 nutritious check that we are people and note it using the chat to say that they're going to speak. Yo, okay chair I can confirm we're not live thank you. Thank you very much so good good morning, members, officers and any members of the public who are viewing this live stream of this meeting. Welcome to this meeting, which is south cane britchard district Council's Cabinet meeting. Cabinet meeting. My name is Councillor Bridget Smith and I'm the leader of this council and I'm chair of the cabinet as well. So for information and members of the public, the cabinet which has made up myself and eight lead cabinet members who you should be able to see on screen with their names there so I won't introduce them all individually. It's responsible for most of the council services and for preparing a budget and for the council's major policies and strategies which are considered by full council. So if you could please everybody participating in the meeting make sure that your microphones are off until the point at which you are invited to speak. And if you'd like to indicate that you wish to speak or ask a question, please would you do so in the chat and between myself and one of my deputies, Councillor Aidan van der Waill will keep a close close eye on this and hopefully take everybody in the order in which they ask to speak. So we also have present councillor Judith Ripeth, who is the vice chair of the scrutiny and overview committee. Would you just like to introduce yourself please councillor Ripeth. Good morning. I'm councillor Judith Ripeth of Milton and Water Beach Ward and vice chair of scrutiny. And have we got, I can see that we've got councillor Deborah Roberts present who hello, hello Deborah nice to see you. Have we any other other non cabinet members present please if you'd just like to say hello. Yes, councillor Claire Daunton, one of the members for the Fendish and full board ward. And Bridget, sorry to leader Councillor Anna Bradnam, one of the members for Milton and Water Beach Ward. Morning and chair, sorry Sarah Johnson-Longfanton Ward. Hello. Don't look at what you see from Gerson Ward. Lovely. Very nice to see you Douglas. Head the Williams to the Mordans Ward. And Richard Williams to the Mordans Ward. Sorry. That's lovely. That's lovely. It's difficult, isn't it? Pippa Hylings from Hisden and Bington Notched Park. That's lovely. That's lovely. Very nice to see so many non cabinet members giving up their Monday morning in order to participate in this. And we also have officers, a number of officers from our senior leadership team present, including Liz Watts, our chief executive, and Ann Ainsworth, our chief operating officer. And they will step in if the need arises or we ask them to contribute. So announcements. So it's sad to say that this week sees the first anniversary of the first lockdown due to COVID. It's hard to believe that it's been a whole year. But I would just like to take this opportunity to say thank you, most importantly to all our communities who have just done the most astounding job of keeping the show on the road for all of us. For showing us how the strength of communities and how they can pull together to really save people's lives, I suppose, the reality. They've fed people, they've kept people connected, they've made phone calls, they've done a huge amount. And I'm immensely proud of every single one of our communities in South Cambridgeshire. But thank you also to the tremendous efforts of councillors within South Cambridgeshire District Council and also to our officers. I know that both officers and councillors have been tireless over this last year and have stepped into many roles which aren't traditional roles that any of us do. So again, feeding thousands of people for whom food's been a problem and again just keeping tens of thousands of people safe. And just finally, one of the good things about COVID is that it's really strengthened a lot of our partnerships. So both councillor Bill Handley and myself participate in weekly meetings with the county council, with all the other, our neighbouring district councils, with public health, with the health service, education, fire, police and combined authority. And that is a very, very significant partnership because we really all have been working together in the best interests of our communities. And I hope that those strong partnerships and that strong partnership working will continue long after COVID becomes a distant and unpleasant memory for most of us. So that's one of the good things. So moving on to Apologies for Absence. Jonathan, have we an Apologies for Absence please? Good morning, leader. We have not received any Apologies for Absence from Cabinet members, but we have received Apologies from councillor Gwynville Chamberlain, being chair of the Scrutiny and Overview Committee. Thank you. And I gather that councillor Chamberlain is busy working with the equivalent committee at the combined authority this morning. So thank you very much to councillor Rippers for standing in. Do we have any declarations of interest pertaining to any of the items on today's agenda, please? From me, leader, only for item 13, we make indirect reference to investment return and I'm represented on the investment partnership. Thank you very much councillor McDonald. So if that could be noted, please in the minutes. And moving on to the minutes of the previous meeting which start at page one, and I will go through them page by page, please indicate if you have any points you'd like to raise. So page one, page two, page three, page four, page five, page six, and they end on page seven. OK, thank you. So members are asked to approve the minutes of the meeting held on the third of February. I moved the approval of those minutes as a correct record. Do I have a seconder for that councillor van der Waier? Are you seconding these? Yes. Thank you very much indeed. So do members agree to approve the minutes? Agree. Does anyone wish to vote against the proposal? And does anyone wish to abstain? OK, thank you. So cabinet therefore agrees the approval of the minutes as a correct record by affirmation. So moving on to item five are public questions and I'm very pleased that we have two members of the public who have also given up Monday mornings to come and talk to us. So firstly, we have a question from Mrs Jane Williams. Mrs Williams, are you present? I'm here. Can you hear me all right? I am. Would you like to pose your question, please? The question is being taken by councillor Tumi Hawkins. Thank you very much, chair. It's a rather long question. In 2016, the council granted planning permission for the development of Cambridge North Station at Chest and Siding. Of that planning permission, approximately 1.6 hectares of land was designated for ecological migration measures, including the retention of existing trees of vegetation, the creation of a new area of wetland habitats and the installation of new habitat areas for invertebrates. The site, which forms an important connector between the Brunville Fields Local Nature Reserve and nearby habitat areas, was deemed to be an area of near SSI quality and was in particular noted for its potential as a rich habitat for invertebrates and reptiles. The City Council released its draft North East Cambridge Area Action Plan last year. This 1.6 hectare ecological site was inexplicably not included on the spatial framework maps, and the land was instead relocated to provide for more profitable town centre, retail and housing uses. In the past several months, the entire site was clear-cuttable trees and vegetation and violation of the 2016 planning permission. In its recently adopted doubling nature strategy, the council says that it will make the most of our direct influence on the natural environments as the local planning authority. But in this case, greater Cambridge planning has ignored its own designation of 1.6 hectares of land for ecological mitigation. In the lives of the ecological devastation, we have seen associated with council-approved developments at Cambridge North and other sites, including North Stowe. How can the public have any confidence that the council actually cares about doubling nature and what measures will be taken to remediate this? Thank you. So, Monday morning. Thank you very much indeed, Mrs Williams. Councillor Hawkins, would you like to respond? Thank you, leader. Yes, good morning, Mrs Williams, and thank you for your question. Firstly, I would like to reiterate that this council does care about doubling nature, and we are taking steps to do this. Secondly, in respect to the specific matter you referred to, the land near the Cambridge North Station where trees have recently been cleared, the 2016 planning permission and the condition which you identified actually was not implemented. Instead, subsequent applications were submitted to and approved by Southcams as well as Cambridge City, and the land that has been cleared was included in these subsequent permissions which were implemented. And they did have a condition that required a submission of a landscape and ecological management plan. Now, that plan was submitted at the time and assessed by the city council's ecologists who found it acceptable, but that plan did not show landscape or ecological features to be retained within the area where the recent works have been carried out. So, as there was no requirement through those subsequent permissions which were implemented to retain the vegetation, unfortunately there is no bridge of condition, and so there is no enforcement action that we can take. And just to let you know that removing trees and vegetation from land does not require planning permission unless there is a TPU involved. Therefore, in this case, the council had no control over those works. But thirdly and hopefully to give you and the public the assurance that we are committed to our aim of increasing biodiversity and doubling nature in the district. As part of the work on the North East Cambridge area action plan, the council had actually already undertaken a biodiversity assessment back in June of 2020 of the area. And this will be used as a baseline for any future applications in the area where we expect proposals from developers to meet the national planning policy framework requirement for a net game and also be for our own emerging policy objectives. For the area action plan also provides significant opportunities for delivering biodiversity objectives through a wide range of new, both formal and informal spaces across the site, and also maintaining the habitat that does exist as those sites come forward. So we are demonstrating our firm commitment to doubling nature through some of the planning decisions we've made recently across the district and through our emerging policies. So I hope that you and our residents will recognise that commitment as those new considered permissions are built out. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Hawkins. Mrs Williams, would you like to come back with a supplementary question? Yes, please. Thank you, Councillor Hawkins. Yes, it is incredibly admirable. I obviously follow a lot that's going on with the doubling nature strategy, which I have actually read. One of the issues that I have and would like assurance with is the fact that we have these plans, and I've studied lots of them as you probably know I live in Water Beach. For me, we have all these plans. We have all these aspirations as to how we want and visions to bring things forward. What concerns me is when, after planning has been approved, how it actually translates on the ground, such as the parameters plans, such as land profiling, such as ensuring that we are doubling nature, that we're dealing with contamination. I believe that you're doing some work with enforcement at the moment to try and bring these things forward. But when you have these huge sites coming forward, I would like to have the reassurance, but I'm not quite sure how I feel whether what is being approved is being translated in the right manner. So, you know, sort of what checks and balances, rather than what is being proposed, what is actually being done to ensure that these, especially the huge sites have come forward because of the implications on nature, the landscape and everything else, which I'm sure you're aware of. So I would like to sort of know how it's been dealt with, really. Thank you, Mrs Williams. That's quite a big question, actually. Councillor Hawkins, do you want to add anything at this point? Just to say, I do recognise the concern that Mrs Williams has expressed. One of the things that we did with the new organisation of this service was to introduce what we call the strategic sites team. And we are working within that team to make sure that when we do grant permissions and conditions come forward for discharges, that we actually look at this in quite a lot of detail. I mean, I would be willing to have a chat with you outside of this just to give you a bit more detail where possible as to some of the things that we are doing. Please be assured that the fact that we now have a doubling nature strategy means that we will be looking at all these sites, the big sites, especially that come forward in closer detail. Unlike in this case where the permission was given several years ago, which we cannot do anything about that, the new permissions that we are giving, we are making sure that as best as we can, what is built is what was permissioned. Thank you very much, Councillor Hawkins. And I think the important point Councillor Hawkins makes is that we really are very keen to work as closely as possible with our communities. So it's not about us dictating that stuff is done to them. It's about us working together to deliver actually what communities want, as well as what should be provided as a result of planning permissions. So I hope that gives you reassurance, Mrs Williams, and please do email Councillor Hawkins if you would like to just have an informal chat about this. Now, so moving on, our second question is from Mr Daniel Fulton. Are you present, Mr Fulton? Yes, I am. Thank you, Chair. Hello, you're quite a regular these days. So please put your question. In September of last year, the Council's planning performance submission for SU2 2020 told the government that 85% of non-major planning applications had been determined within the time allowed. However, an audit conducted by the Fuselin consortium found that the truthful figure was only 9%. At the Cabinet meeting in January, the portfolio holder for planning agreed that the Council's internal audit team would review and report on its findings in regards to the Q2 2020 data for non-major applications. It has now been more than two months later, and neither the promised audit has not been conducted or the Council is suppressing the results of the audit. There is a local election scheduled for May 6, and it certainly appears that the Council is more concerned about protecting the political future. Mr Fulton, could you keep to the subject matter of your submitted question, please? I am. I don't want us to deviate into politics on this. Thank you, Chair. It seems that the Council is more concerned about protecting reputations than about correcting the dishonest planning performance statements made by the Council to the government, to members of the Council and to the public. The gap between the actual performance figure of 9% and the Council's claimed performance of 85% is staggering. Even if you give the Council the benefit of the doubt in every single case, and even if the Council has misinterpreted every rule in every possible instance, the Council's performance figure wouldn't have even reached 40%. The only plausible explanation for the Council's reported figure of 85% is intentional dishonesty. Could the portfolio holder for planning please explain why the internal audit report has not been completed as she had instructed? Thank you. Thank you, Mr Fulton. Councillor Hawkins. Good morning, Mr Fulton, and thank you for your question. As you may appreciate, the Council audit team has a work schedule, so when additional work is required, it is fitted into their work stream as quickly as is possible. The Council's internal audit team began the audit of the Q2 2020 PS to submission in February of 2021, and I am advised by the lead audit officer that the team is working on it. And we expect to be in a position to report their findings to the scrutiny meeting on the 20th of April 2021. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Hawkins. So obviously, these things take time. They can't be done overnight. Mr Fulton, do you have a follow up question which relates directly to your original question, please? Yes, I do. I do appreciate that reviewing the audit submission will involve the review of over 3,000 individual documents associated with over 300 planning applications, and I realize that this takes time. However, it took a team of relatively untrained, a team of three relatively inexperienced volunteers, approximately two days to complete our audit. So I appreciate that the audit team is busy and has many responsibilities, but I do think that this needs to be taken forward as quickly as possible. Thank you for your response, Councillor Hawkins. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Mr Fulton. So I don't think there was a question there, but the key issue is that if we do these things, we have to do them very, very thoroughly, and doing things really thoroughly and accurately takes time. So thank you very much, Mr Fulton. All right. So I think our visitors will be leaving the main body of the meeting now, and we shall move on now to item six, which is issues arising from the scrutiny and overview committee. And I see from your report, this committee's been doing some really very good work on some very big issues, and I'm very grateful for that. They're being very focused, which is great. So, Councillor Riffith, do you want to speak on the report or do you want to speak on the body of the meeting or a bit of both? Could you unmute yourself please, Councillor Riffith? Yes, sure. Can I speak on the report now please? Yes, please do. Just to say it's very well written up by Victoria, as usual. The housing repairs points on page 10 really want to emphasise the timely and responsive service that I'm sure you as a cabinet will be looking at as well. And then moving on to the task and finish groups, both of which carried out a lot of detailed work, and I was part of the COVID-19 one. And just want to emphasise it was an honour to be part of that group and to recognise how much hard work has been put in by local members, officers and community groups. And it was working together that I think really made the difference. Just one thing to add, a lot of churches also helped out with meal delivery and the Christmas meal scheme, just that that wasn't mentioned in the snapshot. I think that really covers most of it, and there's nine points to take forward from the anti-racism task and finish group too. So lots of good work carrying on. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Riffith, and thank you for pointing out my admission, which I really shouldn't have made because actually I've been in conversations with the Gameligay Baptist Church this weekend, who have got a fantastic plan for continuing the work that they've been doing all along. And actually in the first lockdown they delivered food to me as well, which was marvellous. So of course we acknowledge all the work of the churches of all faiths. It is. We do our best. Thank you very much indeed. Okay, so Councillor Delacy would like to speak on this issue, this matter. Thank you very much, leader, specifically on ICT, and I'm sorry that I couldn't have brought this to the scrutiny and overview committee itself. But on Friday I reported a problem with our planning website, and I had rather worrying responses from planning officers, which suggested an amount of uncertainty as to who is responsible for IDOCs, the planning software we use. Is it the Greater Cambridge Planning Service, or is it 3C? And I hope that we will actually look at this in the future because it seems to me this is potentially quite a big problem. I should say that as of 9.45 this morning the problem remains unresolved, which also raises the question of how parishes are kept informed about these issues, and how they can obtain planning extensions if they cannot properly prepare a response. Thank you, leader. Thank you very much indeed. Does any cabinet member want to respond on that? Councillor Milnes. Yes, thank you, leader. All I can offer at the moment is a confirmation that the planning service had a problem over the weekend and at the end of last week. I was waiting for a report from Geoff memory and Ainsworth as to the nature of that. I think it continues to be an area of concern because the reliability and robustness of the site is clearly lacking and that continues. So, I'd just like to acknowledge Councillor Delacy's recording of the continuing issue. And I think his question about who's responsible in terms of reporting and so on about whether it's the planning service or ICT as the shared service is a salient question. Thank you very much. I'm going to bring in Geoff memory. Just an update on that, leader. I'm waiting for four details of what the problem is, but we are running constant monitoring now of the council's planning website, and we should have received notification when it went down. No, we didn't receive that, so I'm trying to find out exactly why. And as soon as I find out, I'll report to Councillor Milne and the rest of cabinet. That's super. Thank you very much. And thank you very much, Councillor Delacy, for raising that. Leader, can I just say, I'm slightly surprised if this was known on Friday, generally, that parishes weren't made aware of it. I was told, I think, by Stephen that a message would be put on the front page of the planning website. But I suspect very, very few people ever go to the front page of the planning website. They will go to the planning request form. So I wonder if we could make sure that parishes are immediately made aware if we know that there are problems. Thank you. I think that's a point very well made, and we shall take that back. Thank you very much indeed. All right. So if nobody else wants to comment on this, in relation to item six, members are asked to note the report from scrutiny and overview committee. So moving on to item seven, which is on page 11. So just to show scrutiny and overview committee have been working extremely hard. This is the report from their anti-racism task and finish group, and there are nine recommendations here. And Councillor Chung Johnson, who chaired this task and finish group, is going to present this to us. So are you ready to go? Hello, chair. I'm not going to read the report. I'm just, I can't just say if I'm busy. And I think Victoria has done a fabulous job of writing this up and that it is pretty clear. I think overwhelmingly on behalf of the group, we feel that this has to be an ongoing piece of work and not finite. And obviously it impacts pretty much every area of the council, which is where we, why we came up with the recommendation that it needs to have a cabinet focus. We were also incredibly impressed with the work the city have already done with many of the items that were in our motion originally, and which is also why we've recommended pairing up with them because obviously our communities do crossover. For my own community, for example, in Chinese community centre is a huge community in Cambridge. And those of us who live in South County will always travel into the city to meet up with fellow community members. So obviously a lot of our residents are already mingling and so therefore our work should be put together. So I'll leave it there. I would like to obviously thank the officers that have given a lot of time for the group and also my fellow task force group members as well if there's any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. Yes. So my thanks to both yourself, Councillor Daunton, Councillor Harvey and Councillor Williams, who I think you must all have put in a considerable amount of work into this. But thank you also for acknowledging the invaluable support of Susan Gardner-Trag, our head of HR and Victoria Wallace, who supports the work of the scrutiny of overview committee. So I think this is going to be proposed by Councillor John Williams and seconded by Councillor Aidan Van Derwyer. So if I can hand over to John. Thank you, leader. I'm proposing the recommendation set out in paragraph three as lead cabinet member for staffing, given that we must work with our staff to achieve the results. Can I first thank the work of councillor John Johnson and members of her task and finish group on producing this excellent report and its recommendations? Can I also thank the officers who gave such positive support to the working group, including colleagues at the City Council? These recommendations arise from the motion passed by full council at its meeting on the 16th of July. And as you can see from paragraph 11, some of the recommendations will require additional funding and where in my finance hat, I will ensure that we follow through these recommendations in the coming financial year. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. Councillor Van Derwyer, do you want to speak now? Yes, I'll just say that there's a philosophy to work and really put some really careful thought into this from all of the members involved in this and there's some sort of really stimulating things that we need to do. The council, the whole needs to think when doing and I think that will result in some really significant improvements to how we act and how we engage with communities that are the diverse communities that we have in south camps. It's fantastic. Thank you very much. Are there any other members of cabinet who'd like to speak? No. So I've got councillor Anna Bradlam. Thank you, leader. I just wanted to point out that in this report at recommendation 7, there's a provision, a recommendation for a provision of training on Gypsy Roma and Traveller Cultural Awareness to all councillors and officers. And I just wanted to point out that through the work that the community, the South Cambridgeshire Community Safety Partnership is doing, which is dealing with delivery of a community resilience toolkit, actually as part of that, not only the members concerned but also members of the parish council are taking part in the cultural awareness training to do with Gypsy Roma and Traveller Community So this is already being rolled out and it's being rolled out in 10 workshops, which are being held with parish council members. So you might want to take that into account in the recognition that this work is already ongoing. Thank you very much indeed. Councillor Hawkins. Thank you, chair. Sorry, I missed the earlier slot typing and trying to unmute. Just wanted to add my thanks to the Task Unfinished Group really as one of the members of the minority ethnic groups in the council. It is good to see how much progress we have made from when we passed the motion to now and the proposals being made. A lot of work has gone into it and I'm hoping that we will see even more progress in the future as we implement some of this. I'm not sure I might have, I might not have seen this in the report, but what I'm hoping is that there will be training available for unconscious bias across the council and potentially made available to other organisations who we work with. I think this is a very important part of actually ensuring that we are inclusive in what we do. Thank you. Thank you. Could everybody make sure they're muted please because we've got some interesting thumping going on in the background. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hawkins. These are ambitious recommendations and we're going to have to put work into them, but we will absolutely put work into this. It's so important that we do this properly and that South Cambridgeshire as a district and that our district council as well is a great place for everybody to work and to participate in. Huge congratulations on the ambition of this and I take your point, Councillor John Johnson, that this isn't a one off, this isn't something that you just rub a stamp and then file away to gather dust. This is work that has to be constantly reviewed and probably amended and some things are not working out well. We might have to think differently about how to deal with it. I know that you in particular will be giving a very close eye on this and holding our feet to the fire on it, so thank you very much indeed. Members are asked to approve the nine recommendations. If I could come to members, are you all minded to approve all nine recommendations in this report please? Anybody wish to abstain and anybody wish to vote against? Thank you very much. So the recommendations are approved by cabinet. Thank you very much indeed. So moving on to yet another bit of excellent work from the Scrutin Overview Committee. This is the COVID-19 response task and finish group and Councillor Bill Handley I believe is going to present this and I should be really pleased to second it. So over to you Councillor Handley. Thank you leader. In your introduction you mentioned the tremendous community response we've seen across the district and I'd like to echo that with my, give my praise also for this. The task and finish group was set up by the Scrutiny and Overview Committee to look at lessons learned and they've held discussions with volunteers and those meetings were attended by myself and officers from the communities team. The proposals in this paper are to ensure that there's sufficient resource for community recovery and for the council to host an event or events to celebrate the positive aspect of the pandemic when we can safely do so. I'm really pleased to say that we've already made significant progress on this and indeed later this week we officers and myself are going to be speaking again with volunteers how we can move this forward. The recommendations are given on page 19 and I'm very pleased to put them to cabinet. Thank you very much indeed Councillor Handley. So my personal thanks to Councillor Chamberlain, Councillor Daunton, Councillor Hales, Councillor Rippeth and also to you Councillor Handley and all your supporting officers for this work. I'm delighted that one of your recommendations is that we should have events to celebrate because my goodness we all need a few parties to look forward to because there haven't been, there haven't been too many of them for the last last year. So both members and all our fabulous volunteers could certainly do something in their diary as soon as it's safe to put it in there and something jolly and I hope that we will do people proud actually and we will do something that's memorable to say thank you because I think what this acknowledges is that the work isn't going to stop. And certainly some of the stuff that in the media from public health yesterday about a lot of these measures are likely to stay in place for years shows that we're not going to get to the point where suddenly we switch back into the way life was. But there have been lots of positives from the way that COVID has brought communities together which actually we need moving forward even when COVID isn't around anymore because actually our communities are better places for a lot of this work that's been going on. So I'm very grateful to the scrutiny of the committee for highlighting this as a priority and I'm delighted to be able to support both of both of their recommendations. So would anybody from Cabinet like to speak on this? No, and would any other members present like to speak? Okay, so in which case I'll move straight to the recommendations and ask do members agree to approve these recommendations? Agreed. Agreed. Thank you. Does anyone wish to vote against? And does anyone wish to abstain? Cabinet therefore agrees the recommendations and thank you again to all participants and moving on to item nine, which is actions taken under the chief executives delegated powers. And I think these pertain to some grants back in the days when we were in tier four, which seems like a lifetime ago. So anybody got any questions on the on this item? No, okay, so member. So we're just asked to denote the report and moving swiftly on to item 10, which is the quarter three performance report and councillor Neil Goff is going to present this and I would like to second it. So councillor Neil Goff over to you. Thank you. Thank you, leader. So there's basically two appendices for this report, one of which looks at the KPIs, which are sort of performance against sort of business as usual. Secondly, appendix B, which looks at performance against our business plan objectives for 2021 and the things over and above business as usual. This period covers a third quarter, which is October to October to December. So obviously we have the continued impact of COVID and the back end, the second national lockdown to contend with. If I just briefly look at appendix A first of all, and then I'm going to focus most of my comments on appendix B, which is a which is a sort of new structure of the report, which I think is particularly helpful for the members. In terms of appendix A, we see continuing sort of trends in quarter three from the previous quarters. There are a number of areas of red. Some of those are relating to the particular impact of COVID. I think what we've tried to do in this report is provide extensive commentary on areas where that has occurred in the notes. And I'm sure if any questions will come back to review those with input from the respective cabinet members. But I want to focus most of my comments on appendix B, which we've sort of restructured and I hope is welcome for members. This basically looks at our performance relative to some of the particular targets we had. And again, given the impact of COVID, I think this highlights a number of areas where we've done frankly remarkably well. And I just want to go over a number of them, which as of third quarter were either achieved or looking as though they were well on the way to being achieved. So first is the actual installation of the business support team, which is obviously fully in place. And in many ways, thank goodness that they were given the workloads that the council has faced in terms of grants activity and support and the importance of that work. The existence of that team has been core to the ability of this council to support those businesses. We've also seen over performance with respect to the number of new council homes completed, 66 relative to a target of 50, which is clear over performance. We've also seen the establishment of all of the liaison forum group meetings which we set out to do. New ones have been established as targeted and have already started their work. Continued work on climate, seeing the zero carbon strategy adopted, doubling nature strategy, progress on the LED lighting project which had been stored for many, many, many years is now well on the way and on course to completion. Service reviews now started completed in revenues and benefits and going on to planning. Progress on the investment strategy, well on the way to the 25% income target being met. Online accounts for council online and in sort of channel shift, now more than 22,000 accounts actually established. And mobile warden schemes target exceeded there. We've now set up seven rather than three what we've had. So I think even at the end of quarter three if you look back and consider the difficulties under which the offices were operating in 2021. That's really quite stunning performance and congratulations to all of those involved. I'll just leave my comments at that and happy to pick up any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Gough. So I think it's nothing short of a miracle actually that we have kept the show on the road so effectively in the last last year and business as usual has continued and it's continued really, really well despite everything that's been thrown at us. So I think I do think I think it's miraculous and huge credit to all our offices for being so adaptive but also so hardworking that they've managed to keep the organisation functioning so efficiently. Similar to Councillor Gough, I'm very pleased with the changes in the way this report's been presented and my thanks to Kevin Ledger, Phil Byrd and to Jeff memory for that. Poor Kevin really had us at the 11th hour saying oh rag rating would be a tremendously good idea. And yeah, I think turned it turned it round in 24 hours really so thank you. And I certainly I like rag ratings, particularly with the amount of paperwork we all have to have to deal with these days because it focuses the attention. So I think that's great. And I very much like the way that the narrative goes. And you know will hopefully be of interest and comprehensible to members of public as well as those of us who find ourselves to immerse in council speak. So, you know, congratulations. Everyone's done really, really well and that this this report reflects that success. So are there any comments from anyone in cabinet? No, okay, councillor Delacy would like to speak about on this one. Thank you very much leader. I want particularly to talk about pages 45 and 46, the call center results. You will know that I've been asking for more detail. And I'm very grateful to Mr memory who gave me November's full figures. And with your indulgence, I would like to comment on them to explain why I'm asking for what I'm asking for generally. The standard deviation is 5.4 minutes, which is interestingly small, I think. In November, our record was 85.75% answered. That's you get from the figures that are presented. So I make that about 13,000 calls in total in November since 1862 were abandoned. But interesting figures, I think seven calls ended within less than one second. 57 calls were ended within five seconds and 189 within 30 seconds. Is it reasonable to count those as part of the data set? Clearly, they weren't terribly serious. But at the other end, 62 callers hung over for over 20 minutes and seven callers between 30 and 40 minutes. And those I think are very significant figures. Our target for answering the call is 100 seconds and intervention is triggered at 180 seconds. 500 calls were abandoned before 100 seconds. Over 1000 callers hung on for over the 180 seconds. And it seems to me that gives us a lot more useful information than just a graph and an orange bar. And so I'm very grateful that Mr Membury is now making sure that the next software we use will actually provide something more of these figures. As a PS, I wonder why, incidentally, each area needs to start a new page. It seems to waste an awful lot of paper in our printed agendas. Thank you very much, leader. Thank you very much. Well, I'm working on a screen so I haven't got anything printed, but I take your comment. And I share your concerns. Councillor Gough, do you want to respond to the specifics in Councillor Delacy's comments? I sort of will say that actually looking at the distributions obviously helpful. I think we were very fortunate that Jeff Membury has taken up Councillor Delacy's challenge. And I'm delighted that before Councillor Delacy stepped down we were actually able to provide him with the data. So it is one of the things which the new system will actually help us with because it's basically about understanding the way in which calls are actually received. Calls are actually diverted and calls are actually addressed. And Councillor Delacy has highlighted what I think is an important element of this, is that you do need to understand at a level of granularity that you can appreciate what's going on. And that you can actually track individual calls and you can think about what the processes are, which is sort of leading to people either getting a satisfactory service or an unsatisfactory service. So I think it is a really important step. And I think the new telephony system will actually help us do something about it rather than just monitoring the data. But I just would like to ask whether Jeff Membury would like to actually add any additional comments to that because he's dealing with the actual new system itself. Thank you, Jeff. Would you like to step in? Yes. Thank you, Leader. Councillor Gough is absolutely right that we're focusing very much on making sure that not only can we get the sort of information we need from the new system to analyse exactly what's happened with calls to be able to identify potential peaks coming up in the future so we can ensure that we've got resources in place, but also to ensure that we've got real-time information so that people managing the call centre can see immediately if calls are starting to build up and can make some changes perhaps to different lines or changing people's break times to ensure that we've got people on hand to try and make sure that we deliver the promises to respond to customers within a good time. That's certainly very much our focus. We had an initial session for potential bidders on the new system just last week so we're expecting to see some significant progress on that in the next few weeks. Thank you. Jeff, have we seen, I can't tell from the grass, have we seen an increase in people bringing up the contact centre over the last 12 months? We have patches where we have significant increases. What we found in particular towards the end of 2020 was, of course, near the beginning of 2020 there wasn't a recovery action for council tax or business rates and those, of course, started towards the end of 2020 so we saw a significant increase once those started to go out. And, yes, as we move into lockdown and there was extra grants for businesses, we had a significant increase in calls for businesses and eventually the call centre had to support the business support team there to enable them to get on with processing the grants so that the call centre had to take some of those calls. So, yeah, we had seen quite a significant increase. That's interesting. Councillor Gough, do you want to come back on that? Yeah, I actually just made the point I was going to make about, you know, the number of business calls relating to sort of grants and other support which we've taken, but again that's the other thing, the sort of thing we need to understand when you look at this data is what do you do with those peaks and how you kind of deal with those peaks without addressing, without adversely affecting the service levels for regular calls. And I think, again, that's something which the new system will hopefully help us with in terms of being able to sort of more directly target and direct those sort of peak calls. Thank you very much. Councillor Heather Williams, you've got a question. Thank you, leader. Apologies if I repeat anything that's been said previously. I completely dropped out. The internet all crashed and went down. So, if I'm making repetition, my apologies. It was just about page 39 on the housing and property services, the average day three level housing stock. Now, I appreciate that there is going to be disruption because of COVID, but I was just wondering when then factored in the amount sped on bed and breakfast and everything else. Is there any way we can try and speed up this process or what's happening because obviously we want people in their homes as soon as possible, really? Absolutely. And I think COVID has had a catastrophic effect on re-letting stock. But if I could bring, I don't know, Hazel, do you want to help Hazel Smith to come in first and then we might bring in Peter Campbell as well for some more detail? Yes, just to say that there have been particular problems. Of course, the days to re-let are only logged at the end. So, any problems with COVID will sort of mount up because the difficult ones will be logged at the point where they have been let. And there have been problems particularly with Mears actually giving us the amount of service that we need. And so we have also been going out to other contractors with the agreement of Mears to help them out. I don't know whether Peter's got anything else to add to that. Thank you, Peter Campbell. Yes, thank you. There's two things that I'd like to mention. First of all, about the re-lets themselves. There are two reasons why the problems haven't taken longer. The first is the one that Hazel has covered is the fact that we've not had the contractors haven't been able to carry out work as quickly as we'd have liked and that's partly to do with COVID. But the second point is also to do with the choice of potential tenants. People have not wanted to move during the pandemic, especially older people and people who are more vulnerable. So, people have not wanted to move, of course, that has a knock-on effect on the void figures. The other thing that Councillor Williams mentioned in passing was the increase in bed and breakfast. And although in normal times we'd be aiming to reduce bed and breakfast expenditure, it's particularly high this time because of the good work that the service have done in responding to the government's request to ensure that everybody's homeless is housed in temporary accommodation. So, there is an increase in use of bed and breakfast purely because we put the extra effort in response to the government work. And what's not reflected in these figures is that the increase in bed and breakfast for that purpose wasn't met with an increase in funding from governments. And perhaps it would be useful if we spent some time to try and split out the underlying trend for bed and breakfast and the COVID trend, which has provided the bump in these figures. Thank you very much. So, it's unusual that actually we're celebrating the fact that these amount of money spent on bed and breakfast is in the red because it shows that we've done a really, really excellent job in identifying people who are homeless and actually getting them all a decent roof over their heads. So, congratulations to the enormous efforts that our homelessness team have put in there because I know it's been really, really tough. And of course, things are likely to get tougher because at the moment there's a halt on evictions. Once that halt is lifted, my expectation is certainly we're going to see a whole load more people, suddenly homeless. And so that figure is going to increase even more. But I'm really pleased that the government has provided us with the money to meet the need, whether they continue to meet the need as we come out of lockdown is another matter because the problem is certainly not going to go away, certainly not going to get better and it's definitely going to get worse. So, Catherine Williams, you'd like to come back? Yes, please. I think my question is slightly misunderstood. What I was referring to was the bed and breakfast figures and the figures to do with the housing stock, whether there was capacity to take people out of the bed and breakfast and put them in to the houses that we're not letting out at present. That was my question, whether if we increase the turnaround to be able to let the properties out, could those people come out of bed and breakfast and go into proper housing? That was my question. It wasn't a criticism of the figures being spent, which I feel is how it's been interpreted, but that was not it at all, as you've made aware. It's government funding and policy, which I'm very supportive of, but I was looking, maybe we could use that as a more long-term solution. Emergency accommodation, bed and breakfast are great, but it'd be much better if we can get people in a house they can call their own. Absolutely. I'm going to bring Peter Campbell back in, but oh that we had enough empty houses that we could house all the people who are currently in bed and breakfast, but Peter, would you like to come back in on that? Yes, so slightly misunderstood the original question. Yes, that's what we've tried to do, councillor, is that when we were struggling with the relics, we asked the contractor to prioritise family accommodation, which would take families out of bed and breakfast more quickly, recognising that they're the least suitable people to be in bed and breakfast. The majority of people that are in bed and breakfast now are single people, and that's where we have a real accommodation shortage. We'll be looking at that over the coming months. Thank you very much, and I'm sure councillor Williams that Peter Campbell will give you further detail if you wish that. Are there any more questions on this item? Okay, so cabinet's recommended to review the KPI results and comments that Appendix A and progress against business plan actions at Appendix B, recommending where appropriate any actions required to address any issues identified. So do you members agree with the proposal? Very agree. Does anyone wish to vote against? And does anyone wish to abstain? Okay, so cabinet therefore agrees with the proposal by affirmation. Thank you very much. And moving on to item 11, which is at page 59, and this is the review of the forthcoming business plan, and councillor Neil Goff is going to present this, and councillor Aiden Van Derwire is going to second it. So, over to you, councillor Goff again. Okay, thank you, leader. First of all, I'd like to just thank Anne Ainsworth and the officers for preparing this report as well on the work which has gone into it. This is in a familiar format, which is reflective of the continuity in our business planning, which we have tried to establish over the last couple of years. So it's in the same format, the same four priorities, and lists again the particular areas of focus for 21-22 in terms of delivery in the business plan to go alongside the budget which has been approved. I would like to just recognise that while there is obviously a lot of continuity in the focus of our business plans, we do need to recognise that this has been an extraordinary year, lasting implications and impact on our activities. So this business plan contains an enhanced focus on business support and on business recovery from Covid as part of its actions, and it also considers the impact on communities, and we've already talked about the importance of communities in this area, and highlights continued focus in terms of rebuilding community activity post Covid. We also need to recognise in this business plan two other things which are going on, which are really important, one of which is continued progress on the local plan, which is highlighted, and also on the implementation of the zero carbon and doubling nature strategies, which need to be obviously read alongside this report, that this year will be an important year for translating those into action, and that is highlighted in some of the key areas of the business plan. So that's basically all of the comments. I think it's another programme which is focused on important areas to build on the base of the performance of this year, which we've just reviewed in the previous item. Thank you very much indeed. I just love the way this is set out, and I love the way that you can see it in glance what's been achieved, but also what we're aiming to achieve in the next few years. So really great, really plain English and a very readable document. Councillor Van Der Wire. Thank you, yes. So this is a really great business plan, a plan to have a council for the next year and well beyond, and it's even more fantastic given that the year that we've just been through. So to have something, a realistic plan like this at this stage is really impressive, and as some Councillor Scott has said, there's a lot of continuity with what we've been talking about for the last three years, but also some adaptations to the circumstances we find ourselves in. So yes, I do hope we can spot this. Thank you very much indeed. Would any members of cabinet like to speak on this? No, everyone's happy. That's lovely, good. Councillor Delacy. Thank you very much, leader. I know that you have received a heartfelt plea from Panther Taxis about the way in which, under our current planning, some taxi drivers are dealt with, and I know that Councillor Macdonald has explained that we have followed our procedures and that he approves. I understand all of that, but I wonder, leader, whether we might revisit these procedures in the light of Mr Clare's concerns. Other authorities have taken a different view, and I should add that Mr Clare is the son of a friend of mine, but I believe his appeal stands on its own merits. Thank you. Thank you very much. I also responded to a letter from the MP for Cambridge City, Daniel Zeichner, on this matter, and sent him a very detailed explanation which had been provided for me and Councillor Macdonald by the head of our business support team, and Daniel Zeichner came back to me and said that he was satisfied with the response, but I'm going to come to Councillor Macdonald for a greater explanation on this. Thank you, leader, and thank you, Dr Delacy, for your question. We did think long and hard about this, and actually we continue to think about it. Currently from the so-called ARG grants, which contain an element of discretionary decision making, we have allocated something like 75% of that fund so far. That's one of the highest deployments actually in the country. And Dr Delacy probably knows currently we're paying between 60 and 70 businesses per week. So in the current pandemic, or in the face of recovery, we are trying to deploy those funds as widely and quickly as possible, and we considered that a 10% allocation of that fund towards individual taxi drivers was a fair allocation. If we change the rule to some of the neighbouring ones, it would be something like 17%, which we felt was a little bit high for that sector. But I do take on board his request. We will look at it again. The fund continues until the end of June, and thank you for his interest. Thank you very much indeed. Any more questions on this item? OK, so we'll move to the recommendations. So members, the recommendations have been moved and seconded. The recommendation is set out in paragraphs 5 and 6 of the report. A says, consider the proposed 2020-25 business plan at Appendix A with the action plan primarily focused on delivery 21-22, and recommend it to council to approval with any amendments as required, and be authorised to chief executive to make any minor wording changes required to final drafts in consultation with the deputy leader. So do members agree with the proposal? Agree. Anybody wish to vote against? And anyone wish to abstain? OK, so Cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. Thank you very much. And moving on to item 12 at page 81, which is Newtown naming. We don't do this too often, do we? So that's quite exciting. So councillor Bill Handley is going to present this, and councillor Tumi Hawkins is going to second it. So over to you, councillor Handley. Thank you, leader. Yes indeed, it's the time to look at the consultation on the name of the Newtown. We are currently approaching the submission of their first residential planning application. So it's absolutely vital that the Newtown is given a name, and one that's strong and supported locally. The idea is that this should be, excuse me, this should be resolved prior to the first scheme being approved, which will be mid-summer, so that the house builder can sort of promote and deliver their scheme using the new name. Engagement with the local members and the parish council have shown that there is support for the principle of this process locally. So it's recommended that cabinet note the contents of the report and agree the engagement process that the two master developers are going to follow, and they're given at paragraphs 11 and 12. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Tumi Hawkins, do you want to come in at this point? Yes, thank you, leader. As we know, when a new member is on the way in the family, the process of selecting a name is a collaborative one. Sometimes in the nuclear family, sometimes in the wider family. And it's an important task, obviously, because the name or set the identity of the person. Names matter a lot. And so naming this new community in a district in the way that has been proposed is a good one. And I'm familiar of the view that we should support this proposal and take this naming process forward as has been identified. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. So I think we have representatives from the two bodies involved, Urban and Civic and RLW estates. I can see Sam Foulder who is there. So shall we start representing RLW estates? So shall we start off with Sam? And we'll see if we've got anybody else as well. Hello, Sam. Hello. Thank you very much, Councillor Smith. I thought Councillor Hawkins put the sort of substance of what we're trying to pose across to you today very well. We all recognise the importance of names to give places and their residents a sense of identity, culture and cohesion. Most places in Cambridgeshire have names that are embedded in history and naming new places, of course, has a bit of a mixed history, which is why we've been working collaboratively and with SEDC colleagues to develop this robust process drawn from and shaped by community governance processes. And we're here today to ensure that this has your approval as a process in advance of bringing back the recommendation after the naming process has been completed. One of the things that we're quite keen to stress in terms of how we design the consultation is the importance of recognising Cambridgeshire's history, but also recognising the residents who live there today and their view on what the new town should be called. But also, we've been very keen to stress as well that we want to engage with young people. We're going to be engaging with the Youth Parish Council and with other youth groups to ensure that we've got an idea of what the future residents of the new town might like and how they might engage with their new homes. That was all I had to say. I don't know if Rebecca's had a chance to join yet. Thank you very much, Sam. I really like the brochure that you've put together. It looks great, but I do appreciate. Trying to please all of the people all of the time is going to be tough, so we will aim for most of them. Hello, Rebecca. I can see you've joined us on behalf of Urban and Civet. Would you like to speak now? Yes, please. Thank you for being slightly late joining. I think it's absolutely the case that we are very conscious about all of the consultation that we've been doing over recent years. There's been a lot of discussion, which has broadly come under the planning term of Water Beach Newtown, and this does seem an opportunity in which we can just pause for a moment and allow people to think fully about the name itself. We know name is such an integral part of people's identity and the cultural connections that people have. What we've been working through with this process is something that follows the community governance structure that we will be working with yourselves on going forwards. Critically, what we think with the process is we've got that ability to have a really broad range of discussion as part of the consultation, but also then to have some specific stakeholder discussions which pick up some of the more sensitive areas, particularly around heritage and ensuring that we've got memorial gardens there. We've got huge amounts of emotion from veterans and other groups there, as well as going back to Roman times and medieval times. We've obviously got a lot of interest in the planning process and in the future governance from the existing villages around, particularly from Water Beach and a community governance aspect in place on that. We're also very keen through the workshops to bring in the voice of young people and try and ensure we have that full arc of Water Beach as a place, a robust name for it going forward as a future part of South Cambridge's communities. We feel this process has that option of being able to do a wide scope, to do specific thinking with stakeholder groups and then to come forward with a recommendation and we're certainly keen to make sure that yourselves are comfortable with the process and comfortable with your role in future agreeing to the recommendation that comes through. Thank you, Rebecca. Dan Foster's also joined us from Urban and Civic. Caroline, do you want to add anything? No, I want to talk. Thank you. I think Rebecca has summed it up. We're excited to get started really. This is a key moment for us in progressing the development and I think the work we've done with RRW and South Commons to date on this has created a robust process that I'm confident we can take forward in the right way. Excellent. Okay, thank you. We must never underestimate how important these names are to people. It really, really matters. What I always say to developers is every extra minute that you can spend on consultation will pay huge dividends further down the line. I'm very reassured that you are going to be very inclusive. I hope when you're talking about young people, you are talking about young people from the very young to the young adult because they're not all groups of young people are easy to engage with, but there are ways of doing it. I was bound with teenagers off of them pizza and they'll engage with you, so I recommend the pizza. Jolly good. Any Cabinet members wish to speak at this point? No, and any other members present wish to add anything? Okay, so we'll move on to the recommendation. Cabinet's recommended to note the contents of this report. Agree with the engagement process that the two master developers will follow. Paragraphs 11 and 12 to gather feedback and opinion on the name of the new town north of Water Beach. Cabinet's asked to agree the final step in the process whereby Cabinet are required to take the final decision on the name of the new town following the period of engagement. So do members agree with the proposal? Agree. Sound a bit more tearful, Brian. Does anyone wish to vote against the proposal? No, and does anyone wish to abstain? Lovely, so Cabinet, therefore agrees the proposal by affirmation and thank you very much for your participation, Sam, Rebecca and Caroline. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. So moving on now to item 13 at page 103 which is the 2020-21 revenue and capital budget monitoring and John Williams is going to present this and Councillor Peter McDonald is going to second it. So starting with John Williams, please. Thank you, Lady. I present to you the revenue and capital budget monitoring report for the third quarter of this current financial year. That is from the period from October to the end of December 2020 and proposed the recommendation set out in paragraph 3. This includes the housing revenue account. The report pretty much speaks for itself as we anticipated our income would be negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and that it would also cause us additional costs. Also the pandemic has negatively impacted on some schemes that we were to bring were to bring us savings and also the capital programme. Nevertheless, overall the impact has been less than it could have been. The government has supported the council with its increased costs although it has been slowing compensating us for our lossing income and I refer you to paragraph 9. Our commercial strategy and income has been affected and I would refer you to the appendices for details of this. Interest from urban street loans has been lower than expected but generally speaking income from commercial rents has held up. We expect this to improve. We are also seeing matters improving in planning with the recouping of outstanding fees from pre-planning application support for strategic sites. Finally, I must thank the hard working business and finance teams for distributing the government grants to local businesses. See paragraph 15. Council McDonnell will elaborate further on this. Because of COVID-19, the three months before last Christmas was a challenging time and it is a credit to all our staff that the negative impact has been contained so that we go into the new financial year in a better place than most other councils. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor McDonnell. Thank you. As we mentioned briefly before in response to Councillor Dr Delacy, I'm pleased to say and wish to thank both the officers within the council who have done an absolutely amazing job both in the first round of grants of 25 million plus received from government last year and then subsequently November until now during lockdown 3. Last Friday we passed a figure of 10 million which has been deployed to South Cam's businesses and as we previously mentioned significant part of this are discretionary grants which are administered in a very manual and time-consuming way. But nevertheless we have already allocated 75% of the funds that the government identified for us based on our population. So I'd like to thank officers again. I'd also like to thank members because they've done a sterling job in helping us to reach businesses and make sure that this money is reaching businesses especially SMEs. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. I echo Councillor McDonnell's thanks to the business support team but actually my thanks to him also because he has done such a huge amount to steer a steady ship on the business grants. But also huge credit to Councillor John Williams who without John and Peter Madduck's fantastic team we would potentially be in the sort of mess that many many many other councils are but due to the diligence the hard work and the considerable expertise of Councillor Williams and of Peter Madduck's and all his staff we find ourselves in a good position nowadays which really most councils cannot say as they come as we start to come out of the pandemic. So I don't just thank you to everybody. So are there any questions please to the cabinet members? No, so I have Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you leader. I've got a couple of questions. One is on page 108. We've got some I understand obviously the finance and probably corporate services given everything that's going on has gone above. I just wanted to check about planning and whether the future budget has taken into consideration that will we be more on track with our budget planning. I'd also say that I know their percentages but 511% seems quite a substantial amount even though it's obviously not as drastic as 511% seems. So we're just wondering if I will. Sorry. Sorry. I think it's okay. Could you mute please? My apologies. Do continue Councillor Williams. No worries. So just some reassurances that everything will be okay with that and all on track even though it's an underspend and then page 113 it's 0.7 on the business and growth obviously on the rag rating the investment strategy is slightly behind and obviously there's been changes in things with the recent announcements on MHCOG and the PWLB so I just want to see a believer member have some reassurance for us given how reliant we are on growth to fund that near 6 million shortfall. I think from recollection it's just over 4 million that we're intending to get from business and growth so what we're doing to get that back on track as a council. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. Councillor Williams, do you want to address the first point which was about the planning service or do you want me to bring in Stephen Kelly? Well on the planning service I think if you look at appendix I think it's one C1 there's an explanation there as to the planning deficit my understanding is that planning is working to resolve that particular issue and that next year's budget does take account of the changing circumstances in planning and I would also like to add that of course the loss in income from planning has been made up by the government although as I said the government's been a bit slow in paying us for that loss of income and the government split the financial year into thirds so the first four months we've received that's from March through to July we've received that money but we're still outstanding August to November that's over £700,000 of lost income that the government has yet to compensate us for and of course we haven't put the bid in yet for the last four months because obviously we haven't come to the end of the financial year but given that if the government is true to its promise then we're hopeful that we will see an improvement and we are expecting planning to be on budget next financial year Can I just bring in Stephen Kelly to add anything and then we'll come back to the second question which was about the investment strategy Thank you We are obviously doing some work on potential forecasts because clearly the planning service is a net cost and is contingent upon fee income which is contingent upon the number of applications that we receive so we are doing some scenario modelling around what we think might happen to planning application numbers and types to help us to think about any adjustments that we may well need but clearly our commitment is to try and sit within our budget envelope that's defined by the council and once we've concluded that work looking at the potential implications and indeed what our options are for responding to that I'm sure we'll come back further if necessary but at the moment council Williams is right in that the service is taking advantage of the income compensation scheme from the government and obviously we'll be putting its submissions in around that to seek to at least recover some of the lost income that arises from the effects of Covid Thank you it's not helpful when they work to thirds is it council Williams did you want to comment on the variance of 511% as well before coming on to talk about the investment strategy well that's also explained within the appendices but maybe Peter Campbell may be able to give some more detail on it Thank you Peter are you there I am here but I thought there was a planning question what page are we on please So this was the on page 108 the table there which shows the variances and it's showing the housing general fund it's showing a variance of minus 511% Do you mind if I come in Yes that's lovely thank you So I think council Heather Williams has pointed out that when you have small numbers the percentage differences can be very large and we've kind of talked long and hard with cabinet about how we present this data and there are obviously pros and cons in terms of presenting the variances as percentages that this is one of the areas where it's definitely not helpful to us to look like a massive variance on actually a relatively small amount of money and I think that's just one of the things that we need to live with if we're going to continue to present variances as percentages Thank you very much So council Williams, John Williams coming back to council, Heather Williams question about investments and the impact on investments Yes well has we discussed at full council when we discussed this coming years budget we have taken into account the changes to the public works loan board rules and which obviously does impact on us because we are no longer able to purchase properties for purely for yield for commercial yield nevertheless we do have other in the pipeline we do have through our partnerships we do have other proposals for increasing our our income while at the same time obviously delivering placemaking and affordable homes but all that has been taken into account in next year's budget and in the medium term financial strategy going forward so yes we've had to make a change but nevertheless our commercial strategy is still sound and we will be coming forward in the new financial year with further schemes to enable us to meet the anticipated income from that from our commercial investments Thank you so I wonder if I could just ask you to just give some clarity about what our current investments amount to because obviously we inherited was it 206 million pounds debt for the council housing and then obviously there was borrowing associated with urban street and then can I stop you there leader we haven't actually borrowed any money for urban street fine would you like to clarify the situation please from our reserve I think there is a a misunderstanding here that there is an assumption that if we buy something we've borrowed money for it and in fact so far we haven't had to borrow money we will be borrowing money in the new financial year to purchase things but at the moment the only long term borrowing we have outstanding is that 206 million that was taken out by the previous administration in order for us to retain our council rents at the moment the only long term borrowing that we have all the commercial purchases that we've made over the last year have come from our reserves and we have not had to borrow to purchase those properties that's really that's very helpful as a point of clarification and my understanding is that the plans for future borrowing are going to be reasonably modest in the future absolutely yes and you will see from the MTFS that we have adjusted our expectation of our borrowing going forward over the next five years that's lovely, thank you very much indeed so I see Councillor Williams would like to come back with a further question that's fine thank you it was just on what was referenced I didn't reference about borrowing for commercial, I just said with the changes that have been made to clarify my question but the lead member for finances we haven't borrowed at all could you explain then audit corporate governance we were told about 39 million pound that was going to be borrowed because my understanding is we managed to get in before the public works loan changed that was what was reported to us but things might have changed after that meeting can I have some clarification around 39 million please we have short term borrowing to help our cash flow but we haven't borrowed money to purchase our commercial investments but we will need to be doing that with the current commercial investment that we are will be undertaking going forward but at the moment as you know because this has been all these commercial investments have been discussed at scrutiny we have not had to borrow money for them because we've had sufficient reserves to use thank you very much indeed thank you I don't know if if Peter Maddox wanted to come in and add anything there I think John's probably given sufficient explanation okay well just to confirm we borrowed 39 million short term that's a short term but to help our cash flow yeah that's lovely and I know that councils councils borrow short term all the time and they quite often borrow from each other don't they so okidoke so if there aren't any more questions we will move to the recommendations so cabinet is recommended to A acknowledge the forecast 2020-21 revenue position against the approved revenue budget shown in appendix B the projected major variances with reasons for these variances at appendices C1 and C2 and with the action being taken to address the underlying issues and B acknowledge the latest capital programme 2020-21 position and variances if any as shown in appendix D so do members agree with the proposal agree agree thank you anyone wish to vote against and anyone wish to abstain thank you so cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation and moving on to 14 at page 127 this is the home link allocation policy and councillor Hazel Smith will be presenting this and it will be seconded by councillor to me Hawkins so over to Hazel thank you leader just by way of introduction I think most members will be aware that home link covers 34 affordable housing providers in Cambridgeshire and West Suffolk it's a web based system that we in partner councils and housing associations in these areas use to allocate affordable homes in a fair way to applicants from our housing registers we in south camps have taken the lead in this review and I'd like to thank our officers especially Heather Wood for contacting the review of this home link policy for our partners in the sub region as the report says the policy has been subject to updating for new guidance it's been a line by line check and has been out for consultation to our partners and their populations all the comments have been taken into account and agreed across the area by the home link board and the policy is now coming to us for formal adoption in south camps by the cabinet as the final stage in this process you'll see in paragraph 16 of the report that the solicitor who Heather consulted said in my view this is a good and detailed allocation policy it is clear and comprehensive and in my view it will enable applicants to understand how the application has been assessed so I'd like to thank Heather very much for her excellent work on this and her team and I know it's been a time consuming undertaking and much appreciated by ourselves and our partners if there are any questions I'll have to hand over to Heather who knows it all very well and I think Heather has a few slides which she'd like to show which show how this helps to get people into new homes both across the areas and in south camps that would be lovely thank you Heather are you ready to share your screen thank you very much can you all see that something is happening you can see it now you're quite quiet though is that better that's fine good thank you okay so thank you I shared some slides with councillor Hazel Smith and we thought that they might be interesting for you all to see and there's a dual purpose in bringing them to you so firstly I'm hoping they will offer reassurance to you that the policy works and is able to be responsive to a range of different housing circumstances and the second reason for bringing it is really again to offer reassurance about the policy of the team and how they have been able to keep the service going but actually succeed the number of allocations to social housing that they've done during the pandemic and I thought that both of those would be of interest to this meeting so I will just quickly show you some of the sub-regional information before looking more locally so sub-regionally you may just be interested to know that there are over 10,000 households registered for social housing 58% of those are actually in work which I find very interesting given the perceptions that often people searching for social housing there's a perception that they people don't work on things so find that interesting and it's something we may want to keep an eye on as the pandemic impacts deep and to see how it changes and make up of who's on our register I've put some information there about the number of households who were housed across the sub-region from band A for homelessness and band B for homeless prevention it's actually very interesting I think to share with you that although we are responsive to homelessness and homeless prevention it isn't the only reason that people are being housed and I think it's really important that an allocations policy can respond flexibly to a range of different circumstances so for example we'll house people because of medical needs and health and safety needs as well so what those figures just show is that whilst we are very responsive to homeless situations it's not the only reason so those figures make up a percentage of our allocations but they're not the only reason we house people I've also added that 157 people across the sub-region were housed as a result of domestic abuse or other forms of harassment and again I've put that in for information because the domestic abuse bill is currently going through its course and we will need to start working in a different way and change some of our services a little bit within housing and allocations and homeless prevention to be responsive to that so I just thought that might be a general information point the one that's really useful to draw your attention to in the first 11 months of this year across the partnership we'd allocated 2666 properties as a comparison last year when we weren't sorry the year before we hit the pandemic we'd allocated 2963 so what that shows is 11 months in we're pretty much on target to allocate the same number of properties as we had pre-pandemic so it shows that the allocation system's been able to keep going again I'll pick that up at a local level so there's a statistic on there or a figure on there 11 months in in South Cams we've allocated 466 properties when we weren't in the pandemic in the whole 12 months we'd allocated 442 so actually what we've done in a pandemic in 11 months is allocated more social housing than we did prior to the pandemic and that's actually no mean achievement because in the first quarter everything slowed down and virtually stopped so we weren't allocating very much at all it's a team of four people and for some of that time we were an officer down so those officers have worked incredibly hard to maintain the allocation service during the pandemic and I'm really proud of that and I know across the organisation we've had huge amounts of staff who've just gone over and above to keep the services going but this is just another example of that but I wanted to highlight for you and again I've just put a little bit of information on there for information so you can see that in we house most people from band A and B which is what you would expect so 344 of our 466 households that were housed came from the highest need band that is what you would expect because we want to be responding as flexibly as possible to those most in need and again I've just put the homelessness prevention and homeless accommodation figures up there and you can see that 185 of our allocations have been to people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness so it forms a high proportion of what we do but it's not the only reason we house people and that's really important just as I was saying to show that the system can be responsive to a range of circumstances so thank you for allowing me to share these stats I hope I've offered you reassurance about how the policy works and also demonstrated how well the team have been able to keep the service going and I'm going to stop sharing my screen have I managed to do that? Yeah you have Heather I'm blown away by what you've just shown us it's just brilliant absolutely brilliant and my huge thanks to you and all your team I can't believe you've done more allocations during Covid I wasn't expecting that at all so talk about fucking the trend absolutely brilliant I'd really like those slides to be shared with all members please I think they'd all appreciate them and I think I'd also like you to send them to Tom in our comms team because I think there's something we can do on that as well and the very fact that you are a team of four you know four seems to be the magic number actually on teams within South Cams but just brilliant thank you very much indeed Councillor Hawkins I think you want to second this Thank you Leida I'm not sure there's much more I can say after that really except to say that the process that we have as we've seen from the numbers works very well and the tweaks that have been made can only make that better and to echo your thanks to the team of four who have done such a great job in the last 11 months I mean 466 households and located properties higher than the previous year and of those about three quarters when the highest needs bans absolutely brilliant so I support this and recommend it to cabinet thank you Thank you very much and one of those shock statistics is that 58% of people in need of social housing are in work and that reflects the unaffordability of our area you can be in a job and you can be in a good job and you still can't afford to live here and that's one of the biggest challenges that we are facing moving forward So any questions from members of cabinet Yes Oh thank you, yes you've raised your hand you have put in the chat Councillor Mills Yeah I'd just like to reinforce the commendations to the team for their performance I find that recovery figure absolutely astonishing from not being able to do anything almost in the Covid period and I think cabinet and other members don't need any reminding of the level of importance to the people who are making these applications you know this is critical stuff in their lives and if we can continue having this level of responsiveness to their needs I think it speaks well for all of us and absolutely wow thank you to Heather and the other members of the team for doing that I know from my own case work how important this is and let's continue in the same direction, thank you Thank you, yes and I'd like our comms teams to pick up on that 58% but also on what you've told us about you know this isn't just about dressing homelessness you mentioned domestic abuse I spoke a week and a half ago at the public policy forum in Westminster on domestic abuse and that was the sort of half day conference and some of it made very very difficult listening quite honestly and this is a problem that is going to put more and more of a burden on services such as ours now that there's going to be the new duty on us to provide housing so thank you a nice comment from councillor Bill in the chat saying brilliant work thank you to Heather and her team any questions from any non cabinet members Leader, sorry Heather had her hand up earlier Thank you, I just wanted to say that the comms team have actually got a press release ready to go today that's highlighted how we've performed and the overall stats so I hope that that will be good we've tried to reflect how well we think we've done as a council and thank you for your lovely comments about the allocation service I will send those back to them but I also just must highlight that we have a partnership manager and we host that post here within Southcams and that partnership manager is a lady called Sharon Locke and actually she should have a huge amount of feedback today with you so I just wanted to make sure that was that knowledge so thank you very much I really appreciate your feedback on it That's lovely so can we minute our thanks to Sharon Locke as well please and Heather I know you'll pass it on so we are where are we so the recommendation is that cabinet are asked to note the outcome of the allocations review including the consultation feedback and agree the subsequent revisions to the policies so is cabinet gosh slightly confused with this so do you members agree with that with the recommendations please agree thank you anyone wish to vote against and anyone wish to abstain thank you so cabinet therefore agrees the recommendations by affirmation so moving on to item 16 which is Ehrman Street housing business plan now there is confidential information in the part to appendix if any member wishes to discuss anything within that appendix then we will have to move into closed session but if they if there's nothing in that appendix that needs to be discussed then we can stay in open session could you please if anybody wants to discuss anything in the part to appendix could they please indicate now okay in that in that case we will stay in open session and this item is going to be presented by councillor Hazel Smith and is going to be seconded by councillor John Williams over to you Hazel thank you very much leader well yes Ehrman Street business plan the Ehrman Street business plan comes before you as it does every year Ehrman Street is our market rental housing company and it has a review every year at this time this report as you'll see was written in December 2020 so there are some updates Ehrman Street is now seen within the council as a close partner to our housing department rather than just an investment vehicle which was the way it was set up it now concentrates on acquiring stock for rental within the investment area which is the greater Cambridge community commuting area as identified in the Cambridge and Peterborough independent economic review sphere which came out in September 2018 and this does include Peterborough recently they've acquired some houses in Canbourne to be used as houses in multiple occupation and these are let by Shire homes our other housing company for temporary accommodation and this helps to reduce our need to use bed and breakfast accommodation in the council as Heather Williams was talking about earlier the business plan review gives the company an opportunity to review the trading over the year adjust the budgets and re-examine the assumptions the bad debt provision and void loss assumptions have been changed because of the Covid pandemic which has had an impact on rent arrears and void loss over the past year fortunately in the short term this will not have an adverse effect on the financial performance of the company it's anticipated that up to 488 properties will have been acquired by the end of this month this would leave 12 to be acquired during the remainder of 2021 to achieve the target of 500 properties which was set in 2015 any future expansion in the form of additional housing beyond the 500 properties will be subject to further agreement from the council with an agreement about future loan terms and rates the company's work will benefit the council this year by about £2.9 million in interest payments the council commissioned an options appraisal report from Savils last year to consider future options once the target of 500 homes has been achieved the report recommended that the company be allowed to expand to the original target of 500 homes and then the council will take stock and decide on future investments so as well as buying homes to let Erman Street takes Ministry of Defence to homes typically on five-year leases it improves them if necessary and rents them out they currently have three lease arrangements in place with the DIO Defence Infrastructure Organisation and 148 of their dwellings were in the current portfolio being let and managed last December there are more now an additional five had been added to the Bassingbourne lease in May 2020 and an additional six were added to the Water Beach portfolio more recently with tenants in situ there was no upfront investment needed for these and the Least portfolio continues to make a positive contribution to the business plan lease extensions have been agreed at Water Beach and Bassingbourne beyond the first five years and work is progressing at Brampton to extend the lease there and to take on an additional 36 homes upfront investment will be required in these homes because they've been empty for some time a report taken to the board concluded that even with the upfront investment the additional 36 would make a positive contribution to the business plan and this will bring the total Least properties to 190 so they are managing these in addition to the 500 that they're acquiring for us the head of Erman Street continues to meet monthly with myself and councillor John Williams to discuss the acquisition progress the future strategy and the possibility of future developments with the council this December 2020 version of the business plan is to be received by Cabinet and full council as the sole shareholder in the company and the recommendation is that Cabinet just receives the plan for information thank you very much indeed councillor Smith so Erman Street's done really well in getting that's whiskers away from its target of 500 houses and the 190 Least properties obviously adds considerably to our ability to provide rental properties for our residents I'm really pleased that the company has adapted so well to our instruction to restrict their purchases to the travel to work area I'm much more comfortable with that and I think they've been really successful in delivering on that so thank you very much indeed councillor Williams councillor John Williams you're muted it can be very sensitive can't it trying to unmute you have to I hope we haven't lost you all together still muted has anybody got the means to unmute councillor John Williams please tell you what John while you try and get unmuted we'll see if there are any questions from anybody actually Duncan Basie do you want to add anything to what councillor Smith has said in her introduction yes thanks thanks for the opportunity just to give Cabinet some more good news in that the MRD have accepted the new version of the lease for the 36 additional properties and the lease extension in Brampton now this was pretty critical for us because as councillor Smith said there was some upfront investment necessary I mean the properties because they've been empty for so long and basically the new lease will protect the company should the lease be terminated within the five years or after five years we've spent a lot of money on new kitchens heating systems and in some cases rewiring so the company is protected by the ability to claw back on that expenditure so that's been a success in the past week that's lovely well done on that and I gather that these MRD properties are very popular with tenants yes they are I mean they're very spacious and they are very popular of the 36 that we knew we were going to get but it hasn't been confirmed yet we've already let 10 of them and that's in Brampton so the market is very buoyant for this type of accommodation which is good news that's lovely and Brampton's a nice place so yes why wouldn't you want to live there so John Cubs oh councillor Williams John Ligo, over to you I'm very delighted to second this because as you said leader we had a review of Urban Street when we took control of the council in 2018 and it was clear that if you look at power graph 12 in the report that Urban Street wasn't actually delivering on its original business plan it wasn't buying 100 homes a year it wasn't taking up its full capital allowance and we made some decisions in then which has actually proved to be the right decisions in that we stopped Urban Street being purely a vehicle to make money for the council which was the previous administration's intention and actually bring it into the housing mix for the district for those living and working in the district and I'm very pleased that as a result of that we've been they've been able to purchase properties in the drive to work area but also been much more involved with for example providing HMO HMO housing to meet single persons housing needs and to help housing with rehousing homeless families so we're doing much more with Urban Street now and I look forward to them being involved with some of our housing development going forward and continuing with providing good quality open market rented housing for those who live and work in South Cambridgeshire Thank you very much and as you say it's got to be good quality thank you very much indeed so Councillor Milne your hand is up It was for this item I just wanted to say how good it is to hear that we're putting properties back into use through Urban Street I mean it's a blight the number of properties in anything that we can do in that respect is good news so thank you for that Thank you very much and I very much like the way the report is presented again it's very reasonable it's easy to understand nicely set out so well done on that so any questions from any other cabinet members Any questions for anyone else present Nope, okay so Members Where are we? The recommendations Sorry I'm just struggling to find where the recommendation is give me two ticks Okay so cabinets requested to consider the report and if satisfied to receive the Urban Street business plan for the period 2020-21 to 29 to 2034 information So that's it So Members agree with the proposal Agreed Agreed Anyone wish to vote against Anyone wish to abstain Thank you Cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation So there's one more item to discuss and at this point we have to make a decision about the exclusion of press and the public So we now come to the point on our agenda where we need to consider whether this is because the next items contain information which is commercially sensitive Members of the public are advised that if cabinet agrees to exclude the press and the public the video stream will end I therefore propose that the press and public be excluded from the meeting during consideration of the following item of business in accordance with section 100a brackets 4 of the Local Government Act 1972 on the grounds that if present there would be a disclosure to them of exempt information as defined in paragraph 3 of part 1 of schedule 12a of the Act brackets as amended and I believe councillor Aiden Van Der Wire is going to second that Great Thank you. Do members agree with the proposal? Agreed Thank you. Anyone wish to vote against the proposal? Anyone wish to abstain? Okay Cabinet therefore agrees the proposal by affirmation Members of the public who are watching this this means the video stream will end now. We thank you for joining us to view today's cabinet meeting and so if I could be informed when there are no members of the public left in the meeting please.