 Gŵr eich meddwl, ydych yn gweld i'n gweithio'r Cymru, y Gymraeg, y Cyflawn Davies, y Gweithio'r Cymru? Ymlaen i'n gweithio'r Gwyl Llywodraeth, a dyma yw'r Gwylodraeth Cymru. Mae hynny'n dreflu'r cyflawn hwnnw i'r cyflwyng. Mae'r rhan o'r pwysig, wrth gwrs, sy'n gwneud y cyd-dweithi. Mae'r rhan o'n gyflawn hwnnw i'n gweithio'r cyflawn hwnnw angen, ac yn cyflawn hwnnw. Gall y cyfnodd wnaeth ymgylchedd angen y dîm, mae'n ei adnodd y cyfnodd edryhiren a'r gweithwyr yn llawer arlinei gwneud. Mae yw'n gweithio i ddyn nhw, yn y fwrdd fwy yn gallu ei dod y cyfnodd yn cyfanyddio rhai o edrych ar gyffredinol, mae nydag hynny'n deall y rhai o'r cyffredinol ac yn y gweithio'r ddaethol ai'n tryr o ffordd ffrindig. Efallai angen ei rhoi gyffredinol o'i amgylcheddy i'r ynnig o'r sgolwyd, yn ei dweud yn gweinig hynny o'r unionid o ddefnyddu'r d Wholefyrdd, ond y bwysig o gych chi'n byw ddrefciwch i ddweud o'r unionid. Beth sy'n ei ddefnyddu'r dweud, o traumat cadw ar y ddechrau, oherwydd yr ysgolwch yn dweud o ddechrau o'r unionidol i ddylch i ddefnyddu'r ddych i ddweud, oherwydd y Chair o gyffeithio ar hynny i ddweud yr ddechrau i ddechrau ffelodolau a oed itiol. I will now invite each of you to introduce yourselves. Members, after I call your name, please introduce yourself and say which ward you represent. As I said earlier, my name is Councillor Stephen Drew, and I am one of the members for Canbourne. My vice-chair is Councillor Graham Cohn. Thank you, Chair, and I'm one of the members for the Fendit and I'm full-warm water. Councillor Anna Bradner. Good evening. Thank you, Chair. I'm Councillor Anna Bradner. Thank you. Councillor Tom Bygert. Councillor Tom Bygert. I'm one of the members for Longstown to North Stoke, Oakington and Westwood. Councillor James Hobrow. Hello. I'm James Hobrow, and I'm the member for Foxton Ward. Councillor Helen Leaming. Hello. I'm Helen Leaming. I'm one of the members for Canbourne Ward. Councillor Judith Rippeth. Good evening, Chair. I'm Councillor Judith Rippeth. I'm one of the members for Milton Ward to each ward. Councillor Richard Stobart. Thank you, Chair. Good evening, Councillors, officers. I'm Richard Stobart. I'm Richard Stobart. That's fine, Councillor Stobart. We are happy to have a little pause for a moment. It's unfortunate, of course, that the moment you are called upon, the cough arrives. Are you ready? Okay. So, Councillor Richard Stobart is attempting to induce himself, and Councillor Stobart is one of the members for Gertan. Thank you very much. I do not believe that, apart from our Cabinet colleagues, we have any other ordinary members present. No. Okay. So, we also have Councillor John Bachelor present. Yes, John Bachelor. I'm one of the two members for the Linton Ward. Thank you. And Councillor Bill Handley. Yes, hello, everybody. I'm Bill Handley, one of the members for the villages of Over and Willingham. And Councillor Brian Mills. Good evening, everybody. Brian Mills, one of the members for the Salford and Ward and Deputy Leader. Thank you. Councillor John Williams. Hello there. I'm John Williams. I'm one of the members for Fendin and Fulwyr Ward, and I'm also the lead member for Resources. That's it. I don't believe I've missed anyone out who is a councillor. No. Thank you very much. We also have with us several officers. Liz Watts, would you introduce yourself, please? Good evening, Chair. Liz Watts, Chief Executive. Thank you. And Anne Ainsworth. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Anne Ainsworth. I'm the Chief Operating Officer. Thank you. And Peter Maddock. Good evening, Peter Maddock, Head of Finance. Thank you. And Fazzana Ahmed. Thank you. And Peter Campbell. Hello, Peter Campbell, Head of Housing. Thank you very much. And Rory McKenna. Thank you, Chair. Good evening, members. Rory McKenna, Monitoring Officer for the Council. And Stephen Kelly. Good evening, Chair and members. Stephen Kelly, Joint Director of Planning. Thank you. Caroline Hunt. Alex Snelling Day. Good evening, Alex Snelling Day, Waste Policy, Climate and Environment Team Manager. And John Hall. Good evening, John Hall, Service Manager for Environmental Health. Thank you. And Michael Parsons. And David Hill. And Ian Senior. Thank you. And Jonathan Moulton. Good evening. I'm Jonathan Moulton. I'm the Cabinet Support Officer and I'm livestreaming this committee. Thank you. And I assume there are no other officers present as I've read out names to people who aren't here. Are there any officers who I've missed out? No. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And I also note that I now have the arrival of a number of extra Cabinet members and councillors. So what we'll do first of all is we will ask the councillors and the Chamber to introduce themselves and then we'll go to the Cabinet member who's joined us online. So councillor Sue Ellington. I'm councillor Sue Ellington. Good evening all from Swage C Ward. Thank you, councillor Aiden Vanderveer. I'm councillor Aiden Vanderveer. I've written the people of Darrington Ward. And Henry Batchelor. Evening chair, other than being a few minutes later, I'm councillor Henry Batchelor, one of the members of the Linson Ward and lead Cabinet member for Environmental Services. Excellent. And I will just ask one more time if there is anybody else present in the meeting who, after that marathon introduction, I have not offered the chance to introduce themselves. If I have, please do so now. I believe I tried to introduce myself but forgot to take myself with me. So that's the first for the evening. Kevin Ledger, Senior Policy and Performance Officer. Thank you very much. Are there any other officers online who I haven't yet asked to introduce themselves? Yes, Chair. Good evening, Chair. Good evening, Bender's members. Jeff Member, Head of Transformation, HR and Corporate Services. Anyone else? Hi, Heather Jones, Assistant Director for Planning and Building Quality. Thank you. One more, I believe. One more. Thank you, Chair. Phil Bird, Corporate Program Manager. Thank you. Excellent. And during that period of time, no further councillors have arrived, so I think we can genuinely finally move on from that bit. So thank you very much. Okay, Councillor Stogart, are you feeling okay now? I just wanted to check. Excellent. Thank you very much. I believe that Councillor Bygol, they kindly got your glass of water. And so if we move on, please. I confirm this meeting is quiet. There being at least four scrutiny and overview members present here in the Chamber. If any time member believes the meeting, would they please make that fact known to me so it can be recorded in the minutes. And item two is apologies. Are there any apologies, Ian? Two apologies from committee members, Councillor Sally Anne Hart and Councillor Peter Fane. And also apologies from Councillor Bridget Smith and Councillor Tumey Hawkins. I believe that Councillor Libby are also apologising. Is that correct? She didn't know whether she'd make it, so yes. Okay, no, that's fine. I was just making sure I read my email correctly. Okay, thank you very much. So, declarations of interest. Members are required to declare the existence and nature of any interest which affects or relates to any item of business to be considered. If the interest becomes apparent during the meeting, then the member should bring it to the attention of officers at that time. Do any members have any interest to declare in relation to any item of business on this agenda? Yes, Councillor Stogart. Thank you, Chair. So, yes, I need to inform the committee that I'm the director of both SCIP, South Cambridge Investment Partnership and South Cambridge projects. Thank you very much. And then moving on to number four minutes of last meeting. The minutes from the 15th of December 2022 last weekend today will be presented to the meeting on the 28th of February. Number five, public questions. We do not have any public questions. And then we move on to number six, as per the agenda. So, for item six, we have the business action plan 2023 to 2024 revision. Obviously, members have had this paper for the statutory period of time. I've had the opportunity to read and prepare questions and just to make sure, although I'm not expecting a presentation, just to make sure that nobody wishes from the officers or cabinet members to say anything of any significance before we begin the questions. Take matters of note. Okay, so, what we're going to do is following the same strategy as we used, I think quite successfully last week, we are going to see if we can break the questions down into a series of headings. As I said last time, this is not an absolute requirement that we follow these in some particularly strict fashion, but at the same time, it perhaps will assist us as we go through. So, we are starting off with our business plan. So, what I'd like to suggest, first of all, members, for asking questions is, if we have any questions related to clarity around the meaning of numbers, this was something that came up in our pre-meeting. So, is there anything anybody wishes to ask in relation to clarity around the meaning of numbers? Councillor Hobe, I see your hand in relation to that, first of all. So, thank you, Chair. I had several questions about some of the numbers in the business plan here, and perhaps I could just run through them one at a time. So, I'll start on page 14. Really, the questions were basically the same question, which is to try and understand the context of the numbers and make sure that whatever it is we're trying to achieve, there's some meaning in the numbers. They're not just numbers that don't really have any reference. So, the first question was about, yes, page 14 on section on council homes. So, in the second column of the table in the middle, it talks about building, delivering 375 new council homes over the five-year period. So, I found it hard to understand whether that is, how significant that number is, without the context. For example, I think we know how many council homes there are in stock, but how many council homes are being bought and removed from stock in that five-year period, or would we expect to be bought and removed from stock in that five-year period? Doubling the rate from 2019 sounds like an ambitious target, but what numbers also do we have to assess the need for new council homes to be added to the stock? So, I thought, really, some context was necessary to understand whether this is an ambitious target or a less ambitious target. That was the first question about numbers. So, if you have a number of questions, the moment you're the only person who's asked in this category, I think your question is going to be quite technical. What I might do is stop you after each question, give the person a chance to think, and then we can come back to each time, councillor. I think, otherwise, you risk having a number of very technical questions. What I'm planning to do here is, in the first instance, councillor Milne's is go to you as a deputy leader. I recognise you may well then go over to councillor Williams, obviously, as he comes under his remit, or go to councillor Bachelor, and then, obviously, if you wish to go to one of the officers, please do so. So, councillor Milne's in the first instance. So, I think we should go on housing numbers to councillor Bachelor, who has a service. councillor John Bachelor. Thank you. Can I just check which pages we're dealing with first, please? Is page four, four of appendix A? Page four. Right. So, the question is about these, the housing numbers, isn't it? Yes. So, we are planning to build 375 houses, which are affordable, which are a mix of rent and right shared ownership. That represents 75 houses per year. This is double the number per year that we are building compared to when we actually came into office. You will appreciate that South Cowns doesn't own significant amounts of land, so the way that this works is through the planning 106 system that means that developers develop the land and then we bid in with other interested parties to buy the affordable elements of various developments. So, the limitations are obviously the amount of money available and the bill should go on. So, shall I stop there and see if councillor Hembrough wanted to develop that further? Councillor Hopebrough? So, thank you for the answer. One of my questions was how the rate of building relates to the rate at which council houses are being removed from the stock. Do we have any information on that? Right. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me. Peter Campbell might be able to help us on that. Right-to-buy has been a very significant issue in the past. Before Right-to-buy, this council had nearly 10,000 houses that it managed. We are now about 5,700. But the Right-to-buy has been running at about 20 or 30 a year, I think. I see Peter is with us now. I hope she would like to confirm that. So, over the past two or three years, there has been an increase in council house numbers, the number that we've built or acquired has indeed exceeded the numbers lost through the right to buy or buy other means, and the growth has been about 25 or 30 per year. What I will endeavour to do is, and the actual figures are shown within the asset management strategy, what I will endeavour to do following this meeting is to provide an update on those numbers and circulate those, if that's acceptable. Councillor Highbrough. Yes, that would be great. Thank you. Councillor Highbrough, do you have a second question? I do, yes. So, this is also about numbers. So, this takes us on to page 17 of Appendix A, or within Appendix A, and it was about the ambition for empty homes. So, it talked about bringing 40 empty homes back into use. This is the third line in the table, objective number six. Once again, I wonder what the context is here. Do we know how many empty homes there are? Or do we have an estimate of how many empty homes there are? How ambitious is this goal compared with the size of the problem? It's really my question, because I couldn't really get that context from the numbers on the page. Councillor John Baxley, again? No, that is me, actually. It's an environmental health issue. Okay, Councillor Milne, so who am I going to for this one then? I'm going to go to John Hall. John Hall? Yes, to be honest with you, I don't really have those figures at the moment about the estimates. Those figures are likely to be available with my colleague Leslie Beavers. So, as with Peter, I'm more than happy to provide those following this meeting, if that's okay. I'm sorry, Councillor Hobe. Before I come back to you, I'm looking at the table that Councillor Hobe is referring to, and Councillor Hobe is obviously asking the question about how significant the 40 empty house is by the end of 2014-25. I note that in the column at the end, 6A2 says, assign 200 empty homes a priority classification using the scoring and rating system against the agreed criteria. Are we able to read the fact that the table is referring to there being 200 empty homes that be given a priority classification? Is that something we can use as an indication of the total number of empty homes that exist? I'm not sure who is able to answer that question as a sub-question to what Councillor Hobe has asked first. I see Councillor Mills, and I also see Liz Watts' hand up. I'll go to you, Councillor Mills first. Yes, I think Councillor Hobe brought a very useful question. We've tried to extend the business action plan this year recently with the additional column, and I think he refers quite well to how we compare with previous years or what the total figures and so on, so I think there could be some work in terms of the next revision. This is a draft that we're looking at, and I can quite happily take that recommendation away and put it in the final published report. Thank you, Councillor Mills. Liz Watts, did you want to come in as well? Nothing to add to what Councillor Mills said. Thank you. I think you both hand up at the same time, but obviously great minds thinking alike, as we would say in that moment. Councillor Hobe, let's go back to you. So thank you very much. I mean, I think that's a good way forward, and really it was just to understand the context, how big these numbers are compared with the actual issue of empty homes as a whole. So really my basic question is to make sure that somehow conveyed in the report if possible. Thank you. Do you have any no further questions at this point? No further questions at this point, thank you. Okay, thank you. Councillor Bratman. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to, it suddenly popped into my mind, and it's simply to clarify something. This relates to empty homes, I think, in private ownership, and we developed a strategy, didn't we, to deal with how we were going to approach that, because obviously summer west, the resident has deceased, sometimes they're rentals that are not currently rented out, and so we did have a strategy for that. So it was just, this isn't council homes that are empty between lets, this is private homes in private ownership. Okay, fantastic, thank you. And just a pause for, sorry, Councillor Lenton, I'll come to you in a second. Councillor Heather Williams just entered the Chamber, so Councillor Williams, you should be so kind as to introduce yourself. Thank you, Chair. Heather Williams, I represent the Mordans Board. Thank you very much, and Councillor Ellington, I believe your hand was up. Well, while we're looking at the strategy, I have a question on page 12, where we're talking about under number 2C, I think it do seem, or somewhere around there, creating 100 meaningful trading opportunities for small businesses, and whilst thinking this is a very good thing to be doing, I'm just really fascinated at what trading opportunity you could create for a plumber, or a bricklayer, or because those are the sort of small businesses that are mostly in our villages. I'm going to come to you, Councillor Byrn Mills, as we don't have Councillor Byrn's meeting with Donald, so maybe you can go first, or suggest someone else. Oh, we do, I do apologise. Councillor Peter McDonald is there. We'd like to, is it okay if I go to him, Councillor Mills? Yeah, Councillor Peter McDonald. Thanks, thanks, Chair. Yeah, so what Sue Councillor Lenton is referring to particularly is the work that we've done in rural areas principally for startups. So these are principally small business startups, hence we took the number of 100 to identify within villages. As Councillor Lenton mentioned, yeah, if you are certainly an established business, or you're a business, I don't know, like a bricklayer or anything else, it wouldn't be so appropriate. But if you're a small trader, a retailer, somebody who's starting up a new farm shop, which has happened recently as a spin-off for a market initiative, then we do give support to those businesses. And that's what we're trying to address here. I hope that's helpful. Thanks, Councillor Lenton. Thank you. Yes, I think a little more refinement might be used quite useful. Thank you. Thank you. So yes, Pete Campbell, is your hand still up from the previous, or is this wanting to speak at this point? It's wanting to speak at this point, if that's okay, Chair. Just to confirm the figures on empty homes. The empty homes strategy from last year has figures from October 21, and there were 663 properties that have been empty for six months and over, plus 207 properties that have been empty for over two years. Sorry, Pete Campbell, can I support you for a second? Can I ask you to start again on the numbers, please? Sorry, I personally was unable to hear, so everyone else was fine, but personally I couldn't quite hear. Could you do the numbers again for us? So 663 have been empty for six months or over, plus an additional 207 that have been empty for over two years, and those figures are accurate as of October 21. Okay, Richard, then I've got you. I've got Councillor Stobart first, and then I've got you. So thank you. That was some Councillor Lenton with combat. Yes, so Councillor Stobart. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So page 15, item four, we will support energy efficiency improvements in private sector housing. So my first question was how many households, so it is a numbers question, if you will, and it's an intriguing one, so in the expansion of the 2023-2024 objectives, there's a good degree of activity, but where does this sit? So it might be reasonable to suppose it's not building up to, say, a full passive house retrofit standard, but where does it fit on the spectrum of energy improvement? Secondly, is there wrapped up in this some attention to the overheating question, which I think stands in the shadows a little bit, but is still very important. Then gathering best practice, there's reference to establishing a private rented sector landlord forum. It's excellent for gathering best practice. That's part of something that could be much bigger and very helpful to future developments in the housing sector. So yeah, those three questions. That's the milms. Who would you like me to go to? Yes, it's page, it's a gender page 15 and item four, which is the second one in the table. Page five is the appendix. We have a number of quite complex questions at this stage, so I think if we pause for a few seconds each time, I really don't think that's a problem. Yes, I'm just refreshing myself to see whether I or one of the officers should deal with that. And actually, I'll defer answering that if I may chair, and I'll come back either later in this meeting or a written answer to that question, because it is clearly really important for us that energy efficiency of our own houses is dealt with as quickly as possible, and especially in this current climate. But I'll reference that again either in writing or later in the meeting. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Council of Underwire. Yes, I'm just on this question of empty homes. I'll follow up to the numbers that Peter Campbell gave us, which were helpful. I think it would also be helpful to have some idea of the scale of that. My recollection from the discussions where we adopted the strategy was that the proportion of empty homes is relatively low here, and also that it was a quite difficult problem to address. And so even the scale of action that we're talking about, the business plan, was significant. So if there's any sort of clarification on the scale of the problem and the scale of what we've written, help give that context that we've written. And please, Campbell. Yes, the figures are low, and it represents, if I remember correctly, 0.3% of the total stock in the area. So 0.3% of the total stock in the area. Thank you. Yes, that's very helpful indeed. Great. Thank you very much. I have Councillor Lee May. Thank you, Chair. I'd like to ask a question about page 14, please, which is a question about the 75 new homes completed. I guess my first point is actually just a statement, which is, if that's doubling the number of houses which have been built from the point when, from the previous administration, that's a great achievement. And I'd like to about knowledge, the hard work that's involved, to have reached that point. But I wanted to ask whether those 75 new homes, whether they include, recently we've had some news which we've received £4.5 million for refugee housing to build 30 new homes. Does that 75 new houses a year, does that include those refugee homes, or is that a sort of base rate plus these additional 30 new houses, please? That's a meal. Chair, please, campers' hand is up. I'll go straight at the end of the slide. Yes, so the target was set before the new funding became available. So if funding's available, I think we'll be looked to do the 75 plus the 30, although the refugee funding is so new, that's not been formally agreed yet. Thank you, Peter. Would it be something that we could consider putting as a sub point on this output then, as a secondary thing that we're going to aim to achieve over this year and the next? It would be really good to have that noted down, I think. I can see no problem in doing that, as I said, that the refugee funding is so very, very new. It was only agreed earlier this week. We've not had time to include it within this plan, but it can be included in the next iteration, I'm sure. Very much. I thought it might be breaking news. Councillor Lee, you are all over it. It's clearly excellent. Thank you very much. Councillor Drew, I've managed to find the figures that were asked for before about the net gains in properties. Would you like that information now? So if we look over the past, back to 2013, the net difference has been a loss of 46 properties, and roughly that's for a line. The early years there were lotters of around 25 per year, going up to the last year where figures are available to a net gain of 37. So there has been a change, and as I say, moving forward, it looks like we're providing more properties than we'll be losing. There you are. You've got an answer to your question a little while ago. Thank you very much. Excellent. Thank you. Councillor Cohn. Thank you, Chair. My one question is around sort of private rental housing. So on page 15 of the document where we talk about energy efficiency and improving energy efficiency within our own stock of council housing, obviously the government is putting in regulation around private rental houses, and obviously this document will lose the fact that we will be doing our best to enforce that and make sure that is being adhered to. So I was just going to ask around how much teeth we've got as a council to enforce when residents are reporting breaches to us, and tying into that with the lots of stuff in the media around damper mould in houses. When we look further on in the document at page 26, it talks about the condition of houses and also that being sort of a campaign around awareness on that and people reporting to the council. So again, it's just how much teeth have we got to enforce on issues around mould, damper and making sure that private rental houses are adhering to the energy standards set out. Yes, so we recently introduced a MES policy, minimum energy efficiency standard document that we can use in controlling this, and properties that don't meet those standards can be visited and assessed, and enforcement action can be recommended. I think if we want more detail on that, we can supply it. John Hall is here in the meeting. Leslie Bevers, I think, is the officer again that is responsible for that part of the policy, and then you had a subsequent question, but generally about the same issue of enforcement. We are the statutory body for enforcement. We can be involved in, but clearly cooperation with landlords across the area is a much better route to go to persuade them of maintaining their properties, and it's not always a question of negligence in terms of issues of black mould, which in that severe case recently, for example, highlighted that any property can be susceptible to mould growth and assisting our own tenants, but also private tenants in dealing with that problem is something that we can help with. Thank you for that answer, Councillor Bradner. The question seemed to have moved off the matter of numbers, so I was just going to ask, are we sort of... No, no, interestingly, I think Councillor Cohn can see my screen and the next category is energy efficiency. So he has naturally moved us on to the next category, which as Councillor Cohn has already moved us on to, excellent vice-chairing, is energy efficiency. So please raise your hand fully if you'd like to answer a question about Councillor Bradner about energy efficiency. Councillor Bradner, you are first. Thank you. Again, Page 19 decarbonising the council's estate and operations, and at 4D how we will achieve the objective is to increase the energy efficiency of our sheltered housing and communal rooms. I wanted to ask, have we done all of the improvements to energy? I know we did a big exercise on insulation of our council housing, but also I think of our communal rooms and sheltered housing. Have we done everything we can with regard to replacing, putting in double glazed windows and solar PV on sheltered housing and communal rooms? And I know, for example, we have communal housing at Denson Close in Water Beach, but so there was that part of the question. And I'll say the second half now so that people can think about it at the same time. And that is, are we doing as much as we possibly can on our own rental housing stock in terms of solar PV, replacement windows, insulation, and wall insulation as well? Thank you. Councillor Nels. I see Peter Campbell is standing by ready to help me with this, but the process of better insulation is a work in progress. You'll know that we did external insulation to a lot of our council stock. The solar PV panel scheme, rather disappointingly for many of us, was not enforceable. We gave tenants an option, which meant that some of those that might have taken up that offer would probably be regretting today with the increase in utility prices. And Peter Campbell can give us an update perhaps on that process for embellishing our own council stock. Peter Campbell. Yes, so we have got a strong history of improving energy efficiency within the council housing stock. But there is a need to take this further. Members will recall that in 2021 you approved an asset management strategy to deal with our own stock, which included a long section on improving energy efficiency. The first step of that is that we're going to be conducting a stock condition survey, hopefully of 100% of our stock, to identify where the works needed and to come up with a plan based on the data produced from that survey. With regards to the sheltered housing schemes, not all schemes are fitted with solar panels, some have not been suitable, but we continue to look at those. So, for example, we've currently commissioned the installation of a scheme at Elmcourt and continue to be proactive at looking at solutions. Thank you very much, Councillor Bakken. Thank you. The reason I asked that, Peter, is because I had a quick look at the communal rooms and the council housing in my area, just on Google Maps, which Google Earth might not be entirely up to date. But what I noticed is, as was common at the beginning of putting in solar panels, there are many properties which have solar panels on roofs if they have roofs facing south, but we haven't got many on roofs facing in other directions. Although, obviously, you get the best return from roofs facing south, actually, you can get very good returns from roofs facing east, west and even north. In fact, they have the benefit of kicking in delivery of generation at the time when the panels facing south are not, so they actually even out the grid a bit. I just wondered whether that's why I asked, have we done everything we can, because there are some of our properties that already have systems that we could perhaps consider putting solar panels on the other aspect roof? Yeah, we've certainly not done everything that we can yet, and the amount of money that we're going to spend on our property to maintain them and to bring them to modern standards is substantial. So we have done the obvious, easy things to do, and what we need to do as part of our journey to net zero is to start having a deeper analysis and a deeper understanding of what would improve each individual property, including shelter to housing schemes and communal areas, and that journey will start off with the condition survey, which will look at the reality of each individual property. Very much. Councillor Hoagway. Thank you, Chair. This is a very closely related question, really, but it's about the same part of the efficient plan about improving energy efficiency of the council having stock. So really, I wanted to voice strong support for this as the first and foremost measure in terms of, because it has the win-win of really significant carbon reduction, but also reducing heating bills for tenants. I wanted to check that this, the energy efficiency measures are actually at the top of our list of priorities, because of course there are many things that we could spend money on that relate to this, and also to try and understand how ambitious the target is, so that the headline target here is to bring all council properties below a C EPC rating. So is that something that really is going as far as we can on this? Is it an easy ambition or a hard ambition, or, and how, I suppose, how high is the priority of energy efficiency over the other measures that we're taking, if that makes sense, is a question. Councillor Millan, to the first instance, or another, as you're going to say? Thank you, Chair. I think I'm quite happy to press that onto piece because he's operationally closer to the answer to the question, but certainly in terms of policy then clearly energy efficiency in our own council stock is a priority, but like everything, budgets will have their place to pay, and I'm just very conscious that we've got very high escalation of prices in the supply chain. I, myself, went for a quote from the Silver Together programme that the Council operates, which, at the time I applied for it two and a half years ago, offered me a complete system, including batteries for £6,000. That same offer is roughly £4,000 more than that today. So the supply and demand equation and inflation is taking quite a toll on this, but I don't know whether the pizza wants to add anything to that. Pete Campbell. Only to say, we are taking energy efficiency and carbon reduction very seriously, but we've also got to balance that demand against the need to have your housing stock that's otherwise well maintained and looked after. So we can't choose to do one over the other. These are both a major piece of work that need to take place at the same time, and indeed are complementary. So by setting a minimum energy efficiency standard, a PC of AC, is a challenging but realistic interim target for us on our overall route to net zero. Councillor Hobart. Yes, I think that broadly answers my question, and I'm happy to leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Stobart. Thank you, Chair. So I'm referring to strictly its decarbonisation, so it's agenda page 19. That's nine in the action plan item four. We will decarbonise the council's estate operations. So it was also partly a numbers question. What would be reasonable as reductions in the six categories? No, we don't want hostages to fortune, but on the other hand to have a rough idea of what is the reduction in carbon emission that's within scope for all of these areas, what would be ambitious and appropriate. And it does suggest a certain innovation agenda. So in the planning, the detailed planning would say, well, we should do things that we know to be reasonably achievable. So I think the second column confirms that. So there is ambition, but it would be useful to have some kind of indication of ambition. Where do we stack up against other councils, for example? And I'm just going to leap ahead if it's okay. Page 21, item nine, we're going to tell the world about this and the councillors will be included. We'll be in the vanguard, I hope. And that pooling good practice is not just this, but the various other things we've been talking about. How do we best do that as a council? Is it to have somebody whose job it is to gather all these success stories and to link them up and to basically do the sums on what we're actually achieving throughout the spectrum of operations? Thank you very much. Councillor Mills. Well, our colleague Alex Snelling Day, I notice, is standing by and is probably the most appropriate officer to ask about some of that detail. But clearly, we are ambitious in the extreme, I would say. Green to the core is not just a slogan. It's a prospect that underpins everything we are trying to do. So net zero targets are very, very important to us and we're working hard to do that. But we have constraints and Alex might want to talk about some of those with some of our projects like the render renewable energy, which has had to be slightly curtailed from its original size, for example, just because of cost constraints. So Alex, I think I would see you to give a little bit more detail if you can. Thank you. Alex Snelling Day. Thanks, chair. Yeah, a little bit more detail. So obviously we're balancing our targets that we've set out in the net zero strategy around carbon reduction targets with a range of projects that help us get to those targets. So I think Brian alluded to the fact that Councillor Mills alluded to the fact that we have to balance the kind of cost effectiveness with actually meeting those targets. So the projects mentioned within section four on page nine are around the mix of us generating our own electricity in order to power fleet and reduce our carbon emissions that way. But also looking at what else can we do in order to bring down our carbon whilst we are bringing on other sources of fuel for those particular fleet. So that's why we've got that kind of program that looks at the HBO fuels, as well as the Wren project, which looks to help us power those electric vehicles when they come online as well. So we're trying to kind of meet that future innovation around those new technologies coming online, but also at the same time bring down our carbon as quickly as we can. So it's that balancing act between the two. Can you answer those? That's great, thank you. Okay, I'll just thank you very much. Can you answer the buy dots? Thank you, Jim. So my question is on page 10, but it's the small page numbers because I don't have big page numbers on the one I'm looking at. And that's the point about EV charging. So it says in second column at least 10 publicly accessible EV chargers installed. And then in the next column it talks about a grants program and the final column 50K funding to eligible applicants. So I'm just wondering if the details of this are sort of being worked through yet and whether the local organisations would be charging for that electricity or not and whether each parish council and community organisation would be expected to work out which of the very large number of organisations that have networks and provide the apps. I don't know how many people have electric cars at the moment, but you can spend up to half an hour trying to set up an app to actually get some electricity out. And it seems to me like it could be a bit of a minefield for a parish council or a community organisation to work all that out. So I'm just wondering if we're going to be able to provide them with a bit of guidance on those sort of questions. Okay, thanks. Thanks for the mail on to the first instance. Yeah, so we have our first electric vehicle charging point grant aid program in place which answers most of the questions Councillor Bogg has just questioned. We have a supplier who will be able to set those things up so that you won't need particular expertise from the parish councils that we've offered or other community organisations who are unfamiliar with this. And they will be run by the providers. And yes, Councillor Bogg is right. You need an app, but the process of setting up an app at once is obviously a single event. So, and that's fairly normal. These people with electric vehicles will recognise the system, the one that we're using is quite commonplace. So they may already have an appropriate app for them. But of course, we're trying to make sure that the deficiency in rural installations for electric vehicles is not inhibiting people with electric vehicles to visit our area. Range anxiety is not just about getting to your destination, it's returning from. So this is going to help in that respect. We've got £20,000 in the budget for that grant system until the end of the year. We've already got several applications in there. Segal Morden has gone ahead with that as the first example of that. So I think we'll see how that develops. But I think that my own ward have two separate points of interest. So I think it's going to prove popular. Alex is on the screen again, Councillor Milne. Is there something that she can add to this? Alex, loading day. Thank you, Chair. Just to add to Councillor Bogg's question. So on the grant funding page, we've got a checklist of information that parishes can think about if they are wanting to do this. And we also link to a page where there's an approved list of EV chargers and installers, a kind of national list that's available as well. So hopefully that's provided parishes with some information and signposting there as well. Thank you, Councillor Bogg. Thank you, that was good answers. Thank you. Councillor Lee, then. Thank you, Chair. This is probably a question about the ignorance of this term. But on page 21, we have an ambition to secure brand status as a carbon literate organisation. I just wondered whether someone could explain to me what that actually would mean. Councillor Milne's. I think I'm hoping. Alex will be able to answer that because it's not something I'm familiar with. But she hasn't taken herself off the screen. So Alex. Thank you, Chair. Yes, so this is an external recognition for us as an organisation. Becoming having that brand status means we've trained senior members of staff in carbon literacy. So that's an explanation of what climate change is or human impact climate change. So it's that external recognition that we've trained senior members of staff on an accredited course to do this. And then we're also going to roll that out to other members of staff and hopefully members as well. So it's that external recognition that we as an organisation take this issue seriously and we've trained people accordingly. Councillor Lee, me. Thank you for that. Okay, and the last one of the month on this list is Councillor Breglund. Thank you. And that was actually related to what I was going to ask. I know at the county council we have made available carbon literacy training for all members as well as staff because at the county council there's been a recognition that the responsibility for thinking about carbon reduction shouldn't just lie and be the responsibility of a small coterie of officers. I don't mean that brutally. I mean, we have a very valuable group of officers who've been absolutely fundamental in bringing it forward, but the intention is to educate all of the members of staff so that everybody, whether they're in children or adult services or planning, you know, we're all thinking, all of the staff are thinking about carbon literacy. So I was going to ask, is that carbon literacy training going to be rolled up to members as well as staff? And I'm very glad to hear in due course it will be. So thank you. But are you happy first to move on at that point? Yeah, I thought that was all the comment. Thank you, chair. I had a question which is also about page 21, but it's about waste management. Is this the appropriate time to ask that? Or does that come later? You almost managed to do what Councillor Coen did last time because waste management is next. However, Councillor Coen does just want to come back on the electric vehicle charging bit before we move on. So what we'll do is that we will then come to you on waste management and anyone else who raises that hand. Councillor Coen. Thank you, chair. So my was just building on Councillor Bygott's point about electric charging points. I know some of my own parish councils have asked about getting money back once the charging points are in situ. So obviously the council is providing a grant and the parish will put some money towards that electric charging point. But I think some parish councils are reluctant to make that investment until they know what costs they might recuperate over a period of time. And I know on the website there's not much information on recouping costs and how that will work through an operator. So I just want to wonder if you could expand on that for me. Councillor Mills. So there are different models available and Alex will fill that in. One of the models is to do a gain or profit share on these schemes. But often this will be a question of up from capital versus long term revenue. And I think the options will be available there for those parishes that want to have a sort of long term commitment to the scheme prepared perhaps to invest more on a basis of doing profit share as they go forward. I think my suspicion is that at the outset the parishes may want to do this on a low impact basis rather than worry too much about revenue and see how that works out. So I don't know if Alex has got anything to add to that as an answer. Alex, any day? Nothing of substance. I think Councillor Mills has covered that off different models. I think use that list of approved installers, have that discussion and find out what the back office system is and be able to set the rate accordingly as the parishes see fit. Thank you for that answer. I wonder if we could put some more information on the website about that because I know parish councils have come back to me saying they've looked at the relevant page where I've sent them the link and there just isn't the information on the different models, the operators, how they will recuperate costs if that is something that they are looking to do. So, yeah, thanks for that. Okay, great. So as we've already fragged from Councillor Hobro, it seems to be recycling, waste reduction and such like is our next category. So, Councillor Hobro, be first. If anyone else wishes to speak please catch Councillor Cohn's eye. Councillor Hobro. Thank you very much, Chair. So my question was about the entry on page 21 so it's objective number seven which says we will reduce consumption of resources and waste and I wanted to ask about the two items in the second column there and so they say that we'd like to increase household recycling rates and reduce the residual waste in district and I'm assuming that residual waste means the black bin waste. Have I interpreted that correctly? Okay, that's good. So I believe it would be possible to meet both those objectives but still be processing more and more waste overall and I'd like to suggest that perhaps we should consider having an ambition to reduce the total amount of waste that we process on the basis that although recycling is better than not recycling, not producing the waste in the first place is better than having to recycle it and so I don't really see that ambition listed here in the business action plan. I'm assuming that there are lots of small ways and probably very dispersed ways in which we can as a district council have influence on the way in which for example single use plastics are used in our district and I think it might help if we had an ambition in here to reduce the overall amount of waste that we process in some form gradually with perhaps an ambitious but achievable objective along those lines and so I wanted to ask if we might consider that. Thank you. Council Mills. Okay Chair, so I'm going to briefly refer to this because it was in my previous portfolio which has now changed hands. So Councillor Henry Batchelor has recently taken over responsibility for this area but I know from the work that I've done previously that actually the suggestion that you've made is already there in the detail of these plans not necessarily posted here so I don't know whether Councillor Batchelor but I know that Alex is listening in still and is one of the responsible officers for this and the remarks you make really refer to the circular economy which is very much based on smaller use, reduced use, reduced waste and recycling or reusing, repurposing earlier in the process. So we're very much in mind of that as a policy. So perhaps Councillor Batchelor or Alex Snowing Day would like to add to that. Councillor Henry Batchelor. Yeah thank you Chair. I mean obviously a lot of what we have in the business plan in front of us is more around trying to change people's behaviours as opposed to anything else which obviously I think we can all appreciate is going to be isn't the easiest. So a lot of what we are you know a lot of what the outputs are around education but yeah absolutely it's a huge you know part of our business plan you know something that we're trying to do to help reach our green to the core objectives as an authority but if you want to go into the sort of my new shy in the detail I probably would have to hand over to Alex at this stage. Alex Snowing Day. Thank you Chair, thank you councillors. I think this is an area that I'd want to take away and give some more thought to because we need it to be a really meaningful objective. Obviously this is a one-year business plan as well so we'd want to look at what that objective would be and what we could achieve within that year because we've talked about things that are within our sphere of influence in terms of changing people's behaviours. I'd also want to make sure that this figure is in relation to the fact we have growth within the area so we need to make sure it was coming back to that per household average kind of side of things. So if that is okay with this group we can take that away and consider that. Thank you very much, councillor Hobro. Yeah so thank you very much I mean I think that those are great answers and I'm really pleased to hear that this is already being carefully considered. I suppose I've just the only thing I'd like to add really is that since we are working on this then perhaps it should be there in the headline objectives because those headline objectives are not too specific they're broad objectives. So if this really is a part of what we're focusing on then perhaps it could be included in those broad objectives regardless of how we may phrase more specific objectives. Thank you very much. Okay thank you very much councillor. Oh councillor Bradlund. Thank you chair it's just a reminder as I'm sure councillor Milnes would have said is that we are just the collection authority here at the district council so yes we can influence how people behave as councillor bachelor pointed out but the responsibility for disposal lies with the county council and of course they also are keenly wishing to reduce the total amount of material that they have to dispose of. I'll say this because I happened to be in a county council meeting this morning at which we saw data which showed that in recent months the total amount of waste that was being disposed of had reduced but that was largely influenced by the reduction in the amount of compost that had had to be dealt with because it's been a very hot dry summer and so there were much less grass cuttings. So you know something like that can really influence the quantity of material that we're dealing with that the county council is a disposal authority is dealing with and we can't you know we don't have a way of influencing people in terms of that it's just what happens because of the weather so just a thought on that. Thank you very much councillor Stavart. Thank you chair. I'm possibly cheating a bit here by using sorry the item so I'm on page 24 agenda page 24 which is plan page 14 item 5 that's really about working with communities but there is a mention of flight tipping but I was really wanting to focus on community-led plans because I think it touches on this issue that we've just raised. Now just looking over to the right hand column to carry out a review I wonder if that could be more than review and something like an audit or you know something that council that members can contribute to as well as officers in other words you know we know awards quite well where are the pressure points and so on and one of those might be yes we want to reduce the amount of waste that we're producing sorry I'm just using this as a for example and yeah have the community work on that rather than the you know sets of policies see what the community's come up with so I think this is a great initiative but I wonder if it you know some spice could be added to it by actually engaging the parish councils because I mean my very limited experience talking to parish council about the potential of community-led plan actually begins a lot of thought processes and I think once that ball is rolling I think the parish councils you know could get on board quite quickly with a whole range of things so I'm trying to tease a question out of this could we could we consider a kind of a broader contribution to this process not just a review but a kind of almost a brainstorming amongst councillors and officers as to what might work ward by ward. Thank you councillor Mills. So I think you touch on an important part of our work in local government and councillor Bradenham just talked about the work that the county council was doing in terms of disposal of waste and it's really important that we have joined up strategies for these issues that include and earlier conversations about recharging sorry vehicle charging for example is another example where we got the combined authority the county council and the district and now the parishes involved in all levels of that I think the liaison groups that we and meetings that we have with parishes are important in this regard vital in terms of intelligence and so the more that we can encourage that I think the better so I think more of that is going to be really valuable and it's a continued work in progress I believe. Thank you councillor Stoddart. Yeah I'd like to stress my thanks for the answers. Thank you very much. Okay so our next topic down is Enziw carbon which I believe has come up already is there anybody got anything additional they wish to raise or ask in relation to carbon we're on the fork of my list of topics I don't particularly have a page for my topics it's just coming it is that yes. I only refer to that to help members because that is where it talks about carbon literacy so it might be in that area. Is there anybody who wishes to ask anything that that hasn't been raised already? Councillor Ellington. This isn't about carbon it's about age 27 oh sorry 26 and here we're talking about actions business plan actions and one of them under 6B6 run a workshop to promote mobile warden schemes and plan the development for new scheme which will run from 24 2024. I've mentioned this last night in relation to the next item but it's more appropriate here. Mobile warden schemes are a great success across this county or our district and they are predominantly run by a UK. I have become aware in the last couple of months that Age UK has readjusted their cost base and are significantly more expensive now than they were when we set up our scheme and therefore I would warn the council if they don't know already that most of our community warden schemes will fail as a result of this unless we find either another provider or we negotiate much more carefully with Age UK. An example might be my own parish where in 2021 we had a surplus of £10,000 in our community budget forward community wardens next year we are predicted by Age UK to have a deficit of £7,000. Now in a fairly small scheme we shall go to the wall and so will a number of others and we need and we should perhaps ask whether the administration are aware of this coming up and the problems that it will cause. Thanks to Councillor Eilinton for advising. I know that all organisations are having huge problems that we mentioned earlier so but I'll use my back. I think it's a timely indicator of this as a specific as you say the mobile warden scheme which involves users of the scheme making a contribution but with subsidised effectively by the district council if that subsidy all the charges to the users of the scheme are going to go up significantly then indeed it could mean that they would fail so I think we're advised and we'll put that into the agenda for how that scheme develops. So thanks to the... Councillor Handley's hand is up. Thank you chair just very briefly yes thank you Councillor Eilinton. I am in discussions with officers about the future of the mobile warden scheme. I like you think it is a fantastic service and do whatever I can to make sure it continues. Also talking with the county council they have a new a relatively new scheme called Care Together seeing how we can dovetail those two schemes we don't want any duplication we don't want any you know we want to make sure that the two run seamlessly so thank you for thank you again and I will keep you in touch about this Councillor Eilinton because I know you have a very keen interest in it. So I don't see any further oh I do see another hand. Yes I can't see who it is oh no oh it was Councillor Handley sorry it was the hand was against participants 17 which was rather tricky for me to decide who it was but I now see that it's gone. Okay our next topic Dan is actually housing for refugees anything further on that you dealt with that. Councillor Hobro was that hand? Councillor Hobro. Sorry this is not a question of housing for refugees it was an attempt to get in in the last section if that's okay. Yes no absolutely fine you're still on carbon yes. No I thought we've moved on from carbon to Mr Lane is okay sorry. Okay so my question is about page 24. Okay hold on I'll just pause you for a second what I want to do I'll let you in in a moment um interesting Councillor Eilinton went on community wardens which was one of my later topics so a bit like Councillor Cairn did she jumped us ahead which is what no it's absolutely fine it means we're covering things. I've raised the housing for refugees but I think that was then covered earlier in relation to the council houses and I have one more topic on my list and then I will just offer it open if it's okay at that point Councillor Hobro. I have the topic down here which obviously raised last night in relation to Camborn High Street which I imagine is going to be Councillor Leaming yes it is as it's not going to me it must be you Councillor Leaming. Thank you chair and so I'm relating this question to page 13 the point point five on there so whilst I absolutely agree it's essential that we bolster and support um our existing high streets um with my Camborn Wartharton I would like to ask if we could consider um putting additional output in this section um in regards to supporting fledgling high streets um and the vibrancy in commercial areas of of our new development so um definitely I would like to see something that we could measure in terms of making progress with Camborn's High Street and also retail offerings in Northstone. Okay so the first thing to get to Councillor Mills I imagine we may end up with Councillor Hanley or Councillor Macdonald but I'll start with you Councillor Mills. The High Street Prosperity Fund is definitely councillor Councillor Macdonald's territory so we'll let him answer that but I know from personal experiences this is work work in progress and Catherine Southwood has been very helpful for us in Saarston in that respect already so Peter Macdonald can give you some more information about that thank you. Councillor Donald. No thanks chair I mean probably two points to make on the shared prosperity fund um it is a two-year program going through to 2025 um this Councillor Mills says it is work in progress at the moment so part of that working progress is really identifying the criteria that we want to utilise to support high streets and we're very very open to considering you know very small high street developments as she says those that are a fledging fledgling developments we're very very open to that and it's a good point to raise this because it's right at the start of the program thanks. Okay Councillor Lee. Thank you Councillor Macdonald do you think we'll be able to put something in here then as a commitment to support fledgling retail and commercial offerings in our new terms? Yes of course I mean it should be it should be available in our new town developments as well as the existing ones that that would be fine please come and discuss with me or Catherine or some of the officers. Thank you very much. Okay thank you Councillor Lee. At this point are there any further questions related to the business plan that any councillors would like to raise under a sort of shall we say general top of the end? Councillor Hobro I'm going to come to you first because you've kind of chicked in just before and then yeah Councillor Hobro. Thank you chair so this was a question about page 24 item number four about making it easier for customers to access and carry out transactions online. So I just wanted to make a comment that that reading this then um there was no mention of our telephone service that we obviously is older than the online services that we offer and and make the comment that that when I've received queries from residents about contacting the council and problems contacting the council it's almost always been people who are trying to do so by telephone and clearly there are lots of reasons to move more services online and I wondered if but but while we're doing that then there are some people who won't be able to use those online services and will still be using the telephone. I wanted to make sure that that builds into our objectives here we have the objectives that that our telephone support will remain good and and will have to quickly serve the people who still need to use it and I don't think that is competing with the objectives to move online I think these are probably complementary objectives but um it just seemed a little bit odd that there was no mention of the telephone in there and I just wanted to make sure that that is taken into account in the objective to move online. Okay councillor Milnes? I don't think we can take that as a recommendation from the committee and that's perfectly reasonable. Okay and Jack memory's hand has gone up to add something to this. Jack? Yes through you chair the the reference to the contact centre is actually specifically about the telephone contact centre so although we don't use the word telephone contact centres on the next line down and in fact is very much an important part of our strategy to have a holistic customer services centre where people that telephone us can get an answer on a wide range of services so yes I can give that that commitment we're not only looking to continue to have a telephone service but we're looking to continue to improve it as we have done over the last year and a half. That's the hope right? So yeah that's a great answer thank you very much. Councillor Riffith. Thank you chair um on page 23 so page 13 in the small numbers um so looking at the impacts of the initial four-day week trial so 1b in the third column and um particularly about assessing um how how that's working in the um three month period like how so how do you propose to assess the impact of the initial trial of a four-day working week although I understand this plan is a broader document but how is that actually going to be able to take place especially if we're looking at three months only? Thank you. Councillor Mills. I think as Liz Waith Watts is standing by ready to answer that question we'll pass straight over. Thank you. Liz Watts. Thank you and so you chair um there are two kind of measurements that we're doing in the three months one is comparing key performance indicators January to March this year against previous years and the other is the health and well-being survey um which we ran in August before the trial was announced and we'll run again in April so we'll be measuring have we maintained performance and have employees health and well being improved um I have um been talking to the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at Cambridge University who have agreed to help do some of the kind of data analysis to um give you know as opposed to help us to have an independent view on the analysis of the data um and they're very keen to work with us because they're doing a lot of work on productivity in in lots of big organisations so the three just going going back to Councillor Ripper's comment about the three months and is that long enough um the three months is really uh uh uh the the shortest amount of time we could use to see if we can maintain performance that's the key thing and if we can then we will be uh reporting to Cabinet in May to ask for a longer trial because the golden bullet in all of this is about recruitment can the four day week impact recruitment and retention and obviously you can't really measure recruitment uh in three months it we it's not a long enough period so if performance is maintained um uh and health and and and colleagues you know report that their health and well-being is improved then we will be looking to extend the trial um but obviously you know the the data from the first three months is really important um um Councillor Williams did you want to come in at that point thank you chair it is on four day week just following yeah no no that's fine i'm quite happy to do that let me go back to the next question i'll say Councillor Ripper yeah sorry sorry that's why i'm going to come back to you first i'll then lost my thread for a second Councillor Ripper first i do it the whole time is my turn so um yeah that was my main sort of drive for my question was how could you realistically measure the retaining talent and recruiting it aspects of that um which is the main sort of one the main things behind this um but thanks i think you've answered that so basically at least a year would be needed to begin to answer that question thank you Councillor Williams thank you chair um i'd just like to double check that when there's opportunity for officers to feedback that they are able to feedback if they are doing a four day week although they're still doing five just unofficially um so if there's some way to make sure because because then the performance figures wouldn't change but they are working above the hours that you're expecting them to work if that makes sense so just to make sure that we're keeping regular track of who is um actually having to go back into their fifth day uh this was thank you chair um yes Councillor Williams we're doing a weekly survey of all colleagues in the trial and one of the questions is are you managing to do you work in four days um so we will be able to track that over the three months of the trial we'll also be asking a question in the health and well-being survey um about whether people manage to do their work in four days and if they're what i've agreed with the Bennett Institute is that we will look to when we get the results of that survey if there are kind of specific areas in the council where proportionately more people were saying no we will follow up with qualitative interviews to try to get under the skin of what what that was about and try to find out more about that data so we certainly will be able to identify um uh that specific thing Councillor Williams. Councillor Williams. Thank you so long as there's some distinction because my concern be people would work longer or hours or an extra day but and so therefore productivity wouldn't falter so that it wouldn't show in the kpi so so long as there's a way of distinguishing i think that's important okay thank you i have two more remaining on this i think we are then done with the business plan i have councillor Lee mey thank you chair um this is a very miscellaneous question um it relates to page 19 um and it's to do with the wildflower medals um it's very interesting that we're going to create four wildflower areas on sites located across the district and i wondered whether we knew where they were going to be um what the scale of these sites would be um and whether i could ask if we could use a native seed mix for these wildflower areas. Councillor Milnes. Sorry i didn't mean to sound unsure that you could answer there right i shall say again councillor Milnes. I'm not sure i've got the ability to answer your question so i'm going to notice Alex has appeared again so i'm hoping that she's got a possible answer for you. Alex no day. Oh hi there sorry sorry chair um yes so we'll be looking to scope out both sites but also what's suitable for each site as well so we will definitely make sure that we've got um you know that these have been signed of biologists in terms of what's what's right for that particular area so looking at that wildflower seed mix as well and native seed flower mix so at the moment this is obviously our business plan for next year um yeah we're looking at doing that work and scoping work next year as well. Thank you councillor Leany. Do we know where they're going to be? No not yet and this the size of this would be contained by where it was i suppose that's yeah thank you. Thank you and councillor Bradlin. Thank you chair. My question is um on page 25 big numbers 15 of the little numbers um and it relates to the um objective on page five on page four but it's the specific how will we have to the objective is 5D and it relates to in partnership with Cambridge County Council and the Greater Cambridge Partnership deliver a civil parking enforcement scheme for South Cambridgeshire and the outputs will be the launch of a parking enforcement scheme by the end of quarter three and i just wondered do we have have we got the legal wherewithal now to be sure that we can deliver that by the end of quarter three and are there any associated costs that might have changed in the recent um because it might involve infrastructure and lights and or AMPR you know that might cost more now. Thank you councillor Mel. Yes so the um civil parking enforcement um is on track at the moment to uh full fill that targets the end of quarter three uh the finance of that has been predominantly covered by the GCB for the signs and lines work and so on. The um the process has to go to parliament to get approved so that may be a delay point but we've tried to incorporate that potential in this timescale so let's hope by the end of this um calendar year we'll be able to have civil parking enforcement which is a desire that is strong in our community. Sorry when you say calendar you need 2023 or yeah. It's just that the business plan covers to 24 doesn't it? I just wanted to check thank you. Okay right and um I have added my name as a last point um I want to go back to the questions asked about the four day week um I come to you councillor Mel's in the first instance and you may then defer to Liz Watts. In the answer that Liz Watts gave she referred to the fact that the trial for four day week is January February March yes and this then referred to the fact that there was an intention to report cabinet in May and possibly asked for an extension to the trial so what is going to happen in April until we get to the report to cabinet in May we'll all start to be going back on to a five day week since the trial has come to an end and and permission hasn't yet been sought to extend it. I think I'm going to go straight to Liz. Liz Watts. Thank you chair so permission was sought in the cabinet report to uh in September when cabinet signed off the four day week um that was one of the recommendations that rather than go back to a five day week for potentially six weeks that assuming that everything was working except acceptably you know that we were planning to propose an extension um that we would continue through to the 15th of May that was a specific recommendation to cabinet in September last year. So to follow up on that question you're still referring to potential proposal to do that so can I ask when you asked it although yes thank you for correcting me there by saying that it was in the proposal to cabinet but you are still referring to a proposal to extend for those six weeks and not close the trial down. So what is the plan for that proposal to be made when is in your intention to do that? So that was agreed in the September cabinet meeting that if everything was going according to plan you know we've always said during that during the trial if suddenly performance dropped and we'll be managing we'll be monitoring performance every month uh we might halt the trial at any at any point in time um but if by the end of March we're confident that performance has been maintained um then we already have permission through the cabinet report in September to go through to the 15th of May rather than revert back to a five day week and then potentially go back to a longer four day week trial. Okay and will that be based on published data or will that be based on your perception and the perception of senior officers of the success of the trial and when I say perception I don't mean that in a negative way I'm just seeking to make sure that we know exactly what's going on here because obviously you've talked about the fact that there will be the KPI data which will then be used to assess for May but I'm just wondering what is the formal process for the proposal to go beyond March within the terms of what you've already described which was agreed back in December. September so um that's okay so um although we normally bring a KPI data to scrutiny cabinet quarterly we have monthly data and I'm reporting to employment and staffing committee in South Cams and to strategy and resources in the city every month between now and April and so there will be touch points where we'll be saying this is the KPI data that we have at the moment and so so we will be publishing you know it may not be the full suite but we'll be publishing as much of that data as we can um and as as I mentioned um we'll have kind of independent analysis alongside us by the Bennett Institute to you know make sure that the data is being properly analysed. Okay great thank you very much I'm happy to move on at that point which brings us to the next item on our agenda which is item seven which is the budget now you will notice that you also have a conservative group budget proposal for 2023 so 2023 to 2024 so my intention is effectively to treat this as item 7a and item 7b clearly the bulk of this will be item 7a which is the administration's proposal of budget which we'll see most of the questions and discussions and such like at the end of that we will then move on to an or what I will call an item 7b which will relate to the budget proposal from the conservative group now the structure of this will be that for the budget proposal although I will initially say to councillor Milne's I'm sure he will be defering to councillor Williams for obviously virtually every single question and then we will discuss the administration at the end of that we will then follow a similar procedure where questions related to the conservative group's alternative budget proposal will actually be posed to councillor Heather Williams who will also in the same way as councillor Milne's or councillor Williams will be able to if they need to to defer to officers will also have the opportunity to defer to officers in the same way should she wish to do so I'm sure the balance of time will not be equal but we will see how colleagues ask questions so in the first instance related to the budget proposal that has been made by the administration the first set of questions I would like to ask for is anything relating to planning matters such as S106, neighbourhood plans and such like hold on one moment I am being told that councillor Milne's wants to come in no councillor Milne's didn't want to come in councillor Bradlund can I um ask whether members are happy with doing it I'm not I just want to check if everybody's happy doing it that way that's fine in other words the themes as suggested by yourself but actually sometimes people think of things in a different order and and it's quite hard to be constrained by that so and it might be the order that exists in the agenda papers so I just wanted this to people I for one I'm just kind of quite formulaic and I want to go through the agenda papers and the order it appears in the agenda papers rather than trying to think just planning come later on I am more than happy to return to the kind of open structure that we have gone through before but it has been suggested to me that the meeting may well go quicker if I require people to stick to sort of topics which obviously don't work perfectly um equally I am also happy to listen to alternative view which is that doing that isn't particularly helpful but what I have done for the last meeting and for this meeting is in response to comments that have been made to me by a number of members is that working with Ian and with Graham we have come up with some themes based on the pre-meeting to try to kind of structure things in that way what I would suggest councillor Bradlund is okay is that we follow free on that proposal for this meeting and then afterwards if colleagues wish to suggest that they want to go back to the more open approach which equally I'm entirely happy with that we do say for next time can we ask members today how they feel about it just of course you know because if they say yes that's great Steven that's fine um and if they say well actually it's easier to do it through the agenda then that might be easier I'm not I just wondered would like to know I asked this because as a chair I have sometimes done that and I've actually knocked it as helpful as it to the members if they don't know what they're going to be asked okay you know so colleagues if anyone like to we will try to make some very quick discussion otherwise we wish this be coming on next major agenda item would anyone like to comment at this stage on the process we're using I I'm not sure who was first but I saw councillor by got first interesting councillor wrote down leming but I'm going to go to councillor by got first thank you Chairman so I'm just wondering if you're going to take questions on the appendices at the same time and if if we are could we not go through the appendices in order happy to do that councillor leming I was going to ask if we're going to do it by themes could we be told the list of the themes and then we can prepare where our questions fit please okay two very different questions which is like on a thought process councillor Williams before I give me a few more moments to think of my answer councillor Williams check if I can try and bargain a compromise um that uh perhaps we just take two minutes for everybody to write down the themes and and just have five minute adjournments so that people can organise their thoughts um and then councillor Bradnell could maybe have a free for all at the end okay so now you've taken put me off and made me laugh okay so the themes that have been suggested in conversation between myself and Ian with Graham is the first theme would be planning that the second theme would be grants that the third theme would be greening of south cairns hall then ambient noise elections arts and culture and street lighting well yes okay so it's not a strict criteria you know if you go out and councillor Bygwrth has something to add at this point um is there a miscellaneous category there is always a miscellaneous category which I believe occurs repeatedly throughout the process whenever you choose to play it and most definitely occurs at the end thank you okay so as suggested very wisely I believe by my colleague on the right we will take a couple of minutes of pause for people to reflect upon that before moving on and I think it's very sensible to return having a German those who wish to take the time to think may do so those who wish to go to the toilet may do so we will start again at 10 past seven yes excellent okay welcome back everyone to our speaking overview meeting on the 19th January 2023 so um further conversation in relation to that what I'm going to do is as we talked about in terms of those themes but I'm also going to do is when I raise a theme I'm going to ask Peter Maddox to point out to us which of the sections within the budget this in general specifically refers to so that those officers who are responsible for those sections are aware and also that Councillor Williams is aware as well and had a conversation with Councillor Milne who has suggested to me that I go to Councillor John Williams in the first instance each time which I expected him to say but I'm glad I've had confirmed so therefore we have questions related to planning as our first issue so um Peter Maddox can you tell us which section of the papers generally we are looking at for planning so that will be pages 77 to 84 okay thank you so if you wish to ask a question in relation to this please can you raise your hands I have councillor Stovart first then councillor Bygot councillor Stovart thank you chair um so um my particular set of questions relate to agenda page 81 which is I can't find a small number so it's page 81 under planning delivery so um I'd looked at three entries the planning performance agreement s106 administration section 106 administration and strategic sites and this was uh or the question I was going to pose was um a general one about planning performance agreement just what did it actually mean it's a small item um but then um I wanted to continue with um section 106 administration being the next thing on the list um why is that um apparently shrinking there is an explanation at a time when you know section 106 should be busy with our strategic sites there is actually a reduction in the proposed budget and then perhaps a similar comment against strategic sites and again a little explanation as to how that budget is used but why at a time when in a sense our strategic sites are very busy is that budget falling thank you after john williams thank you chair um I'll ask Stephen to respond to this I mean I this the income we get from section 106 agreements very much depends upon um the the agreement that's you know the uh conditions of the agreement and a lot of them are linked to the delivery of an occupation of of housing and I think we've seen a slow up in that also um it is very much linked to um the the major sites because changes in government planning policy over the past few years you know section 106 agreements on small sites have virtually dried up um so I'll ask Stephen to respond to this but I assume it's because we're not getting the building rate that we originally expected Stephen jelly uh thank you chair um well this actually relates to some of the modernisation work that we've been doing in the planning service seeking to recover more of the cost of administering the development process uh from the development industry itself so just to help councillor stay by planning performance agreements are um uh best practice effectively in in um planning practice guidance but what it is is it's effectively a um expanded pre-application um process in which uh the council recharges the developer the actual cost of providing that the officer meetings the officer time and so on to their pre-application process now we do have a number of substantial schemes that are ongoing um but what we have done over the last 12 months is get significantly better at accounting for our time we've introduced a time recording system across the service which means that um we are now much more effective at recovering the cost of delivering pre-application advice to developers which is why you see um an increase of an additional 223 000 in ppa income reflecting in fact a lot of work across the built natural environment team and planning team that the team are doing um because we are still busy on a large number of sites as you've highlighted but what we're trying to do is to make sure that the residents of great of south Cambridge share a greater Cambridge do not pay us to give the developers their our time for nothing and so the reduced cost effectively is um collecting that income and the forecast into next year is a reflection based upon a combination of both um existing planning application fee forecasts for those some of those major applications that because we now have these agreements which include a timetable for the application we can forecast more accurately and secondly um our continued billing for our pre-application time that is built into those agreements um it's a similar story in some respects for section 106 um Council Williams is is right on one level but what there was a ruling towards the end of the last decade in that local authorities couldn't charge for the monitoring of section 106 agreements and you have a three strong team you're quite right we've got a lot of them but we've got a three strong team and monitoring and administering section 106s for the greater Cambridge shared planning service um uh but we were only able to recover the costs for um uh some of that team um in fact the practice between um the city and southcams i think one of the organisations wasn't collecting income to cover the costs of monitoring and it's an entirely allowable section 106 cost so as of um the autumn of this last year this financial year we have been ensuring that the developers pay us to monitor the section 106 costs proportionate in line with the SIPFA code contribution and that's what accounts for the reduced cost to again council tax payers and residents of southcams for monitoring developers performance um hopefully that's that's helpful um the both is it really important to remember that the strategic sites and and the delivery budgets are net positions we achieve around two and a half million pounds a year of fees per year through the planning application process uh and this is the kind of net position after costs of staff fundamentally staff costs but legal costs and so on for those services that are listed the reason why you see on page 81 planning performance agreements with 27 000 then 21 000 out turn this year and absolutely nothing next year is because part of the financial rationalisations that we've been doing with the support of the finance team um to resolve some ambiguity um biguities in the budget position mean that that cost centre is being effectively folded into um uh the existing uh other cost codes and it's no longer it's no longer pertinent and I think the note may be a bit long windedly seeks to try and explain that hopefully that's helpful absolutely thank you very much um so just one small supplementary question around the kind of the cash flow uh or maybe you call it flow of funding that that follows the assistance that you're providing to developers during the the planning process um how easy or difficult is this to predict and what are some of the risks around that that funding stream um there's there's thank you chair there there are there are in some respects there are two dimensions to that risk what the planning performance agreements set out a program um outlined at a point in time and although those programs are kept under review as we've seen recently the decisions of developers will will change potentially more quickly um so there are two fold risks with them the first is that um a program might slow down which might change the amount of forecast income um based upon the number of meetings for example that a developer has in a particular year and that may well have impact our forecast of the number of officer hours that we would require to deploy to that project um and then the second the second component of risk uh is that um the planning application itself which might follow from that process might be delayed or deferred and the planning application uh fee income for some of these strategic sizes is well into six figures in terms of its contribution so unlike a householder application where you need a large number of them to make significant sums up to recover the cost of a case officer or what have you um on strategic sites they are very substantial fees and they are and but they are very lumpy and so they pose they do pose risks for the service what we've tried to do is take a cautious approach to fee income next year um and we have been Philip O'Kelly the manager of the strategic sites team has been talking and continually talking to developers to try and understand their expectations um around application submissions and schemes that they're going to bring forward to give us a reasonable forecast but of course um the market conditions you know adjust quite quickly so it's something that all planning services have to keep under review uh and look at both their resource commitments and indeed their staff costs associated with what we think the work is going to be like um but also take a view on when that income is going to come in over that financial year so it's a risk we are used to managing it uh but obviously greater economic uncertainty makes that um challenge of managing it uh more difficult absolutely stay that um great that's a great clarification thanks to uh thank you answer the bygards thank you um so apologies i don't actually have any page numbers at all this time either the big numbers or the small numbers um it's a planning question but it's the line item i'm interested in is actually on the housing revenue account on index eight uh it's six of fourteen in my uh pdf page numbers index eight yes there's page 102 a benefit of printing out the agenda page 102 yes one two three four five line items down self-build plots uh this project preparing plots of hra for sale as self-build plots has ended so i'm just wondering is this just a housing uh an hra project that's ended um and are we still doing self-build plots from uh in the planning service and if so whatever arrangements answer john williams thank you i think i'm trying to think who this could be i assume it's it's it's peter i should think but can i say that um no we haven't finished we haven't stopped the bygards self-build plots because you will find in the application that will be coming to planning for the houses across the road here that there are three uh plots available for self-build in that application so we haven't stopped of you know what we have found though it's very difficult to um you know to find people willing to take on these plots and that's been that's been the problem although we've had a people register uh we have found over the years that that when plots do come up that the people who registered aren't able to take them on uh but i don't believe we have stopped providing self-build plots uh peter will be out thank you peter campbell yeah so the specific project that's ended was a project within the hra which was set up um before the time when uh the councils couldn't do um self-build you know build building ourselves uh to identify plots game planning permission and and to sell the plots on um with hindsight it looks like the number of um plots that were available um was uh was overestimated uh and there was a very um slow um flow uh flow through and most of the people were expressing an interest uh were in fact not true self-builders but small-scale developers who wanted to develop properties for um for sale so the decision was made um by cabinet in um towards the end of last year I believe to to start the project um so I could pass over to Stephen but I think can answer this bit as as well so there is um the council um through the planning service uh does still maintain a list um of self-build plots and people can register register to receive that okay thank you Stephen Kelly do you have something to add on this uh I don't think so in relation to the budget obviously self-build is a form of housing but it's a planning matter it's not a it has no budget implications for us okay thank you I'm sorry I misunderstood what we said councillor bygaard thanks James so I was quite interested to to hear that um there's insufficient demand for self-builders um given that sort of nationwide there's thoughts to be a very great shortage so uh I subscribe to a website called plot browser and they send out uh uh sort of updates that say you know there's 0.02 of an acre available in northumberland or there's a site for a static caravan in Cornwall and uh huge numbers of people supposedly trying to look for things but have to go all the way different parts of the country so I'm just wondering how we go about advertising those those plots you're familiar with for you yeah thanks so um this this did come up um at a cabinet meeting um or an informal cabinet meeting more precisely at the end of last year um and one of the issues that we have with this in terms of consideration of what we might do with some of the plots of land that we own ourselves for example um the uh there's a big issue of over viability um and that's impacting uh the um uh appetite for self-builders uh to take on sites uh where they may be smaller than uh normal um developers would take so there's there's a um yeah these are all components of that viability uh aspect that make the proposition uh less attractive so we're working in that environment thank you councillor bygwrt thank you okay and I have Pete Campbell's hand up who I think is going to close off this oh Peter has your hand gone down now sorry I was going really hard to notice what was going on here because this item's come so large yes sorry I don't want to add anything further no sorry I forgot to lower it earlier uh no that's absolutely fine okay and thank you councillor bygwrt I now have councillor van de Waire yeah thank you very much I want to ask about the um the sort of recharges to our partner in the shared planning service uh and and how that's that's sort of presented here uh because I I couldn't quite follow it I'll get to that um so this is a that I mean it's throughout the whole of the planning uh section but but pay 78 the summary um shows it clearly uh if I understood correctly uh we get back from our partner um the 1.381 million um uh which would seem to represent um just a little under half of the uh net cost of planning delivery in front of planning operations that's development management strategic science uh enforcement um and the sort of um uh technical work um but there's also the strategy economy uh the local plan line does seem to be sort of split half and half but there's also local policy and they're built for natural environment uh which are the major costs there and and so I mean just on the on the face of it um uh we we are we are I mean yeah it's not not clear how the costs the uh overall costs are shared if we're ending up with six million expenditure um for the for our share of the planning service um did you look like you didn't that didn't make a lot of sense chair but um I hopefully it will too um um um you can come to the front of the yeah so council William was first uh yeah can I can I ask Stephen to respond to this I I yes I suspected that may well be the answer since the questioner suggested that his question was maybe definitely uh Stephen Kelly this one is now yours uh thank you chair um so the the cost reimbursement you'll see in fact that the um that the issue in this in this case is is that um uh there's been a an expectation of income from uh uh being paid from the city to south cambridge a district council uh in this in this financial year and there's a and there's a gap in in in that which we recognise will result in an overspend uh that is being reported in the in the city the reason for the difference in the the difference in cost is that under the shared service arrangements there is an approach to the management of overheads uh that um effectively means that the host authority is the fundamental authority charging the overhead and the um uh the beneficiary authority uh is the authority that um uh that generally pays a cost contribution uh after those overheads have been shared there was it's it's quite complicated I'm afraid to say chair but but essentially there is a shared services agreement that sets out the charging regime on the split and distribution of costs between the two organisations the thing to remember is that although there is a shared service there are more applications in south cambridge um significantly more applications in south cambridge other than there are in the city and um on uh that what we've aimed to do is through the shared services agreement come up with a proper apportionment based upon a review in fact conducted relatively recently of the proportion of applications and the proportion of income from those applications that aligns to south cambridge and the city when it comes to things like the local plan there is a cost share so 50 50 when it comes to management costs and my costs and the management team they are shared 50 50 um but it probably isn't productive for the to to run through all of the elements other than to say there is a shared services agreement there is a shared services um uh not just within the service but there is an approach to the management of of costs um uh and cost overheads amongst all of the shared services not just this not just planning but waste uh um and it and and so forth um that has resulted in the recharges uh being what they are if you discount the recharges from the equation i'm just trying to think whether or not it's possible to illustrate that if you look at the um if you look at the the um uh table on page 78 but those those costs include the distribution of recharges and this year for example there's something around uh 1.4 million pounds of recharge for the transformation programme um uh costs which include for example the pension contribution adjustment amount to another 750 800 000 pounds that are distributed as recharges but which tend to inflate some of these costs that may appear to distort the relationship between southcams and the city the the net cost of direct service delivery for the shared planning service um uh in year is about 4.4 million uh and the difference in the 1.38 and the four and the balance of that the 2.5 or so is um attributable to the difference in the application numbers and the um income levels um the other issue the residual costs fairly substantial as councillor um uh by uh as councillor van der Vier is highlighted is a consequence of the way in which the councils collectively have agreed to disperse um uh the operational non direct operational costs so your recharges and so forth i'm sorry it probably doesn't make for those listening and i'm trying to give figures probably not that helpful but but i'm trying to explain that there is a formula and a ratio and a approach financial management approach that applies to all the shared services that appears to suggest that the imbalance but we have checked it this year and um aside from the variance between what we were expecting about 1.6 and 1.3 which is what the city budgeted for which was an error um uh which is being accounted for by growth bids in the city to accommodate that uh the the split is appropriate in our view at this moment in time um it's matters yeah so um just to add to that um when the um shared service agreements were set up um the apportionment of overheads to uh the city was based on only the additional cost over and above the support cost that we would incur if we ran the service alone so for example um it systems the building um that would be here whether we ran the service ourselves or whether it was a shared service so when they set the agreement up it was just the fact that we needed just uh just as an example we potentially need an additional HR person so they were charged for that additionality and I think we had an additional finance person so it was only the additionality of costs over and above what we would have incurred if we'd have run it as a service just for southcams which is why the bulk of the overheads are sort of fixed costs as a result of how it's uh how it was before a shared service. That was an underwear. Yeah I mean that last one probably wasn't that ideal but but as Steve demonstrated it's a very complex arrangement and I'm certainly yeah but it reassuring that um uh there's been so much work on it um I think um and um yeah do you find reassuring? I think probably maybe in the future not not not to continue with now we could find a better way of um enabling to understand the the apportionment and and yeah that into the future that the arrangement is sort of equitable uh and um for us about the pages for us as well just like so. Yeah thank you that's a good job. Thank you very much um I only remaining questioner in this section is Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you chair picking up a couple of points on what others have raised um I will start with probably the more complex actually first following Councillor Aiden Melavere on his questioning because I think it's a valid question about we have numerous shared services so for example we're covering the overheads on one and perhaps it is coming overheads on the other it may be useful to have a note with the budget papers um that summarises contributions from shared services from others and what we're putting in as a standalone table which I think might help to answer the questions that have been raised in a very clear manner um um for which then we could actually see the percentage costs and we can have that from sort of revenue in you know day-to-day applications overheads whatever it needs to be in the breakdown the table of the shared services and the contributions made I think would be very helpful in in identifying and making it clear the answer those questions um because equally I can see that on page 79 under building control we are um we have sort of expenditure going up considering from 22 and it says it's due to a change in percentage contributions by partner organisations so we're talking about multiple things going on in multiple shared services so it might yeah I think that helped strengthen my argument for a separate table chair um the other question I have is on page 81 and I just wanted to come firm based on the response where you heard from Councillor John Williams about not getting the build-out rates expected and making sure that was my you know from um from I was going to make you a councillor I called it happened to Liz the other day and that's happened to Stephen Kelly you're not um apologies for that Stephen but could you just clarify whether you were you said it partly right we were agreeing that the building rates aren't as we have predicted and are slower than we thought or was it a separate part that was correct of what Councillor John Williams said because given that the local plan emerging relies on faster build-out rates that would be a bit concerning I think chair Councillor John Williams' stance I'm sure you will defer to others but just give you chance first yeah thank you chair I I was responding to the point that has been made about about a fall in receiving section 106 receipts um I think what Stephen was talking about was the fact that um we are we've got an income we're showing an income from the section 106 administration because of recharging developers for for managing the section 106 which we didn't do before but I mean it is it is clear that there is a slowing down in um you know we can we can see that there is a slowing down in build-out rates at the moment because of the economic situation and the shortages of trades people because of I have to say Brexit um but you know I'm sure that that is a short term problem and Stephen will confirm that in the medium to long term we do not expect um you know the the expectations of the local plan not to be met during the plan type period thank you well um uh in in some respects um when we look at uh overall housing delivery we do tend to take make some assumptions about the kind of economic cycles um by way of assurance however the council is over delivering in terms of um its housing target modusly and at the last week's scrutiny meeting I think you received the monitoring report cabinet's due to receive the monitoring report that will indicate that and the last monitoring period we uh slightly over delivered about an extra 130 homes uh to target but uh council Williams is right both council Williams are right in some respects in that we're entering a challenging period for the development industry and the construction of further homes but over the life cycle of a local plan 15 year life cycle of a local plan those economic cycles tend to balance out in which we find periods above target delivery and periods below target delivery but where is a um without wishing to uh indulge the committee's time on the local plan discussion there is a delivery report that we have prepared that we referred to last week in in this meeting um in which we are testing and seeking assurance about delivery rates to avoid a circumstance where we cannot meet the fulfilled identified need that we put forward in the plan thank you before I go back to council Williams to come in um I'm just going to say would anyone like to reference the first bit that council Williams raised regarding the possibility of a additional table or such like which showed the breakdown of information of contributions because just before I go back to council Williams I clearly I'm sure she's going to say that haven't been answered so I'm just going to preempt that in my chair role um council John Williams in the first instance could you just give me some thoughts in relation to the first part of what council Williams said um yeah I don't have a problem with including that okay great thank you very much council Williams uh thank you chair and I think the percentages and ratios is particularly important to make that um table meaningful thank you and are you intend first to move on regarding the second half of your question yes chair thank you very much so our next bit relates to grant so Peter could you perhaps point us towards which section of the report or appendices we should be looking at excellent okay colleagues who would like councillors colleagues who would like to ask in relation to grants in the first instance and he has to be raised on this but we want the embarrassing for me if we have a section and then not one of you raises your hand I've undermined my whole process excellent thank you very much councillor Leaming yes I know councillor Williams I recognise that you may not be so concerned about such an event occurring councillor Leaming thank you chair um my question about grants is kind of a global question about grants not specific to the tables um it's actually more related to page 30 which is the summary page before we get into the detailed tables um so paragraph 12 on page 30 states that um the provisional settlement that we've received at the end of last last year um is on the basis of grant income for 2023-24 being around 600 000 pounds higher than predicted in the median 10 financial strategy um and that this looks like they'll now they will not be a gap when all the budget figures are available they had previously thought that they would be but there isn't any more so my my first question is um we were warned to suspect that the fairer funding review will have a negative impact on our finances in the future and I wanted to understand how this settlement and the fairer funding review are related if at all and if or if they're separate processes um and it do do we have the option to earmark money to help us in the future to help us prepare for the fairer funding review which we suspect is coming? John Williams yeah thank you um quite good question actually because um one would assume that um all goody we're going to have some our outturn is going to be better than we expected and therefore we can spend more money um in the financial year the fact is that because of the fair funding review you will remember that when we looked to the medium term financial strategy um the estimate the forecast was that would be about some six million uh short at the end of the five-year period and most of that is down to the fact that we have to make provision for the fair funding review which um regardless of what happens in the general election we we we believe will happen um that fair funding review I think all the indications show that there will be a shift in money away from district councils to uh to county councils and unitary councils to pay for uh social adult social care mainly um but we have to expect that we will see how um now we will see the settlement after 2020 from 2026 onwards um be tougher for us than it is now so any saving and any surplus that we make we have to put into reserves um in order to carry that forward into the mtfs to reduce that end deficit of six million so it's not a choice you know of being able to use that um unexpected improvement in the outturn for next financial year um on things in that financial year um we need that money going forward to set aside the deficits that definitely will be happening after the fair funding review I'll I'll leave for Peter Peter Maddux so um I think it's probably helpful to view the things as two separate things if you like um so um we had predicted a worse settlement obviously when we were preparing the meeting um but when the um during november when we had the the budget um it did start to become clear that actually um we probably wouldn't see the cuts till we had first fear and that was I'd say that was then confirmed on the 19th of december um they have indicated that 24 25 and settlement will be on a similar basis I'm totally sure what they mean by that other than I don't think we we will see huge cuts but they have also made it pretty clear that after that we will see the cuts as John referred to so I think um you know I think review the the first two years or the next two years um there's some reasonably stable funding but as you rightly point out we need to think about what's going to happen in 25 26 if we make circumstances on our general fund that automatically gets put into our general fund reserve so that money is automatically there um so in theory we could use some of that money to um offset in-year deficits um we can specifically earmark money for for that as well we have got an earmark reserve um for losses on business rates and if you've had for a couple of years so again the intention with that was to use some of that if we saw losses significant losses in business rates um having said all of that as as we saw at the audit committee earlier today we have got significant earmark reserves um so I'm slightly nervous about um putting even more into our earmark reserves because what the one thing we do know is that um central government are probably going to be starting to look at the level of reserves that councils hold um and there was a danger that them potentially they might start looking to to recoup some of those reserves that we hold and we have got significant reserves so there's a bit of a balancing act to be had in principle I agree you know you want to try and prepare as best you can for 25 26 but I do believe we've got we've got plenty of earmark reserves at the moment to manage that certainly initially it's so difficult to know what's going to happen um then um as John said I mean we've potentially got a gam at 6.3 million it could be better it could be worse so I think em I think probably the thing to do is to set our budgets um we are expecting a surplus in 23 24 now so that will ultimately go into our general fund anyway and act as part of the buffer and contingency against future future deficits absolutely me thank you and it's actually very reassuring to hear that offices and and members are considering the long-term financial strategy thank you both for your answers and John sort of repeat um my question leads on slightly from your answers from just now um with not wishing to have too much in the reserves but just the right amount and I'm just looking at page 87 and I note that the arts and culture grant is zero um having been not a huge amount in previously but whether that could be altered maybe not this year but you know in the near future as something which I think is an important part of the district as well. Thank you for the arts and culture line is a new line in fact because um arts and culture is is funded through the community chest um but I think the feeling is that we ought to have an arts and culture policy and that policy you know policy would have its own budget in due course um I think until we see that arts and culture policy which I hope will develop over the no in in the new financial year um as I say we we do we do account for that in the existing grants scheme but not specifically for arts and culture so I think maybe in the coming year we will need to think about that we need to develop a policy and then think how we how we will fund that policy um but at the moment it's obviously too late for for next financial year. Thank you I was thinking ahead that seems like a good plan thank you. Thank you I don't have anything further in relation to grants of any hands raised looking all around so our next bit is quite a narrow thing which relates to the greening of south cams hall it matters what we are do you think here okay um yeah get my words out who has a question related to the greening of south cams hall Councillor Leaming. Thank you chair and so this has been a major undertaking um which seems to be wiser every day as energy prices rise um and this work that's undertaken must have created efficiencies and I wondered where we would see those in this budget. Councillor John Williams. Well it is in transformation uh it's where we see the savings uh from what's happening um here I don't know Peter you know where they are you know people. It matters yeah so the savings appear in the live facilities management so um the say oh sorry um 80 92 92 92 so within facilities management there'll be some savings from um electricity etc so that'll be that'll be coming through in the figures in there. I mean the actual scheme itself falls within the capital program so the actual cost of doing the work doesn't fall within the revenue budget but the savings obviously can be revenue savings. Councillor Leaming before I come back so I have Councillor Neill going to add something and then I'll come back to you. I think the um the only thing that I want to add to the response of so far is um the benefit that we see from the increasing utility prices uh which clearly gives us a significant earlier payback on the projects than we originally anticipated so despite the uh rather unfortunate delay in the scheme finishing particularly in the car park area of course that I'm referring to I see Talmac has been laid today finally so we look forward to creating the benefits of the scheme very shortly. Councillor Leaming thank you um obviously there are green benefits and practical benefits but I did just want to see to know where the financial benefits will be falling in as well so it's very helpful to see that it's in one line thank you very much. Does anyone else wish to ask anything in relation to that matter? No so our next thing on our list is to do with ambient noise or noise pollution whichever phrase you might want to use. I know they're not the same thing I don't know I just made it sound like they're the same thing noise um which section do we think this has a section Peter? So this will fall under climate environment and waste and so that's pay in shorty one almost and I suspect there's probably a line specifically. Okay Councillor Stobart thank you chair so um it was a general question about noise management um now what's quite prominent and amongst the things that the district council does is um you know deal with nuisance noise noise spikes to parties and karaoke things gone wrong and so on but um there is a in-center rising level of ambient noise particularly you know in urban areas in new towns that might be down partly to construction but traffic levels and and so on so I wondered the the item that I just particularly focused on noise nuisance control is that simply you know the the big items you know the parties the loud parties or is it more um all embracing around that that kind of increasing ambient that can actually be as bad in its effect but may not be so noticeable that people start you know calling the council Councillor Mills I believe you wish to answer this first yes and again um if Councillor John bachelor is there this is now his domain so obviously I've cancelled a Henry bachelor I don't know yes it's it's if he's still online it's his domain but obviously I've been from that portfolio for a while I've got some experience of this and I see John Hall is uh also standing by um in in uh wanting to respond to this so we um the ambient noise level um issue is something that's very much in um uh that domain obviously um and for example nighttime news uh nighttime noise nuisance is set at a much different level than daytime um but the um the requirements uh for us to have evidence of uh repetitive noise nuisance still remains irrespective of the ambient background level so if you were regularly woken up at four o'clock in the morning when everything else was very quiet that would be at a different noise nuisance level if that makes sense and I'm not sure that we we have a relationship with uh new developments certainly planning conditions will tell the developers what time they're able to work from until typically from eight o'clock in the morning till six in the evening or perhaps longer in some cases um and the public are able to relay uh you know consistent breaching of those conditions uh John I don't know if you want to add anything to to that response um you've said most of it really I guess um one of the things that has been very evident is uh I guess the COVID effect is that people are working at home a lot more and uh in within their houses are very made aware of the kind of noise that they're not normally exposed to so uh not only south camsbut nationally we've seen an increase in noise nuisance um complaints um but in terms of the the financial situation obviously we've got the resource that's been indicated there which is mostly salaries but we we have uh kind of a a moving resort in terms of the offices of multidisciplinary so where there are peaks or uh increases in complaint work we we have the ability to kind of respond to those accordingly. Thank you Councillor Stavart. Thank you um through chair thank thank you to for those contributions I just wanted to highlight one of the point which I might not have explained so clearly which is yeah during the course of um yeah for example um a new development in which we've reduced the traffic levels or we've increased the the level of active travel so there are less car movements probably less um commercial vehicle movements as well um uh I was interested in where that fits um with um you know control and management and environmental noise so yeah yeah when there are when a development is half complete do we go and check you know that the noise levels are the ones that we've predicted so I may be still going beyond topic here but I just wanted to raise that as uh another related concern. My understanding and John can confirm or deny this is that the uh the levels set for new noise nuisance um are uh quite distinct and daytime and uh lifetime of different levels uh so I don't think the um amount of traffic for example is particularly pertinent in in that respect um so and normally the process for um being aware of a noise nuisance is uh by people who are impacted by that nuisance letting us know and the process for example says we'll collate the evidence uh let us know when this is occurring and if we have see a repeating pattern uh then we'll intervene. That's a story about? Yeah um yeah through you thank you to the contributors. Yeah I don't have anything else in relation to that so next up I have a basically a big issue related to um budget matters and changes to election rules with the introduction of voter ID. Any people aware on this? Okay thank you uh who would like to raise their hand on this? I believe it is you again Councillor Slavart yes? Yeah chair um I think it's big in the news so it did come up in our um our earlier discussions um the um of course there is no big election next year and so the budget items do seem to be quite satisfactory. I'm wondering um if from a risk management to risk management point of view if uh next year's sorry this year's elections do miss fire with voter ID just what are the risks and what might be the issues budget wise uh for south cams maybe we are actually looking uh to the next financial year we just wanted to reflect for a moment on what are the financial risks around what might go on you know elsewhere in east cams or where there is an election this year. Councillor Milnes am I going straight to Liz Watts? Yes Liz Watts. Thank you chair and thank you Councillor Slavart um so this is a what's known as a new burden um and so uh it's funded by the government so in theory um the cost of having to provide ID for voters should be fully funded um obviously we will be watching very carefully um how it goes with uh the district elections that are going on in May this year. I think the risk to be honest is probably more around um people not realising that they need voter ID and turning up and uh not being able to vote rather than the cost of actually providing voter ID because that is funded and so so the risk probably isn't related so much to the budget which is obviously what we're discussing tonight. Okay Councillor Slavart um yeah um thank you through you thank thank you for the answers. Nothing else from that from anyone so next up I actually have arts and culture but Councillor Riff if you have asked a question in relation to that already now no it's absolutely fun. Is anybody else who wishes to ask anything in relation to arts and culture? I see Councillor Heather Williams hand has gone up. Thank you chair I'm very pleased with myself I've got the right part for meeting as well um on page 87 on the arts and culture I just wanted to check because it says about the release of historic 106 and we can see in the 22 23 uh a credit figure of 28 so I'm assuming that that money is still required because it's tied up in 106 to be used um on arts and culture once this policy comes through but we're because we seem to have sort of got income on it as it were because if we just haven't spent sorry it would be right. Yes sorry Councillor John Williams. Yeah normally with section 106 the um the contribution to to art is very specific it's normally to provide um an art um for for a particular development or particular community um as a result of the development um clearly though there are occasions when um it's less specific that uh I think you know we do need to take into account this is off the budget now we do need to take into account though the section 106 contributions towards our towards art within our as I say we need to be looking at a policy um because we need to also include that in the policy so that in future we can ensure that uh any contributions made by developers for art fit within the policy framework of the council. I mean we have to believe it that yeah okay Councillor Williams. Uh thank you chair so do we hold that 28 000 for future years or can it be reallocated was the crux of my question. Okay I'll go to Peter Maddox then. So um as as the note suggests this the actual spending of the money actually came out of it so we're actually putting the money back so we're we're correct until identified that doesn't however stop us from deciding to email that 28 for something else so we can separate the two transactions and we could I don't think we have it at the moment so we haven't actually done that at the moment but we can in theory email the 28 for something in the future. Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you that's the answer I was talking about. Great thank you very much um so I shouldn't move on with nothing else on that. Our next our last identified end is street lighting yes and went straight up in Councillor Ellington before you ask Councillor Ellington just asked Peter is there any particular area where we think this might apply to? Yes okay I see vigorous nodding from other officers on that one as well so Councillor Ellington. It's another one of my local things that applies to all above villages um it's on page 443 there's foot footway lighting mentioned but actually I'm talking about street lighting generally street lighting used to be managed by the counter council it has when I was portfolio holder it was up by the council council and given to all the parish councils to manage for themselves many of our villages are very small with up to or less than eight street lights to try and negotiate for a street light um with some of the big power companies is very difficult ordering on impossible and they are now charging some of the most ridiculous prices over a thousand percent more than last year and I would ask that under our footlights lighting footway street lighting that we look at establishing a south cams contract which each of our villages can buy its subcontract into um one of the examples I have in my village one of my villages is that there's the thing called an empath or something that sounds similar um and this is given every time a new street light is erected and in ffendraton there are something like 13 street lights in all and they've got three impacts of which the current provider charges 350 pounds per impact which is quite a lot of money especially as one of them doesn't use any electricity at all and trying to persuade that power company to um amalgamate all of them together it's a bit like knocking your head against the brick wall and getting no response whatsoever we need to help our villages that's what we're here for so I'm begging us to do something about it um councillor williams or councillor byn mills councillor byn mills so um actually councillor anton has raised this issue before and rightfully so uh it's an issue that's a real problem for the smaller parishes as she identifies and there is a um some light at the end of that tunnel um so the eastern shires purchasing organisation is available to assist local government including parishes in the procurement of energy so they've got a joint contracting arrangement um I think actually in one of Liz what's recent weekly updates she referred to this so councillor anton may have missed that or missed the importance of it in this regard um so happy to share that with councillors again members again so that they can pass this information on to uh onto the parishes and it's a councillor anton describes it really quite succinctly um most of these contracts are uh uh commissioned on a non-meter basis uh so uh they'll just add uh the number of uh lanterns uh that are uh listed and and put a multiplier on it but it's very difficult to get them to even answer the phone uh I remember working with my own parish council and four of us sat in the office for 35 minutes before we even got an answer to the phone and the electricity companies are not interested uh your assessment is absolutely right so the eastern shires uh purchasing organisation is the route that we're recommending to solve that problem councillor anton I believe one of five villages is the one I was talking about is with them and they ain't much better it's that if that's the case uh then I'm pleased to take this offline with Sue and uh and find out what the uh what's going on there but would it be reasonable council members for me to say that obviously councillor anton has raised this issue a number of times and whilst there isn't an easy answer and there is not an obvious answer and there is the issue regarding where responsibility lies you are most certainly saying that you are happy to continue discussing for councillor anton that's excellent thank you very much I just I just note in my capacity of chair that this is something that councillor anton has raised numerous times and she's right to point out this is something we should be trying to do but equally is entirely fair to point out it is incredibly difficult but obviously the matter will continue to be processed excellent thank you very much so we are at the end of our list of bullet points so now oh no councillor Bradlum's hand is up I do apologize because I thought you were I was yes I have three I note how everyone is ready for the next section each time councillor anton you set the tone on that earlier on and now of your colleagues are there okay so we are going on to more miscellaneous section anything people wish to cover we start with councillor Bradlum please raise your hand and count councillor anton I should you wish to say anything else right so I've got three questions as long as I don't lose them the first one relates to page 46 taxi licensing and I'm just interested uh at the amount uh expected to be expended in 2023-24 which seems considerably more than we expended in 2022-23 in the previous year so I'm just wondering why so much more uh is being put under gross predictive gross expenditure councillor John Williams it's on page 46 yes thank you thank you chair I mean one of the things that we are finding is that taxi drivers are referring to license with us rather than the city um there are lots of reasons for that um then you can see that um here we are expecting um although an increase in expenditure we're so expecting an increase in income which pretty much matches that expenditure and that's to say the increase in expenditure I think is due to increasing activity because we're seeing more drivers coming to us where they're likely to license uh particularly obviously private hire licenses so then we've gone off of sir infer as well if you'd like to have that before you carry on sorry so again there's an offer I think there's an officer ready to infer if you want to take that before you come back John or are you adding to this yeah yeah just just following from councillor Williams comment we have made a shift in the amount of full-time equivalence into that team there's there been additional half a post that's been moved based on that increased activity that half post came from another team within our service area so there's no additional cost to the councillor stuff it's still within that kind of salary envelope so there hasn't been a shift in resource and that's something we constantly review across all our services all the time to make sure that the the resort is in the right place and as you know um those additional costs should come in there's a cost recovery as well so that's a piece of work to make sure that any additional work done with taxes is is cost recovered so um reason I'm a little bit concerned about that is because um in earlier years we used to try and align our policy with that of the city so we didn't cause a uh an artificial shift uh from city licensing to south cams um and I'm just anxious that we shouldn't inadvertently create a situation which um is unintentionally adverse to the city um because actually what I'm concerned about is that we have the right number of licenses in the district council and the and conversely I hope we wouldn't inadvertently skew that away from the city accidentally so I wonder can we just um can I just sort of ask for a a note to John Hall that we might just be careful about that and do we know what it is about our policy and I suspect it's the I suspect it's our emissions uh criteria which may be more favorable to drivers of the current vehicles than the city terms are is that right John sorry yes sorry John sorry um I'm minded to suggest that the answer to this question is more than a licensing committee question than a switching over to your question um you entirely like to raise a concern about and I'm not in any way suggesting that but just mind for a time to get through what we're doing what's going on your answer is could we take that offline absolutely absolutely yes okay so can I move on to the next question then yeah the next one is about housing on page 67 yes uh well it's under the housing heading but it's homelessness page 67 and you know we have known for a long time that the um the risk of the cost associated with homelessness and uh finding temporary housing and I just wanted to check with the officers but what and indeed through the league member for housing whether this um anticipated expenditure relates to temporary housing for people who who are homeless in the district and the council of council of mills it would be um yeah I know I know it's the council of john bachon I'm just going to share with council of mills but I believe that the council of bachon I really think is left so Peter Campbell's ready to answer that question thank you Peter Campbell partially so the homelessness is a much wider service than just emergency accommodation the emergency accommodation will form just form part of that overall amount if councillor Bradman would like the a break down to provide the aid we can do with that outside this meeting if that's any help thank you that would be fine thanks for Bradman look forward to that offline thank you and the last I had was on page 69 which relates to um it's relates to traveller sites and I wanted to understand why we are anticipating a greater gross expenditure in 2023-24 on this uh than we've had you know obviously in costs increase but I just wondered why we are on at 438 000 uh rather than the lower numbers you know what is the increase in costs that's being anticipated here because um the reason I point this out is because this relates to management costs sorry if we just look at the narrative it says management costs of the county owned traveller sites in as maintenance this refers to in mud and mills and parish yes Peter Campbell yeah I'm sorry councillor that the sound cuts off on the from here for for quite a lot of your question um but um I think the gist of it that you want to know why the cost increased I don't have those details to hand but I can get those to you as soon as possible outside the meeting thank you you've got the gist correctly Peter do we have any other further what I would refer to as miscellaneous questions in relation to the budget presented by the administration because in that case then the final question will be me um um to either councillor John Williams or councillor Byron Milne's we get to be Byron Milne's this time say the councillor Milne's or councillor Milne's in the first instance um I'm just interested to know in relation to the budget obviously you're presenting it as what the administration believes would be the best budget to have in place um one of the things I've heard you talk about previously is the success that's occurred in the the previous four years of 2018 so I'm just wondering councillor Milne's if you could give me any thoughts about the extent to which you think that work you have done as the cabinet member since 2018 has allowed you to present this budget and I'm thinking more sort of long term in terms of work there because I've also heard you talk about what's coming in the next couple of years and I'd just like a bit more sense of what impact you think the work you've done in 2018 has had on the current budget well thank you um okay I think the there are two two things that made a big difference first is transformation one of the things that we did when we took control back in 2018 is to look at the way the council was structured and seek to improve its productivity and and and obviously its quality of service to to our customers and the public and so transformation has managed to deliver us savings that obviously wouldn't have been there if we hadn't changed the council the other area is our um and sadly put some changes to Government policy we're not allowed to pursue this anymore but it's our commercial investments when we um came in in 2018 basically the commercial the only commercial investment this council had was Urban Street and um and we felt that that was risky dangerous and as it turned out actually we were right because having a vehicle that was purely to make commercial profit purely there for gain for yield um has now been stopped you know or not stopped but you can't follow against the public works loan board for that sort of thing and what we did was diversify so we went and looked for investments particularly commercial investments and Cambridge Science Park for example where we now have three properties is now delivering us a very good income which obviously helps towards providing more services but it also spreads that uh that risk that we didn't have all our eggs and we don't no longer have all our eggs in one basket and obviously Urban Street again has has developed very well and we've taken Urban Street now into um our housing strategy so whereas before it's simply there to make money it's now seen as part of the council's housing policy and is helping us with our with our strategy to deliver affordable homes for everyone every sort of type of housing for everyone and we have concentrated it on the travel to work area whereas before it was about going on buying cheap houses up north to deliver us a you know a a good way to return um so i think those two things have fundamentally changed the budget fundamentally changed our income and our expenditure and have enabled us to do a lot more um and yes the you know the the the the total turnover of the council if you want to put it that way is considerably higher than it was five years ago but it's also enabled us to do that with with um more income from um sources other than grants and council tax and business rates and it's put us in a good position going forward because although as i said earlier you know the fair funding review is going to make life difficult for us it would be far far worse if we hadn't have done those things when we came in and the situation we wouldn't be sitting here now you've only got to go outside this council and look what other councils are facing to realise that this council's got a very sound financial basis and that those two things that we did have enabled us to say next year we're now looking at uh a small surplus whereas for many councils they are looking at big deficits so uh i think that's you know so i think we've achieved now over the last five years not quite five years yet actually by the way um we've achieved an enormous amount in this council so far as the financial um you know stability of this council is concerned thank you very much for your answer um so we come to the end of what i referred to as 7a which was the administration's presentation of their budget and questions from there and as i have said we now move on to what i'm going to tie to the 7b which you should have received both the paper online sorry emailed online previously and also as a hard copy which has hand out the site of the s and the conservative group budget proposal for 2023-24 um obviously as i said the process ends up being basically the same which is the rate of our questions but for the rare occasion as occurs we will look over to our right here and we're looking at counselling Heather Williams um in the interest of fairness because obviously the screen overview committee hears at great length from the normally in this case a deputy leader and this case thing from there um what i always kind of make clear is that people are able to take a very short period of time initially to kind of present their paper should they wish to do so and i know that motion time people don't take the opportunity but in the interest of fairness as i do offer it to others i will offer it in the first day to counsellor Williams maybe a couple of minutes counsellor Williams if you wish to make any statement regarding your paper before you are the one that faces questions uh thank you chair and i i think i will as is traditional i normally move the amendment at full council um and give the context uh and it's um the desires behind it um it's before you today it's scrutiny for me to receive questions answer them to best my ability but i believe officers are on hand if required um so i will just open up for questions and just to be absolutely clear all members present are able to ask questions and in the same way as counsellor Williams is able to ask questions of the cabinet members cabinet members are also able to ask questions of counsellor Williams on this occasion as i'm sure they're aware but just so we're absolutely clear so um counsellor Cone sitting there with his pen at the ready who would like to raise their hand first count i believe counsellor van der Rea has raised his hand first um thank you very much neat i would like to ask um point about point two and link it in with a little bit with point four um so the the proposal to um put some money towards board prevention is wondering what what um uh it's an interesting idea uh i'd certainly want to know a little bit more about about the mechanisms that would um uh be effective um how how would this money achieve those aims um and and isn't the south comes magazine as a as a um something that goes to everybody quite quite an effective way that we do have of raising awareness of our issues uh and therefore we sort of slightly undermining that that that's a aim in tune by the proposal in in for counsellor Williams uh thank you chair i think the um and thank you for the question in relation i'll start with number two um in fraud prevention because it's very difficult for us to ever really quantify how much money is saved through fraud prevention um but i think there's also a moral there's a moral issue involved as well i think we should be very clear to people that we are willing to um prosecute fraud and but that is no that that's a deterrent but i think the prevention is more than that so having spoken with um officers as to what they feel would be achievable this is why we've come to a figure that we have um just more awareness within community and schools because particularly actually what you find is through schools networks and from community networks you are you're you can achieve your aims more than you can necessarily council down so this would enable funds for promotions it will enable funds for you know promotional material to go into schools to to go into community builders all these things um not not suggesting that we set up a um what you know you just have at school as sort of grasping up or snitching environment but essentially making it really clear to people that where to go if they become aware because there can also be a big fear factor for people in reporting there reporting their neighbours but that is the best way to be honest that we're going to find out so this particularly focuses on on initiatives that would have maximum coverage through more local routes than necessarily council top down so i hope that answers where the money would be prioritised on number two when it comes to the south camps magazine i think it it does have a role to play hence we're not removing it entirely um but as we go forward and you see other some councils don't have one at all um other councils do one a year um do like an annual report and i do think that uh to do four is is too too much at the moment um i think also what we know is that people that have role mail and opt out for junk mail for example they're not getting it at all because they don't get it through the post um there are other ways of distributing things and actually if we could lower the amount of magazines that we're doing and and the huge amount of time and energy and effort that officers spend on producing the magazine when we know that the online has more impact now it has its place the magazine but i think we could actually alter and make sure that we are looking more into who gets it who needs it who wants it rather than a lot of residents that inevitably don't look at it it gets put in the bin and also i would say you know it's compatible with green to the core values of not using so much paper and and what have you so i think it's got an environmental benefit as well um so it has its place but it it is a cost to the council and it is something that is not used as much as it wants was and therefore i do think one every six months um is is suitable for for a modern caring council being green to the core thank you chair councillor van der Weer thank you very much that's a very informative response thank you councillor hope right so i uh my question is about item one freezing council tax and i suppose it's it's a concern and a question and and the concern is that uh at current rates of inflation a freeze would actually be a substantial cut in real terms and uh since council tax is progressive and our expenditure is sort of focused on uh perhaps more on members of our community on low incomes then if we were to put in substantial cut in real terms that might tend to exaggerate inequality in this area so that's my concern but the question really is is is to sort of balance that out what what would the what would the saving be for say a bandy council tax per month compared with say heating costs for an average house um in bandy per month so so you know what does the saving look like when compared with other costs such as heating costs so hello audience thank you chair through yourself um so in relation to the saving i think what's proposed on a bandy is the five pound annual increase but to put that in perspective that is 17 packs of spaghetti um from tescos it's it really is we are seeing people that are struggling for the first time um at the moment and forgive me i don't know the heating costs for a bandy property because i imagine that actually would be quite different because bandy can go from anything from a two bed to a four bed it all depends on where it is so i think that that would be very difficult to get a true comparable but we know the average bills are going up i think that's fair to agree and say um my my take on this as well is that actually we have a very affluent area in many respects in assets and therefore a lot of people in our in our district are above bandy and they're not people that are on particularly high incomes if you imagine if you bought a property in the 1940s you're now retired um and you you didn't pay a lot for your property but by natural values when it was even though some time ago you're you're quite a high council tax band and on a pension age so i think that i understand the issues around inequality but i think at the moment when we have fuel poverty um as high because we're so relying on oil i don't think it's as clear cut as if you're on a lower council tax bracket you're not going to be struggling i think people are going to be struggling across the board on this um i would say as well that i do feel it is it is fitting with the motion that we passed recently we passed a cost of living motion for council that did say and bear with me i can load it was that we would be mindful of the cost of living crisis in the setting of next year's council tax so i would say that i am being compliant with that motion in in promoting this here um i hope that goes some way to answering the question that's my hope right um yeah i think it does i mean the figure you put the figure you gave me was about five pounds per year is that right yes that is that's in the administration's proposed um what you've just been looking at i mean i think compared with monthly heating costs then that is the very small proportion okay thank you okay um my next person on this is councillor melds actually i was going to say a few of a very conscious that it's 929 and uh i'm quite likely to have something to eat today so i think um with um the conservative group promising to bring this back to full council for full deliberation perhaps that's the time that we could do that thank you okay councillor john williams yes i i can go without although i would say for those people watching this um what you're proposing is a 10p saving a week um and i would like to ask well i'll ask it later but if you if you don't put council tax up in next year you've still got to find that saving the year after that and the year after that and the year after that so what cuts are you going to make in future years to pay for your the not putting council tax up 10p a week councillor check are you asking councillor williams to answer answer that now or are you saving the are you kind of preloading the question for a later time because to some extent i feel it would actually only be fair to allow councillor williams to answer the question now if she wishes to do so because otherwise the recording of the meeting leaves the question hanging without the opportunity to answer so councillor williams if you would like to answer please do say thank you chair i'll answer it as i might not give the full answer that councillor john williams is looking for but i'll do my best to give what i can and of course the 10p a week relates to if you're banding as i've previously explained a lot of people aren't in banding properties um and i understand the principle of it's you're a lost fund and we keep going up and up and yes i'm not denying that there'll be difficult decisions to make but there are areas of of costs in the council that we could make going forward we have not got the resources as an opposition to put an mtfs together in a five-year five-year plan if you want to give me officer resource councillor williams um i don't think they'd be very happy with you for it but i'll happily take it and provide it but i i do think that we do have to bear in mind the accumulative impact of things like council tax we can throw it away and say 10p a week but as i've said over that year 17 packs that's a pack of spaghetti every week for some families and for those with higher council tax brackets it will be more and when you add that on with the rises at the county council you add this on you add on a potential new mayoral precept it just gets to a point where actually people are watching every penny at the moment and i think we should never lose sight of that or forget that so um i hope i don't think i'm you know i can go on till nine o'clock but i think council briar millons is stomach may be rumbling by that point chair i hope that at least has given some way to answering councillor john williams's question okay and since i don't see anyone at all count strange hope row so i did have one of the question i decided this is going to be the last one i promise it will be quick so it's about number three the the planning enforcement uh or compliance officer um so do do we know if the compliance department has been operating at its full existing staffing capacity in the current year because i i was only in questions it wasn't um but it might have been operating at reduced capacity due to recruitment recruitment and retention issues so i think i'm i'm not sure what the answer is to this but i think it's relevant to the um to the proposal so if anyone does know the answer then quite like to know i'm seeing councillor williams and at this point we may also be getting an officer intervention councillor williams first i'll try and go it alone first chair and see if i see if i require help so yes there has been vacancies um and agency support in the service um that doesn't mean that there isn't a need um what we're looking to do is sort of you can see from the figures that that could be a long term secured um extra resource uh we've been told four day week it's going to be easy to recruit so i would hope that you could fill two spaces if what we've been promised you know comes to fruition um but it's going to stop you for a moment um i'm going to say something that may not be completely popular with all my colleagues um councillor williams item was placed at the end of the agenda um i notes that a number of my colleagues are currently packing away at the end of the meeting can i ask you not to do so um councillor williams is answering questions still at this point i think it's only fair that we give her the same level of respect and focus as we have given to all of the answers given by councillor mills and councillor williams so i apologise for the fact that i am now developing a tone which is perhaps challenging the behaviour of other councillors but i think it's only fair that councillor williams gets to answer her questions with the same level of focus as everyone else i apologize for interrupting councillor williams please carry on thank you chair um so so yes i i do hope that we would be able to fill that even if potentially it would have to be filled with agency we you know i sit on planning committee and they're definitely in my view is a need for extra resources to deal with some of not necessarily the number of volume of cases but the complexity of certain issues that we have issues that have been going on many of them went from one of them at least for when i was still at school so i'm not wanting to reveal my age chair but it's longer than i might like okay thank you very much so i think we're at the end of that point so what i'd just like to bring us back to is the thing we need to do as a scrutiny and overview committee which is tonight we have looked at the business action plan we have looked at the draft budget as presented by the administration and we have looked at the draft budget as presented as an alternative budget amendments at this stage presented scrutiny and overview by the conservative group um our action in relation to this really is as we have said before at the scrutiny and overview committee to note each of those reports on a separate basis so we are noting the budget plan we are noting the administration budget and we are noting the conservative amended budget as three separate things and obviously as is the case in senior as our officer will make the notes on that and that will contain any particular points of recommendation which have been raised during the meeting which i believe councillor Stobart continues to offer wherever possible to attend cabinet so if i can just ask at this point we are noting all three reports and we are making our kind of recommendations and asked at this point if we can take all three and say that we are sent as a committee to noting all three and any recommendations that we have made agree thank you very much the next point relates to our work program and as it says chair and vice-cair will be updating the work paper on 25 January 2023 the investment strategy scheduled for 28 February um in the interest of privacy at this point i will say that the work of the young people's uh young people task and finish group continues um councillor Stobart is anything particularly quick that you wish to say in relation to that um chair thank you for the opportunity uh but now it's progressing well we meet on Tuesday officers are doing their work very well um and we seem to be on track excellent um i think it's entirely appropriate for the report to be very short as obviously we have said that it will be brought back to the committee at a future point and if we report on it now it kind of removes the point of reporting later on um other matters are continuing to be worked on as was agreed at a previous meeting there will be a specific s106 briefing and question answer session which will be arranged in the near future if you have any further questions and relations to that please submit them to myself or to Liz Watts and then our final point is the note the date the next meeting which is Tuesday 28 February 2023 so in very unscrewed in overview matter we now have a month without meeting and if i just as i always do turn to Ian and say Ian is there anything else i have failed to do this evening that i need to cover excellent thank you very much although it may seem like being a little long time it was only three and a half hours tonight as opposed to last week's four and a half hours we should give ourselves a mild pat on the back for that and thank you very much