 Rhaid fawr, wrth gwrs. Welcome to this meeting of South Cambridge District Council's Scrutiny and Overview Committee. My name is Councillor Stephen Drew and I am chair of this committee. May I make a few housekeeping announcements? Those present, including any members of the public observing or any public speakers are asked to note that this meeting is being filmed and live streamed. By your presence you are deemed to have consented to be filmed and to the use of these images and sound recordings for a webcast. May I please remind members that when speaking they should not disclose any personal information of any individual as this might infringe the rights of that individual and breach the Data Protection Act. Please make sure your microphones are switched off unless you are invited to speak for those participating remotely when you are invited to address the meeting. Please make sure your microphone and camera are switched on and then when you finish addressing the meeting please turn your microphone off again. Please would members who are attending remotely indicate a wish to speak through a chat message in the Teams meeting. Those present in the Chamber should indicate their wish to speak by raising their hand. I will ask the Vice-Chair to note the order of speakers both virtually and in the room. If the committee is minded to make recommendations to cabinets, including to support officer recommendations, I prefer to do so by affirmation. However, if there are strong opposing opinions, I will state that a recorded vote will be taken. Members in the Chamber only will then vote electronically, selecting for, against or abstain. The result will be displayed. Committee members present in the Chamber, I will now invite each of you to introduce yourselves. Members, after I call your name, please turn on your camera and microphone, wait two seconds and say your name and ward so that your presence can be noted. As I said earlier, my name is Councillor Stephen Drew and I am one of the members for Camborn. Thank you, Chair. I'm the Vice-Chair and I'm the member for the Fendit and Full-Worn Ward, Graham Cone. Excellent. And while Councillor Bradman gets ready, we'll go to Councillor Dr Martin Kahn. Hello, I'm Councillor Martin Kahn. I'm a member for Piston and Impington. I do not believe that Councillor Libby Earl is present. So I go to Councillor Sue Ellington. Hello, I'm Sue Ellington. I'm Councillor for Swavesy Ward. Thank you. Councillor Peter Fane. Hello, Peter Fane Shelford Ward. Thank you. I do not believe that Councillor Hans Raj is present. I am. You are on line. I apologise. Councillor Sunita Hans Raj. Yes, I'm Sunita Hans Raj. I'm Councillor for Piston, Impington and Orchard Park, one of them. Thank you very much. I know that Councillor Jones has made his apologies. Councillor Helen Leaming. Hello, I'm Councillor Helen Leaming and one of the councillors for Camborn Ward. And Councillor Richard Stobart. Hello, good afternoon. I'm Councillor Richard Stobart, a member for Gertin Ward. And we shall go back to Councillor Anna Bradnam. Thank you, Chair. I'm Councillor Anna Bradnam, one of the three members for Milton and Water Beach Ward. Thank you very much. And appearing from Cabinet to assist the Screeter and Overview Committee, we have councillor Judith Ripeth, who is a Deputy Leader. Good evening. Yes, I'm councillor Judith Ripeth, Deputy Leader and responsible for transformation, performance and shared services. And as has been politely pointed out to me by councillor Sally Ann Hart, I missed her out. Thank you, Chair. I'm Sally Ann Hart and one of the councillors for Melbourne Ward. Before we move on, does anybody else need to tell me that I've missed them out? Excellent. I was doing well for five minutes. Yes. Are there any other councillors who would like to introduce themselves as being present? Apparently I do, Chair. Heather Williams for Mordins Ward. Thank you very much. So, are there any other Cabinet members present either in the Chamber or online? Yes, Chair. John Williams, Lead Member for Finance. Thank you. John Bachelor? Yes. I'm John Bachelor, Lead Member for Housing and councillor for Linton. Okay. And councillor Peter McDonald. Yes. Good afternoon, Chair. Councillor Peter McDonald, Cabinet Member responsible for business development and economic recovery. And councillor Brian Mills. Good afternoon, Chair. All I'm Brian Mills, Member for Saarston and Lead Member for Environment and Climate. Before we move on to officers, are there any other councillors or Cabinet members present who have not yet introduced themselves? Excellent. Thank you very much. Are there any other non-executive members please, which is where I would have gone to you? Okay. Were you also with us, several officers? Liz Watts, would you introduce yourself, please? Good afternoon, everybody. Liz, what's your executive? Excellent. And Ian Senior? Hello, Ian Senior. I'm Scrutiny and Governor of Symphiles. And Aaron Clarke. Thank you, Chair. Aaron Clarke. I hope to screen the meeting. Thank you. And online we have Phil Bird. Thank you, Chair. Phil Bird, Head of the Policy and Performance team. Thank you very much. And are there any other officers present, first of all, in the Chamber who need to introduce themselves? Hello, I'm Dawn Graham, Benefits Manager. Thank you very much. Any other officers in the Chamber? Rebecca Dobson, Democratic Services Manager. And looking at my screen here, first of all, Jeff Memory, please. Good evening, Members. Jeff Memory, Head of Transformation, HR and Corporate Services. And Aaron, unless you correct me, I believe that is all of the officers. Or have I missed anyone else who is present on teams? No, Chair. That's everybody. Excellent. Thank you very much, everyone. I am able to confirm that the meeting is a quarter. There are being at least four committee members here in the Chamber. If at any time a member leaves the meeting, would they please make that fact known to me so it can be recorded in the minutes? Are there any apologies for absence? Yes, there are. From members of the committee. We have Councillor Hobro, Councillor Lovelock and Councillor Van Der Wire. And from the Cabinet, we have Councillor Smith and Councillor Handley. Thank you very much. Declarations of interest. Do any members have interest to declare in relation to any item of business on the agenda? I believe that is sufficient pause. Thank you very much. So, if an interest subsequently becomes apparent later in the meeting, please raise it at that point. So, our first item number four on the agenda is to return to the minutes of the previous meeting. So, can I just interrupt with an apology from my co-cancelor in Sourcedon, Libby Earle, who is unable to be with us this evening? Thank you very much. Thanks. Of course, for moments we can call back as well. Great. Thank you very much. So, coming back to item number four on the agenda, minutes of the last meeting. Are there any points that anyone wishes to raise in relation to those minutes before we agree them? Nope. Ian, is there anything else we need to discuss in relation to the previous minutes before agreeing them? Nope. Okay. In that case then. I have a proposal for the minutes from the last meeting to be accepted. Councillor Bradlin, thank you very much. And if we can take by affirmation that everyone is happy for those minutes to be accepted. Agreed. Thank you very much. I will sign them. Yes. No. Yes. Excellent. There you are. Thank you very much. Okay. Which then moves us to item five, public questions. No public questions or request to make statements have been received on this occasion. So then we move on to item number six on our agenda. Please bear with me one moment. So quarter one performance report. So bearing in mind that at the last written overview meeting I attempted to deny the opportunity for Cabinet members and officers to present in relation to their reports. And although I'm not expecting anyone to present in relation to the quarterly data statistics, I am just as the still new chair of the committee going to ask if anyone is expecting to be presenting anything in relation to the quarter one data report just so we don't have the problem of me stopping people from presenting. Excellent. I am pleased that I have got that one right today. So therefore we obviously I'm aware that we have a number of questions planned in relation to the quarter one data report. So therefore members, I would invite you to indicate your wish to ask a question and then we shall have said question answered. Who do we think got there first? Councillor Bradnam, you may ask a question first of all. Councillor Ellington, you are up. My own. You are on Sue, yes. I'm sure everybody else knows, but what does RAG stand for, please? RAG is a red, amber and green system and it is known as a RAG system. I look all through everywhere to find out what that's for. I thought it was something important. Well, it is important that we all know what it means. Right. Can I then move on? Yes, of course. I've got as far as page 18 and the democratic services and the new performance indicator. The public hybrid meetings run without issue causing downtime exceeding five minutes. I just wanted a bit more explanation about what this was and how you were going to monitor it. Rebecca, is that going to you as your name is there or are we giving that to someone else? You can have your first go, excellent. Right. I have a first crack at this from the other side of the table, so to speak. What I understand and obviously I'm sure I will be corrected if I'm wrong. Basically when the public can no longer access the meeting so the downtime being like when the stream is not working. So the meeting is not properly public because now post COVID obviously you don't have to physically be present in the meeting as a member of the public. So that's the impact if that isn't happening. Yes, so hopefully most of the time it does work anyway, but Jeff membrane might want to add or Rebecca Dobson. I can add a little bit if that's okay. Thank you. Yes, this was based on a an indicator that was reported to scrutiny committee following a request from Councillor Williams, I believe to report on the effect of how well the current arrangements have been been working. Members were happy with the report and the way it was measured. So following a request from this committee, we carried it forward into the performance indicators. As you can see, there are members of the Democratic Services team in attendance at each meeting and they monitor whether or not the public are able to access the stream as the deputy leader has explained and they keep a note of the uptime and the downtime and that's how the indicator is calculated. We're proposing that moving forward we have a target of 90% for this year, 93% for next year and 95% for the year after. That's on the basis that any new technology takes a little bit of time to settle in. So we think that that's appropriate if the if the committee is happy with those targets. So are we okay to move on? Thank you very much. Next up then is Councillor Bradman. Thank you, chair. I found what I wanted now. Okay, so I'm on page 13 and looking at indicator. Well, it's at the bottom of the section on housing rental. And we notice that the rag outlook is for amber on this. And that doesn't mean it means we're falling between the target and but above the intellect below our performance target, but above the intervention level. So what I wanted to pick up is the narrative that we have at the bottom of the page. It's talking about the fact that following COVID rentals have been maybe a little bit slower to come in, but are obviously picking up. But then also on council tax, which is the one which is read in June. There's a narrative below that saying we've also received a high number of requests to credit the energy rebate directly to council tax accounts. And it goes on saying was we asked people opting for this to continue to make payments until they've received notification that it's been completed. Undoubtedly there will be a proportion that have not done so. And I just wanted to kind of note that this little narrative tells us that actually presumably this is. I don't know if this is a narrative about all of these or just about the council tax. But what that's showing us is that people who are getting an energy rebate have asked for that to be paid straight to their council tax account. And that shows remarkable forethought on their part. They're not going off and spending that money on something else. They're actually wanting us to use it to help them pay their council tax. And I just wanted to note that responsible attitude to potential debt and thank them for doing that. But also I wanted to ask is the indication amber because we are concerned that some people may not be able to afford to pay their council tax. I can only assume that's the reason why it's there. So if we could have some explanation of that, that would be helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Council Williams, does that go to you first of all? I'm sorry, my bandwidth is extremely tight at the moment. So I won't put my picture on because last time I did, I dropped out. So you'll have to make do without a picture of me, I'm afraid. I think what it shows, I mean, we won't know the true picture until the end of this month, basically. What happened in June was, as you know, the government gave what they called a council rebate to people who were paying council tax in Bans A to D. That caused quite a bit of confusion because people thought that that meant that it was a rebate on their council tax. Not a grant for their energy bills. So a number of people misunderstood what was to happen and adjusted their payments to the council by £150. And then of course, if they paid by direct debit, they got the £150 from the government. And if they didn't pay by direct debit, we have pretty much given got those people £150 as well. But the upshot is that quite a lot of people decided to change their payments to reduce them by £150. Whereas, in fact, that was not the purpose of the council tax rebate. So we are in the process of contacting those people that did that to get them to go back to what they should be paying for their council tax and explaining to them that the council tax rebate was actually an energy rebate, and the government used the council tax system to give them £150 towards their energy bills, not to deduct that from their council tax. So as I say, unfortunately, this happened in June at the end of the quarter. We haven't got the statistics for the current month, which will be the first month in the second quarter. Until we do, we don't really know the full effect of what has happened. But unfortunately, the government's communication on it was extremely poor. By calling it a council tax rebate, quite rightly, a lot of people misunderstood what was happening and assumed they were getting £150 rebate off their council tax rather than them getting £150 addition to their council tax to help them with their energy bills. I hope that sort of explains the situation. Great. Thank you. Is there any officer who wishes to add to council Williams' answer? Yes. Thank you. I think from the council tax point of view, we have had a lot of residents who've actually taken advantage of the 12-monthly instalments, which has pushed our payment profile. So we're collecting the same amount of money over a year, but over slightly longer. So most people would have those instalments up until January, and we've had quite a few people who've pushed their instalments into a march. Obviously, if they've had changes in income from council tax support, that also pushes their instalments. So the cash flow is slightly different this year on reflection of energy rebates and people's financial situation. When looking at reminders and final notices, they are broadly similar to what we've had in previous years. So we don't, at this point, have any concerns, but it's the way the cash is flowing over this sort of particular year compared to last year. Thank you very much. That's about them. Are we okay to move on from that question? Can I just say thank you very much for that, because I have now understood what was a somewhat cryptic note, but I just didn't know enough to understand. So thank you very much. That's very helpful. Actually, it's slightly more worrying than I thought, but it sounds like our officers are doing a very good job of trying to get in touch with people and sort out their financial commitments. So thank you. Great. Thank you very much. Next up is Councillor Hart. Thank you, chair. I'd like to look at pages 20 and 21 and the focus on the contact centre, having had experience of using the contact centre, and it's pleasing to note that the percentage of the calls that were either resolved first time or handled, that's all in the green. I really want to look at the information in AMBER on page 21 and the information there, and just asking how will the information gathered be used to sort of address the predictable or more likely high demand times of the year. So, yeah, just if it is an annual thing, or I'd note in there it also talks about in May when the election is there. So I'm just wondering how this information will be used to do a bit of forward planning for the call centre. Thank you. Who's answering this? Judith, thank you. Councillor. Again, I'll make a start on it and screen for help when I need it. Obviously, the elections happen every four years in the main, as in our elections, and the normal run things. So I suppose that you would have to employ extra people just to deal with that time period. So perhaps the resources, you know, resourcing you sort of switch around a little bit, but I will check with, I'm getting a look, check that I'm okay on that ground. And obviously the cost implications of bringing in extra staff, even if that's for quite a short time period, really. And looking at it generally, we kind of need like three months of sort of normal. There's been quite a lot of things which have just sort of also cropped up like the, you know, the one day in April where there was a lot of calls, which was again to do with on the government schemes on rebate and the sort of interpretation of that. And when you think you're owed money or you are expecting to be owed money, you do tend to sort of pick up the phone quite quickly, I think, as a sort of normal reaction. And also April being the busiest month because the council tax bills land then. So it's quite difficult to, you obviously have to use your staff well and not have like a surplus of staff for the remaining months of the year at the same time. If that kind of, I think that half answers your question, but I have the feeling I might just ask Member A, if you'd like to help me out. Yes, if the chair is happy with that. Yes, the deputy leaders are correct. I mean we're in a position where April is always a very challenging time. We can't staff to cover our peak demand because we're in a position where obviously we then have people sitting around not doing things at other times. So we're in a position where our telephony system allows the centre manager and supervisors to make sure we've got the right number of people on to deal with calls at the majority of times. That was the April result, was actually one of our best ever performances in April, which is always incredibly busy. We did have an unusual situation this year or two unusual situations this year in both May and June when the majority of the month we were comfortably in the green for our performance. But in the run-up to the election we had to release some staff to both get some training and then also to administer the election. And as the deputy leader says we did have an unfortunate situation where due to some confusing letters that went out to residents but very, very high volume of calls at the end of June in relation to the rebate scheme because people understood that the letter was saying that they'd been paid and they phoned up to let us know that they hadn't been paid whereas in fact the letter had told them that they were due to be paid in a couple of weeks. We do monitor performance now on a monthly basis to ensure that we were performing to the standard that the councillors expect in this authority and we make sure that we've got the right level of resource within the team. For a long time the team was running short of resource but we now have got a constant recruitment going on to ensure that we know that this is the nursery section to council. People move into our contact centre learn about the council there and then often move on to other services so we're constantly recruiting to ensure that we don't find ourselves in a position where we're short of staff which has been the position in previous years. Overall given the very high volume of calls that we received in both April and June I think actually the performance has been exceptionally good in both of those months and in May for the vast majority of the month we were comfortably in the green as I say we just had that one week where we had to release people in preparation for and administering the election. We were looking at our performance so far this year we're expecting to be in the green for this month and we're expecting that to continue. If you look at the indicator that's been put for our anticipated performance for the next quarter that's green and I'm very confident that we'll achieve that. Hopefully that answers the question but I'm happy to give further clarification if it's needed. Thank you for the answer and I think there's the previous question that spoke about the confusion from the energy rebate scheme and the council tax will again paint the picture. I guess what I'm thinking is it sounds as though if the call centre is this nursery for growing skills I'm just wondering does that mean that there is capacity in the system to deal with any other sudden increases in demand that might come from another grant that people might be able to apply for so I'm just perhaps asking that is there capacity then to draw on people with experience who could fill some of the gaps if you think you can see it coming based on what's happened in April, May and early on this year. Jeff, I think that's going to be you again unless we're... Yes, more than happy to answer that. What we've introduced since November is a callback system. Now occasionally we're going to get caught out by things that other organisations do that have an impact on us and those letters about the rebate scheme is a really good example. Now what we've put in place is a scheme where if people are waiting more than five minutes they can instead of continuing to hold on they can leave us their details and request a callback and we get back to them very quickly. One of the comments that people are always saying to our contact centre staff is how impressed they are because when they've done that with other organisations they often wait days or potentially even weeks before getting a callback whereas we tend to give them a callback later on that day or very early the next day. So even when we're caught out a little bit by events that are outside of our control we've got that facility in place. But yes we've got... Actually we've got real time of monitoring now of how many calls are outstanding at any one time and it allows our call centre managers to shuffle their resource to change breaks perhaps potentially delay people going on at lunch breaks for example or to pull in other people who are potentially working on other work to meet areas of high demand. Now I can't promise that we won't have days when people don't have to wait because we know from analysis that we can handle 600-700 calls a day fairly comfortably if it goes over that level then with the best role in the world we just don't have enough properly trained staff to be able to answer that volume of calls with the quality of the response that we need to. But where we can't do that we will get back to people very very quickly. But we do monitor the performance on a regular basis we do analyse why we've not achieved the performance that we want to achieve when we haven't done that. But I think for members that have been on this committee for some time looking at the performance that we're achieving at the moment it's significantly better than we've been able to achieve for many years and our new telephony system gives us that flexibility I commend the call centre manager and the team who actually are dealing with the public on a regular basis because their commitment has been able to ensure that our performance is continuously improving and I'm confident we'll continue to improve. I'm expecting that indicator to be green for the vast majority of months this year perhaps for the first time in a few years. Fantastic thank you very much Councillor Hart are we content to move on? Thank you very much. Councillor Cohn you are next. Thanks very much chair. So my question was on page 20 on the complaint resolved within timescale section you can see that those figures actually look pretty good and even when they go into amber that they're very close to being good but when you dig down into the figures of those it's quite apparent that most departments are dealing with those figures or those complaints very well waste the environment 26 out of 28 completed within timescales finance all of theirs but when you get to the planning Great Cambridge planning shared service it's less than half so it's 13 out of 30 so I just wanted to see what we were doing to address the shortfall there and things that we're putting in place to prevent that happening as it seems to be mainly within that department. Okay in the first instance I think we are coming to you in the absence of councillor Hawkins and councillor Smith. What I understand is that backlog has now been cleared so hence the green going forward but I'm not nearly as a favour of this as councillor Hawkins so I will again pass this apologies back to Jeff memory Jeff Yes chair with your permission we did have a situation where the planning service had a backlog of over 40 complaints so what we did was we undertook an exercise where we both put some additional resource in to deal with those complaints but also looked at the reason why they'd fallen behind and the reason was that actually the planners were used to dealing with work in a particular way and they were responding to complaints almost as though they were planning applications so you were getting sort of 5, 10, 15 page responses to complaints as actually what was necessary was just an analysis of the reason for the complaint and a cohesive response to that so we not only gave them that additional resource which meant that the backlog has been totally cleared and at the end of June we had no outstanding planning complaints but we've put in place the training to enable people to respond quickly so every month now I get a report of how the complaints in planning are going so far it's looking good we're expecting the performance to continue and we've ensured that the training that we've given them means that they can respond in a timely way to future complaints we're very conscious of the fact that when people complain to us they need a quick response and we've emphasised that to the planners going forward and the management in the planning service have embraced that and are working with us very closely to ensure that we don't get into a situation where we've got a backlog of planning complaints again Thank you Councillor Cohn Do you wish to follow up? No chair, thanks very much Thanks and thank you very much Councillor Fane I have a few questions and comments some which have already been dealt with so I'll leave those Looking at page 14 the apprenticeship non-major planning applications determined within eight weeks or agreed timeline it's very good to see that that is as close to green as it possibly could be and I take account of what was just said about the responses to complaints in planning which is very good to hear but I think what matters to applicants is that the applications are determined within the agreed time which is eight weeks if you say or agreed timeline that presumably a caterer situation where an extension has been agreed and I think we need to monitor the extent to which we do depend on extensions I think also we need to just consider and this may be out of scope for this afternoon whether we're using the right target here 75% I see from the DHLUC we see DHLUCs or whatever we're now calling them this week stats that the average nationally for the first quarter of 2022 was 80% and I wonder whether we maybe need to be a little more ambitious on setting the target moving down to householder planning applications on page 15, top of page 15 I see that the target is set in terms of the average number of weeks I think the key thing is how many cases are dealt with within the eight weeks and again the number of agreed extensions is a factor there again I see that nationally on different criteria the figure for all councils on this is 85% determined in time I'm not sure from the national statistics that that also allows for extensions but again I don't think we should make relying on extensions a matter of course Councillor Fein can I ask if we pause for a moment and let us do this first two and then we can come back I'm Councillor Riffith again in the first instance I'm going to defer to you but I imagine it may be moved on yes it will be moved on although there are quite a lot of what you're saying as comments and things to be absorbed and taken away I think they're quite interesting and maybe it's something which can be looked at but I wouldn't also want to step on Councillor Hawkins those here because it's that's her real area of expertise and from that point I think I will have to just move this on to somebody a lot more and are we suggesting that Jeff is that person again, looking at Liz Watts Jeff it appears to be you it's going to be you again Jeff if you can comment on Councillor Fein's questions at this stage I can give an answer to some of them and perhaps Liz can step in in those areas where I'm less expert I don't pretend to be an expert on planning in terms of the particular indicator itself actually this indicator was proposed by this this committee I think it was Councillor Ellington in particular who raised a concern about the fact that the planning indicators as being reported were not necessarily what the that the person in the street asks when it comes to planning they seldom say how many of your applications are dealt with in 13 weeks whereas they might say that how quickly are your average planning applications determined I wasn't involved in the setting of the targets for this particular application but I think something that is well worth noting is that South Cambridgeshire is a growth area for planning so although we can and it's absolutely right that we look at the statistics for other councils a lot of those applications get perhaps a tenth, sorry a lot of those other councils get perhaps a tenth of the applications that we do as a planning authority so it's relatively easy for them to turn around a high percentage in a short period of time and our planning service has been through a great deal of change recently we've been working with the planning management on a transformation service and I think I'm hearing from members that they're recognising that the service is moving in a really positive direction so I think the idea is to start at an indicator that represents a realistic level of performance given the high volume of applications that we receive over the course of a year and then to look to build on that so that we can ensure that that we continue to improve as both the service and as an authority. As I said I'm not an expert in planning so we may need to get back to you on some of the details of that council claim but I'm going to ask Liz what's whether she's got anything that she needs to add to my response Liz? Thank you chair. It's just an extension of time council thing. It's a point that comes up a lot and I think there's a real balance between agreeing an extension of time which is requested by the applicant in order that quite often complex applications can be resolved with a conversation between the applicant and the case officer and the alternative to that is that we reach the 8 week cut off when we say no and generally we would have to refuse it because we haven't got to a point where we can recommend approval. So while extensions of time, I mean they're pretty common in planning services they're not always a bad thing they're not always just a way of the planning service kind of running out time and therefore needing to ask for more time but often there are very genuine reasons why you would need more time and it's in the applicant's favour to be able to have an extension of time so it's a bit of a balancing act but I just wanted to make sure that everyone was kind of aware of that kind of side of the story in terms of extensions of time because Stephen Kelly was saying next week I don't know that's what he's saying because he's I think said that in the past at some of these meetings Thank you, Councillor Fane anything else to add in relation to the questions you've asked? Thank you chair if I may just briefly comment on that yes I fully accept that extensions of time can be of benefit to both parties sensible planning management but the problem is that our KPIs need to be meaningful and we can of course agree an extension of time in any case we often do quite a lot of our planning applications are determined on the basis of an extension in time and it's quite difficult to meaningfully monitor the extent to which we are meeting the original eight week deadline if we just say or agreed timeline but I may of course have misunderstood the way the figures are written there Thank you, Councillor Fane everyone to one question each at this stage and we're going to keep going round so what we'll do is we'll add you to the bottom of the list and we'll come back to you in a few minutes Councillor Heather Williams you are next up on my list to ask a question Thank you chair I'm afraid I had a couple so I will be very brief if that helps You may do two very brief questions at this stage or you may ask one and then we will come back to you Okay in that case if I can refer members to page 20 it was in relation to the complaints process and one thing that I am aware of is a complaint being closed accidentally so I would just like to seek reassurance if we know how many complaints there have been it might have been a one-off incident but also that are we informing people that they only have a certain limit of time of which to contact the ombudsman because if we are delayed and we go beyond that period we are then actually removing their right to go to the ombudsman so can I seek assurance that we are actually our delays aren't actually taking away people's rights I think that's probably my one long question is it chair if you'd be kind enough to come back to me I'd very much appreciate it Councillor Rippert can I come to you in the first instance I'm going to ask since it has quite operational detail really I'm going to ask again or this what's if you can answer Jeff are you going to answer that? Yes yes I'm happy to answer that you're right Councillor Williams that normally there's a limit of a year in which people have got to complain to the ombudsman after an events happened however if we're in a position where people we have delayed in responding to complaints will extend the time that the ombudsman is able to consider the application so somebody before they go to the ombudsman does have to go through our complaints process and if we delay the ombudsman will still investigate if the result of the delay is if the delay is caused by the fact that we've delayed in responding to their initial complaint so we're not in any way stopping people going to the ombudsman hopefully that gives you the reassurance on we've got a process by which we're trying very hard and now succeeding on keeping making sure that complaints are resolved in a reasonable time to make sure that we don't find ourselves in that position in the first place coming to this coming to actually I'm not sure if this committee or whether it's the audit committee in future will be our letter from the ombudsman for this year and we're very much on top of responding quickly to any issues that are raised with the ombudsman and in fact all of our issues last year were dealt with locally without the need for the ombudsman to formally investigate any complaints. Thank you chair. To be clear I'm aware of a case in the district that we accidentally closed without it being resolved after two years when they went to the ombudsman prior to that they were told that the ombudsman would not investigate because it gone past a time frame so I'm afraid that is not the practical reality that residents are receiving so if we could take note of that and clarify and check that perhaps hasn't been a change or something because this person is now in limbo. Sorry chair if Councillor Williams would like to send to me the details of that complaint I'm happy to investigate it. Okay you've preempted what I'll perhaps suggest. Councillor Williams are we okay to move on or did you wish to come back again? I'll take it up privately for now chair on that issue but if I could come back to some of the others later I'd appreciate it. Of course absolutely. Councillor Cohn you are next up again. Thank you chair. So I just had a quick question on emergency housing on page 16 so again the figures are looking good there in that we're not exceeding the time threshold of people being over six weeks in emergency accommodation. My question was really around what sort of emergency accommodation we're using and knowing that we might have to use more emergency accommodation going into amber whether we've got enough provision for emergency housing like council housing I know obviously we use B and B's and so forth but I think we use actual council stock for emergency housing sometimes so I just wondered have we got enough of that and whether that is the case or is it just all B and B that we're using currently? I'm a bachelor and I'll be correct if this one needs to come to you. Yes I'm just trying to get the camera to work. Right yes thank you councillor for that question. Fortunately at the moment and over recent times we haven't had a great demand for bed and breakfast this is partly due to our work to try and prevent people from coming home which is obviously the first step for us as to what facilities are available initially we use hostels and the hostels are managed by sanctuary housing association so they're sort of subcontractors to us we do sometimes use our own stock on temporary tenancies but that's dependent on their being some availability obviously there's a constant churn in our housing stock and the constant demand of course so there isn't a great amount of spare properties in our area so should the we need more we would normally go to Cambridge city and hire private B&B accommodation and in some cases Peterborough as well but you know underlying fortunately at the moment the number's not high as you see from the the right up on the right there we've dealt with 31 families over the three months of this period thank you Jim Thanks very much for that I think that clears up the only thing with the council housing element of the sort of housing stock that we're using to mitigate the problem are they specific houses for emergency accommodation or are they houses that are going through the general process of council tenants moving in and out of those Where is families it will be our regular stock there's a different demand from single people and there we're likely to be using houses of multiple occupancy and that's through Shire homes who have a number of properties that will be available to us Thank you Councillor Cohn Thanks very much I have left Councillor Fein and Councillor Heather Williams and I think we'll be moving on to Appendix B Councillor Fein Thank you chair A quick question if I may on staff Turner which I think is a very important factor for us just wasn't quite clear to me what the measure is 3.85 in March 3.56 in June compared to 3.25 what is that it's not per FTE or a percentage of I'm sure I suspect that one may go to Geoff memory on the waste target I guess maybe this is a matter we will have to come back to I'm aware that we will be needing to change targets to take account of food waste at some stage and I just wondered how the figures shown here and indeed our target of 52% compared to the national average I couldn't find a corresponding figure in the death rate stats Chair could I just ask Councillor Fein to clarify which pages he's on with those Of course Page 18 for the staff turnover and page 19 second item there is the household waste sent for reuse, recycling and composting Okay Thank you very much We're going to have to slow slightly for a moment here as Councillor Rippeth has now left us as well and we obviously do not have Councillor Smith so therefore yeah okay so therefore it is likely that unless one of the other cabinet members wishes to offer to answer the question the first instance as a cabinet member that will have to go straight to an officer to answer in the absence of the leader and the deputy leader so the first thing I'm going to do is just check whether or not our four remaining cabinet members would like to offer to provide an answer from the executive and Councillor Fein Milnes has shaken his head and not realised that by doing so he has appeared big on the screen for a moment we thought you were offering Councillor Milnes but I believe you are not so therefore I will just check with Liz Watts for the first instance for this one So could you go to Geoff memory? Of course I could, Geoff memory you are now the person to answer please Thank you chair I had understood that it was a percentage but if Councillor Fein thinks it's not I'm afraid I'm going to have to seek advice and respond to him tomorrow if that's okay with Councillor Fein Chair I'm happy to take that assumption that it's a percentage that you just wasn't here to do that at all Thank you I'm sorry, yes thank you Councillor Fein is there anything else that needs answering at this stage? No, Councillor Fein is content for us to move on Thank you very much, thank you Geoff We now have Councillor Heather Williams then Councillor Cohn then Councillor Bradman Thank you chair I believe my other two questions are quite brief so page 16 it was just in relation to what was mentioned earlier about the council tax and payments I am aware that Southcams actually historically has quite a lot of people that pay up front for the whole year page 16 oh sorry, not 16 I've gone to the wrong page that teaches me to get some water in between but the council tax collection page 13 my 3s and 6s is chair, I do apologise How are we for those that would normally pay annually because that affects cash flow because we normally see through the audit that we have a lot of money earlier in the year and that obviously does affect projects and the like so how are we doing in relation to that are we seeing any differential treatment this year on page I'm going to double check my pages page 18 on hybrid meetings one of the things that I'm sure frustrates many members is the word key stakeholders so a KPI is only as useful as its levels in its rating so intervention levels are being consulted in discussion with key stakeholders so we could find out who those people are and that might help us in our assurance over those and just in relation to the contact centre not a question but something that may help with councillor Hart's question was some time ago and I remember it was councillor Phillipa Hart portfolio hold at the time we had some issues in the contact centre and one of the things that I think I asked for and she very gratefully agreed to was for a rolling advert to be they're not as easy thing to get but a rolling advert for the contact centre because it is so vital as we've been hearing earlier and feeding ground so there's natural turnover so just in relation to the questions after maybe it would be good to clarify if we can place chat So I think it's councillor John Williams for the first question in relation to councillor Tatt's collections payments up front Thank you chair unfortunately teams is playing up at my end something terrible at the moment As I said earlier it's difficult to to see how this is affecting us in the first quarter without seeing what's happening this particular month I think once we're we start to see how we perform this in July then we'll be able to make an assessment as to what happens the rest of the year but I as I said earlier and I think it's Dawn has said we need to see a bit more of the picture before we can start commenting on how this is going to affect us later in the year On that issue chair I do feel the lead member may have misunderstood my question Would you like to ask it again then? Thank you, my question was about those that pay annually so we would get 100% of their council tax bill paid in April and are we seeing a shift in our percentage that normally does that paying that way I think the numbers involved are quite small and certainly I'm not aware that they make an awful lot of difference I don't know if Dawn has got some more details on that but the number of council tax payers who pay the full amount at the beginning of the financial year in proportion to the total number of council tax payers is small so their impact is probably not going to make a big won't a change in a small change in what they're doing or a change in what some of them are doing is unlike to make a significant impact on the overall picture but I don't know if Dawn has some statistics available normally we don't have a huge number of people who pay in advance but we have found that in June that we are about 400k down in cash in total but as I said before this is about the spread of the budget being over the 12 months and we feel that's the biggest issue not that those people who pay that lump sum in advance most people they'll be few and far between most people budget monthly but we haven't really got any statistics for that up from annual payment which we can what I can say is that we are for the month of May and June we were 400k down on cash but we also posted 120k in energy rebate which was this issue about being over the period so it's shifting those instalments a couple of months which is where our cash flows changed but I can't really give you any figures for the number of people paying up from but I would assume that those figures could be provided to council Williams because they would be available because it is simply the number of people who have paid their council tax inside I would assume council Williams to contact council Williams I think it's entirely reasonable that those figures may not be at your fingertips but I'm sure they can be provided for council Williams great, thank you very much council Williams any further stuff related to stuff that's not a good word is it any further points related to your questions at this point or are you able to move on not on council tax I did have the other question you did, sorry around key stakeholders of intervention levels so key stakeholders of intervention levels Liz, who would you like to send that question to in the absence of cabinet member if I may chair, I'd like to send that to Geoff Geoff memory, could you answer the second question which council Williams asked related to key stakeholders and who they are yes certainly chair, the key stakeholders are of course members particularly members of this committee which is why I made that proposal to you earlier on of 90% for this year 92% for next year and 95% for the year after obviously officers who were involved in administering the meeting because they're at the meeting every time and they're having to cope with any downtime that results and any partners that hold external meetings using our facilities as well so those are the three key stakeholders but the most important of those of course being your own committee so my own microphone on, council Williams any further points on that no, I look forward to seeing this committee's response to that chair and it's just about the contact centre the rolling advert because I think that would help with council's request is what's for the rolling advert who are we asking that of I can answer that one as well actually the only reason I got in first is because I think I've spoken to Rachel Fox Jackson the contact centre manager more recently than Liz has and yes indeed I stressed to Rachel the need to continue with the rolling advert because council Williams is right by the time we've appointed a new person we're always in a position where we've got somebody else who's moved on so we're even going to move to a situation where we plan our recruitment plus one so that we anticipate when we're undertaking a recruitment for the contact centre that in the time it takes to recruit we're going to lose an additional person I'm pleased to see my request in place chair, it's not often that happens I'm very pleased today all I can say is we try excellent and and councillor Cahn and item average days to be left all housing stock on page 16 where everything is red I was looked at this and I thought well yes it's quite everything seems to be red we don't be meeting our targets and I just wondered where the targets are drawn from because I'm a private landlord myself which is a different situation and in an area which is not nearly such high housing demand but if I can let within a month I think I'm doing extremely well it's normally a matter more than one month so it seems to me very optimistic and targets to achieve now maybe the social housing situation is rather different but I just wondered how you determine your targets and whether actually we ought to be looking at perhaps a slightly realistic you might be looking for slightly longer times timescale as normal okay thank you councillor Batch of that right yeah thank you very much you're quite right it is entirely unrealistic it's been in place for a long while and I think the world must be in somewhat different when and if they ever achieve 17 days we have discussed this a number of times in this committee the problem is that there's too many variables within the target because this is key to key so it's key being handed in the actual work being done and then the place being re-lit so it takes no account of the complexity of the work that needs to be done so you know it might just be some minor work or it could be very substantial or you know it could be very substantial so what we we are now reviewing this in order to break it down into the relevant parts because now equally the letting didn't use to be an issue but now we are experiencing quite a number of people deciding not to take on the properties when they have actually come top of the points score and so on and so that is actually extending the period because obviously you then have to go through the process of offering it again to somebody else so these are under review it is a key item but I suspect we will probably break it up into more realistic targets and this will be done by October probably when we start to enter the new contract with MiAs so yeah yeah it's meaningless I'm always asked the same questions so I want to get rid of this red one thank you thank you do we have an officer to add anything to that answer or are we happy to move on happy to move on being noted that excellent I'm myself chairman it seemed to comprehensive answer but I shall check back with councillor Cym that he is content for us to move on very happy to move on thank you councillor Baxter we do have one more question coming from councillor Bradnham we will then be moving on to appendix speed thank you very much and it was just because I wondered if that target that councillor Cahn has referred to at AH211 I wondered if that was as strict as it is because of there used to be a requirement that if the property was not filled within a certain number of days a void was taken back and I can't remember who by but I seem to remember there was a sanction on us if we didn't re-let a property quickly enough so I'm sure councillor Baxter might know whether that relates to this and whether that's influenced this target councillor Baxter any thoughts? I'm not aware of that I'm afraid a councillor is certainly much before my time in position so it's not me, gov, chairman okay I don't know if any officers are able to provide with what's hand is up we'll equally through you chair I'm not aware of that target I'm wondering councillor Bradnham whether you're thinking about right to buy and whether we don't spend right to buy money in time that we lose the money yep thank you very much we've got to the bottom of that one okay so that brings us to the end of appendix A section which is up to page 21 of the agenda and note and we move on to the appendix B section so councillors who would like to start us off this time and then we'll form our list councillor Bradnham I think I've seen your hand go up see you are first councillors if I can encourage you to catch councillor coun's eye then you will be added to the list thank you chair my questions firstly relate to um item C2 little 4 rhanom 4 on page 33 and this is under the general heading of it's talking about the balance of our environmental impact and doubling nature and it refers to delivering six free trees and the initiative to increase the amount of tree cover and we note that in the position at the end of quarter one is that we're preparing for a third round of this popular scheme which is great but what I wanted to check was whether we have done an audit of I know this is difficult because these were trees that were offered to parishes but I wanted to ask whether we've done any kind of audit on the trees that were planted under the three free trees scheme and under the previous version of the six free trees not to be critical of those parishes which took up this scheme but to check how the trees are doing because we know we've certainly at district and county level we've asked for the people who've planted trees under landscaping contracts certainly to national highways at county level to be accountable for the trees that they've planted and how those trees have survived because what we found is quite a large number of trees were planted under those schemes which haven't survived because they weren't looked after there was no provision in place to maintain those trees so I wanted to check whether we could do a check on the trees that were planted and see how they're doing and the second thing is can we consider we've just gone through an extremely so that's the first thing, can we do an audit the second thing is can we consider under this new scheme asking those people who take up the scheme for six free trees to consider installing with their planted trees an irrigation ring in the hole where they plant their trees which simply provides a leaky pipe in the tree planting hole with a pipe into which water can be poured by willing neighbours and willing parishioners because it's actually really quite difficult to establish trees particularly when they're planted as quite even quite small standards it's quite difficult for them to grow particularly in such hot conditions and we know going forward that we're likely to get hotter conditions still so I'd like to ask that we consider planting an irrigation ring into the tree planting hole and with any luck that might oooh our lights have gone out and that might encourage we should not take this as a statement on your question Councillor I suggest we hold on for a moment till the lights come on this might give parishes a tree a chance to ask residents neighbouring the trees to actually water them and the second so that's the second thing can we have an irrigation ring in the water? Is your next part going to be linked to the trees because if not then I think I'll ask Councillor Milne to answer the question about the trees and then we'll come back. Councillor Milne's unfortunately we are not here to address its tones Draught the answer to Councillor Brandon's questions is yes they're all hugely sensible suggestions and I think we should move forward on all of them we do have some of the larger parishes who have the capability of doing the watering themselves so here in Sallstone for example that's exactly what we've arranged because we've had County Council supplied trees that were had the irrigation systems to which you refer so a ring underground and then a bag around the base which will slowly let water out and unfortunately we had to intervene as neighbours because there was no provision and we weren't advised there was no provision for looking after those trees when they were planted so absolutely right there those trees that we provided under three free trees and then six free trees there was no requirement for any provision to maintain them and I think that's a perfectly good suggestion that we put those things in place okay thank you Councillor Bradman many follow up on that before I move on to another question yes thank you so two things one is I'll come back on this and I also have some other questions to ask so hold on Councillor Bradman your other questions to ask are they related to the trees no but I will come back on this one that's fine then I will put you on the list again to be come back to it okay so the reason I ask that question I'm very glad to hear Councillor Milne's making that one so positively the reason I ask that is when my own parish obtained three free trees I scurried round as tree warden for Milton and actually asked the neighbouring people if they would be so kind as to undertake to water these trees that we had just planted every week for a year and they looked slightly surprised and said really and I said yes please if you could and in fact although they didn't do it the whole time actually what they did was really important because of course we went in after 2021 to quite a dry year and actually the trees that we planted in Milton the first three that we had are surviving well and I'm really pleased so I just think we need to be mindful that watering goes along with planting new trees so my next questions I'll wait thank you Councillor Bradman Councillor Milne just to check I didn't offer the opportunity to add any officer comment but I felt that wasn't necessary at that point I don't think we need to involve anybody else at this stage it's perfectly good suggestion from Councillor Bradman and we'll do something about it Fantastic thank you very much Councillor Bradman if you could turn your microphone off now please and we now have Councillor Leaming Thank you chair I'd like to ask a question in relation to points on page 31 it's point C1 the first line my first question on this section was to do with trials regarding substitution of fossil fuel diesel with vegetable oil I was wondering how this trial was going particularly given that there are international issues international shortages of grain and vegetable oil and such products following probably following the war in Ukraine I wondered how successful this trial was going to be Thank you Councillor Milne I believe this will be you again Yes I was specifically answering the question about Ukraine which is a very large producer of vegetable oil from their sunflower crops that we're possibly familiar with they will have some impact on the supply but the current volumes involved in the HVO trial so the hydro treated vegetable oil that is usable as a substitute fuel for our bin lorry fleet particularly and that's where the trial is going on the producers of this are international there was a for some reason I'm not quite sure why two companies in Spain, Repsol and another one were ahead of the game in terms of using the existing infrastructure to create this HVO so at the moment I don't think there's any particular risk to using HVO and if there were problems in the supply chain then it would be relatively easy to go back to using diesel normal diesel so the trial that we've got currently going is an extension of a previous trial that we did with a small number and we are we've cleaned out our existing diesel tank to take on the HVO and going for a larger trial right now so hopefully that will give us some good results and certainly in terms of our carbon footprint the members may remember that some 65% of our carbon emissions comes from our vehicle fleet so it's really important that we bring that down as much as possible we know limitations in the electricity supply will limit our ability to take on further electric refuse vehicles so the HVO is an interim measure to improve our carbon emissions is very welcome Councillor Milne do you wish to have any officer addition to your answer well if the members feel that would be useful I'm happy to but hopefully I've given a comprehensive answer you may certainly have but I would just like to check if you feel there is anything additional to be added Councillor Leaming can I have your response and thoughts thank you Councillor Milne on the same point the second bullet point mentions the development of on-site generation of renewable electricity could you explain a little bit more about that ongoing process please yes so we are currently working on an investment grade proposal to build a solar plant adjacent to the vehicle depot in Water Beach because you may have heard from elsewhere and I know there has been some discussion of grid power availability as I just mentioned the local grid doesn't have any excess capacity from what we've got at the moment which we'll look after three electric refuse vehicles so without supplementing that grid power availability then we won't be able to extend the electric vehicles so that's the primary purpose of the solar array that we're intending to build and I think it's indicative of the problem with both UK power networks as the DNA of the local network operator and national grid itself in terms of capacity of generating and you'll know as members of GCP that we've also got a plan to build two substations in the self decams area which will allow us to supplement the grid capacity according to demand that's likely which rather strangely the local power network operators do not have currently they're not allowed to build on anticipation of demand which is rather curious as you might imagine so I hope that's given councillors an idea of where we're at in that project and I'm happy to answer any more questions about it if they've got them OK, no officer involvement needed so councillor Leaming thank you we are happy to move on, excellent thank you next up is councillor Ellington thank you chair three questions but can I take them one time right the first one is on page 23 and it's the first item under A11 it says we are currently engaged with suppliers and exploring options for delivery including the identify project resource which tells me absolutely nothing and I wonder if somebody could explain what what sort of support we are really giving to businesses and the green recovery that enables them to survive because I'm not sure what sort of supplies we're looking for on well I'll leave it at that councillor Peter McDonald I believe this is for you I think he's not there anymore he's not councillor Peter McDonald was there at the start and is no longer there in that case then I will do my thing of first of all suggesting if any of the three remaining members of cabinet would like to offer any form of answer from the executive to the question that councillor Ellington has asked and the answer is no so Liz is there any officer who is able to answer this question so I'm happy to chair thank you so at the moment as you know we set up a business support team of four officers probably about two years ago and the way that we communicate with businesses from across the district is it's not managed at all so we don't really have any central record of what businesses are looking for how we've supported them and I suppose the sorts of things that we'd like to do with the customer relation management system is if we knew that a business was growing we could add them on to our list of businesses who may be looking for new premises and where we've got potentially businesses who are actually developing new premises we could start to make those sorts of join up but it's quite hard at the moment because we don't have a central point where we're holding all of that data on businesses and we also aren't able to enable businesses to come through a central portal where we can sign post them to parts of the council so for example yesterday I went out to see a business who had no idea about some of the services that we offer and it was only by chance talking to them that I said well we could probably help you on this so I suppose it's about joining up the dots in terms of how we offer support to businesses and making it more systematic being more robust and just basically being able therefore to offer a better service Councillor Fane, does that answer your question? Well it gives me an idea that we're actually trying to establish a database that will help them and us basically Councillor Fane, to what lies it is move on to someone else's question then come back to you so that everyone has one at a time Councillor Fane you are next up My question relates to the item at the page 29 improving the energy efficiency of housing which is of course a crucial part of our business plan not just because of the mission's implications but obviously with the massive increase in energy costs which many of these residents will be feeling again in October this relates to council housing I notice we're doing a large piece of work using EPC data and that is perhaps why this is on AMBA but of course we have dual responsibility perhaps this is outside the scope of the business plan in relation to the private renter sector as well where local authorities are responsible for the enforcement of that we've recently found out from the census that actually we have rather more housing in the private rented sector here than certainly I was led to believe on previous occasions and of course many of those tenants are most at risk face higher energy bills and I'm wondering whether in doing this piece of work we need also to extend that survey to ensure that we can in future include our responsibilities for enforcement of the MIS regulations minimum energy efficiency standards regulations in the private rented sector as well as in our own stock OK, thank you very much Councillor Batch of art Yes, thanks very much Well, extending into the private sector would be an expensive operation what we're planning to do at the moment is our stock conditions survey is certainly to deal with our own stock don't forget that is a significant matter as well with five and a half thousand houses I'm not aware of any plan to extend that so the private sector and I couldn't imagine why we would do that at our expense on the the work that we're actually carrying out is a plan maintenance program dealing with something like 900 of our properties and what we're trying to do is bring this up to the PC bands C levels by 2028 so that's what the program is we're concentrating initially on the worst performing houses because this gives the best return on our investments given that we can make very significant changes to poor performing properties whereas a fairly efficient property you have to invest a lot of money to make any real difference so I think that's probably where we are with that one we have the program but it's not complete yet because clearly the stock conditions survey will give us our baseline and so that's not fully in place although we are getting on with the work and getting on with the investments in other areas we have discussed a long-term plan before and we do have a 30-year plan with an investment that's something of the order of £440 million to bring all our properties up eventually to net zero thank you chair thank you councillor bachor sorry councillor bachor is there any officer addition to your answer that you think is necessary I don't think we've got any officers a little else is handing up but I don't know whether that's an offer of an additional answer Liz or well thank you Peter Campbell is at the north stone community forum tonight and so I am covering for him the only thing that I would say counciller bach is absolutely right about the stock condition but we are doing a lot on the solar so we have the solar together scheme which was launched across Cambridge I think south Cambridge district council had the highest number of residents signing up for that scheme so we're facilitating energy efficiency with residents where we can which potentially goes partly to response to that question excellent thank you councillor fein yes if I may just respond to that point about why we should perhaps be doing more if you look at the BIS guidance on this keeps the success of the regulations and minimum standards for is effective compliance and enforcement for which local authorities are responsible in the domestic sector and it also goes on to say that the for this reason grants are made available and targeted to engage local authorities where there is a need for financial support I wasn't of course suggesting that the cost of this should necessarily be met within the HRA I appreciate it couldn't be I certainly couldn't be I'm just saying that since it is a clear council responsibility and now I suggest a higher priority than it has been in the past extending perhaps to insulation as well as solar we might need to consider whether to include this in future additions okay thank you are you happy for us to move on at this point thank you councillor fein just to say that I'm happy to pick up on that great thank you very much I have a question from councillor Heather Williams thank you chair it's just in relation to page 24 about the skills section part of it's in amber and I just wanted to make sure that we don't have any duplication chair because I sit on the Greater Cambridge Partnership Assembly and I have to say one thing that GCP has done very well in my view is work on the support they do for the skills and it's a big part of what the GCP does so I'm a big fan of that I think skills and training is never a bad thing and we need to support people into careers but I just want to make sure that there's no duplication or that we are actually working with them because there's no point at us reinventing the wheel and I have to say things like the Cambridge correctly I'm being looked into and other things it's probably one more or less controversial chair elements of the GCP OK, thank you very much so forgive me what exactly are we asking as a question are we working with the GCP to make sure there's no duplication indeed the reason I'm asking is I'm trying to think of exactly who I can ask this question to I think I will go to Liz what's in the first instance and there's Councillor Milne's you are offering an executive answer in the first instance so I apologise for seeming a bit confused because I really was having a moment of thinking who to ask Councillor Milne would you like to provide an executive answer first of all I think that's a perfectly reasonable request again that we make sure that we aren't doing double the work with two different parts of very similar organisations so we are obviously part of GCP we've got a controlling interest in it and I think it would be terribly wise to avoid duplicating any work on those skills programmes that Councillor Williams mentioned thank you Councillor Williams so I'm still don't think I've quite got my question answered my question is are we working with the GCP or are we not very positive that Councillor Milne says we'll look into it but is it happening or not Councillor Milne any further thoughts in answer to Councillor Milne the answer to Councillor Williams' question is are we working on trying to avoid is rather like the requirement to prove a negative I think I am not aware that we are working towards it are or not so what I've tried to commit to is making sure that we can answer Councillor Williams' question with a positive and confirm that we are trying to avoid duplication is up at the moment then we may come back to Councillor Williams again thank you chair I can confirm that our business support team are working closely with GCP and also with the CPCA who have a big skills program okay thank you chair thank you to our chief executive who seemed to understand the question in its entirety okay so I feel that between the answer given by Councillor Milne's and the answer given by Liz Watts we have reached a solution to that question I feel that Councillor Milne's was seeking to say that we would do everything we could to avoid duplication and Liz Watts was able to provide us with an answer that there is close working to avoid duplication should any more come up I'm sure the question will be asked once again thank you very much Councillor Cohn thanks very much I think most of my question has been asked by Councillor Fane but continuing on page 29 before firstly I know it's an amber because of the surveying that's sort of happening but that is on track and on task whether it should be an amber or not questionable and in terms of the energy efficiency savings we talk about the lowest performing properties which is obviously a good thing because we need to tackle those but there also may be very quick wins in properties that are not as under performing as well so if you tackled a lot of those quick wins in the properties that are not incredibly bad and easier to fix there might be a better reduction in carbon helping residents with their bills the other thing I was just going to mention was water in relation to housing and whether we are upgrading any water efficiency and things on taps and plumbing et cetera to minimise the amount of water that's being used Councillor Batchelor we are back to you I believe right thank you very much yeah well I won't repeat the answer to the other question but question of whether we also this doesn't mean that we're not doing any work on houses which actually are efficient at the moment that our plan maintenance programme will see to that this is a particular programme specific to try and get the best performance out of our housing stock and in order to do that you know we might we need to concentrate on these older houses and we do have a substantial number of older houses that do need attention and the balance in this is that the returns one are financially better and secondly of course that the main benefit is actually to the tenant who has a much more efficient house and would see their fuel bills being reduced so certainly our whole stock is always under review and this particular programme we will be concentrating on what we see is the best return thank you Councillor Batchelor any officer addition to that answer I am seeing nos coming from both the Cabinet Member and from the Chief Executive so Councillor Cairn anything further on that I'm happy with that thank you very much Councillor Bradman we are back to you thank you very much chair so my question relates on page 33 to item C3 and it's C31 that's the complete retrofit and I'm delighted that we've got on so well with that and we look forward to the carpark being open again not because we want to bring cars but because we just want to see the job finished but I just wanted to ask two questions about that but they're related one is please could we have a display of the amount that we're generating somewhere in the building so that members of the public who come to the reception can see how much we're generating and also if it can be a double sided sign can it show members of staff and officers and members who are in the main part of the building how much our lovely system is generating and also I just wanted to ask whether a battery has been involved in the installation so that when we're generating at the weekend but we can't use it I wondered if we're using any battery storage or is it all just going straight into the grid and earning us money instead thank you I am considering returning this to you councillor Milnes however you may say this is not you however I'm going to point out again we have three cabinet members remaining so therefore you have to have a go or I will turn to Liz Watts I think on the climate environment it probably falls within my view and the answer again is it's a very good suggestion if there's not one planned already having a display showing how good we are generating our own power that would be an excellent idea and that's pretty typical provision with these systems our local surgery has such a sign so we can certainly take that on board as a good recommendation and the second question actually I don't know the answer to for sure so I'm going to defer to officers if Liz knows otherwise give a written answer I know elsewhere we are talking about doing battery power and creating small microgrids which make sure that the circumstances that Anna Braddon described means that we can use electricity when the sun isn't shining I see Phil Bird's hand is up and Liz is confirming Phil, thank you very much Thank you chair I can answer both questions there will be a display of the amount of energy we are producing and it is going to be a large TV screen in our reception area so that will be part of this particular project with regard to battery storage there isn't any battery storage taking place within this project but we are working with our partners on a potential phase 2 for South Cams Hall so looking at a bigger wider aspect so battery storage may be a wind turbine and also smaller parts to make sure that all of our external lights are LED as well as the internal lights so in answer to Councillor Braddon's question it's in the plan, in the pipeline but hasn't been agreed yet it will have to have what Councillor Milne referred to as investment grade proposal done which is basically a business case to see how much it's going to cost and what the return will be over what periods so just to say that it is in hand Thank you very much Councillor Braddon Thank you very much Mr Bird and will that display screen in the reception be visible for officers and staff and members as well as members of the public Absolutely yes Explained dude, thank you very much Excellent That may well have been our simplest question and answer of the evening with a good positive immediate outcome excellent Brian thank you very much, Phil thank you very much Next up on our list is Councillor Ellington Thank you On page 37 under C12 we are told about five out of six cameras being installed to dissuade people from fly tipping and that Meadow Road William hasn't proved to be very effective I particularly know that particular road very well however that's another story what I'd like to know is why do we have to advertise the cameras why do we not have them so that we can prosecute the dear people who leave big heaps of rubbish where we don't think they ought to be Thank you Councillor Milnes is this another part of your responsibility I thought it was this time I was very confident Councillor Milnes So in discussions about cameras we both considered overt and covert cameras and you might imagine that if people can see that there are cameras operating they might be more dubious about fly tipping for example which is the primary concern that we're talking about here I've got to say that that's not always the case we have had and we find I think we refer to a case of vandalism on insulation of such camera so we the scheme that we've adopted is our best effort at the moment to see if we can reduce fly tipping in locations that are particularly vulnerable to it it's one of a series of measures that we've involved including gating at different areas and so on and it's just a part of a process but Councillor Ellington will be aware of massive fly tips which doesn't seem to be the right expression to describe two large caravan units being dumped on the droves so that's the scale of some of the problems that we're having to deal with there might have been a different question as well sorry if there were two parts to Councillor Ellington also just asked about the principle of publishing the information regarding where the cameras are going to be yes and I think I've described the debate that we've had internally over whether we should use covert installations or overt so it has been considered in the round whether we publish where we're installing them or not okay and I would just ask Liz if there is any need for any officer addition to that answer in your view well just to add I'm advised by a colleague that the point is to try and prevent fly tipping and therefore publicising where the cameras are potentially is one way to doing that I think we're still a little bit in the process of trial and error but that's part of the reason why we would publicise where cameras are okay thank you Councillor Ellington it's just knowing Meadow Road if you're going down Meadow Road with a load to dump there's only one way in and one way out it's the same you've got to come back you can't keep going and therefore a covert camera as possibly as well as an overt camera might identify the empty trailers coming back and their number plates Councillor Ellington did you want to ask your follow-up related to the other fly action as I believe that you wanted to ask especially related about fly posters I noticed recently and many of you may have noticed in your village a significant increase in the number of fly posters with on this occasion most of my villages anyway have got a poster that's as wide as that and as high as that at a very prominent point in the village advertising improvements house improvements in my villages I went round to put Thoram off the wall and stuck them in the bin but I don't know that other councillors feel quite as confident as I do to know that it is illegal and we ought to be advertising it as illegal and taking action against it Councillor Mills Yes noted we we've had similar outbursts if I can call it that in my own ward as well where signs were put up all over the village they appeared in one evening I would just urge caution in adherence with the law in this respect so I wouldn't like to make any suggestions of doing something that is either borderline or outside of the law It is within the law it is illegal for them to put posters on on walls and property that is not there Yes it may be illegal to put them up there it may not be at your personal discretion to legally remove them Okay If anything offers the wise to add to that Okay Councillor Bradman you put your hand up during that as if you wish to add something specifically related to the law That's right I did Thank you very much and Councillor Mills is absolutely right that it is illegal to apply post but it is not within our permission to take them down and in fact actually the regulations say that any posters that are removed should be returned to the owner of the person who has posted them illegally I know that sounds weird but actually they belong to the person who has posted them I would like to meet the person that put it up there and have a discussion with them I feel we have developed that item as far as we possibly can at this point I think we are very clear that as councillors and as a council we most definitely wish the law to be followed and upheld in every way None of us claim complete expertise as lawyers in this matter and therefore nothing that anyone has said should be taken as representing absolutely the legal position of the council or any of us of individuals or any groups within the council and I am going to move on at that point Councillor Stobart I have a different question please Thank you chair So my question well first of all a comment on the business plan being green to our core all the items are green which is great that's an excellent attribute to this area of activity but I wondered if I could invite a comment on how stable that situation is in other words are there risks out there that might actually cause any of those items to fall behind how are officers identifying risks and quantifying them this is a huge question and could occupy us for a long period of time and I think we have already delved into this a little bit following councillor Leemings questions about the HVO and about the solar but I was interested in a general reaction as to how risks are managed in respect to this area perhaps we could explore a little bit further later and is there a way that I will finish in a moment is there a way that members could help this process of risk identification because this is a matter of eyes and ears and feeding back to officers facts and observations as well so that's my question how are we managing the risks quantifying them and mitigating them but perhaps some examples really to keep it brief councillor Leemings in the first instance I'm afraid we are unable to hear your dulcet's tones as you'll learn that is my response I must try harder get the right buttons so largely the policy agreeing to the core is clearly under our own control the risks really the predominate at the moment are supply problems in the supply chain inflationary pressures are clearly in there and these are issues that are regularly reviewed and actually clearly with inflation now running at nine points and plus then that's a substantial addition to the cost of many of our projects but of course in the case of renewable energy production as we discussed at full council actually there is a benefit in some of that so that utility price increase that we refer to going from something like 15 pence a unit to 50 pence a unit means the payback period on projects like the greenhouse south camps hall is going to be reduced by nearly half in that case so I mean the simple answer is that we are looking at the project cost of all agreeing to the core projects and for example the skip and joint development that we will be building the housing estate opposite south camps hall has looked at all of those issues in determining the design guide that is going to be brought forward for there so that we can get maximum value out of our green to the core strategy I don't know if you would like to discuss that any more Sorry, cancer stable before we move on let's just see if this was wishes to add anything in relation before we then come back to you councillor If I may it was more generally about managing risk so we do have a strategic risk register and that's reported to audit and governance committee so if we'd always welcome feedback on that from councillors particularly councillors who bring lots of expertise I think that will go to audit and governance committee later this autumn councillor stable so that was a very helpful comment from chief executive officer the existence of a risk register is reassuring I think at a project level the existence of many project risk registers probably at the discretion of the project manager is very helpful and to know that those exist in their under regular review is reassuring there is an opposite side to this which I hope we can come back to at some point which is the opportunity and are we ready to exploit an opportunity that presents itself that might you might call that kind of scenario planning but we won't dwell on that now but thank you to councillor and to chief executive officer David OK, thank you very much councillor stableart I do not have anyone else on my list at this stage to ask any questions councillor Allingsen sorry Alison no, I said a few questions of my third one is around on page 39 about the D6 lifelines and I have a little inside knowledge about these things as you may know Mae gwahodd i ddim yn ymwybod i ddysgu hosbiddol, y cwmhysleddau'r Llyfrgell i'r Gweithgaredd yng Nghymru, mae'r gweithio'r ddaeth i ddysgu hosbiddol eich hosbiddol i ddysgu hosbiddol i ddysgu hosbiddol i ddysgu hosbiddol i ddysgu hosbiddol i ddysgu hosbiddol, six weeks free of charge and then charging them five pounds a week and we charge four pound four to seven. And therefore there is an issue around the viability of our lifeline service because we're not getting the referrals. People who are coming out of hospital are going straight into a different system. Now that's not a bad thing. I'm not complaining about that. I'm just saying maybe we need to evaluate or review our lifeline system or maybe we need to suggest to the hospital that we take on their service because we've got somebody who does the job. I'm going to look at you Liz in the first instance because I'm going to be honest and say I'm unsure which of our remaining cabinet members to put that to. So the first thing I'm going to go to you unless Brian or John would like to jump in as the executive member. Liz? Thanks Councillor Wellington. It's a really good point and I think now that the integrated care service is in place and one of their key areas of work is partnership and engagement with local authorities I think there's a real opportunity there. So thanks for pointing out. I didn't know about the hospitals issuing lifelines and I'll certainly take it up with a colleague at the ICS. Thank you. I'm going to say that again. The reason I'm saying it is because I have a couple of questions to ask but before I do mine I'm just going to make sure that any other councillors who wish to answer anything else in relation to Appendix B. Councillor Stobart you may go as an opportunity. Thank you. I'm just finding the place so it's following a question under housing that Councillor Fane raised and this is about energy efficiency. Will we remember what that one is? That would be on page 29. The other big issue that's around at the moment is of course energy efficiency and its relationship to cost of energy cost of living but how about overheating in relation to existing stock that's much more difficult to deal with but it is related to insulation and simpler measures but we did have that highlighted last week and it's going to happen again so overheating. Excellent. I'm watching Councillor Batchelor has now left us so I'm going to and I'm assuming councillor Milms that answering questions about overheating in councillor housing stock is significantly outside of your portfolio. It's borderline isn't it Jay? Well this is why I was I was being generous to you councillor Milms but if you wish to offer us an answer we would welcome it I will then go to this after you. It's fascinating isn't it that mostly we refer to the problems with being cold and heating systems not being sustainable you know we still had some housing until fairly recently that was using storage heaters as a primary heating system which was clearly not ideal and councillor Cone was asking a question previously about water usage so when the average water person per day figure is about 150 litres I think we have some of our new housing has plans to be close to 110 ideally that would be sub 100 level if we could get it down that low and this question over for example natural cooling system in design would be part of our consideration when looking at new builds and certainly our most recent council apartment blocks in Sauston where we've got two new blocks and another block coming forward this later this week have mechanical heat and ventilation recovery sorry heat recovery and ventilation systems fitted to make sure that we can be efficient in bringing fresh air into a building without losing the heat but I'm not sure that those systems are reversible so I think there's a really interesting question about how we deal with excessive heat events such as we had last Tuesday fantastic thank you very much councillor sorry Liz is anything to add to that do you think I think it's something we need to take away thank you I don't first have any information here that I can help to share with you so if we could provide you with an answer thank you very much councillor Stavehart any yeah just a brief comment to end of course it's being discussed in the planning committees and the new building standard is of course related to new build but I'm just wondering that thinking process is going around new build whether there are some ideas coming out and of course it's a very busy world out there so I think it's a much of going and finding what other people are doing marvelous thank you very much okay so um I have a couple of questions that I would like to ask um obviously I've let everyone ask only one question at a time so therefore I'm going to point out there if anybody wishes of my first question to ask a question I will accept being interrupted otherwise it would be rather hypocritical of me as chair to simply ask my two questions um if I can first of all and of course after doing all that I've now become the person who's lost his page because I was so busy and everyone else okay first of all um I just wanted to refer to on page 38 item d2 1 which refers to complete and analyse the staff satisfaction survey and this has been given a rag rating of green but returning back to something that councillor Fein raised in relation to appendix a where on the page on page 18 ff 117 staff turnover the two staff turnover figures are both listed as being orange or amber within the rag rating so I just wonder whether or not I think I'm going to go to Liz and I'm going to straight to you for this one it's wonder or not you have any thoughts related to the fact that we are saying about completing analysing staff satisfaction survey that has been ragged as green and it talks about doing that but at the same time within appendix a for the staff turnover we have two items which are amber and I wonder whether or not you think there ought to be any connection drawn between the two if there's any concerns that flag for you or if there's anything you would like to comment on in relation to that I think Jeff's going to fight me for this one but I'm going to have a go so chair the survey is green because we're on schedule to deliver the survey it we're not saying it's green because we're happy with the results obviously once we see the results of the survey we will then start to join up the dots between the survey and the turnover um okay jeff is there anything you wanted to add to what has been said there yeah thank you chair um we do regularly speak to anybody who's leaving the council and we've got a very high return rate for for those people that are leaving the council and generally speaking it's not to do with those things that the council can influence such as the support that we give to our colleagues or the empowerment that we give to our colleagues it tends to do with things that are a little bit outside our control due to the fact primarily that the private sector can offer higher salaries than ourselves also the amber indicators reflect I think a reflective of the situation generally across not only the public but also the private sector in the light of the great resignation following Covid people have evaluated their lives and are making different decisions than they did pre-covid and the indicators and the targets that we have were set pre-covid and were seeing that actually turnover rates you know across a range of sectors are increasing um in light of the fact that people have have undertaken this reevaluation um we have a very comprehensive um staff wealth survey which is due to be completed before the end of august which will give us a current and very up-to-date piece of information about how our people are feeling at this moment in time within the organisation and highlight those things that we're doing well at and those things that we aren't doing so well at and unlike a lot of other surveys this will also provide individual feedback for each person within the organisation which will tell them those things that they can do to address any areas where they're feeling that things could be better and give them some advice so I'm confident that you know there are national trends that we can't directly influence that were subject to and that's why we're perhaps amber in a couple of other areas although a lot of other organisations are in red so you know we're doing better than a lot of a lot of other organisations but we're doing everything that we can to ensure that we both recruit and retain the talent that we need to deliver for our residents who deserve the best um hopefully that answers your questions but if there are any others I'll be happy to have a go at answering those no thank no thank you both it's very helpful to have the answer on both of you um okay so I have one more question to ask however there are no more members of cabinet present in the meeting therefore um I am not going to ask my question because I am not happy to ask my question just to officers when there are no cabinet members left attending the scrutiny and overview meeting um clearly the cabinet members are part of my own group but I am going to publicly express my disappointments at the fact that at 7 29 two hours and 10 minutes into the scrutiny and overview meeting that has been scheduled for a very long period of time there are no members of the executive of the council present to answer questions from members so we will now move on to the next item on the agenda so the next item on our agenda is regarding scrutiny at south cambridge a district council a new approach which is a report on page 43 250 and this item has the chief executive's name against as lead officer and as far as I'm aware Ian I am asking Liz to present in the first instance whoever I choose thank you very much in that case Liz I think I am I am saying for you to talk unless you feel that this ought to be done by somebody else or as it is something that has come from myself and Graham if it is something that you think we ought to be doing I am slightly unsure as this is the first time that we've had such a report identified and as you know I am more than willing to admit that I am sometimes unsure about exactly who should be doing things so I think we are in your hands here hopefully the report is fairly tough it's well that you I'd like to thank Ian senior for putting it together I think it's a potentially interesting and exciting new way of working for scrutiny to add to the pre scrutiny that your committee traditionally does and happy to kind of consider any sort of comments or feedback great thank you I just wanted to give you the opportunity in the first instance okay so Members as you are aware we have discussed and come up with what has been referred to here as a new approach and as Liz has just referred to it's about widening out the scope of the work that the committee does so therefore most of the work that we have done up to now has been related to the work programme of the council and related to things that are going to cabinet and related to the items or presentation and obviously the data as well and following on from discussions with everyone within the cabinet and following on discussions particularly Leber myself and councillor Cohn we are proposing this new approach and I will just give a brief overview of that and then we can have any questions and thoughts that people wish to have so we are looking really to have two sort of new ideas in terms of the way that we work one relates to the opportunity for members both members of the committee but wider members of the council as well to present ideas for things that they would like the scrutiny and overview committee to work on these may will be very small matters they may be slightly larger matters but they are not necessarily going to be matters that are exactly within the work programme or the forward plan as was previously presented and it may well be things that you as councillors are coming up with related to conversations that you've had with residents within your wards or it may well be things that groups in your wards are presenting to you has been particularly important and you think that we ought to be coming together to work on so there are a wide range of things what we also would be able to look at is the work of any organisation be it a public organisation who whose work impacts upon the lives of residents and both of these activities fit within the constitution of the council as a whole and specifically the rate of scrutiny overview committee and we have worked myself and councillor Cohn have worked within as the support officer for the groups come up exactly where we are with it and you also will find that you have been emailed the member request form which is the scrutiny item and I know a number have already been returned to Ian and just so we understand exactly how it would work any items that would be returned would be reviewed in the first instance by Ian myself and councillor Cohn in the first instance probably to check that they have relevance at all to the council because clearly we are not going to look at the activities of shall we say the British space programme for instance I feel that would be a very tenuous link I'm feeling some councillors and officers faces seem quite keen to work on that topic but I feel that might be a bit of a lot large stretch to ask an officer to write us a report on that and that then we would both use these items when there were not other things to put it on the agenda we may well use them when there are not large numbers of things to work on the agenda and that we would then come up with a work plan going forward I would hope this would allow us as a committee and as a council to be more open and transparent in our work and also to engage more with our residents so those are the things I wish to say on it councillor Cohn and if you have anything to add at this stage before we open the floor I'm happy with what you said chair hopefully it'll give members of the entirety of the council the opportunity to contribute to scrutiny as you have indicated excellent I see that councillor Cohn has already written a list for us so we have councillor Bradlam in the first instance thank you chair I think this is a perfectly sensible a way to approach bringing new items to the agenda and we've got the forms with which to do that and so I would simply like to propose that we accept this recommendation that it should go to to cabinet for consideration if that if it's cabinet who make the decision I think it's a perfectly sensible thing and and I think we should agree it okay before I come to councillor Fain who's next Liz your hand went up at that point so just oh right you were just waving excellent so councillor Fain you were next next chairman if the chief executive has comment on this I would it was all I was going to do was to say that having had a proposal that we approve this we should now proceed to do so but if the chief executive wants to say something first that would be useful to hear from us sorry it's a two points it doesn't need to go to cabinet so you can approve it here I did just want to make one point and I maybe should have said this in my introduction um that the form does refer to um so I'm just looking for the numbering uh question six and question seven about have you contacted the relevant header service and that's there for a reason um because you can generate a huge amount of work not knowing that something's been done or been addressed or you know already being considered and and so that's really an opportunity for us to advise members you know 18 months ago we did this and this was the outcome and therefore do you still want to continue so I just urge members to make sure that you use that bit of the form in the way that it's intended yes and just to kind of reinforce on that I know that um in senior has said in answer to a couple of members of the committee about making sure that they answered all of the questions on the form I know that councillor Cohn also reinforced that as well so that is a message that we've all been very clear on um thank you both I feel I'm going to ask a question here of Ian so bear with me one moment councillor Williams you wish to make a contribution thank you chair um before I I mention on this your comments about your disappointment about cabinet members um all I would say is I share your disappointment but I also recognise that was not an easy statement for you to make and that on that matter you have my full respect for the measures um words you have said and I say that formally on record um in relation to page 48 and 49 all I would like to raise is just on question seven and I do worry that that you know scrutiny is meant to be a separate from executive you know you're scrutinising and actually I do have concerns that the inclusion of that question may blur the line somewhat so I'm wondering if that is a question that is particularly important to the committee and I'd also just want to have some clarification that this is not um treating the same way as calling um and that we're not treading on some toes on the calling process um and my main thing with this is it because when there is calling then all members of the committee have to declare if they have been subject to a whip um so I'm wondering from a constitutional point of view and for opus and transparency whether this would fall into a similar category I'm not trying to be nitpicky chair I support the approach you're taking I think it's very good that yourself and Councillor Cohn want to involve more people and scrutiny and but I think constitutionally we need to make sure that all ducks are in a row so they are a couple of questions that I have that may not be able to be resolved today okay I think the are the question regarding number seven can very clearly be resolved today I think although we have said that people should seek to answer all the questions the so let's face on number seven civically have you previously contacted the relevant league cabinet member about this issue and what was the outcome that does not in and of itself preclude the item that the member wishes to have discussed from being discussed so therefore it may well be that the person who submits it answers no I have not and then wishes to explain why they have chosen not to do so that does not in our view having had the conversation preclude the item from being discussed so therefore it I would say that I have no issue with the question remaining on because it may be an entirely valid and relevant issue to raise but just to repeat myself again it doesn't preclude the item from being discussed yes please do come back thank you chair I'm pleased hear that and perhaps we do need it we have no systems and perhaps it's very important that we show that that's the case and I just want to seek some assurance we have and it's very rare but we have had a couple of incidents in the past where it's been necessary to bring an urgent case through scrutiny and I noticed the form filling process then leads to the next meeting and then then full scrutiny whereas the chair has normally been able to exercise some emergency power so I just want to make sure that we're not losing that facility in doing this no this there is no adjustment to the constitution position for screening over in relation to this and one of the things that we did was we made sure that we went through the constitution of the full council and then specifically reference screening overview in order to fit this within and if it had been the case that there had needed to potentially be amendments those we were willing at that point to possibly propose those but having terms of discussions both with Ian first and then with Liz and with others that was on essay to do that as regards the issue of calling I think I am not aware from my discussions that anyone has raised that as an issue and problem I don't know if either of our senior of any of our senior officer colleagues would like to comment in relation to that but I it has not been raised by anyone's an issue up to this point however it may not have been asked as an absolutely specific question. Ian, Liz. So, so happy to chair. Yes, thank you. So I think the idea of this form and this new way of working is to be able to be able, it's for members to be able to bring things to scrutiny and you know consider things that aren't already on our forward plan and our work plan. It's different from from calling so a calling is where you can question a decision of the cabinet that's country of the council that's contrary to policy or budget framework and therefore it's sort of a completely different things really. My question was whether this form exercise constitution would fall into the same through self-chair at the same process of calling about declarations of whips. So if you is this a calling to council from five members or the chair or whatever then if any member has been subject to a whip a party whip they have to declare it so I'm asking whether because this essentially is a style of calling in things whether it falls under the same constitutional grounds or whether it's something separate. Whatever the answer is the answer is it's just I feel that we need to be very clear constitutionally given especially the scrutiny that you know we are under. Okay um can I just say councillor Cohn would just like to have a bit of a contribution at that point then I'll come back to you Liz. Yeah so it's my view that they'd be completely separate so that the court the um the question system wouldn't be subject to the questions around whips like the calling would be because they are completely separate so the constitution would kick in if it was a calling um but not under the the questions system so I think we're happy to make that public but this is a sort of a different process and Liz anything to add at this point. I completely agree with councillor Cohn. Okay councillor Williams so I'll keep coming back to you just as you know I never like to move on until people are happy. No I appreciate the answer that I've been given I might sound pedantic but I think watertight is necessary so can I have your reassurance chair that the monitoring officer he's not with us but is completely approved been consulted and happy with with this document? I think you have raised an issue that whilst we are I get the impression well I get impression with colleagues that we are confident enough in our answer but I think you are entirely correct to say that we ought to just go for one more absolute check just so we can all be completely satisfied and that is why we have a monitor officer monitoring officer at the end of the day so we will do that. So if I could recommend in your your recommendation you may wish to amend that you endorse it subject to final consultation with the monitoring officer for constitutional checks. I'm entirely content to do that because that's something that can be done very quickly and go from there. Okay so we go back to the fact that councillor Bradnham has proposed and councillor Fane has seconded that we approve I'm sorry councillor Fane your hand was up again. Chair I did seek to second councillor Bradnham's proposal earlier on I just want to say a couple of words in doing so I certainly didn't intend to foreclose the very useful issues that have been raised since. I very much welcome this as a way of broadening out of actually the role of the the committee as you point out chair to fulfill its role under the constitution I think the role of the non executive councillors and their opportunity for non executive councillors to contribute formally to our work is very important. I as you say to some extent the SEAC does this in relation to some of the climate change issues I suspect we may find and this will be for your new chair that the time will be a constraint in which case I do feel very strong we need to find another way of achieving the objective you set out here but broadly all I wanted to do was to second the proposal earlier on so that we can now move to approval. Okay thank you very much so based on the discussion we've had I'll propose that we accept the proposal and the second and obviously as councillor Williams and the discussion we just had that we will accept that we will just have a final moment of check with the monitoring officer that the issue regarding calling is completely clear which I'm sure will be a very short conversation but obviously so in that case then um if I can take that by affirmation from members of the committee thank you very much everyone so that brings us to item number not no sorry I'll do apologize item number eight our work program so obviously you'll see where we have published at this stage information in the work work program we then will have our following meeting which comes in the next item on the 6th of September um members assuming that everything goes through as we proposed will continue to be invited to submit forms to Ian as the associated officer and then when we get to the meeting on the 6th of September we will be able to discuss that right yep we'll be able to discuss the things that we are then going to review which will then allow us to develop a work program and what we've already done is reviewed items coming through to next April so that we know where they're hopefully will be space liars I understand your hand was up thank you chair and uh I just wanted to bring to the committee's attention the motion that was passed at full council last week uh proposed by council Williams council Heather Williams about young people um the motion was sort of handed to cabinet I've been asked by cabinet in the meantime to ask if scrutiny would be prepared to take that piece of work forward and report back to cabinet um thank you um I as a member of the committee am very supportive of that idea I just wonder if there is any thought for many members of the committee regarding that I'm just going to check it sorry give me a second in my head yes we have agreed so we can talk the next bit yes I've got councillor Bradlam in the first instance for this um that sounds like um the sort of thing that task and finish group could look at marvelous councillor Ellingson having done it before I know the pit holes and they are many and numerous I will leave it that but happy to offer information thank you very much I do not see any of the and councillor Williams obviously proposed the motion thank you chair thank you for I think is your agreeance to take this subject forward all I would ask is we have done in some of the other tasks and finish groups that you do not seek to just pull from scrutiny and overview members that was part of the reason why it went to cabinet um so if you would consider that in your decision yes thank you very much so therefore again posing by affirmation that we accept responsibility for the delivery of the motion proposed by councillor Heather Williams at the recent full council meeting that scrutiny will take responsibility for that as a task and finish group I can have that affirmed agreed thank you very much which brings me then to item number nine to note the date of the next two meetings which is as I've referenced Tuesday the 6th of September which obviously means that the publication of the papers will occur before the end of August I will just flag that so that everyone is fully aware to expect obviously the papers for the meeting on the Tuesday 6th of September to be published before the end of August which I know isn't something that commonly happens for meetings but just be aware of that and then the next one being Thursday the 20th of October both will start at 5 20 p.m thank you very much I do apologise everyone bear with me one moment as ever I just wish to check something thank you very much apologies everyone so therefore we come to item 10 exclusion of press and public the press and public are likely to be excluded from the meeting during consideration of the following item in accordance with the provisions of section 100 a4 the local government act 1972 exempt information is defined in paragraph 3 of schedule 12 a as amended of the act paragraph 3 concerns information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person including the authority holding that information so therefore I propose that we go into a private session with exclusion of press and public so that we can complete the item related to minutes nine of the meeting held on the 23rd of June please can we affirm