've published all the data, but I'm going to ask Nina from the Bennett Institute to join in, please, and just explain why. Any, you know that these most small reductions in service areas were considered to be less significant than you are implying that they are counselor Williams. Hello, Nina. Thank you very much for your time. Good morning everyone. Yeah, thank you and thank you for the questions about the about the data. So I appreciate that the data looks different depending on what kind of analysis you run and I think you refer to the internal targets and that not all of the targets were met. However, to get like a comprehensive picture, we done like four different kinds of analysis, as you can see in the report, and if we combine this picture, there is no data or no, there were no outliers that raised specific concern. However, we were very clear in the report that there were some service areas that probably need some further attention if this trial is going to be extended. And yeah, it was very important for us to not only compare January to March this year against last year, but for a lot of KPIs we try to look back as far as possible. So for a lot of KPIs, we went back to 2016 to create an average and then see if there are any significant changes in the data and this was not the case. I hope that helps. Thank you very much indeed, Nina. On your point about in the planning committees and things trying out, I can't, yeah, to me Hawkins, would you like to respond to that because I'm sure I don't quite know where to go with it. Thank you. Cases that come to planning committee are supposed to be the more challenging, difficult ones or sensitive ones. And actually, I think it's about 94% of applications that actually dealt with by officers. So the fact that we don't have or we've not had that many come to planning committee in the last couple of months is no implication that there isn't work going on that officers aren't actually dealing with applications, they are. And if there is any that needs to be, that's been asked to come to committee, as you know, it goes through that delegation process. And if it doesn't have to, it doesn't. So this has no implication whatsoever, I'm afraid. Planning committee work is not supposed to be the main way which applications are dealt with. It's the sensitive ones that come to us. You're welcome to come back. Thank you, leader. On this point of planning, that's not my point. There were 29 applications that went through delegation committee in the first quarter of 2022. There were eight applications that went through delegation committee in the first quarter of 2023. There was no drop in the number of planning applications coming in to the council in the quarters immediately preceding quarter one 2023. So why would it be that so there was such a dramatic drop in the relative number of applications coming through to delegation meeting in quarter 23 as compared to quarter 22? I think I answered your question because basically, leader, if parish councils or councillors don't request for applications to be considered by the planning committee, it doesn't have to go through the delegation meeting. That's a simple fact. So at the end of the day, others, those who can, those who wanted to, will ask for it to come to committee. It will go through the process and if it needs to come in, then it will come to the planning committee. So I think, because it's quite a specific question, so I think we'll take it away and we'll ask colleagues to look at it in more detail and give a written response to that, because there is some detail. But I think otherwise we're just going to go backwards and forwards, aren't we? Okay, fine. Are there any other, are there any other questions, points that we made before we, Councillor Williams, do you want to sum up? Thank you, leader. Well, I think that last exchange has shown that what we faced over the last month has been disinformation on an industrial scale from the Conservatives. And that last point about the delegation committee, I'm sure the council knows full well the planning process and to use that to suggest that our officers are not dealing with planning applications. Well, I'm staggered, actually. What we are looking to do with this extension is to ensure that we have the evidence and the change in working practices to deliver the productivity that is needed to enable us to decide to make the four-day week trial permanent. Three weeks, three months is not long enough to enable us to do that. So we need to have a further 12 months. And it's not a foregone conclusion. Now, if after those 12 months that we've found a deterioration in our performance, or we've found that we've not been able to overcome some of the serious issues that have been raised, then we will not be recommending it's permanent. But so far, to say in my introduction, the three month trial has shown that there is every possibility that we can make this permanent. But we won't know that, and it would be wrong of us to go out and now ask for council its opinion, because we don't have the full evidence available now to enable us to make that decision, which is why we want to continue with this trial for further 12 months to the end of March next year. And then council can make a decision, because it will have, hopefully, the evidence that it needs to make that decision. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Williams. And Councillor Bradman, that was a wind-up, the wind-up speech from councillor. I wasn't asking to speak. Thank you very much indeed. OK. So look, because this is such an important item, I am going to read out the recommendations. So forgive me, they're a little bit long. It's recommended that Cabinet approves an extension of the trial up until March 24, in order to assess the impact on recruitment and retention, with regular reports on progress being submitted to Employment and Staffing Committee during 2023-24, and a final report to Cabinet and council at the end of the extended period. Cabinet notes the position of Cambridge City Council regarding the shared planning service trial extension, brackets to be provided on 11 May, but not available at the time this report was published. And should the city council agree to proceed with the trial extension, Cabinet ensures equivalent reporting arrangements are established in order to provide Cambridge City Council with appropriate oversight arrangements regarding the shared planning service. And finally, Cabinet approves a three-month trial for facilities management colleagues at South Cams Hall, where the report being presented to Employment and Staffing Committee at the end of the trial. Do Members agree with the proposal? Does anyone wish to vote against? And does anyone wish to abstain? Therefore, Cabinet agrees the proposals by affirmation. So, moving on to item 10, which is collection changes, the future of waste collection. I think councillor Henry Batchelor is going to lead on this, and I think councillor Bill Handley is going to second it. So, councillor Batchelor. Thank you very much, Leader. So, what this item is essentially asking is two things. One, to note the route optimisation of our bin collection rounds. And then the second one is to also, as we've just been discussing, approve a trial period of a four-day week for refuse collectors in the shared service. So, starting with the first point. So, I think good practice generally is to have a look at routes that bin lorries take to make sure they're operating at their best potential every two to three years. The last time we did actually go through this exercise was something circa around six years ago. So, we are a bit behind the curve in that respect. So, this route optimisation is actually fairly long overdue. Obviously, in the last six years we have had quite significant amounts of housing development, meaning that the routes as they currently are may not be being operated to their best capacity. So, that's what the exercise has done, and that's what we're asking Cabinet to note in the report this morning. The second thing that we're asking Cabinet to agree to is to a short-term trial of a four-day week in the collection service. I think we've already been, via the last item, been through the benefits that that will give to us. I mean, namely, the benefits for the council would be hopefully the recruitment and retention rates for crews significantly improves. Obviously, the benefit for the residents is that if the recruitment and retention of staff does improve, we'll be using more permanent staff. Hopefully, every post will be a permanent position. We won't be using temporary or agency staff, and so therefore the quality of service should improve for our residents. Given the fact that they will have more regular crews who are used to the routes, used to the bins, and therefore the service should be improved. It's probably worth noting that we were always going to trial a four-day week. The only reason we hadn't done it at this or implemented it at the same time as the office-based staff in Canborn was because the external consultants we were using to run the route optimisations. That process took some months, so that's the reason we're starting a bit later in the year, or we're asking to start a bit later in the year than the office-based staff. It's probably worth also noting we have, or the service operatives, so the waste crews have been consulted on this, as has their union. Generally positive feedback on this, and actually they're saying, you know, why could we not start it sooner? You know, why are we being excluded from this? So, you know, we are trying to bring all departments into line. This paper did actually get a very thorough going over at Scrutiny Committee, and as a result of that, there have been changes made to the report we're looking at today. Predominantly around the amount of data we're looking at, so this is actually slightly more data heavy than the report that did go to Scrutiny. And there has been some questions around the costing of this. It's probably worth noting in terms of percentages. The cost of the trial will be about 0.3% of the services entire budget for this year, and should the trial be made permanent, the cost of that being made permanent is about 1% of the services overall budget. So there have been, the numbers are in the report if anybody wants to pick up on those. And also worth noting a big key, this is obviously a shared service between ourselves and Cambridge City Council. So should they not agree to this, then clearly we won't be able to go ahead with it. But I am hopeful they'll be open to the idea of trialling it at the very least. So, yeah, I see we've got a plethora of officers with us as well, and we have both in the room as well. So if there's any more technical questions, I'm sure they should be able to assist. And Councillor Handley, I'm hoping we'll second this. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. That was a really, really concise introduction. Councillor Handley, do you want to speak at this point? Then I'm going to ask about Scrutiny representative. No, I'm happy to support this, I second this. I'm really pleased that the four-day week is being extended to shared-way service staff. That's to be applauded. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Bradman, it's good to hear that there's got a good going over in Scrutiny, and that changes have been made as a result. Perhaps you'd like to give a bit more explanation. Thank you, Chair, Leader. Certainly it did. We had a very long discussion of thank you to the officers who answered so many of our questions. So a couple of things that had come up was that whilst Scrutiny and Overview were reassured that the round-optimisation exercise had only increased the working day for individual employees by, on average, 30 minutes, they were concerned that the longer working day might result in an increase in musculoskeletal injuries as our waste service staff are the staff of all of our staff. They're the ones who suffer that from that most. And so we're very pleased that this suggested action for Cabinet to endorse that. Item 5 looks at monitoring that very carefully. The other thing was that Scrutiny and Overview was also reassured by the feedback from the service and from the staff that the feedback from the waste team themselves who've been very much involved in the discussion was very positive. They were looking forward to spending more time with their families and were not necessarily seeking to work on their non-working day. This is one of the things that people were concerned in. And indeed it's quoted in the papers. They wanted to make it work. So that was very encouraging. We wanted our staff, you know, the ideal is that we want our staff to feel able to cope with the considerably physical job that they do. And so this was very encouraging. And we also noted with absolute recognition that disruption, that Bank Holiday Mondays caused to our service. And so we recognise that this was an opportunity to reduce that disruption and also reduce the cost of taking on agency staff to cover the extra collections that are needed at the weekend when we have a Bank Holiday Monday. So that was all very positive. But we noted that the commercial waste still needs to be collected on seven days a week. So, you know, we felt that we'd given the staff and the members a real grilling about this and we'd been very much reassured with many of the aspects that we queried. So thank you very much. We're very happy with the recommendation that has come to Cabinet. Thank you very much. Diolch. Do you want, is there anything you want to add that hasn't been covered by so far? Diolch. Can you hear me? No, I don't believe there is anything else we need to add. I think we did have quite a long conversation at scrutiny and overview and we did address most of the questions. And if we didn't at the time, we've certainly updated the report to reflect that. Davily, thank you very much indeed. Right, are there any questions from members of Cabinet please? No, there you do, such a good job. Councillor Bachelet. So Councillor Heather Williams? Thank you, leader. So just to be clear, when Cabinet takes, obviously there is more plant property and equipment costs that are going to come with this, more capital. And we can see the upfront cost but these are going to be rolling costs year on year. I Teach being done to ascertain the true cost over the long term of taking on because we'll need extra dokumentary to have the extra routes through the end for days There's been a lot of debate about the amount of hours and do you consider this, a four day week for Refuge Collections, in giving the fact they're on different hours? Will the crews be on service finished contracts or just round finished contracts gyda'n cadw i ddau i'r hyffordd o'r rhaid i'r cymhiliadau. Ac mae chi'n ffordd mlu i ddau i'r hyffordd o'r ddau i'r hyffordd o'r cymhiliadau i ddau i'r hyffordd o'r cymhiliadau. Yn y gallu bod ni'n edrych yn yw Llywodraeth, dyma'r bod yn ni'n meddwl ei wneud wych chi'n gwybod i ddau yn ysgrifennu yn ymddangos ymddangos ddefnyddio. Adegwyddiol fel y dyfodol yw'r cyflwyn mŷfyn pwysig? Oni'r rhai mŷfynnol yn ysgrifennu am y ddiweddol, ond angen wedi bod yna'r cyflwyn yn ysgrifennu. Rydyn ni'n byw i'r gwaith cyd-af ynglyn â'r cyflwyn yw'r cyflwyn, ac gan bwysig o'r cyflawni ars-hwys i'r twyr yw'r cyflawni ar bethau ar gynnig y gyrsgwyr rhai, a'r cyflawni ar gyfer y cyflawni ar gyrsgwyr rhai, rwy'n gŷ'r gyda'r cyflawni ar gyfer y pethau rhai. Dwi'n ddweud o'r cyflawni ar gynnig y gyrsgwyr, a'r cyflawni ar gyfer y cyflawni ar gynnig. Rhaid i'n ddweud i'r ddweudio. I'm going to go back to Councillor Henry Batchelor, and obviously he will defer to the plethora of officers we have here, if needs be, for all bar the last point. Okay, thank you. I think I've written down all the questions. So in terms of the long-term cost of a council, obviously if this was to be taken permanently, that would involve purchasing of more vehicles, which I believe has been accounted for in the costing. The good thing is the service prior to going through this exercise already had additional vehicles on order, so that wouldn't be an additional cost to the service. But yes, in terms of the cost, as I said, the figures are in the papers and the cost should this be taken permanently is circa 1% of the total budget for the service. In terms of contracts of refuse collectors, I think most refuse collectors are, it's a task and finish contract, so as soon as they have completed their round, they're free to go. So they are, in a way, incentivised to be more productive. And obviously part of the four-day week trial is asking refuse collectors to work an extra 30 minutes for the four days that they would be working in lieu of having the fifth day off. So yes, I hope that answers the question about the type of contract they're on. And in terms of missed bins, obviously now the service essentially has an extra day in the week to use that extra Monday that they now no longer send the main crews out to go around and achieve any collections. But I think, as I mentioned in my introduction, one of the positives we're hoping will come out of this trial will be that we will be able to permanently recruit staff who will be very familiar with the rounds and the individual bins on that round. And so hopefully a positive result will come out of this trial, will be that the crews are more, I'd say, reliable and consistent in their collections. But obviously the team is headed up very ably by Marco, who's on the call, and I know he's very reactive to situations where bins are missed. So obviously it will be a one to keep an eye on, but I'm pretty confident that we won't see a detriment or an increase in these bins. Thank you. I'm going to ask Mr Membray to pick up the question, Councillor Williams, about the cost on setting up the trial in office and time, because I can't answer that. I think, look, I'm looking to my colleagues in waste here to see if I'm right, but I think it would be quite difficult because the service was going through a round optimization exercise anyway. And as part of that they were looking at how they better use their vehicles, how they needed to change their routes, and how they were going to respond to government changes to waste legislation. So I think it would be quite difficult to disaggregate that part of that work that related specifically to the four day week. So I think that might be challenging. I can have a talk with my colleagues from waste afterwards to think about some estimates, but I think it would be difficult to say, well actually that part of the work was specifically just because of the four day week. Do you want to come back on that? Yes, I think when doing any form of trial the amount of officer time spent on it, whether it's refuge or whether it's office base, should be being recorded so we can be transparent of how much this trial has costed. If it hasn't already happened in the first three months, it should be happening for the next 12. Also, can we please pay particular close attention to assisted deliveries? Many of people of assisted deliveries have mental health issues such as Alzheimer's or dementia, and something like a change this routine, we know will impact them. I think as councillors we all have a list in our phone books of those people that do get confused on bank holidays. Can I put a plea in that we make particular care not to make their situations worse for them? Thank you, so absolutely. The thing that always sends it all care-shaped is bank holidays. There are a large number of councils that don't collect bins ever on a Monday because it creates such chaos. I imagine additional expense dealing with bank holidays. This should actually introduce much greater consistency and continuity. My own mum has an assisted bin collection and it's very, very, very occasionally things go wrong there, but it's an annoyance when it does because she simply can't do it herself. It means that I have to, which is very annoying. We're a really, really high performing service and it's really important that we keep on being a really high performing service. Does anybody else want to come, any other officers want to come in and comment on any of these points? Boe Day. Thank you, Chair. If I can just add to the answer that Jeff gave and also I think councillor Harry Batchelor mentioned in the beginning, the review around is something that we do typically in any service every three to five years. So what we're doing now in terms of office at time is what we'll have done anyway without the four-day week. So the four-day week scenario is just an additional, what a new scenario that we're adding on it. So I don't think that this exercise is costing us any additional office at time from that perspective. Thank you very much. All right. Moving on if there aren't any more questions. Thank you very much councillor Williams. So the recommendations are set out in paragraph seven of the report I think. Thank you. I won't read them all out. Do members agree with the proposals? Anybody vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? So cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. And moving swiftly on, we've got the Cambridge Water Draft Water Resources Management Plan 2024 consultation response and councillor Peter McDonald is going to introduce this and councillor Toomey Hawkins is going to second it. Thank you. Thank you, leader. By way of introduction, I'd like to say for all of us as members of the council, water resources are a very significant issue and a consideration in the Greater Cambridge Local Plan. Overall, we are supportive of measures from Cambridge Water alongside the Environment Agency, DEFRA and others to look at demand and supply measures. This plan, which is currently under consideration, covers the period 2025 to 2050. We need to plan all of us for water from the aquifer, especially to protect our chalk streams. We've set out our response in Appendix One, which is contained in the agenda, and we've responded in three main areas. First of all, planning for development needs, secondly, measures to enable capacity, including infrastructure, such as the fence reservoir, and thirdly, an environmental goals. Overall, it's really important Cambridge Water work with us as the authority every step of the way in developing the water resources plan. I'd like to recommend to Cabinet that we accept the submission to Cambridge Water. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor MacDonald. Councillor Hawkins, do you want to say anything at this point? Thank you, leader. I will reserve my comments till later. Thank you. We've got Nancy available. Is there anything else you want to add at this point? No, nothing at the moment. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for attending. Right. Any questions from cabinet members? Or self-explanatory? Councillor Williams, then Councillor Bradman. Thank you, leader. You mentioned earlier if I had any ideas that I should raise them. So I'll just raise one simple one. Less house building in the next local plan might just help with the water issues. Just throwing it out there. And indeed it might, but unfortunately it won't help with the cost of housing and the cost of rents and the homelessness issues. So yes, thank you very much indeed. Councillor Bradman. Thank you. I'm very pleased to see the proposed response from the council. There's one question that I have though at item 12 on page 179. It refers to the fact that managing demand is not going to be enough to meet future needs and the plan sets out some processes. And one of them is a time limited bulk water transfer from Anglian water. And I just wanted to understand some clarity in what way is that time limited? Because my understanding is the plan is to build a pipeline and so I'm trying to understand why would that be time limited? Thank you. So I think I understand years that it's destined for elsewhere, but Nancy, would you like to pick up on, oh sorry, Peter, do you want to address that? I'll come back briefly, but I think Nancy is much more of the expert. My understanding is that that's just a basing issue until such time is spent as a reservoir is on stream, but let Nancy clarify. Yeah, that's actually a pipeline and I go through to Bereson Edmonds, so it's part of their network. But they've kindly agreed, will negotiated with Cambridge Water that they have an excessive supply in the shorter term, so they can supply, the pipeline will go through the Cambridge Water area and in the shorter term the Cambridge Water area can use that water, but in the long term it will go through to their other area. Do you want to come back? Thank you. It's very complex, isn't it? A logistical nightmare, that sounds a bit. Thank you. Any more questions on this? So my thanks to the officers who've put enormous effort into preparing this. Oh, I'm sorry, Castle Hawkins, you want to wind up? You can have the final word. Thank you, leader. Yeah, basically I should say thank you to Nancy and to John actually for the work that they've done to put our response together and it has gone through a nitrate process and members have had an input as well. Definitely it's an important part of emerging local plan going forward, not just that, it's also important for the current type of the local plan and if I might just make a reference to the comment from Councillor Williams. The current type of the local plan which was created back in rural up to 2014 which was adopted in 2018 actually has 19,500 homes proposed between 2011 and 2031. That's for South Cams. Cambridge City, as you know, has 14,000 in there, so actually there's still a lot of buildings that need to be built within the adopted current local plan. What we have done with emerging or proposing to add, it's not even up to that, so please let's be realistic. There is a need in this area. Greater Cambridge is growing. There is a housing need and the problems we've had to date is that the growth that has happened has not been supported with infrastructure. We can't let people down. We need to be able to provide the need or meet the need that we've identified and that's what the Greater Chemical Plan will be doing, but of course it all depends on the water supply. It's not our responsibility and some people try to make out, but I'm glad that Anglia Water are now seeing to that with their proposed solutions. So, yes, thank you and I'm looking forward to them being able to put forward something that will work for us so that we can meet the need of Greater Cambridge. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Councillor Hawkins. All right, so the recommendations are set out in paragraph 3 of the report. Do members agree with the proposal? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? Cabinet therefore agrees with the proposals by affirmation. Thank you very much indeed to all concerned. Moving on to the final item, I hope there's another can of worms, a response to the Department of Levelling up Housing Community's technical consultation on the infrastructure levy. I spent hours of my time at LGA discussing this. I think Councillor McDonald again and Councillor Hawkins seconding. Thank you, Leader. So this submission to D-Luck is in response to the Government proposals to replace the S106 arrangements, which we are familiar with and all councils familiar with an infrastructure levy. We in South Cams and the Greater Cambridge Planning Service, we have real concerns and we have set these out in our 45 answers to the questions. Our concerns centre around the timing of revenues because it's proposed in the Government proposals that they would be at the end of a development and essentially the proposals from Government proposed that the Council borrow to fund the gap between development and infrastructure levy payments. I hardly need to articulate how concerning that is in terms of the borrowing that would be required from local authorities. The bill is going through Parliament, as I understand it, and it would see changes during a test period or test and trial period in 2024 and 25. There are draft responses in Appendix 1 in the agenda. As I mentioned we've responded to 45 questions in that Appendix and I believe the submission is comprehensive and thoughtful and I really thank the officers for all their work and I ask Cabinet to approve. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hawkins. Yes, I'll second is what I'd like to speak at the end please. Thank you. So this is debated at length cross party at the Government Association and in particular at the district council network where there is some serious concern cross party about recommendations here particularly that point about councils being required to front fund stuff and we know how long it takes to build infrastructure by which time costs have escalated. We then find ourselves in deficit, developers have gone out of business, goodness only knows what's happened. So I think we are all horrified actually at many aspects of this. Any Cabinet members wish to ask any questions or discuss this? Councillor Batchelor. Yes, thank you, leader. I'd just like to highlight the issue of affordable housing in this. There's no detail at all describe the bag of worms and this is very wormy indeed. No detail, don't know what they really want out of this other than there's no drop in the number of affordable houses. How that's achieved is simply what explains very worrying. Thank you. Thank you. That's a very, very important point. So cross party, there's been disappointment voiced that the ambition of this is just for there not to be a drop rather than there to be an increase in affordable housing which again is something that is a cross party will, a wish certainly within district councils. Anyone else from Cabinet wish to speak? Any other members wish to speak on this one? Councillor Williams. Just that it is our group's policy as I know it is an aspiration of the entire organisation that affordable housing should never be compromised and we should be seeking more affordable housing and I won't go into the merits of everything else but on that point in particular. Thank you. I'm pleased to hear that. Thank you very much. Councillor Hawkins, do you want to come in now before we wind up? Yes, thank you, leader. I still remember my feeling of horror when I first read the proposal to get councils to pay for or to borrow against a nonspecified cross development value in some years forward. I mean, we as councils are not geared towards that sort of thing. I still remember actually asking a question at a webinar we had with the chief national planner and I didn't get a straightforward answer back except that it will be tried and there will be etc. But I think you will see from a document that we strongly disagree with that question 21. At the end of the day, yes, we shouldn't have affordable housing compromised definitely. I would like to see, I think we would like to see a lot more of that come forward. Infrastructure is key. We get a lot of opposition to development because infrastructure doesn't come when it should and really the government should be looking at a way of bringing it forward in a proper way. Not in any way to suggest it. It seems to me that we didn't actually talk to local planning authorities before coming up with this. I don't think we will come up with something like this. But once again, thank you to the officers and to John and his team for working hard on putting this together. It has taken us all their thought. Thank you. Thank you. I want to tell you about the offlog another day and about lack of consultation with councils. Okay, so there's nobody else we should speak to. The proposals are set out in Paragraph 2. Do members agree with proposals? Anyone wish to vote against them? Anyone wish to abstain? So Cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. So that brings this meeting of Cabinet to a close after two hours. It's not too bad. Thank you for joining us today for today's meeting. The next meeting of the Cabinet is scheduled to take place on Tuesday the 27th of June at Paragraph 2.