 Gweld ei wneud i'w gweithio â'r cymru oeddngos i'r Cymru yn y Cymru yn y Cymru yn oedolol yn y Cymru. Gweld ei wneud i'w gyfrannu Gwein Cymru, ac rydyn ni'n ysgrifeth y cyfrannu. Yn y gweithio'r cyfrannu, yma'r gweithiau, yw'r cyfrannu Stephen Drew, yma'r cyfrannu Llywodraeth, ac yn y cyfrannu Llywodraeth i'r cyfrannu, ac yn y gweithio'r cyfrannu, i'r cyfrannu Llywodraeth. I will introduce other attendees when I invite them to speak. This meeting is being live streamed by your presence here in the chamber and via video conference you are deemed to have consented to being filmed and to the use of these sound recordings for webcast and archived recordings. When addressing the meeting speakers should not disclose any personal information of any individual as this may infringe their rights of that individual and breach the Data Protection Act. I can confirm that the meeting is core it, there being at least four members of scrutiny and over the committee members here in the chamber. If at any time a member leaves the chamber would they please make the fact known to me so that it can be recorded in the minutes similarly anyone joining us online but leaving before the end of the meeting should pop something in the meeting chat so that we are aware. So we will move on to apologies. Three apologies from councillors Sally-Anne Hart, James Huber. Are there any declarations of interest from any councillor, councillor Stobar? No sound. Councillor Stobar. Thank you chair. So there is a mention in the business plan of the South Cambridge investment partnership of which I'm one of the directors. Thank you we will note that. Any other declarations of interest? So then we'll move on to item four which is the minutes of the meeting held on the 19th of October. Can I just check with the committee that they are a true reflection of the meeting that was held. So if we just go through those, has anyone got any comments or anything that they wanted to amend? And councillor Bratton. Good record. Good record. Councillor Judith Griffiths. Okay, that's fine. We'll just pause slightly. There was one issue I've noticed. Thank you. Councillor Griffith. Just to say that I'll have the same for the minutes because I wasn't here at last meeting. Thank you. Councillor Bratton. Just to note, just a typo. In section six cost of living support update in councillor Leemings' contribution. In the second line it says who had worked so hard to make network of warm hubs not warm hubs. It's just an end needs to be replaced with an end. Lovely, thank you for that. Anything else? In that case, we will move on to public questions. I don't think there has been any public questions. So then on to item five, which is the quarter to performance report pages 11 to 56. So who would like to start on the performance report page, guys? Councillor Ellington. Thank you. I have to admit that it wasn't until I really got my glasses on and looked at item number. Key performance, the average time, I mean, validated household planning applications, page 19, and I was quite staggered to find that it takes 10 weeks or that is the target for validating. So actually, if I put an application in today, it would be well into January, beginning of February even, that my application would even be looked at properly by a planning officer. Assuming that I had collected all the right bits, paper, people, and nowadays I think there are a number of people who are well versed in doing this activity and should have the opportunity to be seen quicker than that. 10 weeks seems an enormous amount of time. I'd all read it as 10 days. The other point about the other items on that page is that the fact that 73% or 75% indeed 65% is the target and we overachieved, but I would like to know what happens to the other 35%, to be honest. Which are not determined within the work time within those 13 weeks for a major application and the 25% who were not determined for the non-major applications. They can go on for a lot longer than the eight weeks and we don't get a feel of how many cases are being seen. I hate percentages because they tell you absolutely nothing. 100% of nothing is nothing. So can we have some sort of indication of how many cases we're actually looking at here and how many are being determined within the time and some idea of how much, what happens and how long the others may take to be processed. Thank you, Councillor Newton. So I'll come to the leader of the council Bridgesmith. Yes, thank you very much indeed. Well, I'll defer to Stephen Kelly to talk about why the target is the target. But you need to be aware that what a busy planning authority ours is and they're dealing with thousands of planning applications. And therefore I think our performance here is extremely good and if you compare with some years ago it is dramatically improved and the fact that we are hitting our target and we're exceeding our target doing better than that. But we are not a sleepy little district council dealing with planning applications for garages and things. I've just come from a meeting with Secretary of State Michael Gove where I've been saying that that we have 140 people in our shared planning service. They are dealing with 13 big strategic sites ranging in size from 1,300 homes to 11,000 homes. So one of those is the largest strategic site in the UK since Milton Keynes. So the fact that we are doing so well here is a reflection of the expertise and the improvements that have been delivered by the planning service certainly within the last 12 months. But I'll ask Stephen Kelly to give some narrative around the rationale for the target being what it is if I may. Stephen Kelly? Thank you and I will draw Heather in but just your first point Councillor Wellington to provide some reassurance it isn't 10 weeks to validate it, that's the total decision time that is involved. And you might remember a previous conversation at Scrutiny in which this isn't a government performance target but one of the things that we've been trying to shift to is the lived experience of applicants in the planning process. I'm encouraged to say that the September performance 9.62 weeks is a performance that is better than it was 13 weeks last year. So this relates to how long if you're a householder not do you get your decision in because the indicator is within 8 weeks or a time that we agree. We moved in the planning service a year or so ago to say that doesn't relate to the lived experience of applicants and particularly around householders. So this time last year or so it was about 13 weeks. Now it is 9.62 in this last corner and it's continuing to fall because we felt it was important that that indicator reflected that end-to-end experience of an applicant or a householder proposal in South Camershire and I'm pleased to say it's coming down. I'll ask Heather Jones who's the Deputy Director to comment on your second point to see if we can give you an indication of the number of applications. Clearly the major application target is a reflection of the complexity of some of these applications. They include things like 106 agreements, every single major almost includes a section 106 agreement and we need the applicants to play ball with us and the counter council to play ball with us around that to hit those targets. But if I can ask Heather to comment and give you some idea of numbers and also comment on the other 25% it might be helpful because we are targeting those particularly. Thank you Heather. Yes. Thank you. So just to add to that we do we do deal with around 5000 applications a year but they can range from everything from pre applications right the way through to the different application types. In respect of statistics where we need to respond to government then that's generally around 1500 a year. So that's the kind of scale of applications that we're dealing with. I think there was a comment about what happens to the applications that are outside of those weeks that we've not determined. Generally there will be a reason why that is so there might be that there's consultations that we have to do further consultation or further work that is required. And we we don't get an agreement for an extension of time. So we are trying to work with our agents and our householders to ensure that we reduce that as much as possible. But we I'm pleased to say that our our basically our historical applications or those out of time over 26 weeks is reducing. And we've spent a lot of time to reduce that to a number of around. I think it's around 350 something like that now. So I think that's a really positive move so that we know that they don't sit there for many years. We do actually deal with them before they hit the kind of historical limit which is 26 weeks. That's what we class as a kind of aged application. So hopefully that reassures you that we are targeting them and particularly for householders because we want to make sure that it's very very important that we help them achieve their planning permission as soon as possible. And the last quarter the last month I think our figures are around 80 81 percent again. So that's really positive move. Thank you. Thank you if I can just come back and say I misunderstood then the validation. I've understood that the validation was the process when you between when you receive it and when you ensure that you've got all the right bits paper. That was the the meaning in my head. So I think you've undersold yourselves. Thank you. Well yes I'm sorry if the description of it refers to your right validated applications but actually because there are some applications that the applicants do submit them and obviously they are taking longer. But we are working with agents actually so that are the householders the residents of South Cambridge experience the minimum time possible. And that includes trying to help those agents to put valid applications in because that can extend the time. Thanks very much. Counselor Judith Griffith. Thank you chair. I've got a few questions to ask if I start on page 52 that's the paper copy. I was sad to see that the Milton Country Park for mental health thing for young people the primary school aged children couldn't go ahead this September because of lack of participants not because there aren't a lack of people I think to take part. And I'm glad to see that the council is working closely with the NHS to get those people referred. I just wondered if anyone had thought about going into primary schools to find out or finding out through primary schools leadership teams because often the mental health issues start at the earlier stage there which is what this program is about. Picking up on kind of low level mental health to improve mental health problems to improve whether primary schools have been contacted because I think that might be a really useful place to start. Thank you. The Milton one was younger. The one at Wonderbury is teenagers but the Milton one is like sort of 10, 11, 12 year olds. I was sorry. Leslie has it changed? It's obviously changed. Okay. As I understood it, Wonderbury had the older age group and Milton Country Park had the sort of primary slash secondary school aged bracket. So initially when the scheme was set up we looked at it wasn't up. It was never primary school age range but it was 12, I think 14 and then split then with the 15 to 17 year olds. So that we didn't have that 12 to 17 year age. Okay. My question is then can the secondary schools like you know Impington, Cotnome, the ones around the locality be contacted because that might be helpful. We are in contact with all of the secondary schools. Okay. With the assemblies and the dementia moment but the care team for those children that are struggling. So I think it's not for a lack of trying because I personally am very proud of this initiative and I've spoken about it sort of far and wide so it's really disappointing that we haven't been getting the update. That's not to say that you know if things improve we won't respond. Yeah could I just say that actually Gareth and I met with CPFT, Cambridge and Peterborough Foundation Trust just last week to see whether, so they have a single point of contact called United which all gene referrals refer into. So we had a very good and positive discussion with them last week to see whether we could embed a scheme into their referral process. Yeah and that's something likely to happen. Yeah thanks and I think it's a really good scheme and I'm also really proud of it too and I know it's really good and I'm proud that it takes place locally, some of it. But I just sort of saw that and I thought are we missing something because obviously through the health care route is one way but also the stage at which this scheme kind of really helps is early on. So often schools actually kind of know about that first and that's why I was inquiring if you would consider sort of going contacting secondary schools too. Thank you. So I have been involved in recent years through the Children and Young People's partnership in early intervention mental health support for children in primary schools. That has which was organised by the county council. It's a different offer. I think that's the thing. There are different issues as different health and safety concerns and so on. I mean I'm not aware how much. Well I know there is work still going going on because I know some of the people are delivering it but it isn't a slightly different ball game. And I think what was unique and special about this was the fact that it allowed children some sort of some levels of freedom within open spaces which was so beneficial. Which you possibly couldn't do with younger children because I think possibly the safeguarding issues. But we're getting into quite a lot of detail there. Do you want to respond to that at the secondary age? We have actually just had the whole scheme evaluated over the last three years. So that's just been published this week which we can share with you so you can see full outcomes. Yeah that would be great. I've got one other question. Is that okay or not? Do you want to come back to me? No we'll start but just before we move on I was just going to add about the charitable sector in that. I wonder if Catherine could just, I know you talked about the single point of contact for mental health services, GPs. But does that link into the charitable sector in terms of, I don't know, naming off the top of my head. But there are a number of charitable organisations that provide sort of non-statutory mental health services. STARS comes to mind and various other ones in schools. So I just wondered how they're being linked in. I'm sure they are but it's just how that's happening. So there's a, as part, United is an umbrella organisation for the voluntary sector as well. So there are part, the part that's signed up, that includes SEND and ROMSY MIL. So the children that come through the voluntary sector automatically get referred on to this scheme as part of that. So it is an umbrella organisation for the voluntary sector. Thanks very much. Judith, come on to your second question. Yeah, on page 25 about food waste and wanting to reduce the overall household waste production. I'm really glad to see that recycling rates are good and the work being done through the Love Food Hate Waste scheme especially. I just wondered, because one thing which was really good was the food waste caddy scheme which was piloted in Milton as one of the places. And you really did focus your mind on what you were putting in there because you just saw the waste in the caddy and it helped you to reduce it. And I know this is a complicated issue but I wondered if the council would have got any further with bringing that back at some point soon. Leader of the council. Thank you. I don't know if Henry Batchel is there. So the government are just, they're mandating for weekly food waste collection. So this is something that we've got to respond to. And obviously we'll be, I'll let Bode talk about, Henry, let me let Henry talk about this rather than me waffling. Hi, evening. Sorry I didn't see you online. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, now I was concealing myself. So yeah, so as of April 2026 the legislation will come in that we will have to collect food waste separately. So that hence why we had that three year trial, which ended last year, uptake of that in the areas that we trialled in Milton being one, my division being another. The uptake and the right things being put into the right bins was very, very good. I think it was over 85% of people used the service correctly. So yeah, so it certainly is coming in. And when it does come in, yeah, we're confident that if we did collect food waste separately via the caddy scheme that the change in behaviour of people, it wouldn't be a huge issue for that to take place. But yeah, I think the leader alluded to, we are having correspondence with DEFRA about how exactly we facilitate that change and what support they can give us as an authority. Because as a collection authority, we can pick up the stuff fine, but it's what we do with it afterwards, which generally tends to be a county council issue because they dispose of the waste. So yeah, but certainly as a collection authority, we're very confident that when the change does kick in, we'll be able to cope. Thanks very much. Do you want to come back now? Yeah, just April 2026 comes soon enough from that point of view. And yeah, hopefully maybe earlier. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Stobart. Chair, thank you. I actually have three questions, but there are three quite discreet areas, so I'll leave it to you. But let me ask the first one. We'll put the first point. So I'm on page 30 of the agenda pack. Item 2A, which is the conversion of the ground floor of South Camps Hall as a kind of business incubator and encourager. And my question was, well, I've got two questions. The first is directly related to this. How's it going? And are we getting any level of inquiry? Of course, this is related to the communications plan to get the word out to local businesses that there is space. So how's it going? And are we beginning to get inquiries and interest? The second, which is kind of vaguely related, might take us in a different direction, which is in all the discussion of incubating new businesses and helping and putting feelers out and all the good things that we do in relation to business, I've never seen a mention of B corporations. So just a little context, I may be pushing on really open doors here, but B corporations, you will see the little sign on products, but it's basically a whole kind of view of business which takes into account sustainability and ethics as opposed to simply, you know, let's draft our rules of association and make a profit. So engaging with B corporations is a good thing and really aligns with council policy. We could go on to, does it touch on procurement, but I think for the moment, you know, if a small company or somebody with an idea of a startup were to roll up to the council and say, I really need some help in setting myself up as a B corporation, I just want to start, could we actually help them? So two questions, what's happening downstairs? How's it going? And then if somebody did rock up and say, I really want to be on the path to a B corporation status, could we help, could we answer their questions? Thanks very much, Councillor Bridges. Thank you very much. So the decorators were in the downstairs space only last week, so I think the paint's probably just about dry. We're still waiting for the new screens around the contact centre to go up, so it's nearly ready. And I know it's been doing lots of work over quite a number of months to find out the interest, and I know there is some, but I'll let her talk about that. So on the subject of actually assisting companies who come to us, we're already doing that work. So our business support teams provide a single point of contact. They advise people about space, about bringing their own business. We will now have this ability to offer them hot desking or start-up or move-on space or whatever. So that's already an offer we have. Whether we want to get into accreditation or not, I suspect possibly not at this... Well, I suspect possibly not, because I think that's the job of other people and not us. But I'm very encouraged that new space is looking good, but we're also talking about opening it up for community use as well, because we're aware, having met with some local leaders in Campbell and very recently, that there's a shortage of community space, and we're doing our best to respond to that with our own assets, but I can fill in the details of the level of interest. Councillor Stobart. Oh, sorry. We've just come in with a bit of detail, Councillor Stobart. Thank you, thanks, Chair. We're hoping for the downstairs to be open as an offer to businesses, individual start-ups from April next year. We've been in the process, as you know, we're renovating the downstairs. We're very close to ordering the furniture and the things that we need for the new layout. I think a couple of things to mention in particular. What we're looking to do there is create a business hub, an opportunity for people who maybe work on their own, or working from home a lot at the moment to have that touchdown space and to be able to connect with other people and other businesses and therefore be able to share that experience, but also perhaps not feel as isolated in their own particular roles. We know from business support organisations that that's been a really key aspect of helping businesses grow and develop and share ideas. We're also going in that space to have opportunities for other business networks and support organisations to come and meet with people and be able to do talks, make sure that they're aware of what they can offer and the support that's available to businesses across South Cambridgeshire. So really try to make it quite a vibrant place to be and in that sense provide that touchdown space but also provide that opportunity for people to grow and to share those business ideas with each other as well. So hopefully it will be operational from April. In terms of interest, we have spoken with people who've said to us that this is of interest to them, this is something that they would like to do. We're aware that there are other offers across South Cambridgeshire and this is going to be tailored slightly different to those offers. Some of those are quite expensive, very suitable if that's what you're looking for but what we've been hearing from people is that that touchdown space and that ability to meet others for some businesses is the primary factor and actually they feel that the cost of some of the other offers in the area is prohibitive to their businesses particularly when they're starting up. So we're hoping that this will supply an offer to them that they currently can't access in other places but also as part of that it will differentiate itself because we'll be bringing in those other support offers as well. We've also had some interest from other organisations and obviously you'll appreciate it, I'm not going to name them at the moment but those are organisations that support young startups, young enterprise as well, very, very keen to provide them with space if we can do that to support young entrepreneurs in South Cambridgeshire as well. Thanks very much. First of all, thank you, very clear explanation of what's going on downstairs. I think in relation, so Citing Bee Corporation is just an instance and I think I agree with the leader that South Cambridgeshire isn't the business of doing certification but perhaps setting people on the right track and it would be nice to know that if somebody comes with a concept that officers would be able to steer just from a point of view of knowledge. So that's just perhaps to note. Chair, should I go on with my same question if that's okay? I'm on page 38 of the agenda pack and a bit of a change of topic here, biodiversity net gain and I did chip in with some comments last, Scooting Over You and we had some good discussion for example about the interest at parish level in participating. Now parish interactions I think are nicely covered and there's a good action at the foot of the page and I would very welcome the notes of progress on training of planners. People are at the sharp end of having to deal with biodiversity net gain and the pre-application service I think is essential because it's also new and also challenging. I think not just members of the planning committee but I think all members thought to have some at least in the language because some of the interactions that are having at parish council level are intriguing. You talk about the scheme is greenwashing this is greenwashing, you're letting developers off the hook and so on. I don't think that's correct but it's an initial reaction and so you're promptly on the back foot talking about scale. If this scheme works we can create wildlife corridors we can do big stuff in improving the natural environment in restoring nature which is really what we're about. So I would say it's broad in the training objective and think about the communications as well and it would be nice to have some reaction perhaps from the planning team but also communications about really how we get the message out about how big this change is and what the implications are and I appreciate what's being done at parish level I think that's very significant but how do we get the big picture over? Thank you very much. Councillor Bridget Smith. Thank you. So yes, anything that's kind of new and you know, for some of us by-diversity that game has been around for a few years now is still pretty new for a lot of people and obviously we have a local plan that's been particularly ambitious. We have the combined authority responsible for leading on the local nature recovery strategy which is being done by the county council but also by Natural Cambridges who are a local nature partnership who incidentally have a new chair who I met this week who's quite an exciting person. I think he was responsible for training in all three of the Army of the Navy and the Air Force so he's somebody who can certainly get stuff done. So there's a big bit of partnership work to do on this. I think some of the work we do will be led by the local nature recovery strategy. If your recommendation is about this council doing more to sort of make sure that all members fully understand what we mean by diversity in that game then I'll accept that as a suggestion. May I just defer to Stephen Kelly please in relation to planning specifically? Yes, thank you and thanks for the comments. Clearly there's been a slight delay in the metric and the introduction of the obligations but the shared planning services as you know from a report cabinet I think probably early in the year is already trying to pioneer working with the county council and others a kind of robust and rigorous approach to biodiversity in that game. Because of the late publication The Guidance from DEFRA we're going through our own process of comprehension and understanding in terms of what that delivery process might look like. But absolutely our ambition both in terms of supporting planning officers but also training our own planners and then offering advice to applicants is designed to help ensure that through a charge pre-app process in fact and support for our ecologists to be able to take that process out is a commitment that's ongoing. We have been for funding and in fact have received funding under the new responsibilities from DEFRA the obligations associated with managing biodiversity in that game and for those that think it's a superficial approach it most certainly isn't in terms of letting developers off the hook there is a 30 year monitoring obligation on the planning authority which we are introducing a process and programme for. The essence of your point though can we share that? How can we help people to understand is something that we can think about further in terms of sharing more widely not just with members of the planning committee who are our priority obviously because they'll be surely having to make decisions on this but more widely across the council is something we can certainly take away. Thanks very much. Did you want to come back on that council? To thank officers and the leader for that response that's very good. Thanks mate. I've got one of the big continue. If you've fed up I can come back later. So I'm on page 42 and Electric Vehicle Charging Point 5. I just wanted to note this afternoon that the combined authority led an excellent briefing session on electric vehicles, electric vehicle charging points and highlighted quite a number of issues you would think of in relation to electric vehicles but not necessarily at the first go. So for example interacting with the motability community understanding the needs of people with disabilities in relation to electric vehicle charging so there's very comprehensive coverage. Now one of the things we did talk about was how electric vehicle facilities are working at community level and that's a little more obscure. I know we've had this excellent support for parish councils to install electric vehicle charging points but I think the point coming over in the briefing has come out in some of my discussions with parish councils is where does it fit? What's the business aspect? How can we make this work for the village? What's good practice and so on and so on and then you add to this point about use by people with disabilities. Can we line something up so that with motability supplied cars it's all going to work out and so on and so on? Is there something more we could be doing? That's my bottom line question to make sure that the rollout of electric vehicle charging infrastructure is done well and done appropriately. Thank you for that Councillor Stobart and Councillor Brian Milnes did you want to come in on that? Yes, thanks Chair. The electric charging vehicle programme is continuing this year and Richard we've just dated the additional information page on our website to include for example the various options that are available for parishes and community organisations to take advantage of the grants that we're offering because as you say one of the difficulties is a naivety or general ignorance about what options are available so for example parishes with their own small car parks adjoining recreation grounds and so on might want somebody to come along and provide a whole service but for example then donate some of the, or donate or buy agreement share some of the earnings that are coming out of providing that service. So there's a whole range a continuum of options available from doing everything yourself organising the new electricity supply getting the equipment and so on right of the way through to a fully managed service which I think if parishes and community groups understand that range of options they can better work out what's most suitable to them so that they can go ahead and deploy charging points more widely. Thanks very much for that councillor. That's great, thank you parish councils understanding options maybe we need to work with parish councils to hear what they're saying and feed that back into the process but I think this is a good first step that the deputy leaders outline. Thank you. Councillor Bradman. Thank you. I'm on page 39 in Appendix B and item two which is working with city council water industry and stakeholders to address water scarcity and the position at the end of quarter two refers to working with other authorities to understand the supply position and exploring mitigation measures and I just wondered if it was possible to have an update on where we are with that. Councillor Bridget Smith. So Stephen Kelly and I have come from this meeting with the Secretary of State this afternoon where water was the thing we talked about more than anything else. So we are he didn't give a whole lot away but he's absolutely aware of the problems we're facing with water here and he accepted that it is not our responsibility or within our gift to solve it made it perfectly clear that it was down to government to solve it and he has this water task force who I believe are making progress on finding solutions. We're also expecting a sum of money to be allocated for reduction in water use by households we expect that to be announced in the autumn statement and he did say that but he's very aware that the water crisis has actually put on hold delivery of the development within our current local plan never mind the emerging local plan so again it was a very amiable collaborative meeting and we are expecting something positive we're not expecting a magic wand but we're expecting to see quite a serious level of commitment from government to helping get through this problem there's nothing else I haven't said there which you can add. It's just to highlight the fact that certainly through the water scarcity group work and we're represented on that group which is a project group led by the government your point around holistic solutions that look across the wider area has been understood so alongside Cambridge Water who are the water supplier we also have Anglun Water the Water Resources East Ofwatt and a number of representatives from DEFRA and the approach has been to look at a whole basin approach but also to understand and indeed there is recognition of the contribution of affinity water and so forth to resolving these demand supply challenges so insofar as it's the group has made progress so far there's still further work to be done in a whole system of view of the water challenges facing the area and not just considering the narrow boundaries of administrative areas and so forth. Thank you, is that alright? Thank you very much the reason I ask is that you'll be aware by the Joint Development Control Committee and one of the things that we're becoming increasingly aware of is that there are times when we are told in a planning application that measures a water usage plan has been submitted as part of the application and in a recent one a building is proposed to be have a footprint increased from an existing footprint to four times that footprint and we were being told that the water usage of that building sorry it was going to be demolished on a new building built which would have four times the floor space and we were being told in the documentation that the usage, water usage of that new building would be no more than the existing building even though the floor space was four times the floor space at the original so we're not in the position we weren't we weren't saying we don't believe you we were just saying we would very much like to be able to monitor that so that if that transpires not to be the case then we need to be able to control that and what came out of that was that of course we as an authority have no powers to monitor and I would just wonder whether the government could be in a position to actually enable the monitoring of plans which are submitted by developers to ensure that they are complying with the water usage that they declare that they will comply with thank you well I suppose just to comment on that water industry is a complex and regulated area such that even whilst for example Cambridge water I understand is able to levy metres and put metres in place and potentially can develop incentives or an incentivised approaches for domestic water consumption for commercial water consumption water is provided through wholesalers and there is a market in place but the point that you make was raised at the water resources group discussion yesterday in respect of how far off what for example can consider obligations on the wholesale sector not on the water company but on the wholesale sector for performance improvements in terms of per caps of water reductions clearly at this stage that is well beyond the scope of the district counciller and planning authority but I suppose and certainly I know there has been explorations around are there planning conditions and so forth that are appropriate I think it's difficult to police from a local planning authority perspective because in essence you would be declining people the right to use water which is a human right in many respects and certainly will present management difficulties but off waters the regulator and effectively the police force for both water companies and the wholesale sector is certainly exploring that possibility is part of the work that is going on at the moment Thank you and it was really that point that as a member of that water scarcity group whether we can lobby government to require this wholesaling exercise to be needed in some way Thank you very much Stephen I wanted to bring something in on that topic really ask one of the issues that came up on this particular application which occurred to me as being a significant issue and I don't know how one deals with it is the fact that you're having a developer who's speculated basically building a building which is going to let out and he may make promises which is then virtually impossible to impose upon the tenants that eventually comes I'm wondering if there's ways of dealing with that in the planning process Yeah so just briefly sorry Stephen Kelly I think a range of options are being considered but I don't think it's appropriate for us as the district council planning authority to get involved in that the level of consideration and detail because there are so many variables and there is an industry regulator for water Thank you that's not what I'd suspect Thanks very much Councillor Stephen Drew Thanks Thank you chair In the first instance I'd like to ask a question which comes from page 34 at the start of Appendix B on the Business Plan Progress Report I apologise if I sound confused when answering the question in part and part of my campaign colleague Councillor Leaming who was unable to be here so therefore I'm making sure that I'm channeling Councillor Leaming and asking the question correctly In the objective one it refers to the plan for the building of 75 new council homes each year that talks about the fact that in the current year there is not expected to be 75 which will be acquired or built and then it explains that this will be done and caught up in later years We wonder to what extent the council is completely confident that this will be able to happen on the grounds that one of the things that has been talked about in the last few years is that the district council has been very successful in increasing the number of council houses that we have put into our stock and therefore whilst obviously very positive about having 75 per year just slightly concerned that obviously it will be falling behind on this year and just wondered if we could have some more detail of how we will actually make sure that we don't fall behind this excellent work that the district council has undertaken in the last few years Councillor Bridges Thank you so that's a really helpful question so we don't own land in this council so acquiring or building council houses is necessarily opportunistic and I see council a bachelor has just come in so I think actually to be courteous before I say anything else we can come in and then I'll chip in at the end if there's anything else I want to add Councillor Bachelor Thank you very much I'd like to reassure Councillor Drew that we will be making our numbers very significantly particularly next year the current situation is of course market forces to builders have in general simply slowed up the process of their builds which has affected our program the other factor was that we have invested in blocks of flats recently in north Stowe which you only take it on when the entire block is ready so you get 24 houses or properties in one go in that sort of circumstances so if that's pushed out it makes the numbers look more dramatic but in fact they're not I think another factor that you'll be interested in is of course you're probably aware that we're taking part in the government's program for housing refugees the upshot of that is that we have purchased 66 individual properties for that purpose which is partly funded by the government those numbers are not in these figures at all because they're not counting in that context although the 66 will in due course become part of our stock so the build is still going on the contracts are there and we will be delivering substantial numbers thank you if I could just add in so thank you so the the other way that we build council houses is on exception sites and exception sites dried up haven't seen exception sites beyond last week's cabinet meeting where we approved an exception site and Kirsten Donaldson assures me there are a number of others in the pipeline so something's happened and suddenly we're getting exception sites again which slightly compensates for the fact that we don't have land on our own on which to build so these things as council bachelor has said it goes up and down and hopefully the overall trend will be up council mills did you want to come in on this point just a quickie I don't know whether I should be addressing councillor Drew or councillor Leeming being channeled by him but the there's some good news from Sawsdom which is Seben knows very well and one of the developments in Abraham Road are going to have 47 new council owned properties that we're taking from the developer to our own specification as well as arms houses from John Huntington charity so we're going to have a good proportion of those 280 homes on the red road site to the south of Abraham Road in affordable homes category and our own ownership as well as shared ownership so that's another good scheme well thank you very much I have three cabinet members answering my question all very keen to come in what I would say I suppose is I think that reflects the extent to which all of our cabinet take the provision of council housing within south council is a very serious thing and very proud of the work they have done so thank you very much colleagues for the answer I now have three questions of my own if we could go to page 21 of the report please which is appendix A and we have a specific table AH 215 the percentage of successful homeless prevention as proportion of all homeless cases closed and I note that after a period during which there had been quite a lowering of the success still above the intervention level we have had quite a significant improvement in the successful homeless prevention as proportion of all homeless cases closed going up from 49% in June to 60% for September which is significantly above the target I wondered if some more detail of explanation of how we have managed to achieve that could be given council bachelor council bachelor right yes I'm with you I think yes thank you for that these things fluctuate quite a bit because it's all about the demand and the demand comes in waves and so on the truth of the matter is that we have an increase in demand and there's pointers that say that we may have a lot more demands coming on us before long the reason I say that is that if you look at the numbers on our waiting list for housing that went up from 1800 to 2024 in the course of one month that was very unusually large number obviously we haven't got the equivalent increase in the number of houses available and that must mean that more people are in need and certainly I was at a homelessness summit last week where other councils are in deep trouble particularly coastal ones Margate for instance is actually paying out a third of its total budget simply in supporting homeless people so there is a big issue around the prevention side of things I mean we take very seriously and obviously it's the sensible way to go is to find people alternative routes into housing more often than not in private housing rather than in our own stock which the ones in most need must come first so working at it they won't be going away and it may well get worse before better Excellent Great, thank you for that council battery I suppose to some extent that ties in very much with the previous question in terms of the vision of council housing and as you were referring to there you continue to experience a cost living crisis within our area and we know the high cost of living in this area it's really good to see that the council is continuing to put a high level of focus into supporting vulnerable people related to the requirement for council of social housing and the requirement for supporting homeless people If I could reference now to page 22 of the report and to SH332 which is the percentage of emergency repairs carried out inside 24 hours and I note very clearly that for a lengthy period of time now we have been having the report that 100% of all emergency repairs have been carried out in the 24 hour period which is set as our target area I was just wondering if some further explanation would be given of what it is that either cabinet members or officers believe has caused us to be able to have such incredibly successful provision of services to tenants Right, thank you very much for that councillor Eddie Spicer is with us who is the responsible officer and I'm sure he wants to say a few words but perhaps I could actually say first that his has put a huge amount of work into the MIERS contract and we are just coming up to the first anniversary of the new contract and that has been turned around quite significantly and to a large extent with the excellent work that Eddie is doing with his team with the MIERS people so perhaps if it's alright you chair I'll let Eddie say a few words on that Eddie Spicer There we go Good evening everybody The main difference is on the emergencies with the new contracts that we started in October last year we made some drastic changes to the emergency provision In the previous contract we used to treat emergencies as respond within 24 hours and there was quite a long list of areas that would be covered as an emergency Under the new contract the emergency response time has been reduced to 4 hours instead of 24 but on top of that the list of what is constituted as an emergency the list of jobs has also reduced but we also have a one day response for what would be classed as sort of urgent but non-emergency works and as a result of that within the contract there's been a slight re-profiling of operatives and responses and we've split the area or the district into areas so that we can respond a lot faster 24 hours a day which has shown its benefits by maintaining that 100% 4 hour reaction time since we implemented the new contract Okay, great, thank you That's really good to hear because obviously the new Nears contract came through through an overview as one of the committees and we talked about the success of that and I hope to drill down on that I'm struck by the answer there you give related to perhaps as you said emergency if I look back up on page 21 AH204 which is percentage of tenants satisfied with responsive repairs I could be wrong on this but it strikes me that it may well be related to what you're talking there so obviously we can see that at one point over the last year or so that has gone below target for a period of time into the intervention area but clearly work has done so in a sense what it strikes me as I suppose it is that it is excellent to see that when tenants are obviously very concerned about something that needs emergency response that they are receiving that response as you've said there within four hours that some responses are then profile to be urgent rather than emergency but as you said it refers to a day's response but obviously as I'm sure you're doing as I'm sure the team are doing the percentage of tenants satisfied responsive repairs clearly remains something that you are working on and continues to need to be worked on because obviously it would be lovely to see that one above the percentage target it is not significantly below but it may be that we return to that at some point my final one to go to please is on page 25 which is ES 418 and ES 418 is the percentage of household waste sent for reuse, recycling and composting year to date and I just wanted to flag the fact that looking at the data over a period of time obviously once we go past the dip it seems very much to be the case that there is a particular spike upwards at some point within each part of the cycle and that when that upward point is reached there is then a decline now obviously the trend overall if I was to put a trend line on this graph I think I'll be fairly safe in saying it's still upwards it's still moving in the right direction but if I look at the last seven data points I can see that five data points ago it hit what was a peak at that point which was the highest level that had been hit at all but we have then seen a slight decline in tailing off over the last four months and if I then go back to I suppose roughly halfway between 2022 and 23 again there was a peak and a slight decline so I just wonder what is learned by the waste service in this regard as to why this may be happening in that we seem to go up and it's not a case of saying it's a disaster because we still remain at a higher point so I'm just thinking in terms of the idea of looking at the way the data tells us what success is being achieved I wonder if there's any learning going on any thought of explanation of how it is we end up with a peak followed by a gentle tailing off before I'm sure there will be another peak I'll come to Bridget Smith in the first instance I think Councillor Batchelor and Bode are far better placed and Councillor Batchelor has left the meet in so we go to Bode Thank you Thank you chair and thank you for the question Indeed there is a pattern and the pattern really is because this indicator is rid up of two parts recycling which is generally fairly constant most of the year through although we do see recycling increasing quite a lot in December due to Christmas packaging then the second component is composting which is the green waste so the peak that we see to the summer months when people are doing quite a lot more gardening now that shifts a bit before and a bit after was depending on the weather so sometimes we don't get that peak till about August, September sometimes it lasts longer sometimes it comes just depends on the weather and of course when we have a lot of rain then that's delayed as well so this parameter is really best looked at as a yearly figure that's when all the similarities have been evened out the quarterly reviews give us an early indication of where we may need to focus but as I said our question on the peaks and troughs is purely due to weather and it's mostly linked to the composting element which is based on the green waste we collect Excellent, thank you very much I suppose my main thought in relation to others is there was clearly a continuing upward trend for which we should be very pleased, I know it was raised at a previous scrutiny overview meeting regarding the possibility of the level of recycling to talk about how actually the level of recycling for the South Campus District Council was in the upper quartile of things across the country as a whole and we recognise that situation and I'm pleased to see that things continue to go forward I just wanted to make a general point in terms of the question which Councillor Smith can pick up on if she wishes to the data related to call centre times seems to be going in the right direction Councillor Smith and seems to be improving I just wondered if you had a general point you wish on that Absolutely an awful lot of work has gone into this both from Jack memory and from Anne Ainsworth I was going to try and talk to the call centre staff whenever I can they have real pride in what they do it's real, if you have time do go and chat to them because they very much realise they are the, for some people they are the only point of contact with the council so I think we are doing extremely well and if we refer back to the mystery shopper piece of work we are doing we are outstripping the vast majority of other councils in our performance there so very pleased that's been achieved it's been hard work and it continues to be hard work but it's very important it's our shop window for a lot of people Thank you for your comments I've got Councillor Bratton and then Councillor Baigot so Councillor Bratton Thank you Councillor Drew, your microphone is still on you probably can't see it Thank you I just wanted to ask about on page 22 it's AH245 which is the percentage of south camps homes with active HHRS Category 1 or 2 dam and mould cases so firstly I wanted to thank the officers for doing the survey that you're doing on the stock condition of our housing which is really important and for taking action that has reduced that proportion of houses down from the figure in June to the figure in green in September and also obviously there are problems where it's not possible to get into the properties and I'm sure your officers are doing their best to gain access and sort out the situation there so two related questions one is I'm wondering if that is related to the work that our officers are doing with hoarding in properties because that might be a reason why properties are damp and if it's related to the same sort of behavioural concerns that we might have about what's happening in our housing stock and also I'm very pleased that welfare visits are being arranged but the second thing I wondered is if I imagine that some of the properties that we've identified a problem with with damp we might identify that there's a problem that we don't think that stock is good enough for us as a county council to own and I'm just concerned that I'm just wondering if there is a sequential uptick in concerns in the private rented sector because landlords might buy these properties from us and not take as much care as we have done and so I just wonder if there's any follow-up through our contact with the district council because we have a general responsibility for the quality of housing stock in the area so I wonder if there's anything you could... I'd like to bring in Councillor Bachelor we have two new strategies this is a national priority as well as a local priority we have two new strategies to do with mould in council housing and in private rental Councillor John Bachelor is all there I don't think he is but you're on your own okay fine so it's an absolute priority and I personally treated as when I get notification of a home with mould as I did in the last few days I certainly treated as an emergency there's been one too many tragedies nationally on this so it is dealt with with all speed by the council thank you do you want to come back on that? it's just whether we're actively following up on the private rented sector we now have a strategy in place for doing so okay I'll move over to Councillor Bygott thank you Jim so just really an observation to further Councillor Drew's point about ES418 and you mentioned there trying to identify the trend from that graph so just a bit of a suggestion really as a professional statistician is that if you do seasonal adjustment on that which involves taking a moving average of the 12 most recent monthly figures then that actually will separate out the trend and it wouldn't make I think the results easier to interpret and I would also say that ES414 and ES412 which are just above the actuals and the targets interventions are all accumulative format those are two new KPIs but if once you have 12 months of data for them you do a a similar moving average process for those that would actually make the report much easier to see what the trend is thank you I think that's more comments to be noted rather than a question is it yes lovely okay I'll come over to Councillor Stobart Chair I'll be briefing it's more a comment than a question I was very pleased that the leader mentioned rural exception sites and I was just looking on the website that the map there hasn't been updated since 2021 just underlines the thing about rural exception sites being a rather dormant topic but certainly it's become exciting again but I just wanted to underline the significance in the sense of the rural exception site being in a sense very closely associated with our community perhaps at the parish level parish council has to work with a landowner and the planning authority and often there's a cultural aspect to it you know do we want extra people in our village and what's it going to be like how do we get that mix of housing in an exception site that really meets the local need so rather than delve into this now I wondered if it's something that we as Scooting and Overview could come back to why was there a dormant period is it something about our communication strategy are we not reaching the right people are there some parish councils not wanting to get involved are there questions like that that we could help expose and then seek a resolution Do you want to come in on that Councillor Bridget Smith so yes and the joy of exception sites is that it's locally lead so you know people get exactly what they want and they get affordable homes that are for the local people so it's very much they lead based on the need the bottom line is that it needs an altruistic landowner who's willing to so again this afternoon we're talking about land values and a half a million pounds an acre for not terribly exciting space and these people are giving up their land for 10, 15,000 pounds per plot so the technical they have to be truly altruistic about it Cerson Donaldson's team do a superb job leading with this and I think are very very engaged so it might be an idea to have a chat to her to see what added value scrutiny could add to the work that she does so I come in on that point Councillor Bradburn Thank you I just want to point out that they're not always community led sometimes developers can propose an exception site which has not been agreed with a local community so it's ideally yes altruistic but I think what well I mean I think they need community involvement don't they I think virtually community approval actually my understanding is that developers can come forward and then it's driven by the parish councils and local community to take that forward but do you want to just clarify that Stephen but just the policy requires a local need assessment to be done with the parish and that in a sense then is the catalyst for working with the parish council and those communities and landowners to identify the optimum site and there is a requirement to evidence that that process has taken place it isn't just a developer so I think coming back to your point Councillor Bradburn it's really important that communities know that they should be locally driven even if developers are coming forward with proposals they should be driven by the community Councillor Cahn recently the government has withdrawn the proposal that you would have to have a minimum energy quality standards for rented housing at least he's talking about bending the C standard for rented housing how does that affect our program I suspect it doesn't but I just wanted to check that and how does it affect our work with private housing are we able are we proposing anything to replace it in terms of in our work I'm going to have to pass that one on because that's pretty much detailed for me is that Stephen Kelly sorry can you just repeat I'm not talking about Newhouse in particular I'm talking about housing generally the private private rental stock and in also our council housing stock where we have an obligation there was a proposed obligation to achieve a standard C under the energy performance certificate on all rental properties and the government has now said it is going to push that on forward so I want to know how it affected our program which I suspect it doesn't affect our own incentive but also how it affects our work with private housing and the quality of private housing and our work on that is there any replacement to ensure that we also achieve a higher standard in private housing so obviously we have a massive program of upgrading our own housing stock to make it energy efficient and that's an ongoing rolling program that is proven to be very successful what our responsibility is for monitoring or enforcement of private private rental stock to make sure that it achieves those energy standards I do not know unless anybody else in here does know I'm going to have to come back to you on that one which I think we're going to come back to you on that one I think that's reasonable yeah we'll move on right come back to you on it yeah I think we can come yeah lovely thank you for that council that's a lot lovely if there's no more speakers if we refer to page 11 of the agenda so I under item 3 recommendations I think is the committee satisfied that we've made comments across the two appendix A and B on the report we're happy that we've done that agreed so we will move on to the next agenda item which is the health and wellbeing strategy refresh 24 to 28 which is pages 57 to 82 who would like to start on this item councillor Ellington thank you I think this health and wellbeing strategy is really really well thought out and presents some really good ideas and a really good way forward but I have one major issue with it and that is that it doesn't include any transportation it doesn't mention the fact that if people can't get out of their homes they have no means of transport within our villages and therefore they can't socialise loneliness is a big issue getting help is a big issue getting food is a big issue then it does not it's really the thing that underpins the whole of the health and wellbeing strategy in my view and I think it really ought to be included in some way within this document councillor Bridget Smith thank you I don't know if councillor Bill Handley I thought I saw him pop up briefly he said he embraced you everybody's in front of me I can't hear on the screen Bill hello it's your long day being how tired I am I was looking at you on the screen sorry Bill it's alright chair it's been a very long day as we all know transportation is a huge issue across the piece I mean we do have we do work with communities on local transport services and some of those things that we do are shown in Appendix B there are limits to what we can do as a district council we have to work in partnership we are beholden on private companies it's a really it's a really difficult one I'm not sure whether we can do much in here apart from make mention that it is a problem I would welcome any ideas that councillor Wellington has really councillor Eric Schiff nicely well I have this idea that if only we could have a mobile phone in each village with a volunteer and a group of volunteers who are willing to receive a phone call that says it's a nice day I've got up and I feel well and I'd like to go and visit my sister only perhaps half a mile down the road but I can't get to see her and that person with the mobile phone would be able to jump in their car or make an arrangement to do so in an hour perhaps or whatever and deal with that issue and it seems to me a very simple way of moving forward and I'm sure there are a large number of volunteers who would be willing to give up one day a week when you could offer that sort of service in our villages and I just post this idea councillor Bill Handley it is an interesting idea and we do have community transport of course there's owls and other others across the district but it's patchy and I think part of the problem we've had burning through the pandemic quite a few people who used to do community transport driving stopped doing it and have never come back to it so I think that a community scheme like that it's this sort of thing we can do and I'm going to look across to see if there's anything that's already in the system yeah so we do raise it as an issue on page 69 it is bulleted that the district is poorly served by public transport we do offer grants through our service support grant to address public transport and we currently invest in dialeride, Royston community transport and then volunteer car schemes which are led by Care Network about 20 volunteer car schemes across the district which serve approximately 60 of our parishes the kind of idea that you've just mentioned Councillor Ellington is a really good idea and there is something that exists like that in Canbourne where there's a whatsapp group that people can join and someone can say I'm going into Cambridge City to do some shopping does anybody want anything or does anyone want to join me and then people have the option to join that so that is something that we could pose to other communities as an idea and I do know that Care Network are also working really hard with those parishes that aren't currently served by voluntary car scheme to try and recruit more volunteers so that we can expand that coverage to those communities that don't currently have a scheme Yes, just very briefly to add to that point again I think it's a really nice idea and I live in South Cambridge here that kind of informal arrangement already exists so I think that does happen in lots of communities that informally I think Councillor Handy perfectly put that the more formal community transport schemes have really struggled with drivers and I think that they would really value our support which we try and do to rally further drivers through those schemes obviously for the council in regards to our involvement with the schemes so we need to be a bit careful around some of the safeguarding aspects around the formality or informality of schemes and obviously communities can do their own thing I can see in my village that they're very popular but I think we might just need to think about that a bit more in the round in regards to the difference between community transport and something that's perhaps less formal which might be at a village level Thanks very much, do you want to come back on that, Sue? Yes, it certainly happens in Lowers which if you haven't got a car in Lowers you don't go anyway but the community transport scheme does do a good job we've got to hook it weeks sometimes in advance it's usually only used for medical appointments and those sort of things and I have a non-smath respect for those people they do a great great job but it's this impromptu I really would like to do something today I feel well enough today I didn't feel well enough yesterday I feel well enough tomorrow but today I'd like to do something and it's those sort of things that I think we could encourage So we'll move on, Councillor Bradman Thank you I just wanted to reinforce what Gareth has said that formal schemes are struggling for drivers in Lund Beach and Water Beach we have the beach volunteer driver scheme and I know that they always have more requests for lifts to and from places than they have drivers available and that is on a rotor it also requires somebody to manage that rotor between the people calling in and the people who are available to drive but also, as Gareth has said it requires safeguarding confirmations as it were so the other thing I'm aware of is that some of the people who are perhaps more available to or might be more available to drive might be the people who are no longer working but actually there is an issue that you also need to have a degree of strength because quite a lot of the people who want to have a lift may also have a wheelchair or a walking frame and so there is an awareness that there is a need to have a certain amount of space in your car and the strength to assist with that so it's not an easy problem to solve Thanks very much Councillor Bradman, I think those comments will be taken on board, I know they're very true for my village as well in Bourbon with the community car share scheme bus etc that the parish provide Councillor Cun It's a simple point because I know a number of these schemes use minibus and have a communal minibus and I just wanted to highlight something which I think will be coming in the future in the sense that many people of my sort of age who took their test passed the test which gave you the right to drive a minibus and then the driving test changed and you didn't have the right to drive a minibus after you passed a normal test and we'll be coming to an age when we're going to volunteer and not going to have the ability to another problem is that when you reach the age 70 you need to have a medical certificate if you want to drive a minibus and I know that when it came up I had the right and I didn't because I didn't want a £50 a year to have a medical certificate each year these are problems which will arise and we need to think about how you might manage them Councillor Bill Handley, grants from the council maybe I think the points the points being taken we already provide money through the service support grant as I just explained we will discuss it in the community's team and see what we can do but I don't think it's as simple I'm sure it's not as simple as it might appear Councillor Stobar Chair, thank you so I've got some general comments to start with or a general question and then some more specific ones so let's see how we get onto the general one as Councillor I would agree with Councillor Ellington that this is a fine piece of work the tables at the end cover a very wide range of services and reflect a concern for the community so I think it looks very balanced I was just reflecting on the work of the young people task and finish group and perhaps this is my first question then is how is the young people's voice taken into account in the way the programme is formulated so there is in section one a priority area and I think that's very topical but connecting with national trends for example and we know about rates of depression in young people absences from GCSE programmes and so on that things run quite deep and then balancing that there is the scope of the district council to do stuff and it's quite specific so I just want to ask that question that's the first one how is the young people's voice taken into account and how national trends addressed should we take that one first I'm rambling a bit the work that's going on at the moment with children and young people has shown in this document which I'm sure you've already seen we constantly review this it's fair to say Leslie can I invite you to I think you're very close to this particular matter first and foremost thank you very much the aim of the strategy was to align our goals with those with the integrated care system and so their first goal was to or is to to enter and exit education prepared for the next stage of their lives as a result of that strategy a lot we understand that there was a lot of engagement with young people to develop the goal that they reached in terms of what we're doing again we can do more if I use the language based programs as an example we get feedback from each of those young people that attend our courses to understand what they what they got from them and then how they could be improved how we could make them better so that they can get more out of them and so it's a kind of feedback process that we use and it's the same with the we offer children's school holiday schemes and disability schemes and again through the course of providing those we use their feedback to ensure that we can so it's an iterative ongoing process that we learn from what we've done the last time to try to continuously try to improve those programs and we're always willing to listen to your ideas sorry, Councillor Stobach you'll come back on your second one that provides really clear view of the context of this frameworks and context are actually vital to deliver the results I thank you very much can I ask a second more specific one that takes us to a gender page page 77 is the kind of mental health support that might be offered that might be offered through the community development team in the strategic sites we talked quite a lot about community development last time specifically mental health support as it's touched on on page 77 could I ask for some kind of specifics around what we do Councillor Bill Hanley sure I can give too many specifics at this point we are still working with the ICS to my mind things are pretty stage really we have to work with them we talk to them as to how we can deliver think about the way we work as delivering the package at the local level working with the community but the programme that we have now is in the appendix B but yeah we are here to deliver the work that the network wishes to be delivered I don't know if again Leslie's got anything to add again I think we take a lot of learning from Camborn and now Northstone and we know that early infrastructure community buildings is paramount to bringing people those early trailblazers and new people together so they've got somewhere to meet and socialise we recruit community development workers so that their role is to meet and greet, introduce make those, help to make those connections and in addition to that we are working with new residents to understand what kind of groups what their interests are to create those groups again to formulate those social connections so there is a lot of ongoing work just to help establish those communities and then in addition to that I think we work very closely with our colleagues at county council and through Section 106 agreements there's a lot of external agencies there to support those new residents so that there's a lot of joined up work going on Thanks very much councillor Stefa That's fine I think I'll leave it there those two points Thanks very much councillor Drew Thank you I may be asking this question to councillor Smith since I'm going to quote her words but councillor Hamlet feel free to tip in first if you wish to On page 64 of the report we have the forward from councillor Smith and in the second paragraph it says it is the district council that can stop things going wrong we have huge influence on public health and preventative services through our teams in housing, planning, economic development welfare, leisure and environmental health every opportunity to tackle the root cause of poor health to reduce the burden on the NHS and the social care system some things we can do alone and much else we must do in partnership with both the statutory and voluntary sectors I think these are great words and they are very clear kind of statement of what we want to achieve as a council and I was wondering councillor Smith if you could talk to us about how you feel that the council as a whole possibly beyond even the specific strategy we're looking at in relation to it is to deliver against the aspiration that you put in that paragraph Thank you, that's a very useful question So I think the reality is we can always do more I do a lot of work on this at the LJ particularly with the district council network and we commissioned some work recently by the Kings Fund that has been very well received about what the role of district councils as a whole is in ensuring ensuring ensuring good health and we can do it in many ways and it goes very unrecognised to optimise it it demands really good partnership working between the new integrated care services between the county councils between all players really but through things like planning is probably one of the key ones providing places that are conducive to good health so if we look at North Stowe North Stowe started off as a healthy towns initiative somewhere where you can walk freely and safely where there's great open spaces where cycling is desirable not just possible where people breathe clean air where they can be segregated from cars and so on houses are built to high standards high qualities those all play into the determinants of health so I think our planning role is probably one of the biggest tools in our box really but when we look at our own housing stock by making sure that our housing stock is mould free most certainly but you know warm and safe that we create communities that are there we have wardens responsible for our sheltered housing stock these are all things that play into securing good physical and mental health given more money we will always always do more we talked much earlier about the wild mind scheme we'd love to do more of that sort of thing but I think we're very lucky in this area one of the positive outcomes of the pandemic was that suddenly we were talking to the health service now I'd never spoken before that to anyone in the health service and suddenly I was in weekly meetings with these people and we built really positive relationships and we continue to talk to them and so they are now passporting money down to us that allows us to do things like the mobile warden schemes and they're vitally important in keeping people safe and happy and well in their own homes and stopping them going into care homes where actually there's any kind of one outcome at the end of that and good as some of them are most people want to be in their own homes and in their own communities as well so I think what we should be doing is building on the strength of these partnerships to give people confidence and trust in our ability to do more and securing determinants of good health and thereby relieving pressure on our social care certainly on the health service which are too falling over systems at the moment but if we have the freedom to do our bit much better then hopefully we make things better for them as well so they can be dealing with truly sick people rather than providing beds for people with nowhere to go and thank you for that question and thank you for your comprehensive answer Councillor Khan it tends to come to a trait on the elderly people and I see that the priority in the initial temperature study was cost trait on people over 75 but actually quite a problem in recent years with younger people for a couple of reasons in particular one is that people don't leave home as early you have far more young children than people living at home into the late 20s which when I left home when I was 21 and I was not I left home when I left home when I was 21 and I became a householder when I was 21 nowadays that's just not imaginable people on both the cost of housing and the constraint that people are staying at home and this produces isolation for other young people and creates problems I just wondered if you've thought about that in terms of your programme and how we might what we could do about this I'd like to defer to Councillor Handley who's responsible first but I'm very happy to come in after Councillor Handley about why we problematise the older age range basically because they normally are the people that need the most help actually the priorities are set I'm looking over at Leslie again because she's very, very close to this the priorities are set not by us and we have to work within a structure I'd like to just come in but I think we have to be aware of emerging health threats to young people in particular one of those is vaping so I have a very close friend who is a health practitioner and we are seeing children nearly every day of the week with serious lung conditions because they are vaping and a lot of these children are under 10 years of age so we we have very good communication networks we always try and utilise those to get out public health messages and again we need to be working closely with our partners to make sure that we address something that is going to become a really, really big problem and we are going to see some tragedies as a result of it on top of which we are the waste authority dealing with all these retched horrible bits of plastic and nasty batteries which are a health threat in their own right so I think that's why these documents are never static are they they are under constant review because we just had a pandemic we are having to constantly respond to stuff that is rising but older people need to be our priority because they arguably need us more at the moment Any other speakers? Going on from that there are some excellent initiatives in this priority to create environments to give people opportunities to be as healthy as they can be I'm just really struggling a little bit as to the communications that we've got with our residents and how that works because some of these initiatives unless you go to a doctor surgery and you look at the posters and most people don't go to doctor surgeries these days they have a phone call how do we get this message across to the people who could benefit from it but actually are in the loop if they are not elderly they haven't got a long term health condition they haven't got a mental health problem but they might benefit from this and I'm just wondering where we go with that because these messages I don't think are getting across particularly well Thank you very much Councillor Bill Handley I'm slightly surprised to hear that because I think the amount of communications we've put out on these things on social media and probably most importantly in the magazine that's where most of the information is transmitted I don't like to say it but I don't agree with you on that I think actually we do as well as we can do to get the message out we frequently speak with the parish councils for example and encourage them to put the information further into their communities it's never going to be perfect that's for sure but I think we do a pretty good job Councillor Libby L You're absolutely right it's in the South Cams magazine what I worry about is that we put things in writing that's a very passive form of communication with our residents it's there but I'm wondering how that's coming back particularly from the GP practices the PCNs and how we actually make sure that that's happening it needs to be slightly more active people need to be Councillor Bill handling the first instance Can I defer to Leslie because she's clearly has something to tell us Thank you Councillor Hal We meet regularly now with the PCNs and there are health well-being groups within those PCNs so we meet with the social prescribers I mean historically we've had difficulty because I think in the past we were reliant on GPs transmitting this information to their patients which was never a good idea because they have so much information coming at them but now that we're working with the social prescribers that is another route to make our residents aware of the breadth of services that we offer and we're also going to be making or utilising the community hubs build and expand across the district so we've got 12 existing from the warm hubs that we had last year and we're going to be growing those to about 20 and in addition to the community hubs we'll be having recruiting village agents so Cambridge Acre will recruit those and those village agents past their role will be not to just support the volunteers running the community hubs but they'll be liasing with those groups and trying to work with those residents in the communities that don't normally reach out for support so part of their role will be to try and draw them in to the community hub and understand what the needs are of that particular community and then match them with the services that are out there so we see these community hubs being able to offer outreach services to those that wouldn't normally reach out or make contact so we're just trying to expand that reach Councillor Bridget Smith So I'd like to add that it's not all down to us it's up to communities as well so if I think about three initiatives in my own village we have the food hub cycle's food that would have gone into landfill run by the two churches so they do all the promotion on that we have the warm hub which we provided the funding for through the ICS and that's run by the eco hub in Gamlingey and they do the promotion of that and then we have the gym which Gareth probably dreams about the Gamlingey gym actually because he invested so much time time in that and we've invested some central money in it as well and that's run by a community group who do the promotion of that so we can our job is very often to trigger stuff to facilitate it but then it's for others to run with it and I'm seeing that happen really successfully in my own village Thank you That's actually very encouraging so I think this kind of active promotion is much more useful than perhaps dare I say putting out newsletters because that information doesn't actually register quite a lot of the time and if there's nothing going on in your particular community or not very much then it doesn't really mean that much Thanks very much Councillor Judith Riffith Yeah, thank you This is really like a bit of a shout out for social prescribers There's one which is a very newish one at Water Beach surgery who is brilliant and that I think is one of the connections which really helps with the mobile warden scheme because often it's the persuading people that maybe that would be helpful for them and I was also pleased to read in this agenda about the kind of increase or the continued funding of those schemes I think that would be so important to maintain that so they can grow and help more people but social prescribers when you get a good one they are really really good Councillor Bill Hanley Do you want to comment on that at all? No, only to say thank you for the comment Councillor Stobar Councillor Stobar Thank you, I'll be very brief We've talked about the whole diversity of different activities but I just wanted to note one while I have a moment I did note somewhat sadly while looking at some data for this that one of the most vulnerable groups for depression is men in the 55 to 60 age group and it's not a group we often talk about but actually it's been a lot of success in the so-called men's shared initiative guys hanging out making stuff reminiscing about the 1960s and things like that but actually a particular outreach like that is is very much community driven you put it all together but there is an associated thing which has actually been very successful elsewhere the so-called maker space we haven't ever talked much about maker space in South Cams but it is a feature of a number of urban development so where you create a space where people go to make stuff very popular with the young because they can take ideas and actually turn them into reality and that is a therapy as much as anything we've talked about so I'd like to think we could talk more about maker spaces and men's sheds where people make stuff so that's a comment I'm not expecting it it touches on what councillor Smith said about organically growing things in communities and there being other providers for that as well so I think councillor Smith has sort of addressed that men's sheds love them exactly the sort of thing we'll provide grants for exactly and the maker space as well I have a little charity it's run various initiatives but for people with problems where they've done pottery they've done collage they've done all sorts of stuff it goes down a bomb and it builds relationships so it's exactly the kind of thing we're delighted to support but we can't run it Thanks very much that councillor can't it's simply a comment but I don't really know that's much we can do about it but I'm very concerned about the mentioned thing I've heard too early on about the fact that visually all contacts with doctors now is via online I find in other national health services normally you have a yearly checkup with a doctor in person which picks up things which the person concerned may not be aware of and which we'll not contact with over online and we don't even have any checkups normally and certainly people can go years I haven't gone to the doctor for three years now because I've set up I don't want to have an online thing I want to see the person in person and pick up things which I might not know the data may show that this is affecting dealing with things that we know about it won't necessarily affect things that we do know about I don't know whether there's anything we can do except perhaps in the patient participation groups to ensure that we have encouraged that we have a system whereby patients are seen even if they are not seriously ill regularly we don't go too long without and people are not discouraged from applying to go to the doctor because they're not going to see somebody in person I find that affects me and I'm getting to the age where that should be worrying and I'm sure it affects lots of other people in my age group what can we do about it so much as I would love to have a magic wand to do something about it there's nothing we can do about it other than do our utmost to keep people healthy so they do not need to use the health service which is a national sickness service that we optimise what we do to keep people healthy and then we reduce the burden on the health service which can then hopefully start coping rather better than it is at the moment but you know I think my own practice I can get an appointment if I really need it it's not all by telephone so I think it's patchy the point is you shouldn't have to really need it to feel you really need it before you go only we treated people like cars and have them MOT but above my pay grade I'm afraid and I think the key thing I agree with what Councillor Smith has said that the key thing is to keep feeding back through patient participation groups the GP services that we see around the district will operate slightly differently and they do react to patient participation groups feedback for the GPs that run those practices so I think that's probably the best way to feedback into those it's probably a limited amount of you know from a district point of view so thanks very much any other speakers on this actually I was going to ask some questions around prevention but Councillor Smith has answered those questions with previous comments but I will just say this is a good report actually especially some of the comments that Councillor Smith has made in her preamble around prevention through all the different services across the council and just how important that is by preventing people from using higher level services or becoming unwell so just credit to the report and the preamble that really emphasises that point really so I think we can go to no other speakers so we will go to say that we have commenters on the report and reboot it for for cabinet all agreed on that agreed right okay so we will move on to the next agenda item waiting for my computer to catch up a bit so the next item is item 7 and that is the general fund revenue bids and savings that is pages 83 to 92 so have we got any speakers on this at all Councillor Stobart thank you chair, my computer is catching up but I think I can remember so on page 87 I just wanted to general make an inquiry about this proposed revenue expenditure item introduction of a data team which read a face value I would warnly welcome but I wonder if we can have a little expansion on what the team will be doing and what their objectives might be what's the justification if you will I think that's a really important question and one that I also had how can we justify that post what data are they collecting and what will it be used for so I'll come to Councillor Bridget Smith in the first instance thank you so yes it's really important but the detail is with Anne Innesworth and not with me so if I may bring in Anne Innes thank you chair so anyone who knows me knows that data intelligence analysis is very very close to my heart so this is something we've been talking about for a little while essentially what we're looking to do is to create some extra capacity and resource within the council as you'll be aware we've got quite a lot of colleagues working in the council who have expertise in data and analysis etc but it's spread across different services and what we need to have is a central function that helps to make the best use of all those skill sets and bring together those colleagues but also then can focus really on the type of data and the presentation of that data to members that we really want to be able to collect to then help inform our service delivery moving forward so if I could give you a couple of examples one example is about looking internally and making sure that we're collecting the right kind of data and information as an organisation so that we better understand the needs of our residents and our businesses and therefore we can plan our services moving forward accordingly and the other part of it is about external data what's happening in south Cambridge Cambridge etc as a whole and what is that information telling us again there's a lot of information out there at the moment but it's being collected by different groups for different purposes and what we want to be able to make sure is that we're collecting that data for the purposes of the council and elected members and we're able to make sure that we can focus that resource then doing that additional intelligence analysis data layering in a way that really helps us move forward for our future planning for services so that's what this particular additional capacity we're hoping will do Councillor Stobart may I ask about the profile of the individuals that they're likely because there's lots of job specs and person specs and so on but what's the likely profile of those individuals so if I can there's a few aspects so the individuals that we will be looking for not only have expertise in some of their systems and software power BI is a good example of one that we've been using recently it's a good effect but there are others of course that understand what systems we can use in order to gather the data but also make it really functional and efficient so that it's not then adding to their human time but it's actually helping us in terms of driving that service delivery so having expertise in understanding those systems having some understanding of what's coming down the line because I'm sure as you appreciate this is a constantly moving area of business and there's always new pieces of software coming online so people who can understand what that looks like it will need to link into our digital aspirations our technological aspirations which of course Jeff memory and the transformation team have been driving forward for us but the final thing I'll say is people skills so often we will find in these type of roles that you can have someone who's a fantastic technical expert but we also need someone who can work with people corral and bring together that capacity resource I was talking about earlier and really get people excited and enthused about the opportunities of what we can do so technical skills absolutely people skills as well very keen we're actually if we have agreement to this moving forward we're actually looking already at what the type of job description person specification needs to be well I was thinking kind of chief operating officer summarise it kind of a data scientist role a somewhat outgoing data scientist it's very exciting because I think correct handling of data is offers very good value and welcome can I just add to that the data that we're collecting is it sort of member driven essentially that data that we're collecting is that driven from members and can you give me some examples of the type of data that we'll be collecting to then benefit residents as a result of that data Bob a stab so when we had the corporate peer review three weeks ago now one of the things that they highlighted was that we needed to be able to use data better and you can probably say that about every single council in the country you know we collect copious amounts of data but it's what do we what do we do with it so you know you know I kind of like well you know we've just been through all our KPI's haven't we that's data but Anne's talking about data that's available from elsewhere as well what it does is it helps us plan it helps us utilise our resources wisely it helps us to deliver there I say best value and you know we need to optimise it more and I think by bringing in data from outside that allows us to be far smarter about how we plan things so we're certainly not sitting in Cabinet going let's collect data on whatever because you know that's not our level of expertise this has got to come from from our experts thank you very much because that was probably not a terrible answer can I just come back on Brian's coming in there's a man who does understand data can I just come back on so I know this is in relation to the peer review but is these additional posts also in relation to the four day working week at all for data that the government has asked for absolutely not if I can just confirm chair these posts we've been talking about these for quite a while so this is the opportunity to add them into the budget for this and the data collected won't be used for that purpose at all the data certainly that I'm intending these roles to collect is really that layering aspect so if I could give members an example in a previous council that I worked in we had an ongoing issue with youth unemployment and there was so much funding going into that area from community groups, voluntary groups, the council et cetera but still we couldn't make that difference for those young people we were still seeing that those numbers maintained so what I did in our team was bring together a group of people who could begin to layer the data so we started with the question what is happening here and that's I think really really important it comes to the purposes of data what is the question that you're trying to answer and why are you struggling to answer it and once we started to layer data so we brought data in from various councils from both groups, from schools education providers, businesses we were able to see very very clearly what was happening with young people in that city and then we were able to devise targeted provision in so doing we went from one of the worst areas for youth unemployment to one of the best in the country but it was because we had a question that we needed the layering of the data to be able to help us answer and then we could target that provision that's the type of thing that I'm intend on these posts to be able to do for us Thank you very much for that Councillor Brian Mills did you want to come in on this? Thank you Chair just to bring in an example of the sort of data collection that we want to be able to utilise to improve our evidence based policy so the GCP sponsored the Centre for Business Research and earlier this week in fact it was just yesterday morning we had a representation of the updated data that they collect and they take data from a whole series of different sources and then build up a picture of our current performance in terms of job growth unemployment that we've just discussed and so on now that's a report produced by a partner organisation of our own but it's not necessarily something that we are using internally back in the council so it's rather a perverse situation that a data scientist let's call them can find that information and then compare and contrast it with the other information from other bodies that are producing similar but not necessarily the same data because it has our decisions if we are an evidence based policy organisation which I believe we are it can only improve our service delivery by responding to the actual rather than the assumed facts Thank you very much for that input Councillor Milne's I rudely interrupted Councillor Stobart so I should come back to you to see if you've got anything else you wanted to add or come in on Thank you for the opportunity I said what I'd intended Councillor Peter Fane Thank you chair I wanted to ask a question in relation to the turning off of the public switch telephone network and the new digital phone lines it sounds to me as though that is likely to be outside of our control imperative for us to respond to I was initially concerned about the RAG rating but of course that relates to the climate impact of that project and then I was put into some confusion by the comments in the right hand column to confirm if this project involves removing existing hardware So I'm really just asking for clarification of this item and what this means for us Councillor Bridget Smith I can't give you a whole lot of details the RAG rating is because this will generate a load of waste and there's a negative climate impact to that waste it will be loads of plastic telephones basically a couple of which are sitting in my office so this has been a piece of work that has been in transition for a really long time and I think it's something that we're having to do because I think we're having to move into the new technology but I'm going to have to come back to you on the detail because it's Geoff Member who's been leading on this but I think it's been in the back of my mind that this is just something that has to be done and it's possibly taken too long to get it done actually but we'll come back with some more detail on that but the red RAG rating is because it generates waste Councillor Peter Fane do you want to come back at all on that? No I'm happy to wait for the leader to come back to us on that one Councillor Libby L Just on that subject I don't know whether it would be an implication for the council or not but the red button scheme that elderly people have they know you have a box and you can press the button and you get help that does not work on the broadband system so I'm just wondering if there might be a requirement to produce or at least look at the equipment that's out there in people's homes because as I understand it that either needs adaptation or replacing also the other night we've actually had our telephone moved over by Virgin Media on to broadband we had a broadband outage in my village for four hours last week no landline telephone completely cut off very important I'm just thinking my mum has her panic button regularly rolls on it in the night which means that I gallop round her house and appear like a spectre in her bedroom and she's sound asleep and I'm having a panic attack myself yeah I mean I don't it's a problem and I think the answer to it is well and truly outside of our control but it's just something we need to note thank you is that okay council that well? yeah I think that's just it it's to note and I certainly experienced the effects of it they do put a battery with these new phones so that if you have a power outage you have your phone for a couple of hours but of course if the broadband goes down completely or completely cut off I think it's a really important point for us to raise even if it's sort of out of our remit as such I think it's really important as councillor Smith says that we raise that issue as a red flag and a problem yeah councillor Dree excellent thank you very much 87 of the overall report and I just wanted to ask some questions about three of the lines within this on the first line it's climate environment and waste and the title is additional refuse team leader 50% and it explains in there that the post is being introduced in order to reduce the overall sort of level of number of people being managed I'm just wondering if this should be seen as simply being reflective of the overall expansion of the district and the increased amount of waste service that we have to provide so therefore this extra money that is being spent simply reflects the extra size of the service I think the answer is probably yes but I'm going to ask Bode to just confirm that thank you councillor Smith thank you I think it's both so at the moment we have four team leaders and they manage over 140 refuse drivers and loaders so each person has 35 people to manage and more than that so very simply it's a case of one person managing 35 people it's just become very very challenging so not only being able to dispatch them in terms of where they're working today but also any complaints to do with sickness holiday any personnel matters so it's becoming very very difficult and the number is growing like you said so already we're adding more crews we're adding more drivers and loaders it's only going to get worse so really this is a case of trying to make their life a little bit easier and they can do that just trying to spread the load amongst more team leaders great thank you I'm drawn to thinking back to the KPIs item we were going on and obviously we have the really positive data from the waste service about ongoing reduced and low levels of staff sickness and I know we've talked in this committee about making sure we're protecting our waste service operatives in relation to issues such as back injuries and such like so I'm kind of struck by the answer you've given there which explains that this is a good practice move to provide support for our staff in that regard excellent thank you for the second one if I can just go to the line that refers to is the fourth line down waste service planning officer and to ensure there's exhibition expert input is this reflective of the fact that there is particularly new work and more complicated work the way service is doing or is it reflective of the decision being made by senior leaders in the team that up to now we perhaps haven't been as effective as we could have been and therefore the creation of this post will allow us to be better than we have been so far so I'm going to have to refer to Bode but again I think you know we're a growth area we have I think 36 homes homes already permitted in our current local plan and most of them on site you know building new houses means providing providing new bins and incorporating new houses and new rounds so I suspect it's to do with that but Bode will give a bit more detail I'm sure thank you counsellor Smith and yes you're right it's that and also the both comments that counsellor Steven Drew made so my planning colleagues earlier tonight mentioned the fact that we have thousands of applications every year so we're seeing an increased number of developers trying to engage with us earlier on which is what we want so we can make sure that the developments are planned correctly they're designed as best as possible wherever it's possible we're now trying to defaults to use underground bins for the larger developments that takes a lot of engagements coordination and liaison with ourselves and we're just finding new resources to make that happen on time but also to happen effectively so that whatever is built is then best in terms of operations later on so this is exactly to address that problem that we can effectively engage with developers much earlier on but also ensure that what's being built is being built as best as possible so that when it comes to operations and collecting the waste from those houses we don't have challenges we already have a few challenges because a few things haven't happened because that hasn't been as effective as it can be so that's what this role is looking to address. Great, thank you very much. Can I now go to the line that says empty homes office of post? I know that we've referenced this in terms of being a temporary post for the last two years in previous discussions and I know that here the decision has been made to make this a permanent post I'm just wondering, starting with Councillor Smith and possibly going to the officers if we just have a short explanation what it is about the impact of that temporary post which has made the council believe that it is justified in turning into something permanent. Thank you, well bringing empty homes back into use is really important it's not something you can do it's not something that really merits a temporary role is it, it's something we're going to have to keep on and on doing I suspect that it's been rat filled by other officers in the past before the temporary role was put into place and I'm guessing is that the temporary person has done a really good job and has justified their job becoming a permanent job because they're proving to be effective and we can provide you with more detail if you want it. No, that's absolutely fine. I'm struck again by the fact that this perhaps referenced back to when we were looking at the KPIs and we were talking about homeless strategy and we're talking about what councillor houses coming in so I assume I'd be right in saying it because of that helistic strategy. Great, thank you. I have two more that I wish to refer to specifically. So my next one is the PA team leader I'm assuming the PA refers to political assistants. No, it's personal assistants so there are I think five personal assistants within the organisation now, you'll have had contact with the lovely Glenda who helps me and does no end of other things as well. So now this is a team it was deemed advisable that they had a team leader as a point of contact in order to foster learning manage them well and so on so that's why. Thanks very much, my apologies for not reading that one properly, I did ask to make sure I was short. A little persistence or another matter. The last one refers to the I suppose sort of both together really but more focusing on the expansion cybersecurity team. We've got expansion cybersecurity team to expect to reduce the risk I assume it's the case that a risk assessment has led us to believe that like many public organisations and private businesses there is increased risk in relation to this and therefore actually the £22,000 referred to here I would assume you would argue that definitely money well spent. I cannot emphasise strongly enough how vital it is that we are protected against cybersecurity there have been a number of hits on local authorities in the last five years which have cost millions and millions to put right and taken years to put right so when all the data has been wiped off or you've had this ransom software and what I believe is that some councils insurers have advised paying of the ransom because the consequences and the cost of the council of not paying the ransom and letting the damage be done is really just so so appalling so there have been a number of conferences which I and Councillor Brian Mills who I'll bring in now have participated in where you cannot be too careful because the risks are considerable and councils are getting hits every day so Councillor Mills sorry I should have brought you in straight away on that That's fine thank you leader and thank you chair just one example that was very telling was Copland district council who suffered a cyberattack because they were in close proximity to seascale, the nuclear power plant which was the real target and for something that they were sort of innocent bystanders too they thought they were a point of entry to that seascale infrastructure it's taken them some five years to recover from that cyberattack as Councillor Smith has just alluded to it's cost them millions and they are still not fully recovered so that's a huge impact on their operational capability that took a huge amount to recover from so it's something that we're acutely aware of and we need to make sure that we're as well protected as we possibly can be there are dangers around for example zero day attacks that's where vulnerabilities are exposed for the first time when an attack occurs these are very difficult to mitigate against but we need to make sure that we have backup and recovery facilities that mean we can roll back from such occasions so it's a very important and unfortunately it's a growing problem as bad as this have been and it's a constant battle but we're very acutely aware and our Chief Operating Officer could add something probably quite useful into that Thanks very much Councillor Niels for I've even covered it it's really important It's very important, very important I'm just going to come in on a couple of points because it's on the same page 1887 we've got Councillor Fein I know I will come to him shortly so my first was just a question for my own understanding on the first line where we talk about additional refuge team lead and then we've got the 50% figure there in brackets what does the 50% relate to, is that the 50% of the post or at halftime post I assume Oh it's us and city sorry, it's important half the person for us half the person for the city and then does the figure then just demonstrate how much we are contributing to that post so it's half of the salary essentially the 25,000 I just want to clarify so I wasn't 100% clear from there no that's fine and then coming back to the PA role I think normally we would sort of think that a personal assistant would be reportable to the person they're providing the service for and I know you've indicated that there are a number of those roles is it another layer that is really necessary if they're already reporting to yourself for another senior management so I'm not Glenda's line manager her job is to do everything for me but that team leader post will be one of our existing PA's it will be one of our existing PA's will become the team leader it's not the creation of a new role if I may chair as well one of the purposes for having a team leader post is because if a PA is off for example on leave then there needs to be a coordination process by which the work of that individual is covered by the other members of the team so it is very much about sharing knowledge and being able to do additional training together and development skills but it's also a coordination piece to make sure that the work is always covered across the PA's and councillors thank you very much I'll bring in councillor Jane thanks to your patience chair thank you for coming back to me again to some extent my question is a follow up to that asked by councillor Drew earlier on on the empty homes of the post I wonder to what extent this post will address the issue of particularly blocks of flats purchased for investment purposes which may not be occupied may never be been occupied there ownership may be difficult to identify I was faced at parish council last night by an allegation that there are at least one complete block unoccupied remaining unoccupied after being built in the last five years I haven't had the opportunity to check that and indeed I don't know how I would and I just wonder whether this is one of the issues that might be addressed bearing in mind that the even if there is the penalty of the double council tax that can be quite small in relation to the potential gain in capital values I'll come to councillor Bridget Smith in the first instance I think we're going to have to come back to you I mean we don't really have blocks of flats sitting empty in south Cambridge really so I don't think it's I don't think it's an issue but I suspect it's a role that will flex to accommodate whatever the new and emerging need is what we don't want is homes sitting empty when we have as we've already heard from councillor Batchelor an alarming increase of over 200 in our waiting list in a single month so I don't know the detail that councillor Fane but if you'd like to sort of if you could just ping an email to me just being very specific then we'll pick that up and we'll attend to it thank you okay thanks for that have we got any other speakers on this report okay in that case we will come to page 83 and the committee is happy that we've reviewed and considered the report and those comments will will go forward, agreed? agreed okay so we'll move on to item 8 the work programme which is on pages 93 to 104 and it's set out there the agenda is coming up for the next couple of meetings has anyone got any questions on the work programme obviously councillor Drew and myself with officers will be meeting to discuss what is coming forward I was just going to make a plea for the committee to you know if you have got any areas where you want to sort of dig a little bit more deeply we'll come forward with those and we will do our best to get those on to the agenda in a relevant timescale so please do come forward with any of those and councillor Stobart made some comments around that last time which I think were very valid so please do bring things forward so if no one's got any comments we'll move on to the date of the next meeting which is the 18th of January 24 at 5.30pm which brings us to the close of the meeting if there's any other comments thanks very much