 Roedd y ddweud yn gweithio i gweithio sy'n gweithio gyda'r Cymru, yng Nghymru, ydw i'r Cymru, a'r Cymru, i'w gwneud yma, i'w gwneud yma, i'w gwneud yma, i'w gwneud yma, i'w gwneud yma, i'w gwneud yma. Ychydig yn y topfawr, roeddwn i mi, i'w gwneud, i'w gwneud yma Stephen Drew, mae'r cyffredinidol, a'i gwneud i'w gwneud Ian Sr, ynghylch, a'r newid ynghylch yn ymdod. Erbyn, ar gyfer y ddiweddau ac yn ymdod, rydyn ni'n ddysgu'r ddysgu. Yn y gallu ddau y mynd yn cyfleidio, ac yn y cwmffrin ffrindig, yn y cwmffrin a'r ffrindig yma, rydyn ni'n ddau'r ddau'r ddau'r ddau a'r ddau'r ddau a'r ddau'r ddau'r ddau a'r ddau'r ddau'r ddau ac ynwylliant ac yr archivedrau. Fyddangos yn y ddau'r ddau, ddechrau sydd wedi bod yn ddweud o'r ddwyfoedd ymyrch o'r viadau, am ddechrau'n gwahanol am y byd, a dyfodol'i ddweud o'r ddau'r gweithio. Rwy'n cael ei ddim yn fath o'r ffordd o'r cyfnod o'r ddweud o'r cyfnod o'r gwaith, ei ddim yn fforsgrut ysgolol, ac mae'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r ddweud o'r cyfnod, cael ei ddweud o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r ddweud, Rydym yn ei bod i ni i ddim yn eistedd o'r gweinig o'r byw dda. Dyma y byddwyr y blynyddu cymdeithos a'r tyfn o unrhyw o ddweudio cyfnodau o'r 22 sektembera ym wyth, a gwiriaid o bobl y byddwyr sy'n pethau y cyffredin. Rydym yn y gallu pernes oer rydym wedi bod sy'n wouldbau sydd llawer o'i symud o'r gweinig o'r byw dda. Felly, rydyn ni wnaeth i fod yn bwysig, Ian, rydyn ni'n bwysig? Rydyn ni, dwi'n bwysig ar y dwy'r ddymu'r gweithio, a mae'n dweud yr archon ddechrau yn Cael ac yn dweud y ddechrau i Salianne Hart. ac mae'n dweud o bwysig ar y dweud o archon ddechrau Bill Handley i ddechrau John Baxter ac y gallwn rydyn ni'n dweud. Rydyn ni'n dweud, yn cael ei ddweud. Felly, byddwn i wir i'r bethau o ddefnyddio'r byd, wedyn o'r gweithio'r bethau o ddefnyddio'r byd, dweud di'tirio'r byd. Yr ystod, Sdobar. Ddod i'n cael ei fod yn y rher大家都 yn wir y dyfodol. Mae'r ddechraueth Diolch yn ymgyrch, a'r ddiogel, Volume 8, a'r ddechrau'r project Diolch yn ymgyrch yn y pwyllwyr. Thank you for that. Any other declarations of interest? I can't see anyone in the room or online indicating to speak so we'll move on to the minutes of the last meeting. Have any members of the committee got any comments or amendments to the minutes that they have in front of them? There's no one indicating to speak and no one online so we will move on to public questions. There are no public questions. Members will however find a statement attached to the agenda. This relates to the next agenda item and because nobody is available to present the statement in person it is therefore here for your information and I will summarise it at the beginning of item six. So we're all happy we've got that. Okay so we'll move on to item six. Pages 17 to 70 which is a mutual exchange policy and I will start by reading that summary. So the tenant representatives of the housing engagement board have submitted a statement to be considered alongside the report. In summary in relation to under occupation the tenant reps accept that as many other councils the housing associations under occupation by one bed will be allowed. They submit that there is no logic to continuing to refuse like for like exchanges or other exchanges where there will be no increased over or under occupation. They submit it is very important to remember that the Housing and Localism Act 1985 and 2012 listed grounds where councils were allowed to refuse exchanges. It was not an order or recommendation it was just meant that it would not be illegal. They submit that this is not the council making the best use of its stock paragraph 15 or promoting health and wellbeing through housing. In relation to overcrowding the same arguments apply as with under occupation. Some councils such as Norwich also allow overcrowding by one bed in mutual exchange. The tenant reps submitted that it makes no sense to refuse an exchange where the overcrowded tenants are unable to find a suitable bigger property but wish to swap without worsening the overcrowding. People may need to move to be nearer work, schools or family with all the life challenges benefits that that brings. This does not effectively encourage overcrowding as claimed in paragraph 19 but the refusal does deny social mobility for those who cannot find a bigger property with no gain to the council. The clear principle should be that if the overall overcrowding is not made worse then the mutual exchange should be permitted. In relation to staff elected tenant reps firmly believe that without the appointment of a dedicated specialist officer to administer and promote mutual exchanges then the risk of an ombudsman's findings will remain high and the opportunities for social mobility will be reduced. Failing this we believe that at very best a named officer should be identified who will have overall responsibility for the operation and promotion of mutual exchange to ensure accountability. In conclusion the tenant reps hope that the scrutiny and overview committee will support tenants in their desire to improve social mobility in South Cams. That's the end of the summary and the committee members should bear in mind that tenant representatives comments when reviewing the mutual exchange policy that we have in front of us. I think what we'll do now is move into questions from the committee so I'll open it up for questions. Thanks very much. Councillor Rippith. Thank you. I hope I'm not jumping ahead but something I did notice was the desire of those tenants for a full time post to be created for this issue dealing with mutual exchanges which the council currently according to his papers does not want to do. First of all I wanted to ask how many requests come in per annum for mutual exchanges and with freeing up of these regulations that would enable what kind of increase might we expect. So I'm assuming that to Peter Campbell in this case. The lead member for housing I don't think is present so we'll go to the leader Bridget Smith. She wants to refer that over I'm happy for that. You're on mute Councillor Smith. Sorry my apologies I was distracted then by an emergency call but I will pick that up thank you. Sorry do you want to repeat it again I'm sorry I had a telephone ringing there with somebody. Okay I was thinking about making it really simple how many requests come in for mutual exchange per annum currently. How many? I'm going to refer to officers because it's not actually very many but because that's a technical question I'll have to refer that over if that's okay. Peter Campbell did you want to come in? Yeah myself and Julie both had to take questions so I can't remember the exact number but it's in the regional 40. Okay 40, 40. So with 40 per annum currently with this kind of freeing up of regulations what might you expect that to increase to because surely tenants might think oh it's easier to do this and it's more viable for me to make an exchange in the future. And so I'm thinking about should we be putting in you know officer and officer posts for it? It's obviously difficult to speculate what the numbers may be but I hope there will be an increase but I don't think it would increase into hundreds. And what members will notice is that on the summary of the recommendations that are covered in page 18 of the report is that what we're saying is that the officer's proposal is that we continue with the current arrangements but we monitor the numbers. So if there is a significant increase in numbers which suggests the need for additional staff we'll review that at that time. Thank you. Councillor Bridget Smith do you want to come back in? Yes, yes I've just intervened there so obviously it's been made clear that it's something we'll monitor. The problem with having a dedicated officer is that you then introduce a single point of failure and we've been at great pains over the last few years to weed out single points of failure within the council. So you know if that one officer is on holiday or unwell or something it then means that you know they're inbox is filling up with requests and nobody's nobody's there to deal with it. So you know it was the feeling of cabinet that it's far better that you have officers multi multi skilled officers who you know so there's a range of people who can deal with these requests because actually a single dedicated person often causes more more problems than than it saves really. So I just to follow up so would it be a good idea to sort of split that full time post maybe into a number of people's job descriptions that it would be covered so it doesn't kind of fall below the radar almost just a suggestion. Thank you. So you know that's an operational decision, but it certainly know if we have multi skilled multi skilled officers then that that negates the risk that that sort of risk. Also what cabinet heard when we had the presentation about this was that you know there wasn't going there wasn't sufficient workload to justify a single dedicated officer to do this work. But I'm sure Peter or Julie can give more more detail about how how they're currently managing it and how they can make sure that you know we we maintain capacity to provide the best service to our residents. The only thing that I'll add to that is that the rule of the housing officer is a generic housing officer who covers the covers the patch and that gives them knowledge of the area and of the tenants themselves. So there's as much advantage of having a generic officer covering the area that there would be a specialist who may know the process better but will not have the same knowledge of the tenants or all the other locality. Is that okay councillor Ripith you want to come back on that? No that's fine I think I've had quite a long turn. Thanks very much councillor Anna Bradman. Thank you. I've got two questions they're both rather complicated so oh I think well anyway it's up to councillor Smith who she directs them to. So the one question is about what you class as a bedroom or a potential bedroom. You remember in the report there's reference to old style parlour rooms which to me indicates a room downstairs. And so for my money my question was doesn't this rather depend on what you class as a potential bedroom and does this mean we'll end up with over occupation using living rooms as bedrooms. Now that may not be a problem in such a style of old style parlour house but I just wanted a sort of a view of that. And the second one really is quite complicated so it might be easier to answer that. I'm happy for that to happen. Bridget Smith. Thank you. So I think what's important is that our officers are able to take a pragmatic view and you know where we run into problems is if we run a system that's completely inflexible and doesn't take into consideration the sort of nuances of people's situation but also the particular housing. So I think where we've run into problems before is the lack of flexibility in the system. So I'm going to look to officers to back me up on this that we're trying to be pragmatic and flexible. And this is people's lives we're talking about and if it really improves their lives in order to have a parlour bedroom downstairs then we should be doing our utmost to facilitate it within our policy. So just come in there. So what Councillor Smith is saying is absolutely right. So occasionally we do have people who are overcrowded in a traditional three bedroom house and who wouldn't normally qualify for a four bedroom house because of the family size. But because they're so in such short demand or short supply across the district it seems pragmatic to allow those families to move into a larger three bedroom house that has an additional room downstairs which could be used as a bedroom. So to make it clear when we're defining a bedroom we don't make any judgement from the size of the room. A bedroom is a room which is used locally as a bedroom. Okay, thank you. And I hear what is said about the need to be flexible for individual circumstances and I'm happy with that. I'm just thinking it would be unfortunate if that ended up in, for example, the loss of a living room. I appreciate the implication of the parlour is that it's not a very much used room so that's fine. Now right, now the second question. It relates to a situation that I encountered which was where this was to do with the housing association. And a vulnerable tenant undertook a mutual exchange in order to get away from somebody who was bullying them next door. So you will appreciate this is vulnerable tenant moves away from problematic tenant, new tenant moves in. New tenant then gets bullied by the same person who was bullying the original person and finds out where the previously bullied tenant has now moved to. Now fortunately in that situation we as a county council were able to step in and offer council accommodation after a quite a complicated process but we did manage to do that. But I'm just hoping that we can be sure that as landlords we would be looking out for that sort of possibility and taking every step we can to avoid it. I hope I've explained it clearly enough that you understand what I mean. It's just I want the reassurance that we as that's why it's important to have officers being aware of what's going on around the tenant, not just for that tenant. Thank you for that, Councillor Bradman. Councillor Smith. So, you know, there are as many situations as there are tenants, and I know that our housing team are exceptional in their ability to deal with, you know, these very tricky situations that come up. Not often but come up occasionally. So I don't envisage this having any negative impact on our officers ability to deal with these, sorry, but mad puppies here I'm afraid barking away. I don't see that this would in any way negatively influence our officers ability to be able to deal with these very sensitive situations. Thank you. So I don't see why we should suddenly see an increase, but I think, you know, Peter's already indicated that we don't really know, but I personally don't see why we should suddenly get a great surge in demand. You know, this is just about regularising the council's policy, getting rid of a couple of anomalies and just make simplifying it and making it more tenant focused, I hope, and making sure that we deliver the best service. But as Peter's already said, we have to make sure that we're building capacity into our system that does allow us to cope with any increase in demand. But again, that's quite technical, so I'd like to refer back to officers for any further detail, please. OK, so when we have a normal empty property that we deal with a relet, we have a responsibility to bring that property up to a relet standard before we sign up for the new property. The difference with an exchange is that it's a swap of tenancy between two tenants and much of the onus then about checking condition of the property lies with the incoming tenants, so they would view the property. So, for example, if a tenant left one of our properties who changed some doors as a normal termination, we may ask that person to replace the doors with something which is more suitable. If it's a mutual exchange, the incoming tenant would make their own decision whether or not they accepted those doors and would only go ahead once they were satisfied. So, in reality, the promotion of the mutual exchange scheme is likely to save us money on repairs rather than lead to an increase in costs. Mainly in the context of the two examples that the tenant reps gave in their full submission. So they gave an example of two situations where an exchange would not be permitted under the proposed revised policy. I just wanted to ask whether or not we would have another way of dealing with those situations, whether it seems like a reasonable concern is being raised here. Under our revised policy, would we actually be able to meet those concerns or is it possible that the one bed under occupation limit as a strict limit is perhaps a little too inflexible? Thanks very much, our councillor Bridget Smith. Okay, so we have to be realistic about this. The demand for our housing greatly exceeds what we currently have, and I don't know how many hundreds, if not thousands of people we currently have on our waiting list, but it is considerable. So it is really imperative on us to make the best use of our housing stock and therefore we really shouldn't be encouraging under occupancy. I think we should be doing everything in our power to make sure that people have the house that meets their needs. I think we are prepared to accept what the tenants have said about this flexibility on one bedroom, but again it's not desirable because if we have a two bedroom house with one couple in it, that means there's potentially a family of two parents and two children who actually we haven't got a house for. So, you know, this is sometimes you've got to be a little bit hard, hard-nosed about this because we have lots of people who don't have a decent home, so we have to make the best use of the stock we've got. I don't know actually how we in reality were dealing with that at the moment, so perhaps if Julia or Peter would add in the detail please. Okay. My comment is, first of all, the current policy is that we allow no under occupation at all. So moving towards one bedroom under occupation is as seen as good practice that that's what the majority of councils do. We are aware of one of one of the local authority who offers currently what the tenants are asking. I spoke to them last week and they told me that they're facing a type because it's unfair in their eyes. But with regard to the two points about what the tenants are saying, the examples that they have are the examples made to make a point and they're assuming that a mutual exchange is the only way of moving. In reality, most people move house through our allocation system and will continue to do so. And we will, of course, be flexible if people have got a need to move, which is difficult to capture in a policy, we will make sure that there is discretion available within our working practices in order to help people who are in need of a move. It is, of course, very difficult to codify that within a policy of them to refer to the use of discretion. Councillor Hoban. Thank you for the answers. I think the aspect of these examples that caught my attention was the fact that they highlight situations where there's no increase in under occupation and where there would be other advantages to the exchange. So I totally appreciate that there are good reasons not to encourage too much under occupation and we need to have a system that encourages efficient use of housing stock. I totally appreciate that. I was concerned about the examples because they were not examples that would have increased the under occupancy. They were examples that would not have decreased it but would have brought other advantages and that's why I wanted to raise the point. May I move on to the second question? The second question was about the overcrowding, the response to the quest around overcrowding. I really wanted to ask what kind of risks have been assessed here and what was the consideration around those risks. I'm assuming that there's awareness here into slipping into a situation where we might end up with a gradual increase in overcrowding in our council houses. The reason for the revised policy being as it is was to make sure that that doesn't happen. What I wanted to ask is how that decision was arrived at and what risks have been considered in terms of the overcrowding issue. Council Bridget Smith. I'm going to have to pass that on to Peter or Julie. Thank you. I'll start off and I'll bring in Julie to talk a bit about how the needs work that she does. But in a way the answer is very similar to the previous question is that we cannot look at mutual exchanges in isolation. Many mutual exchanges will work that you have a family who wants to upsize and a family who wants to downsize. Typically an older couple who are in a larger property will want to move downsize, a younger couple with a growing family will want to exchange upwards. And they're both benefit from that arrangement. What our objections were to overcrowding is that really that's not solving any problem. It's just shifting a problem for one property to another and what our preference would be to try and identify other suitable accommodation for that family to move into. Through the normal waiting list and allocation system, either in their own stock or with the housing association. Jones, come in about housing needs Julie. Yeah, just to come in really in terms of the overcrowding. I think how we've come to sort of decision we have in terms of the policy was in terms of obviously if that class was overcrowded, they can go on the transfer list within on the housing waiting list and they will be given priority because of that overcrowding. And we feel that because of that they should be able to to move into more suitable accommodation them rather go into another property where they're overcrowded. It's tenants choice in terms of finding the mutual exchange that they want to swap to. But what we have Peter said, we don't want to just move the problem and we know from sort of housing management that people who are overcrowded, you tend to get more sort of anti social behaviour. You've got more people condensed into the home, less space etc. Doesn't bode well. So, you know, we don't feel that we can be seen to say yes, it's okay actually if you want to be overcrowded to be overcrowded because we don't feel it is. We feel that, you know, we need to support you to move. The only reason we've gone for the three beds or parlor type situation is because we know we have very few four bedroom properties available. And therefore the likelihood of them finding the mutual exchange or potentially through the transfer are much slimmer. So, you know, whilst that would still give a person their own bedroom, even if it's sort of like a parlor room, we felt that that was sort of the best flexibility really. Just in terms of housing needs both overcrowding, but I think more under occupation. It's having that awareness actually, especially in terms of family sized accommodation that we do have a huge waiting list over 2000 applicants on the waiting list. You know, many of them are families with children when perhaps you've got a single person in the three bed. And we would say, OK, it's fine to change exchange to another three bed when we know we've got so many people waiting. Again, you know, we feel that's perhaps a step too far in terms of the mutual exchange policy. Thank you. Thank you very much for the answers. Thank you. OK, so we've got councillor Sue Elinton next. Thank you, Chairman. I was very pleased to hear that the councillor of Smith say that we were looking to be pragmatic and moving towards being more flexible. And one of the things that I couldn't find in the document, it may be there, but I didn't read, and I perhaps didn't read every word, is that some waiting should be given to somebody who wants to move closer to friends or family, and the mutual exchange will facilitate that. And I feel there ought to be a paragraph somewhere that says we will look very favourably on this sort of mutual exchange arrangement. Councillor Bridget Smith. So I think, I'm sure Peter and Julie have lots of evidence of the reasons that people actually choose to do exchanges. My own experience in 15 years of being a councillor is actually the need to be closer to support networks. My experience is probably the most popular one for people wanting to move. So I think that often is a factor. I don't know that with exchanges whether these things require a waiting because I don't think they're competitive necessarily, are they? Okay, so I'm seeing shaking heads. So it's a kind of, it's not as if somebody's competing against somebody else for the exchange. It's about something that's mutually beneficial between two households. But it would be, as I say, I think being near support networks or needing to look after elderly mum or have granny who can look after your children is probably the main reasons. But I don't know whether Julie or Peter can add a bit more detail into that. I'm slightly guessing. No, you're absolutely right. So a mutual exchange doesn't offer waiting. The allocation system may do. So the mutual exchange will basically be, will have a list of properties and it will say, I have got a two bedroom property in Cotinham, for example, on and for three bedding in Swaythe. If somebody has got something which is the opposite to that or close to it, it is then up to the tenants to arrange amongst themselves if that suitable swap for them both. We don't get involved with offering any waiting whatsoever, but just make sure that they've got full information which to make their decisions. Okay, Councillor Edinton. Thank you for that reassurance. Okay, so Peter Fane, Councillor Peter Fane. Thank you, Chair. I think we would all be very sympathetic to the submission by the tenants on page 13. I'm particularly struck by what they say about wanting South Cams to be in the vanguard. Well, Peter Campbell has drawn attention to the fact that being in the vanguard is not always an advantage, but they, I would also accept what they say at item two about the benefits of mutual exchange and about being flexible. And I welcome the fact that the Council is proposing to be more flexible. I was concerned in particular about what they said item three one. And they say that the South Cams, I don't know whether the leader or indeed officers would agree with this, that the South Cams mutual exchange policy for years has caused untold misery to tenants seeking to improve their lives by denying them the opportunity to exchange properties for no logical reason. That was obviously a statement that must be of concern to us all. Just in asking my question, I would also stress that if, for some reason, it is not felt appropriate to approve a mutually agreed exchange, that does not, of course, result in the release of a house, or usually I guess, of a house that may be slightly over occupied or under occupied. And I think the tenants key suggestion is that a degree of under or over occupation should be allowed when it suits both tenants. And I wonder whether the leader or officers want to comment on that. Thank you, Councillor Bridget Smith. So I think we've acknowledged that. I think the fact that it's been picked up externally that the policy we had wasn't best practice, and that was because there was a lack of flexibility in it. It was too rigid. I don't know what the history of that is. I don't know when it was last revised. It might well be many years ago. So I think we've acknowledged that. We've acknowledged that we have to build in flexibility. Because people have to have some degree of choice over whether they are under occupying a bit and therefore paying more rent, whether they are slightly overcrowded because they really like the house they live in. They really like the house and they're prepared to put up with a little bit of overcrowding because the house is suitable, the location is suitable, granny's down the road, that sort of thing. So I think we have acknowledged that. And I think what's proposed here builds in that flexibility, which will hopefully address the concerns and make the whole system and the policy more user-friendly. And as Councillor Ellington said, we're able to be more pragmatic and less rigid about it because that's what makes people happy. Peter, do you want to come back on that? Councillor Peter Faith. Thank you, Chair. I'm entirely satisfied with the leader's response on that point. Thanks very much. OK, so we're going to Councillor Libby Earle. Actually, Councillor Ellington has said more or less what I wanted to say, which was that very often I think support networks are important in where people live. And from the point of view of the local authorities, this council and also county, can actually have a financial implication too. So while we might want to keep our properties occupied to the optimum, there will be occasions when a family wants to move simply because they need to provide a support network perhaps to other relatives. And if they're not doing that, then that support network will fall to social services completely. We perhaps need to just take into account, and I think we are doing, I think there's going to be flexibility here, that someone may well be in inverted commas doing local authorities a favour by moving. And perhaps we ought to just announce a degree of flexibility if there is going to be under occupation of a property where somebody is going to be providing support networks for someone else. And ditto the other way around, asking people to downsize, and I've certainly come across this where a single person has been asked to downsize. But in fact, that person is elderly and their support network is local. If they were to downsize and move to a completely different location, they would then be thrown on the good or species of social services for their support network. So I think that that's important. I can see a lot of nodding, but I will come over to Councillor Bridget Smith just to comment on that. Well, that's right. I mean, it's because I couldn't agree more with Councillor Earl. So as somebody whose mum is living in the back garden, so two doors away, and if she wasn't there, she'd be taking a care bed somewhere. So, you know, she is only allowed to, you know, she's only able to stay living independently because it takes me 30 seconds to run round her house when she presses her panic button and then find that she's gotten why she did it, but never mind that. So absolutely, and particularly as we start, we're tackling the cost of living crisis, you know, the I've got a new grandchild. It's going to cost £100 a day for that child to be in a nursery. So I'm expecting the call for the grant about the grandchild as well as as well as granny. So I think with the cost of living crisis and all the pressures that families have to maximise their incomes in order to pay their rents. And they're very high mortgages. I think those support, those familial support networks are going to become much, much more important. Much more akin to what we see in other parts of the world actually, where it is extended family networks that are proximal to where people live, that allow them to live their lives. So, you know, families are, you know, we need our families more these days. So it couldn't be more true. You're quite right, Councilor Earl. We have to be, when we're making these decisions, we have to be factoring that in. Because if by being inflexible, it then means that granny or granddad goes into a care home or, you know, somebody's mortgage can't be paid because a parent has to stay at home looking after a child because they can't work. You know, there are serious, serious repercussions from an inflexible system, which is becoming more and more apparent. May I just jump in if that's OK? Yes. On the end of that, just to provide some reassurance. So Council tenants are secure tenants that their tenancy, you know, is the life if they want it to be. So we will never force one of our tenants to leave the property because they are overcrowded. If we recognise that that person is having difficulties, we may have a conversation with them. We may talk about options of either exchanging or going on the wording list to help them to move to a suitable accommodation area of their choice. And we will give them financial support to help them to do that, but we will never force anybody out. Julie Fletcher. Thank you. If I may just add to that. So obviously, as officers, we think the policy does give that flexibility in terms of supporting those people that want to move because of support networks, et cetera. And what we're trying to achieve is if someone's in a free bed but actually only has a one bed need, we're trying to say actually try and find somewhere you can go to a two bed but actually not like some like is what we're saying within the policy. However, I think 11.14 of the policy there is a discretion there in terms of looking at it on the case by case basis. If we were to refuse mutual exchange based on the policy, there is discretion there to actually look at it again if there are extenuating circumstances such as savings in terms of care, support, et cetera. So I think the flexibility is also written within the policy to allow us to have that discretion where there's evidence that actually there's a real need for that person to move and perhaps that a property that's suitable for them isn't available in that area. OK. Can I just add that if we are going for a flexible approach and we're going for multi skilled officers, can we be sure that officers will all feel able to exercise that? Discretion or at least have someone to go to to make sure that they can because I can see that with a person perhaps who is lack of confidence that flexibility could be threatened. I see nodding heads again, but I'll bring Julie Fletcher in. Thank you. Just to confirm on that any discretion will be at the service manager level, so it wouldn't be up to a housing officer that would have to be considered by the service manager at that point. Hopefully that will give you some comfort in terms of being able to apply any discretion. Thank you. OK. OK. So we've got Councillor Judith Griffith. Thank you for letting me have another crack the whip. I really want to say that I think this is a really good move and a really good policy because it's going to be much more flexible and everyone's already spoken about discretion and social mobility and it's wider sense. And I understood from reading it that actually accessibility could counter to what you might think reduce the number of void properties because there must be some properties that really just don't get fills because they are too. It would be under occupancy. I just want that confirmed. So we might actually rather moving away from treating sort of numbers and boxes approach to more kind of free free approach that we might be using the help council homes to the optimum level in any case. OK, Councillor Bridget Smith. Well I think I think we do. I think you know I think we do. And you know. One of the issues we've we've noticed in recent months is that when properties are vacated. We're seeing quite a lot which are left in not very good condition. And and so that's why I know we're coming on to KPIs and so on later. It's taking longer than we would wish to relet some of these these properties because you know these are awful lot of work done on them to bring them back in back up to up to condition. But I you know I'm not sure I think I think the turnaround we have is as as fast as we can possibly make it but again I refer to officers for a bit more detail. I was wrong to come in. So so the mutual exchange is a swap between two tenants. So that will have very little impact on properties that are otherwise empty. So so what what I think you're talking to about council repruth is the the time it takes us to to deal with avoid property from the keys handed in through refurbishment back to relet. That is a different process that we are looking at. And he's always not been great. We're we're in a much stronger position now than we were for a few months ago. And that's within the KPI report coming up next. Yeah, thank you. Okay. Council Anna Bradman. Thank you chair. Firstly, I'm mindful of the and it's in the report too. I'm mindful of the risks of perception of unfairness when you move from a formula to. A system where you exercise discretion, but I'm sure the officers are aware of that too. You know, I have had people say to me. Oh, but that lady over there moved into a three bedroom house when that would have been perfect for my family. That's real stuff. However, I'm satisfied that the tenants concerns have been considered very carefully in this report. And I thank our offices for looking into this so thoroughly. And I'm satisfied that the recommendation, which is summarized. I know this is just the summary of what's gone on. But the recommendation at paragraph seven on page 18 of our papers is a very thorough addressing of all of those potentials for perception of risk, but also allowing flexibility to enable officers to take a case by case decision. So I'm happy that we should move to the recommendation. And I support this. Just come back on one thing. That's the right councillors. I think you make a really important point about the issue of discretion. And that is partly why we've said that discretion should be limited to getting approval of more senior officers. What we also are hoping to do, although it's not mentioned in the policy itself, is to keep a record of when discretion has been applied, which we will then review on a regular basis within our managers group to make sure that, although there is a discretion available, that discretion itself is applied in an equitable way. Thank you for that. Are you happy with that, Councillor Bradman? Yes. Thank you. Okay, so Councillor Richard Stovart. Chair, thank you. Just a couple of brief points. The policy, I think, is excellent. And I think in the policy document, the setting out of expectations for the parties involved is very clear. And I think that's an excellent feature. Just one thing, and I was looking at paragraph 21 of the policy on authorized mutual exchange. I was a little bit worried about the possibility of coercion. So if one of the parties wasn't so keen on the exchange and another was, and there are all sorts of shades of possibility there, how can that be picked up and counted, are officers equipped to investigate that kind of pressure that might be lying below the surface, but really there that would result in an inappropriate exchange, which on the face of it might look okay. Can we take that one first and then come back to the second point? I think that's an important one. So if we go over to Councillor Bridget Smith, because those vulnerable tenants, yeah. Exactly. So you're right to be concerned about that. But we have some of the most highly experienced housing officers I imagine in the country. And a lot of the tenants they deal with would be described as vulnerable. So I have every confidence in the skills and the ability and the insight of our housing, our office and the housing team to pick up on anything that might be caused because of concern and an act accordingly. I'm sure Peter will reaffirm that. Yes, of course. And in practical terms, during a mutual exchange process, the officer will spend some time individually with each of the tenants. He won't just see them together and will talk about the process. We do, of course, what we are experiencing dealing with coercion. And just this week, we've done a blog about coercion and cuckoing for vulnerable tenants. We're very aware of this. It's a growing issue, especially with the increase in more vulnerable people in society. And that's the advantage, of course, of having the generic local officers involved who will more likely have some knowledge of the tenants involved in the exchange and the locality rather than just some unknown tenant from another area coming to see them. Peter, would that include working cross with police, mental health services, NHS to building on councillor Stovart's point to protect vulnerable people from cuckoing and Bradnham's point about protecting people from bullying and being coerced into moving when they don't necessarily want to? Of course. If anything that any officer has come across, which starts their spidey sentries tingling, we've got a well-developed escalation policy to the police, social services, that they're more appropriate people. A bit of an aside, but I don't know if members do have access to insight. But Claire Gilby, who's a run enforcement team, did a video about this last week. And if we can work away aware of doing this, we can share that with members so you can see the sort of things that we're doing, what our response is. Thanks very much, councillor Stovart. No, those answers are great, thank you very much. Councillor Hannah Bradnham's indicates me. Sorry, having said I'm having to move forward, it's just suddenly occurred to me. Are we talking about mutual exchange within this authority? Or are we talking about mutual exchange of properties between this authority and other authorities, because then we wouldn't know the other tenant, would we? Councillor Bridget Smith. So I'm assuming it's within our home link cohort, but I'm going to, I'm looking to Peter to confirm that. Peter Campbell? No, an exchange can be locally or it can be nationally, and it can be with different landlords. So what the housing officer will do is have conversation and exchange information with their equivalent within the other organisation. Councillor Bradnham. All the way through, I was thinking this was within this authority. The advanced majority are, but it's one advantage of the mutual exchanges, of course the mutual exchange, that it does offer social mobility more widely and is a very many local authorities have closed waiting list for their allocation system, which you cannot go on the waiting list unless you live in the district. A mutual exchange will often help people to move to a new area for work, etc. Or to provide some sort of care issues that we've been talking about previously. If I could just say for residents like mine in Gamlingey, where we are this kind of promontory into Huntingtonshire and Bedfordshire, we're bordered on three sides by other authorities. It's very frequent that so in Gamlingey a lot of the kids go to school in Bedfordshire. So I've had people with children with schooling issues and it was absolutely imperative that they moved closer to a Bedfordshire school in order to meet their children's educational needs. Again, that shows the flexibility of our system. I think it's right, but I'm sure our officers work very closely with housing officers either from our neighbouring authorities or from the other housing agencies as well. In fact, I know they do. Thank you, chair. I'm sure our officers would undertake the same due diligence with regard to tenants moving in as they would have done with tenants moving within the authority. So thank you. Thanks very much for highlighting that, Councillor Bradley. So have we got any other speakers on item six? It was a short exchange policy. I can't see any either online or in the room. So if we go now back to page 18 to the recommendations at item seven, it is recommended that the Scrutiny and Overview Committee considers this report and supports with comments where appropriate the officers' recommendations to Cabinet listed below. Is the committee happy to do that with the comments that we've made today? Can I see a show of hands that we're happy with that? Lovely. It's actually unanimous. So good. So we'll now move on to item seven, which is the quarter one performance. So quarter one performance report pages 71 to 112. I'm just going to open this straight up to the committee for questions. Councillor James Hobro. Thank you, chair. Just a question really about one of the metrics, but I'd like to say first of all, overall, then, I think it's a relief to see that most of our metrics are either good or moving in the right direction, and where there are exceptions to that, then there are very good explanations given in this report for the reasons why there may be some metrics that are not moving in the right direction. There was one example that caused me a little concern, and that was on page 83, FS 117, the staff turnover metric, and there were no comments made about this, so I just wanted to ask. We've seen a gradual improvement in staff turnover, which I know is something that we'd expected should improve as a result of the four-day working week, which, of course, is now bedding in. But this particular metric took what looks like, perhaps, a small turn in the wrong direction, and I wondered whether perhaps officers could comment on whether this is significant, or just a little bit of noise, and if it is significant, if there's any understanding around what the causes might be. Thank you. Okay, so we'll come to Councillor John Williams in the first instance, and then, if you want to refer that on, that's fine. Jeff memory. Thank you, Jeff. Yes, it's actually a relatively small number of people, and it was caused by the fact that we do interview people when they leave to find the reason why they're leaving, and none of these were of any issues of concern, like, for example, there were a couple of people who decided to retire, and there was somebody who was moving to another part of the country and chose to leave. It's still comfortably within our expectation, our target for turnover. I mean, a little bit of turnover is always good anyway, because it brings a little bit of new blood into the organisation, which is always useful. I have to say, it's certainly worth noting, so if it continues going forward, it's something we need to look at, but it doesn't cause me concern at the moment. Thanks very much. I'm very happy to answer. Thank you very much. Okay, Councillor Peter Fane. Thank you, Chair. By context, I'm very conscious of the fact that our KPIs are being particularly closely scrutinised by others at the moment, that where we have stretched targets which are intentionally intended to be ambitious, that will be noted, and I might even say exploited. I wanted to refer to the targets set out on page. I think it's 78. Forgive me, I'm just using one screen, so I haven't got that in front of me. In relation to the KPIs on the collection of business rates and on council tax collection, and in each case, there was a slight falling back on targets for very good reasons for a short period, which I think has been recovered, and I noticed that in relation to council tax targets, we were actually, at the time we were criticised for this, seeing us being the most effective in the country. I wondered whether Councillor Williams or officers would like to comment on those places where we may appear to be failing to meet targets for a very short period and for good reasons. Councillor John Williams. Thank you, Chair. I think it's terribly difficult. We are looking at the first quarter of the new financial year, and business rates and council tax is collected throughout the year, and clearly there are going to be some variations, and as we saw with the last financial year, at quarter four, for the first two months of that quarter, yes, we were below our targets because of reasons, particularly on council tax, of extending people's payback from 10 months to 12 months. But in the end, we actually came out as joint top collector of council tax, whereas if you looked at quarter four, you would have thought, hmm, they're not doing very well on that. And similarly with this, this is the first quarter of the new financial year. I wouldn't read too much into the slight variations against the target in the first quarter. Various reasons why the collection of council tax is either slightly below or on target. I mean council tax, for example, if you look. I mean for April and June, we were bang on target. It was only in May that we saw a slight fall. So I wouldn't look at these particular figures in too much detail at this stage in the financial year. Wait until we're halfway through the financial year and then we might see a trend, but at the moment the trend here is certainly the outlaw piece green because we don't believe that we are, we are seriously adrift with where we are in the budget on either of these two. Thank you, Councillor Williams. Councillor Fane. Just to say, Chair, that I find Councillor Williams' response entirely helpful and rather what I had hoped he would say to be frank. Thanks very much. So Councillor Sue Ellington next. Thank you. I'm looking on page 84 at the black bin collections and they're good. I'm no problem with that. But it does say that you're going to try to reduce the amount that's put in black bins and I wondered whether you're going to set a new target to show that reduction. So what are you going to manage to do to actually reduce the amount that goes into black bins? Councillor John Williams in the first instance. I'm happy to let Bode explain this, but we appreciate how important it is to ensure that we maximise recycling from our household collection and we need to have ambitious targets to push ourselves to make sure that we do achieve, we do maximise the recycling from household waste. So again, you know, both of these, our forecast is green. We're expecting that we would be on target or would exceed the new targets by the year end, but I'll let Bode explain the reasoning behind it. Bode, Sam. Thank you, Councillor Williams. And that's absolutely right. This is one of our ambitious targets. What are we going to do firstly? Education, education, education? We're going to try to encourage and change behaviour. That's the ultimate that we need to start with and then just try and show residents how they can actually reduce what they put in their black bins. We have had a few councillors actually come forward to suggest that they could be exemplar. So we're hoping that in the next few months we can get them moving, some areas want to be able to not put out their black bins for many, many months. So it's all about education fundamentally. In the medium term, part of what we hope to do, there are no immediate plans for that, but we know that one of the measures that does work is to reduce the frequency of collection of the black bins. So if we move to three weekly or monthly, then we know that it's proven that that does help people to make much more efficient use of their black bins. But in the immediate short term, our plan is just to continue to roll out educational initiatives and try and change behaviour at the household level. Thanks very much councillor Sue Ellington. So really we're just encouraging through communications and advertising rather than any other interventions. One hour, yes. Sorry, Apologies. Increase in educational initiatives, communications, yes. We have several outlets that we use. We have several forums. We have community action days, yes. So that's the principal method at the moment. Thank you councillor Sue Ellington. Thank you. Thank you councillor Stephen Drew. Thank you. On page 82, AH 211, average days to re-let all housing stock. I recall over the last year and a bit, this has been a target that has been talked about many many times at this committee and one of the things that has been raised has been the issue of whether or not the 17 day target for re-letting housing stock was actually realistic and there's been many conversations had in relation to this. I also know that this is one of the things that has been flagged up by people who have been looking at the performance of South Cambridgeshire District Council at a national level and have used it to criticise our performance. But I now note within this quarter on report that actually the average number of days to re-let our housing stock has been cut by 42% in the space of three months and actually now sits at 22 days which really is very very close to this target of 17 days which all members have commented repeatedly over the last 15 months is an extremely ambitious target and I have heard members sitting on all sides of the chamber actually at times almost suggested this target ought to be abolished and changed because it's so unrealistic and creates a false impression. Yet we now appear to be pretty close to it. So I wonder whether or not Councillor Williams wanted to comment or possibly officers following him on what has been done to achieve such a great level of success in the last three months at cutting the number of days to re-let council properties by 42%. Councillor Williams. Thank you chair. I'll let Peter go into the details. Before Peter does, I'll just say that as regards should we or shouldn't we have this target I believe that we ought to because that's one of the complaints I often get when people see a council house not occupied is why is it taking you so long to occupy, to have a tenant for that property. So I think this does help us understand how difficult it is sometimes to re-let a property because of various factors one of which is very often unfortunately it's in such a poor condition that we can't re-let it before we do substantial work to it. And also there are cases where there are some properties where we've elderly tenants and quite understand why elderly tenants do not want the disruption but there are some properties that have been occupied by an elderly tenant for decades and when they move out we find we have to do substantial work to it to bring it up to standard. So it is important you know people do draw attention to the voids and I think therefore it is important we have some target that as whether or not this target is too demanding because clearly we are actually achieving you know we are probably one of the where as it says here we're in the top quartile of turning council properties around so we're shooting ourselves in the foot a little bit on this because it leaves us open as you say to people criticising us because we don't meet our own target on this which is a very stretched target but I'll let Peter explain more as to reasons why we do have difficulty in reaching this target. Peter Campbell Yw'r Caer, start off with the reason for the target and why it's an important one. This is probably the only target that we have in the housing service that measures how the service works together. So when a property becomes empty the first part that is dealt with by housing management and then it goes across to the repair team when the contractor is allocated through the allocation system which is a separate team and it is signed up at the end of the process by housing management. So the end-to-end process revolves all parts of the housing department and it's often seen as a one indicator that measures the health of the whole service. So looking at the graph and the reason why the target is so challenging is that in the past there's a council that has excellent performance on real ex. The deterioration in performance during the early years of this graph, 21, 22, etc. Was likely to do with the impact of Covid. People weren't leaving their properties unless they abandoned them or died their properties. So we had a higher proportion of those properties that were in poor conditions. Councillor Williams had mentioned and we had working restrictions for the properties working the properties. They couldn't work in close proximity and in the post-Brexit period we had a significant shortage of materials. All those have pretty much resolved themselves now. So we are hopeful over the next few years that we can keep our performance within the top quartile. What you also report is, thank you for noticed improvements, the national trend is exact top of ours. Nationally people find it more and more difficult to determine the properties quickly. So we are very much booking the national trend here. Councillor Stephen tree. Could you explain why we are back in the national trend? Thank you both for your answers. You are very clear and give very one information. But I genuinely want to know what it is that you think that our council services and officers have done in the last three months to cut the length of time it takes to reload our properties by 42%. You've now given me an even more profound thought in relation to it when you've said the south camp district council which has cut the length of time it takes to reload its houses by 42% in the space of three months at a time when nationally we are back in the national trend. I am genuinely intrigued how the council has managed to do this because this strikes me as an example of incredible performance by our staff. So I genuinely would like to know how you think we have managed to do this. And that's largely it. Over the time when our performance was poor there are a number of unusual factors like the ones I've mentioned, labour shortage, et cetera. But since that's calmed down we've had to be able to really focus on performance especially working with mays under the new contract. And we're focused on performance and we're highlighting difficulties and when we find problems we're really knuckling down to try and iron those out. So if we make a mistake once that's not repeated in future properties. So I'm not going to ask a question again but I am going to check that I have fully understood. So what you're saying is that through the management and leadership of senior officers of the council focusing on performance, focusing on ensuring that we provide the best possible services for our residents we have managed in our council to significantly cut by 42% the number of days it takes to let our housing stock and other councils in the country have not managed to do that. I am delighted to hear this and I hope that certain people who have been criticising our council and to use this figure and our failure to reach that target might well like to consider that they ought to take a little bit more time to evaluate performance of the council. Thank you. Councillor Richard Stobart please. Chair, thank you. So council had drew an excellent job with the question that I was going to address myself but perhaps I could just say one thing I think too the achievement is remarkable but what I did note was the traffic light system doesn't nearly approach the quality of that of the plot to the left. So I wondered in such circumstances whether there might be more of a narrative built up on how we are seeing such profound change so that those numbers can be readily explained. And secondly I think stretch goals and again we've discussed the value of stretch goals can sometimes be really helpful because they drive behaviour and sometimes they can be very difficult because they will highlight as we've just been discussing an apparent failure which is not. So I think that needs to be decided very carefully and I hope we as Sputin will know if you could help with that process. So stretch goals, carefully think about them but they can actually provoke the right behaviour. So I fully endorse the kind of comments that councillor drew has made. I think this is a great achievement. I think Councillor Williams has sort of already answered that question really but thank you for emphasising that Councillor Richard Stobart. So we have got councillor Anna Bratton. Thank you Chair. While we're still on that page 82 the next KPI Dan is AH245 percentage of South Cancer Strict Council of Homes with active HHRS Category 102 Dam for Mold cases and I just wanted to thank the council for introducing this as a new KPI which is so vital to our monitoring of our housing stock and so important to bear in mind quite a part from the really tragic cases that have happened elsewhere. So I just wanted to thank you for using this as a way to keep track of any stock that might be needing our attention or needing not to be let until it's in a state where it can be let. But I wondered if any of the officers might be able to or indeed the lead member might be able to get some narrative around that. Okay, councillor John Williams. I ask Peter. Yeah councillor, sorry Peter Campbell. We were very aware since the tragedy in in Rochedale where a housing association had ignored issues of dampen moulding properties that by having an indicator which looked at dampen mould provided members with some oversight on our performance. It's been a bit of an eye opener over these past few months. We have been proactive in identifying dampen mould issues. Our surveyors who are conducting the stock conditions survey are going into people's properties and they're uncovering in a couple of cases quite horrendous cases of dampen mould that had previously been unreported to us. Our problem is not that dampen mould is widespread. Our problem is not that we're not acting on reports of dampen mould. Our problem is that sometimes they're unidentified until we've had this external check. This has allowed us to act quickly and some of the cases that we've found have been quite horrendous and some of the actions that we've taken really have changed people's lives. Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you, Mr Campbell, because I'm aware of some of those properties and I'm very glad that you're taking such a proactive approach to them because they have significant risks for the health of our tenants but also that we need to be mindful of how we're letting those properties even if they're refurbished some of those properties might be prone to that problem again if for example they're over occupied or yeah, over occupied I think is probably part of the problem, isn't it? But I'm just very glad and I'm actually I know weirdly I'm kind of encouraged to see that there is a red rag on some of that because it means that we recognise that there's a risk and we're going to take steps to address it so I'm very glad to see we're taking such a responsible attitude to it. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Bradman. Councillor Tom Bygott. Thank you, Chairman. So my question goes back to the question that Councillor Ellington raised earlier about black bins and recycling rates and part of the answer to that question included the phrase that we were setting ambitious targets. In 2010, which is 13 years ago now the Council set itself the target of meeting or surpassing a 65% recycling composting rate by 2012 and our best monthly performance around about then was October 2010 when we achieved a monthly rate of 63.7%. So in the report today under ES418 apologies I don't have the page numbers on my copy it says that we did 54.81% on a target of 52%. So our target is 13% lower than our target was 13 years ago and that was actually in 3As aims, approaches and actions which was our top level ambitions and performance document. Given that we have the aim to be green to the core and given how much emphasis there's been on environmental factors in the past 13 years why is our target so much lower than it was all those years ago? Thank you. Councillor John, what is in the first instance? I might be wrong but I don't believe we had the blue bin back in 2010 we didn't separate our dry recycling from our black bin waste we had simply the black bin and the green bin and if it wasn't organic it all went in the black bin and went to landfill so I'm not sure you're comparing apples with apples Councillor. Councillor Byger I've got Councillor Ellington next to me here Ellington was the portfolio holder when and I was temporarily the portfolio holder for her while she was in hospital when the blue bins were introduced which was in 2008 so we did actually separate it out and had been doing so for two years then and my recollection was that it was going to cost 1.5 million pounds to introduce the blue bin system and the Lib Dem group voted against that because they felt it was a waste of money Thank you Councillor John Williams Well I wasn't on the council then so but as I say I do know that the blue bins were introduced after the green and black bin but I take it on board that it was 2008 it was done, I thought it was done after I got elected in 2010 but I accept it, it was 2008 but yeah certainly we'll go away and look at this but I'm not certain that the comparisons are as straightforward as that but we'll come back to you on that Bo did you want to come in at all on the targets that are set? I think Councillor Williams has addressed the point and we'll look into that in more detail and come back because again I don't have the benefit of the history from ten years ago as well Thanks very much Thank you very much Do we have any other speakers on the Councillor Richard Stobart? Chair my comments coming to the business plan are you moving on to the business plan? I'm just giving you a moment Page 96 introduces or talks or presents and there are a number of objectives around the BNG, the Biodiversity Net Gain process that's being introduced under the Terms of the Environment Act and particularly speaks of engagement with parish councils so it's really of course the parish councils in some cases are trying to understand the land when you're doing a neighbourhood plan just as is doing at the moment you need to identify who owns the land and questions of could we re-wild this could we make a corridor there can have come up during that discussion in some cases parish's own land and might like to be included under the Biodiversity Trading scheme now there are some initiatives here but I think things are moving quite quickly and no developers are asking the question now can we obtain some land or Biodiversity credits in this parish or in that place so I'm wondering if these goals are sufficiently ambitious what's a real live situation people want to start buying credits are the parishes being prepared well enough is the business basis for the parish getting engaged in this is that firmly established because it could be complicated for a parish to handle so are the ways in which we can help the parishes and actually together across the district to actually meet this need but in an effective way which could be the benefit for the parishes so sorry that's a bit of a ramble but does that make sense okay council John what is yeah page 96 so I think it's question 1 c1 but it's it's on 96 can I just look it up and tell you that you asked council Smith to comment on this council Bridget Smith if you want to come in thank you I'm sorry could you repeat the question please I'll try I'm sorry I'm sorry it's okay a second chance I might get it more concise so the question or the point that's raised in the implement and communicate or stakeholders the council agreed hierarchy for achieving biodiversity neck gain ahead of formal regulation so my particular question is around engagement with parishes so if a parish council has some land or has is considering the land structure in the parishes part of the neighbourhood planning process how can they get engaged with identifying can I become involved for example in offering biodiversity credits so are we in a position to help the parishes do this or to set up some kind of framework so the parishes can in a sense cooperate or form some kind of cooperative to offer you know to offer credits I mean that the world is this is a really intriguing possibility because it would allow wilding of processes while giving the parishes an income stream so please do tell me if I'm getting this wrong but there seems to be a lot of potential here which we need to really help parishes with that was my question well excellent excellent question that's a really interesting one so you'll be aware that as part of the call for sites we call for green sites and you know we most certainly are having conversations about how those dedicated large green sites could be could be used so you know we're very well yeah we'll come back to that I think maybe councillor Smith can give you a written response on that if she's dropped out am I back just fine okay so I'm very aware that you know it's a real challenge on some of our sites particularly if they are green fields well their kind of agricultural land sites delivering the sort of biodiversity net gain on site is nigh on impossible so we most certainly are looking at those green sites and the call for green sites to provide that opportunity but on a wider scale as part of the Oxford Cambridge partnership we've had some conversations about much larger sort of regional opportunities for carbon credits and you know one example is the work that the RSPB has been doing at Oosefyn on creation of new wetlands and you know there's an opportunity there to roll that model out between Oxford and Cambridge and you know the benefits the likes of East West Rail and so on and to all developers in being able to buy carbon credits and invest their money in regional at scale opportunities for you know really serious environmental enhancement not you know planting 20 trees here 20 trees there something much much bigger so but I hadn't thought about it in relation to parish councils so thank you very much and we will take that away and we will give that some very serious consideration because as an opportunity for a revenue generation for parish councils we'll look at it so thank you OK so I'm just going to bring in councillor Dr Chumi Hawkins who indicated to speak and then Heather thank you chair what we currently we do currently have a biodiversity net gain protocol that we follow with new sites and yes you know it scales down from the large sites as councillor Smith mentioned earlier on down to smaller sites within the community so there is a protocol and there is a parish councils obviously through the process of engaging with area managers and site managers can actually discuss with the planning team as to what they can or cannot achieve and whether or not they can use a particular site and this came up because I had a protocol like that in my ward where apparently there was some land but it seemed that that could not meet the requirement of the particular application so yes there is a protocol I would encourage whether the neighbourhood planning teams to actually talk with the officers who deal with neighbourhood planning for them and we kind of liaise together and make sure that yes we take into account if they do have sites available thank you for that that's really helpful did you also want to add? thank you sorry about that yes I just wanted to add to what Tumi Hawkins has just said so we are intending to do an update at our next parish forum so this will be on the agenda because it is quite topical as you said and also I just wanted to to advise we have appointed another officer to help us with this and we received some grant funding as well so it is on our agenda so we do have plans and officers will be taking that forward so thank you Councillor Stavart Chair thank you I just add one point the folk in Gertan reminded me that they do like to join up wilded areas because it actually contributes to creating corridors which is very desirable and it leads to the question of can the parish councils work together and we have seen some very good examples of parish councils working together or talking to each other but I think that probably needs some encouragement so that would be my comment another aspect to be perhaps addressed as officers work with parish councils would be are there barriers to cooperation that need to be addressed so just a comment so I think Councillor Doctor Chymri Hawkins has set out the policy arrangement around that I don't know if you want to add anything else so you are happy with that we are happy we definitely work with parish councils which is why we have the parish forums and through that as Heather said the next one we will be discussing this in more detail thank you I am very encouraged to hear everything that people are saying about this but just from my own experience when we were looking at land in parish ownership even to plant three free trees we found that actually in many parishes they have precious little land available to them for such projects and certainly in some of the smaller villages actually some of the smaller villages might have more land but it's not a foregone conclusion that every parish has very much land available to do that sort of thing on so excellent target to have for parishes that do have land but many don't thank you for that Councillor Bradman and I think we'll go over to Stephen Drief thank you very much sorry Councillor Williams in answering the question from Councillor Bogg a while ago obviously the question related to the issue of levels of recycling and obviously Councillor Williams asked it in the possibility that may not be the exact comparison I wonder what Councillor Williams agrees with me that whilst it's definitely the case that the number one councillor should take responsibility for this and absolutely there should be no attempt whatsoever on behalf of South Campus District Council to deny that we have an absolute responsibility to raise recycling rates I wondered if Councillor Williams would like to comment on the following two pieces of information in 2013-14 the year that Councillor Bidell referred to the number one councill in the country recycled 57.05% the number one councill in the country recycled 65.7% of its waste in 2020 the top performing council in the entire country recycled 64% of its waste therefore in the 10 year period between 2010-2020 the top performing council in the country against which we are entirely legitimately compared actually fell by 1% and it was a different council I wonder also if Councillor Williams would like to comment on the fact that in the period 2016-2020 the proportion of waste nationally that was recycled was pretty much unchanged at 45% so therefore achieving 55, 58 whatever percent actually means that South Campus remains a good performing council so I don't know whether or not council would like to comment on Councillor Bidell's question in the context of the information that I've just provided him with Councillor John Williams Thank you chair I believe that I think the top five councils are recycling are all Lib Dem run councils so I don't think anyone should be in any doubt that we take this extremely seriously for another reason that we want to be up there with our fellow Lib Dem councils so it is frustrating sometimes that we see recycling rates at you know sort of stuck really at this level and we need to yes make a bigger push and I think everyone accepts that in getting people to separate their waste at source and it's very onerous and a lot of complaints are made about having to do it but you know in South Cams we only ask people to separate three lots of waste I think there are certain London bowlers where people are asked to separate into five or six different containers but yes it is a it is a very concerning issue that we have seen in the country as a whole recycling seems to have stalled and you know and I think maybe one of the reasons is that every council seems to do it differently but it's very much based on in this country on who is actually and what the equipment they have to deal with the waste and it's not dealt the waste isn't dealt with by this council we collect it the district councils collect the waste but it's actually disposed of by the county councils so we are very much dependent on what the county council the equipment and the way it separates the waste we are very much dependent on what they do as to what we can do but nevertheless I can assure you that we are very much determined to improve our recycling rate even though we are one of the better councils for doing it Thank you council audience I'm happy to move on councillor Cain Have we got any other? Yes, councillor Byglet would like to come back in just on that point so while councillor Williams has a look at what our performance was and what our targets were in those times I think it would be worthwhile looking at the question of where we came in the rankings now it was obviously a long time ago I can't remember exactly where we were but I felt at the time we felt we weren't too far behind South Oxfordshire which I think was the top one at that time and I don't look at this very often but the last time I looked was in the 2019-2020 rankings and we performed 92nd out of 341 and that seems a long way behind where my recollection of where we were a decade earlier had been Thank you Do you want to come in there councillor? Yeah, yeah So those figures that's for a command for Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire when the earlier figures were just for South Cambridgeshire and they did decline after that so that definitely isn't a contrary apples for the apple situation Happy for that point of view so I'll bring in councillor Judith Ripley Sorry to lay with the point on this but I think it is a key point it's really about time that central national government have a uniform collection process across the country so for example when a resident moves to a different county they're not dealing with a different sort of system if there was a one system across the country I think recycling rates would go up indeed and rejection in food waste would probably improve if across the country there was a separate food waste collection but we are still waiting for national government to do something Thank you for that I think that's sort of been answered yet previously so I don't think we've got any other speakers online what we have Sorry councillor Sue Ellington Sorry I just need to have my six pen When we introduced the new blue bin green bin, black bin we all went on a jolly and looked at other councils that had introduced recycling and we also went to a number of companies that sold the recycling products and one thing that I came away with very strongly was that we could recycle we could collect various different products in the recycling process but at the end of the day it was who was prepared to buy them and therefore it's dependent on the county council to find the customers to buy our recycling products in order for us to raise the amount of recycling that's worth us collecting if you understand me alright Okay thank you very much councillor and so I think that point has sort of been covered previously about the county council do you want to come back in on that? I'll just say that the county council contract of course is one which ties in the county council for a considerable number of years from quite a few years ago and it means that one of the issues we have with it is the collection of food waste because the current contract that the county council has which is the current county council did not enter into prevents us from collecting food waste so this is quite a serious issue within the county and quite right as Councillor Bair pointed out that actually back in 2008 of course we were not part of the city we were for waste collection and of course we know that urban areas are very bad at separating out their waste particularly where there are a lot of students I was finding it very interesting that young people are very interested in the environment but when it comes to doing something about it they're not very interested in separating their waste I'm sorry okay I'll just let's say on behalf of the young people of South Cambridge and Cambridge City that I'm sure if there was a young person in the room I'm sure if there was a young person in the room that they would fight their corn at the end of the earth however as a 50 year old teacher I'm not a young person but I feel that if there was a young person in the room they would fight their corner strongly Councillor Williams okay I think we can move on from that now so I think there's no other speakers on this so if we go to pay 71 and to 0.3 the recommendations I am happy that we've reviewed the KPIs for quarter one taken into account index A and B and cabinet of lead members from the cabinet have taken on board that discussion so if you are if the committee is happy with that we will move on agreed yeah please yeah happy yeah lovely so we'll now move on to item eight sorry I'm just waiting for my computer to get there so this is the item on the young people's task and finish group I was going to start by bringing in Councillor Richard Stobar this item is pages 113 to 130 but if you could kindly introduce the item Councillor Stobar chair members officers what I was going to do was to make a kind of brief verbal overview of the report and then invite questions so I think in previous committee meetings I've given you updates this of course is the I won't call this a finished result it is a result but it's also a call to action so I'm going to present it in that way and then I'm going to ask Gareth Bell if he would supplement the anything that I say this has been quite a communications exercise Gareth is a responsible officer I as chair of the task and finish group in a sense directed it but was very closely involved and will be responsible for some of the actions so just a little bit of history in July last year a full council unanimously approved the motion which is listed I won't read it out but just to underline and support the greater involvement of young people in decision making at the council and request cabinet to establish a cross party members task and finish group we did under the auspices of scrutiny and overview so for a three month period we first of all defined our terms of reference and we constrained those quite carefully to be within the scope of the activity and services of South Cambridge district council so we could have roamed freely and in fact some of the aspects of the report do indicate that we wanted outside of the remit of the council but only slightly and I think there's some important messages in that so over the period of three months once having defined the direction we were taking we engaged in a series of meetings and discussions Gareth members of the business team and others were very helpful in helping to set those meetings up there is a list in one of the appendices of the organisations that we met we were I think at times like you disappointed at the kind of response that we got employers were particularly difficult to engage and I think there's something around what was the relevance to an employer of taking some young people out of their work or even over a lunch period to have a discussion with councillors so I think there was a question of communication which is something that we can work on if we come back once again then I think we have some data points that we can work from so we do say that the relatively small number of young people we spoke to meant that we could only identify the broadest trends but we did identify trends and that kind of feeds into the recommendations which I'll summarise in just a moment one thing that we did notice and I think parents, grandparents speak about this was how structured that young people's group is how many different kind of if you will subgroups appear when you think 11 to 25 or we define that as our age range of interest but with 11 to 25 we might have 11 to 14s who well let me not dwell on this but there are certain defining characteristics and also between male and female throughout we go into the 14s to 18s we see those who have had their education quite disrupted by Covid but again quite different to the 11s to 14s and then the 18 plus and those who are graduates and those who haven't been graduates but have been apprentices for example all very slightly different in some cases really very different so we got a sense and highlighted in paragraph 12 of this sense of place this sense of wanting kind of ownership of where they live where they hang out the kind of facilities that they might use one thing that we did see and I think if you thought about it for a moment you'd perceive it young people are represented by groups and sometimes that's a school council in the case of say Gertin colleges the JCR but there are a number of representative groups who are able to talk to us about what's of interest to their members the children in care council whom we met were a very cohesive group very intriguing to talk to but they represented a wide range of interests so talking to representative groups I think is particularly important of course it's not as if south camps has not been involved in young people's engagement and the notable example for the council is in the planning planning function and their youth engagement is being practised with I think to a high level of professionalism and very effectively now we believe and I'll just highlight in the recommendations in the moment that kind of engagement could be carried over into other council functions perhaps not all of them there was a discussion in some of our kind of group meetings of well why don't we try business and housing as two so if we were able to take some of those kind of exemplary processes and techniques understanding how young people contribute and bring them into the other council functions but this might be very beneficial one of the things we did note in the person of Bonnie Clark we have a champion and her enthusiasm is quite infectious and that ability to champion I think is something that we would need to look for as we sought to get better young people engagement in some of the other functions of the council let me just very quickly run through the recommendations we're asking officers to share the general feedback that we got with other bodies and that might be educational institutions and also other local authorities there's quite a lot that we could have said to the county council that emerged we've talked about the youth engagement in the planning service we're underlining that as a recommendation that that would continue and that we would see a similar kind of activity in some of the other council functions by way of a kind of progressive but cautious perhaps introduction we would very much like to in a sense go out and meet young people and we've suggested that the climate environment advisory committee holds a meeting at another institution we have one in mind because this is a public the kind of available meeting that we don't name specific institutions but we do have one in mind that we would like to approach and maybe this is setting a pattern for the future we had quite a lot of feedback on public transport and buses it's not surprising at the timing of our study that we would have this kind of feedback and we would like to take that back to the combined authority we would like young people to contribute to the equality policy they have a lot to say within the group the structure that we I was referring to earlier those groups look at each other and have quite a lot to say about what those needs might be and what those differences might be we are asking officers to incorporate and update well incorporate some statements into the statement of community involvement to better embrace some of the things that we found out but to kind of keep an awareness that young people in our district will their interests and their needs will change over time and then finally we would like to encourage members to engage more in their wards and maybe across wards in with the kind of organisations that we've been engaged with so that's with college councils with school councils just making a present spelt it has worked very well for MPs we have one of the regions MPs who makes frequent visits and is well recognised and makes a contribution to the life of the institutions that she visits so there's a whole bunch of things there and just perhaps to finish a few other things for members so some awareness of what drives young people what interests and that can be quite difficult unless you have teenage children or teenage grandchildren you might be a little bit out of touch with them knowing about their world and where they sit in a kind of generational structure would be really very helpful we identified that we need to know better about the modern drug scene for example because it was quite often referred to and members can seem a little bit naive if you're not really cottoned on to that and can give a sensible response and communication so we might think that well a good way of communicating with young people is to have a smartphone app well I think that kind of maybe that's the solution but I don't think it is the way that we might address the issue is to perhaps ask the question again and we have some evidence we would like to dig deeper about what is a good way of addressing and the numbers are we've got like 24,000 that age range 11 to 25 in the district out of 160,000 it's a significant group and we need to be able to communicate with them as well as we can communicate with the older ones and the ones with whom we actually directly do business so there's a communications question which we are going to work on so that's all I'd like to say so I've taken a lot of your time committee members I hope that's conveyed some of the essence of what we did and perhaps Chair you might ask Gareth Bell if you'd like to contribute to summary so thank you for that firstly thank you to Councillor Stobar for going over that thoroughly and all the work that you've done on it behind the scenes in the task and finish groups I know you've really worked hard on this report and I think it's a really valuable one Gareth did you want to come in at this point thank you chair just a couple of quick points for me so I think obviously a really member-led piece of work I think the report does mention it and Councillor Stobar talked about perhaps some difficulties trying to get groups to engage I think some of that is just because it's difficult but also we've got some the task and finish group we're really keen to have a really representative feedback so we're trying to contact groups that perhaps have higher vulnerability so that made that task quite a bit harder as well so it's probably something to note and then I think the other part for me is in regards to some of that kind of best practice and issues that young people have seen far more engaged in in regards to council services I think that what members saw is particularly through the work that planning has done is it's much more difficult to get people to engage in perhaps more strategic issues where you can't see the end goal and you don't feel like you can have as much impact but those issues where it feels more tangible they're the things that have been quite successful in the planning service it feels much more in reach for people so I just wanted to make those two points chair thank you thanks very much for that and open it up for questions and comments so we've got councillor Peter Fane first thank you very much chair perhaps I could receive my question by saying that as councillor Stobart pointed out this was in response to a motion passed unanimously in full council and full council heard an initial report from him at the last meeting and we'll hear I think a further report at the next meeting I'm conscious of the options that's item 15 for this Overview and Scrutiny committee it does strike me that whilst we refer to this as a task and finish group I wonder if in fact that is how we can view it I mean paragraph 10 the limited number of people it was possible to speak to financial cost implications yet to be assessed staffing implications yet to be assessed risks and opportunities yet to be assessed equality and diversity and so on I do feel that the recommendations will need to stress that there is an ongoing role here whilst the work of the task and finish group is very much appreciated this cannot be the finish of it and my view have to consider setting up structures for future work looking at how we can include young people I would suggest particularly in the work of the CAC and maybe others have referred to planning I was very conscious of the exchange earlier on between councillor Drew and councillor Williams as to how young people might want to contest their corner some of our comments on recycling for instance it's certainly my experience that many parents learn their recycling from their kids who encourage them having come across it themselves and I do think we need to look at the long term possibilities here and have some means of taking that forward not just reporting to cabinet at this stage informally reporting to council and in any sense regarding the job was done thank you chair thank you very much Peter councillor Stobart do you want to comment on that I would first of all thanks to councillor for his comment I think he's absolutely right we just really scratched the surface we identified some broad trends we just identified how big the job was I think but understanding and scoping is important and I think we were aware that we needed to in a sense emphasise or perhaps encourage a culture of engaging with young people building on good practice but actually working more broadly across the organisation so I fully endorse what councillor Fain has said to just leave open the question of how we move from where we are now to where we actually have this kind of culture taking root in the organisation that's something for perhaps later thanks very much okay so we'll go to councillor Anna Bradman thank you chair and I just wanted to thank you councillor Stobart and Gareth Bell for the work that you've done and for making such considerable efforts to contact as many groups of young people as possible and I particularly wanted to thank you for engaging with the Children in Care Council this is the representatives for our children in foster care in Cambridgeshire well the Cambridgeshire children some of them are actually fostered outside the county and in my county role I chair the corporate parenting subcommittee which recommends strategy for these children to the Children and Young People's Committee but in that role just last night we had representatives from the Children in Care Council contributing to our meeting and we had the most useful and informative and enlightening meeting we've had for a very long time partly because I think they have gained in confidence in coming and partly because they last night had a particularly eloquent young woman with them and I just wanted to register that in the same way that the Children in Care Council representatives require a good deal of support to be able to present to us as fully and as broadly as they do from the offices of the county council I'm sure we're going to need that sort of structure to support them if we want them to represent to us here at the district council that that involves preparation to the Children in Care Council so that they know what questions we're asking them to consider then getting their feedback and then helping those young people formulate that into answers that they can give us at the subcommittee now that's that's how it works at the county council so what I wanted to say thank you very much for engaging that particular group as you have because one of the things that we learn from that is that actually we get a totally new viewpoint on things from these young people some things we wouldn't have thought of before we as parenting learned from them all the time and I was very good I certainly had all the offices there but I wondered if it was possible to consider I'll just throw this idea out there others can shape it into something useful but doing something rather like our parish forums but with young people and it might be through groups of schools or it might be through the sorts of groups that you've gathered together but it does require considerable effort and time of facilitation so just congratulations on what you've done so far and let's hope we can take it forward and listen to our young people's views can I just add I think Councillor Brafman is exactly right on the engagement and where we didn't have as much engagement that we wanted with employers that wasn't through one of trying through offices but through councils that were reaching out widely to seek that engagement so I think that's just worth noting as well Councillor Stobar Thank you Councillor Bradman so through you chair this of course is the work of the group and so yes obviously I put quite a lot of effort into it but it was a group activity and it was a product of responsibility for the recommendations we've made but Councillor Bradman in your comments are I think as far as something like a parish forum with young people's groups I suppose instead of parish councils is an excellent idea but it's one that we really need to feed into the kind of process that Council of Fame was talking about so all the things that we should investigate we need to give it a name but it sounds like a great idea and a way of engaging across a whole range of young people and just one final comment it was in the Children in Care committee that we or Council, Children in Care Council I'm sorry that we heard the phrase first where it doesn't look as though we're hanging out so we would quote that often afterwards but it was their phrase Councillor Bradman Thank you so much it's one of the things that occurs to me is that for example we have the Youth Connections project in Houston, in Clinton and Milton just because I'm familiar with them they often have quite useful discussions with our young people as part of their regular weekly meetings and that might be another organisation there might be other the Connections project has a bus and they go around different villages that's possible you might be able to feed some ideas in through that forum which they already go to So I think we'll note the comments from Councillor Bradman which feed into the points that Councillor Fane has made about how the process is ongoing when we come to summarise Did you want to respond to Councillor Stavall? No, I think so long as we're noting these points as we go lovely, agreed Councillor Dr Chumi Hawkins Thank you chair I guess I'm going to be saying I'm putting on two hats here one is as the lead member for planning and the other is as the EDI champion the Cabinet EDI champion so this is of quite interest to me of course Thank you very much Councillor Stawbat to you and the team for what you've done Of course it goes without saying that I want to make a comment on the planning, youth engagement team and the work that hardworking officers have been doing which you reported in I think it's paragraph 14 of your report as you know, making places is the role of planning it's not just for adults but it's for our young people as well and just to make a comment that what I've noticed is where we have a planning S106 what you provide or what developers provide there's usually local play areas and those play areas tend to be for the young ones and there's nothing for the teenagers to just hang out and this is something that had occurred to me in all the time but again it's good that that came up in your discussions with some of them I mean obviously I have been supporting youth engagement program I've seen it in action in talks at some of them and I cannot stress just how I open it's being sometimes I mean the kids are not shy of telling you what they think and we are to listen we do listen as best we can and obviously we want to please make good places for them and I keep saying this the places we are building now necessarily for us I mean how much longer do we have it's for them so we need to try and hear what they have to say and how we can make it better places for them to go open what you might not know is the team lead for the youth engagement program actually won an award not so long ago but 10 months ago I think it was the of the year award of the fountain education trust future generations award so there is a lot of expertise there and experience that no doubt we can share with the rest of the council but one thing I wanted to clarify is one of the recommendations say is to support professional appropriate coaching officers in other areas bear in mind that depends on where you want the coaching to come from if it's from the planning team then know that there is limited resource there okay but I mean we can take that up the assistant director is here we can look at that if that's what you are thinking but I just want a clarification on that first of all and also you mentioned a statement of community involvement obviously we have one in planning in fact we've just updated that and we'll be taking it to cabinet at the end of the month but we have a section in there already for youth engagement so I wasn't sure whether or not that was just for planning or for the rest of the council so really it's just clarification as to what those two recommendations are what are involvement potentially could be in planning last but not least I noticed that combatant village college wasn't on your list of areas the people you consulted I can answer that council Stephen tree okay as the member of the committee who worked with the village colleges I made contact with all village colleges and many of them I ended up contacting twice and was unfortunately not responded to and was unable to form a meeting with those so it would have been unrealistic for me to have visited every single village college and I can assure you that any councillor whose local village college was not visited and spoken to it was in no way designed as some kind of deliberate act of missing out of village college I was simply able to make contact with some and not with others thank you councillor Stephen tree councillor Richard Stobart so councillor Hawkins thank you for the feedback the comments I think you asked for what point of clarification the statement of community involvement and we did have that discussion when we had our final kind of discussion meeting in the group we were talking to members of the planning team about that statement of community involvement but maybe this is a question I could just put out there is there any reason why we shouldn't think about extending that statement of community involvement out into other functional areas forgive my naivety on this but with a kind of due process we should be careful what we say but couldn't that be done I'll just bring in Gareth did you want to comment so Heather yeah thank you for that so the statement of community involvement is a legislative requirement as part of the local plan so it has a specific remit but there's no reason like that why it couldn't be used as a format or an example for other areas but it is specific for that and there is a requirement for us to update it every five years which is why we're going through the process now as Dr Tumi Hawkins has outlined Gareth Bell so I think this is probably a timing issue so that recommendation there around instructor and officers around the statement of community involvement which Heather's described planning officers are in the room there and I think what's happened here is that work is taking place to carry out this action but that's there so it may be that actually that could come out for recommendation and be noted within the body of the report of something that's already happened through this task and finished work rather than a recommendation that comes out of it councillor Stover I just want to ask councillor Hawkins can we address your questions? One, the other clarification as to the training to the rest of the council Yes I think we've made this statement here about extending that same kind of community engagement into other council functions without having if you will, assessed the requirement and yet if we were to ask planning for help then of course that needs to be contained within the resource planning or reasonable resource kind of availability so we've not figured out the detail of that but we would hope to you know have the way the planning function engages with young people become a kind of example and then we need to figure out what's reasonable from the point of view of your resources Arif Bell Thank you chair so I think it was described obviously we've got a very experienced very interusastic team leader there in regards to this piece of work I think perhaps it's really sharing that best practice as councillor Dr Tim Hawkins has described there's some really good work that's done in the planning service but I think probably this is envidius that it's not a huge piece of work with a huge resource demand but wanting to make sure the rest of the council can learn from that practical tangible experience that the planning team have had and the type of issues that they've had the most success with engaging young people on so I think there's a perhaps not too much of a burden being asked here Okay We've got any other speakers on this Heather Can I just add to that we're now developing a toolkit so hopefully that will be useful so that you can use that taking forward it is a toolkit for actually for developers to help them engage with youth but hopefully it will be able to be turned into something useful for the council as well and other service areas Councillor Helen Leamon Thank you I just wanted to publicly thank the chair of the task and finish group Richard for his open minded and strategic approach to this piece of work to the hard work of all the fellow members of the task and finish committee and the many officers who supported and challenged us and also the young people that we spoke to it's been so important to hear their voices and to set foundations for a new approach for us to engage with them in the future Thanks Thanks very much Councillor Leamon and I think we've all of that committee echoes that so thanks very much Richard for leading that work I don't think we've got any other speakers so I was hoping that we could go to the recommendations on page 113 0.3 and that this committee endorses the report with the comments that we've made especially those from Councillor Fane and Bradnham around how we work on this on an ongoing basis and how that will look So is the committee happy to Yeah I think so Yeah So and So that part we will work into the recommendation to Cabinet essentially So the issue was the statement of community involvement not being a recommendation but being mentioned in the text of the report that goes up to Cabinet So are we happy with that change as well Okay there's a recommendation in the report about statement of community involvement and I think one of the comments made was that that ought to be taken out of the recommendations and just mentioned in the report and we can come up with some wording So would you be happy with that Yes that's fine because it does have a very specific meaning I think for the clarification on that So with that amendment is the committee happy that it goes to Cabinet Yeah lovely Brilliant Okay, thanks once again for that So we'll now move on to the work programme which is item 9 and you will see the work programme that's laid out there and councillor Stephen Drew and in senior will continue to meet with senior officers to work up that plan and work programme going forward obviously between meetings if councillors want to come forward with any things for that agenda please do come forward with that Did anyone have anything they wanted to add to that No Good okay so we'll then move on to item 10 date of the next meeting which will be the 19th of October and that will be at 5.30 and that brings the meeting to a close so we'll come offline Thanks very much committee