 Rhaid? Ie, ysty'n dechrau ychydig. Rhywbeth hynny, neu ddim yn gwneud am l온nod dros y glas cyfwyn. Hynny, ddweud. Ydw y cysyllton i fynd i'r cerddau o Isabelle canfaith Cymru. Rwyf wedi gweld bod y Cerddau Cymru i gydag dd threadsaeth i fynd i amser i'u cyfwynol, ac ydw i'r cerddau cyfwynol â chi yn fynd mwy. Felly er geltaeth ddwy'n ddechrau'u wasilyddus ychydig? We take votes by affirmation. When we move to a vote in item, I am going to ask if members agree with the proposal. Only those members, present in the Chamber which I think is the whole of Cabinet will be able to vote. I will take speaking Cabinet members and then other members in that order. Get werden wit! Not my apologies for absence? Do we know? Or ond my declarations of interest? Relating to the agenda today? No declarations of interest. Ym the need of the Previous Meeting. I am happy to propose these I think Councillor Brian Milh ann who is going to Second them. Do Members agree to approve the minutes? Or are there any issues? Agree to approve the minutes? Agree. Anyone wish to vote against? Oes i Brilliant y ffoeswel yn ymgyrchu? Roeddwn i'r rei'n gwneud y cynllun o'r funud hynny yn eu rôl. Rhyw o'r adrodd yr adrwysmu ffontiaid? Mae angen o fewn o'r adrwysmu ar gyfer Clywy a Pheooeddol podeig ar Cymru sydd gennymio'r adrodd Llywodraeth i'n cael Llywodraeth Llywodraeth, mae'r Caerdydd Cynllun Cymru wedi gweithio y brom yma yw'r cyfnodol yma ar y project yn dweud y 4-day. Mae'n gwybod, mae'n gwneud yn gwybod arallol yma ar y heb. Yn y cwestiynau, rydyn ni'n gweithio ei bod y gallwn gwneud y cyfnodol y blynyddoedd. So, y rydyn ni'n gwneud yma yn yr ysgwrt-nion yn y cyfnodol, Felly, mae'n gallu bod ni yn amser o'r cyflau'r rhan o'r mwyaf. Felly, mae'r rhan o'r cyfan o'r cyfan. Mae'r rhaglenion yng nghyrch, y brwymp yn gyfrifio ar y brwynghwyl, ac mae'n cyfrifio ar gyfer hwnnw gwych, ac mae'n gallu ei bod yn ymgylchedd ar hyn, gallu bod yn ymgylchedd ar gyfer hwnnw wedi'n gyrdd. Mae'n gallu ei bod yn ymgylchedd ar y cyfan? Ymgylchedd! Ie, dwi'n meddwl i'r cyfnod o'r eitem yn ystod yn y ddau o'r trial sefydliadur wedi'i ddweud i'r llyfr yw John Williams. Rwy'n meddwl i'r sefydliadur yn y dyfodol i'r llyfr. Oedd yn ymddir i'r John. Yn ymddir i'r llyfr, mae'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod. First of all, I'd like to say, of course, when we met back in March last year, by the time we got to this point, we would be expecting to say that the results of the trial would be considered, a report produced, and we would be going out of consultation, and then the poor council would meet before the summer to make a decision. Unfortunately, the Secretary of State had other ideas, and Christmas said that any council with a four-day week would face some sort of financial penalty using some sort of financial levers, and the problem that's given us is that we can't, therefore, until we know what those financial impacts are, we can't go out and consult in any meaningful way. So, what this report is saying is that yes, we will, as we agreed back in on the 20th of March last year, that the four-day week for desk staff would continue after the trial, while we go and look at the results and produce a report, but we can't go beyond that because we can't then consult because we can't tell people what the financial implications will be if we go ahead with a four-day week. So, until we're in that position, we can't consult, and until we consult, we can't then, as a council, meet to make a decision as to where we should continue or not. So, the sanctions of the Secretary of State, as a result of the financial settlement, has left us in a bit of a limbo, but nevertheless, we will be continuing once the trial finishes at the end of this month. We will be continuing with the assessment of that trial, and our intention is that, although we can't go and consult, we will be bringing a report to full council before the summer so that members can get a feel for how the trial went and what the outcome has been. A couple of other things I just want to cover while I'm introducing this, and that is that's obviously been some misunderstanding over the purpose of the trial. If I take you back to the meeting of this Cabinet on the 12th September 2022, when we actually decided to continue with a 12-month trial, the purpose of that trial has been, first of all, KPI performance, and the health and well-being of our staff. If you look at paragraph 21 of that report, it is quite clear that they are the two main reasons for the trial. The following paragraph then explains that what we're looking for is more applicants, better retention, and we're looking for savings. We're looking for cost savings, but there's been some misunderstanding, I think, because some people have suggested that the whole purpose of the trial was to save a million pounds, and that was never the intention of the trial. If you go back and look at that report from the trial for September 2022, you will see there in paragraph 16, there was a description of where we were with agency staff, that's August 2022, and at that time we identified a number of agency staff that were costing us about £2 million, and we reckoned that if all of those posts were filled, then we would make a saving of about £1 million, but it never has any suggestion at that time that we would be able to fill all those posts. Part of the trial was to actually see what those cost savings could be, and I'm very delighted to say, as we've seen from the report, that we have made a significant saving in our agency staff costs, which incidentally is an overspend, so we don't budget to employ agency staff, we budget to employ staff at the full-time post, and so that extra cost is an overspend on our budget, so the saving is actually us not spending money from our reserves to fill those posts, and that money can then be used for other things in council services. So I think I just wanted to say that there has certainly been some misunderstanding. I would recommend people go back to that report of the 12th of September 2022, which actually set out the reasons why we were doing this trial, and it would suggest, and if you look at paragraph 16 of this report, that the three objectives of our best value duties, namely, you know, economy, efficiency and effectiveness, I believe that the trial has actually met that test of those three aims of best value duty, but obviously we will need to wait and see the outcome of the analysis of the trial to make sure that we have actually met those that test, and that we are able then, once we understand the financial implications, be able to then go and consult before we make a decision for this council. So I would urge you to approve the recommendations, which you would also see includes continuing with the trial for the waste service, and also harmonising the working hours for both desk-based staff and waste staff at 32 hours per week. This is good practice, and that represents just over 85% of contracted hours from 1 April 2024. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Councillor Williams. So there has been some public debate recently about a full working week being categorised as 35 hours, so actually we are only marginally shy of that if that's something that becomes general practice nationally. So do we have any questions from Members of Cabinet? So any questions from anywhere else? Councillor Williams. Thank you, leader. So numerous questions, but I'll try and focus in on a couple of areas. One of which would just be clarity because on page 30 of the report, it refers to the different savings, one of which it says about the discontinuation of recruitment and retention incentives in the waste service. Just wondering if officers were aware of that because that might change their view on things, but also there are other supplements and retention and recruitment incentives in other departments and whether it is just waste that will be seeing the discontinuation or whether it will be across the council. Equally, there is reference to, in that paragraph, to two vehicles being required. However, when we then look at another table, which is on page 62, para 13, it says about the five-day week 32 vehicles and four-day week 36 vehicles, which obviously, unless my maths is failing me, is four. So if we could have some sort of narrative around why the variants there, because obviously that would have quite impact on the costings of it, and also a question around the choice really that we can see in this chart that it's for this service as a whole, but obviously South Cams is shared and 50 and waste 62, 38, I believe, in planning, where the South Cams breakdown is, why that's not been created, because obviously that's what we're here to look at is for our residents, and the agency expenditure that's been used as a comparative, my understanding that the lead member may say this is wrong, this is how we were informed previously, is a reflection of five days paying agency, and obviously were the agency to go on a four-day week, that would be significantly lower. So why don't we have a like-for-like comparison of four days agency and four days staff for the council? I think they're the main cruxers because, and also on the sickness, it doesn't appear that there's been any sort of data to remove the 20% less that people have been working, therefore the naturally will be 20% less sickness, because if it's your non-working day you're not necessarily going to ring in sick, and when you take that 20% out it works at about one hour per member of staff that's been saved, so not quite the glorified numbers, so why have the leadership decided to not include an allowance for that variance? Thank you leader. Thank you. Council Williams, are you happy for me to go to Bode for the first two questions which relate to his service? So Bode, if we could hand over to you for a narrative about the discontinuation of the incentives and the exact number of vehicles required for the four-day week, thank you. Thank you Councillor Smyth. Just to confirm that the modelling we did showed that we needed four vehicles to cope with the new growth rounds and for four-day week, and there's a very straightforward breakdown for that. If we didn't have four-day week we would need two extra vehicles just to cope with the growth that has happened and that will happen in the future. By doing four-day week we did an extra two vehicles and that's what's been costed. So again, just simply doing review of the rounds, optimising them and catering for growth that has happened already so that the rounds are more balanced and growth that we still expect to happen, we need two vehicles. Now adding on top of that going to a four-day week approach we need a two vehicles, so the only vehicles that we need for four-day week are two vehicles which we haven't purchased by continuing to use vehicles that have reached their natural end-of-life seven-year span. The second question in terms of the incentives, we actually stopped those in September and that was to get drivers. So people will recall that we had a very, very challenging time getting licensed HGV drivers just after the pandemic so we had an incentive to repay them retention and also when the first train we've stopped those, we stopped them in I believe September and August and that hasn't affected our recruitment so far. Thank you very much Bode. Who can direct the question to regarding whether we're still running with incentives in other services? Thank you very much Geoff. Yes, thank you through you leader. Yeah we market factor supplements, government hello payments and retention payments, run levers that we've got that are in addition to the evaluation scheme that councils use for setting salaries for particular roles and they're ways of recognising when a job market for a particular role is challenging often due to shortage of people being available with that particular skill. Now when these levers are used they're awarded for a set period of time and then reviewed at the end of that period of time to see whether they're still needed and it is still being used market factor supplements are still being used in the council. Planning I think has been referenced as one of those areas because when the review was undertaken there was still a national shortage of planners and by the looks of things that's like to continue for a period of time so not only ourselves but other councils are offering market factor supplements for some roles. Now it's really good news that we've been able to delete some of the levers in waste at the moment but we still keep them on the books so if the market changes for HDV drivers again I remember I think it was about 18 months ago there was a national shortage of HDV drivers which led to this being implemented. If that market changes again we can reintroduce them and it's really positive to hear that the waste are able to recruit at the moment. Okay so it's something so I mean yes all the drivers all went off to HS2 didn't they where they've been paid huge amounts of money. So it's something that we so we award these for a set period of time at that end of that period of time we do an analysis of the market and make decisions about whether to drop them change them or keep or keep them okay fine right uh so just moving on um so on the right so John uh John Williams do you want to to respond to council of council Williams question about uh the agency expenditure and the sickness and the fact that we are we have based our stats on five-day weeks rather the savings from five-day weeks rather than four-day weeks what do you want me to hand that to our namesworth or to Jeff okay thank you who should who wants to pick that up I mean my my off the cuff answer would be that everything's got to be compared with a five-day week for in order for this to this to make sense would be my answer I think in relation to the agency costs of leader what we're comparing is real costs so at the moment agency people are working five days a week so when we're looking at the costs per week we're looking what they actually cost us to work that week um I think some analysis were done in response to a question that uh employment staff and committee um I think about a year ago and planning did a review of the performance of agency people working five days a week compared to our own people working four days a week and actually our own people working four days a week were performing better than the agency people working five days a week in terms of sickness yes we've we've always reported sickness per full-time employee no matter how many hours they're working I think it's at a fair point if you're looking at the impact on people's health members do need to bear in mind that people are working one less day so it might be that on their non-working day they aren't reporting it but when it comes to the savings that are achieved through reductions in sickness the reason sickness costs money is because it disrupts plan service work so I think an example that I normally give is if a member of staff was due to go out and visit uh somebody on site that day and then they're they're they're sick um either that visit doesn't happen and potentially if it's a visit the cost money we don't get that income at that stage or alternatively we have to redirect somebody that wasn't due to go and do that visit to go and do that visit and the work that they were going to do doesn't get done so in terms of impact on disruption actually it doesn't really matter whether you're looking at 30 hours or 37 hours the the impact is the same but but it is a fair point that you know if that was the only basis on which we were judging improvement in welfare then I think members would need to take that into account quite seriously the fact that we've got the staff survey which also looks at well there I think gives us a more complete picture thank you very much um council rooms do you want to add anything before I go back to council Williams you might have more questions I think council rooms also asked about um why it was that we've only been looking at the gross um figure and uh the net really comes to shared services looking at the net figure for both services rather than um the split between south camps and uh and and the city I mean when it comes to um the planning service and and nine of the the 10 hard to fill posts that we have filled permanently that were previously covered by agency staff nine of those are actually in shared planning and the split between us and city in shared planning is I think 65 35 um to to us uh because obviously um the way that um we are progressing with the um with the current local plan it was very much front-ended in the city to start with unless we've gone through the local plan more of the development has been occurring in south camps in there for south camps is taking on more of the work which is why this is a it's not a 50 50 split so the saving to us is around about 120 130 000 two flat and about 220 230 000 pounds um on on the figures that are on the in the table on paragraph 69 so I would suggest that you know getting on for a quarter of a million pounds is still a pretty good saving um okay you know it's not as much as some people had hoped for if we'd filled all all the um hard to let posts but as I said back in September 2020 the intention never was to fill all the hard to let posts and the fact that we have filled getting on for half of those hard to let posts um has meant that we have still made you know and this is an annual saving because this is this is not just a one-off saving either this is a saving that will go on every year um of about a quarter of a million pounds I would suggest that that's a pretty good figure for us to uh to achieve thank you and for clarification I gather that we have during the course of the trial identified other hard to fill posts which we hadn't included and obviously we can't you know we have to work with the same baseline data but we've identified other hard to fill posts which have now been successfully filled with with people saying that the four-day week plays a significant part in their decision to come here absolutely there are there are more posts that we have filled uh that we would have a rise to fused agency staff for but we have not counted because they were not one of the original posts that we looked at back in September 2020 thank you and we've we've heard from Jeff memory that agency staff good as they are are actually less productive in their five days than our our own staff are in four days which is you know quite a quite a strong statement to make councillor Heather Williams do you want have you any other questions you want to ask yes thank you leader just um on page 17 paragraph 50 something of interest because it's not something that I've been able to find anywhere else it says that it was always the intention and expectation that once the waste trial was completed that there'd be this sort of balancing out because obviously something that members will know we've raised being uncomfortable that someone 32 and someone 30 um is there anywhere that we could be directed to that it shows this express harmonisation um that was the intention and just on uh new starters so from the report it's 39% of new starters said that the four-day week had a positive impact and 43% said it had impacted their decision so just just some perspective for members so um I'll come to councillor Williams I mean I'd just like to before councillor Williams answers I'd just like to say you know the whole point of the trial is that uh you learn you learn things during the process of the of the trial and when we embarked on the the waste trial you know we we initially tried to make it fit within 30 hours and it became obvious that in order to run an efficient service it needs to be 32 but we've always been very aware particularly in you know um a lot of very very serious and productive engagement with the unions that we had to be you know it had to be a level playing field and we had to be fair to all our staff but councillor John Williams do you want to come in and then I don't know if any any officers want to add to that I think Lili you've said it that obviously when we set off on this um you know which is back in January um um in 2023 we didn't know exactly what we were going to face and uh we took a straightforward decision that um we would throw rather the hours down for desk based staff are we until we started to look at the optimisation of the of the waste collection rounds for a four day operation we didn't know exactly how many hours the officers would have to work to enable them to do that working for four days and you know and as a result we have discovered that um you know our waste operatives have to work 32 hours and it's reasonable and and to be a you know a good employer we would expect desk based staff to work the same hours as as their colleagues in the waste service which is why we're harmonising it at 32 hours and I've picked up point that Leedon made earlier you know this isn't very far short of full week actually you know 35 hours is considered to be a full working week and our staff are working 32 hours so you know this is not a case of staff working part-time it is a case of staff working um delivering five days a week work in four days for five days a week pay and that's always been the principle of the trial and uh and I say you will see once the trial's over and we start analysing the the results of the trial um all that will be presented to members um in due course and members will then be able to make a decision or wherever they wish to wish the four day week in both services to continue. Thank you very much I'm good I'm going to come to Jeff and then Boody to pick up on any up any detail. Yeah excuse me Leedon yes just just to mention when the report went to when the report that came to cabinet in May last year authorising the way straw previously went to scrutiny and overview committee then chair now the vice chair raised the question about whether we would harmonise ours and it's part of that committee meeting I gave an answer to the chair that indeed we would need to. Exactly as councillor John Williams has described once he understood the number of hours we would need to harmonise. I vaguely record that it's come up in other meetings but that's anyone I can precisely recall that is it has been discussed. Thank you so that's a very nice example of the value of scrutiny raising something raising the important issue that then becomes becomes our practice that's really good sorry please continue. Just just to say that we've always been open about this the fact that harmonising ours needs to make sure that we're being legal and safe and fair in the way that we apply this policy and I think we've always been open to members and officers about that. Thank you Abode do you want to add anything to that? Thank you councillor may just to add that it took us quite a while to settle on 32 hours so it wasn't just the figure that we picked we actually considered several options we looked at 30 hours we looked at 32 hours we looked at 34 hours we looked at a rotor system working four days over five so it took us a while we did extensive planning 32 hours was what we found to give us the most optimum solution in terms of the least impact on well-being i.e a colleagues only having to work two hours but also the least amount of additional resources i.e vehicles so that 32 was based on quite a lot of extensive work hence why we didn't start in September to try and find the most optimum solution that gives the best well-being for staff but also minimises additional costs. Thank you and I well remember going with councillor bachelor up to the depot before the trial started and being really pushed by you know when are we going to start start this they were very very keen but you know the amount of planning that had to go into it I know took time but I think has proved to be very worthwhile. Councillor Williams. I do appreciate the lead to come back to me it's a very short one. How long has the authority been using golden handcuff incentives? I don't even know what a golden handcuff is actually it's where you pay a sum for people to stay at the authority for a certain period of time a bit like a golden hello but more of a handcuffing you to the desk. Bode do you know is there do you know what the answer to this is? I'm not at all familiar with that and I'm not familiar at all with us paying people to stay to the desk. I don't know the answer I apologise I'm not familiar with this at all. Leader if it helps it's not something that's normally used in my service it's normally a desk based operation. Shall we come back and come back to you on that? Jeff. I can't give an answer to exactly when we started using it. I know what councillor Williams means is when you pay a retention you pay money up front normally then after a certain number of years you pay a retention payment if somebody then leaves they have to pay that money back so it's a return now it's been available to us to use ever since we've been on the current evaluation scheme which is sort of over 10 years but I can't I can't say when when we actually started using them so I have to get that information off of my HR colleagues and get back to councillor. Okay so it's been so to the clarification it's been available to us under our current retention scheme for over 10 years okay okay but we don't we don't know if and when it's been used so we'll get back to you on that. So righty ho so if there's no other questions thank you very much indeed for all everyone's contributions I'm not going to read out all the recommendations because they are long and detailed um there's my place again right so councillor um John Williams is proposing I'm happy to uh second um do members agree with the proposals as set out anyone wish to vote against anyone wish to abstain cabinet therefore agrees the proposals thank you very much indeed that was a good and productive debate uh so moving on to item eight which is the quarter three performance report and councillor John Williams is proposing that and I think councillor Bill Handley is seconding it thank you over to you councillor Williams. Thank you leader I'm delighted to recommend that cabinet review and and agree the KPIs for the quarter three of current financial year that's the period to end of December. As I mentioned earlier one of the one of the measures of success for the four day week was the KPI performance and one of the things that we've consistently seen since the four day week trial has been going is the improvement in our KPI performance and I'm very delighted with the performance of of the of the third quarter of this financial year and I'm happy to deal with any questions. Thank you very much councillor Handley do you want to add anything? Nothing to add thank you thank you so thank you to Kevin Ledger who's has always done an excellent job with a very easy to understand report which makes all of our lives easier. Are there any questions from any members? No okay so we'll move straight to recommendations so it's recommended that we review the KPI results and comments at appendix A and progress against the business plan actions at appendix B and recommend where appropriate any actions required to address any issues identified which I don't think we have. So do members agree with the proposal? Do anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain cabinet therefore agrees the proposals? So cracking on land item nine lifeline service and the the lifeline service and financial impact of the digital change over quite complicated items so councillor John bachelor is proposing this and councillor Bill Handley seconding it so councillor bachelor please. Thank you very much leader. Well it's not that complicated really it's fairly straightforward. The why it's all being changed the digital stuff's complicated it that's what I'm hearing. So I'm a simple soul so to me what this is about is there's a change the digital thing is and in order to do that it costs a good deal of money and effectively the lifeline service as we are running it is unbiable and so we wish to close it down. We appreciate obviously that people are dependent on this at the moment so the strategy here is to give as much support as possible to those who need to change to a new supplier and there are plenty of new suppliers around who actually charge less than we do currently anyway so there's benefits for the users. I'd also make the point that our own sheltered housing is not included in this operation at all we will still maintain the lifelines type service for all our sheltered housing tenants who require it so other than that I'm happy to move the recommendation which is to close down this operation and provide the support at our hands. Thank you very much councillor bachelor. Councillor Handley do you have any comment? Just to say I'm sure that our officers will give every help and support that is needed by people who are moving from one service to another I'm confident of that. Thank you very much indeed are there any questions about this so my understanding is that once this decision is taken we will be writing to anybody using the service and hopefully advising them on what to do next. There's a three month period when the officers will be freed up to provide the support. Okay thank you thank you very much indeed so the recommendations are set out on page 116. Do members agree with the proposal? Anyone wishing to vote against? Anyone wishing to abstain? Let's hope cabinet therefore agrees the proposals thank you very much. Item 10 is the homelessness strategy and that's councillor John Batchelor again seconded this time by councillor Toomey Hawkins so back to you councillor bachelor. Yes thank you leader. Homelessness strategy is required to be up grade reviewed on regular basis so we've done that and gone out to consultation. The strategy is of course also really quite straightforward it has two objectives one is to try and prevent homelessness by giving support and advice and if we are not successful we are apparently more than 50% successful in prevention so that's a great performance by our team but if we can't then we provide accommodation and support for the homeless. So that's basically what we're proposing move the recommendations on that. Thank you councillor bachelor and councillor Hawkins. Thank you leader. Yes happy to support this and I'm particularly keen to see that we're playing on improving the housing options that are available for single people both those who can share and those who can't. They usually tend to be at the bottom of the pile but yeah happy to support this. Thank you very much and thanks to Sue Carter and her team for doing a lot of work on this. Homelessness is going up nationally less so here than other places but we're still seeing quite concerning increases and our focus seems to be on as early intervention as is possible to support people to help themselves as much as possible so yeah it's not a problem that's going away anytime soon. So any questions from any cabinet members? Councillor Williams. Thank you leader just something that yeah overall the homelessness we obviously support anything that can help deal with that but just one thing that might not be on members minds but to be more perhaps all of us aware of is a piece of a case work that I've had recently of somebody that's terminally ill and the issue was that they were in a flat so they were capable for quite a long time unfortunately because the brain tumor then creates seizures and therefore stairs were no longer an option and fantastic work has been done since what since those seizures he's now able to apply for a two bed because he has to some state and ground floor but essentially became homeless because the accommodation overnight was not suitable and ended up having to live essentially in a pub short term which is not you know in that situation is not ideal. There probably were things in hindsight that could have been done earlier but I think our processes basically meant that until he was at that point of such thickness to get him in to be able to give him a two bed and I'm just wondering it might not be that there is any flexibility but if perhaps we could take a review of what we do in those situations because that was a statistic that could have been avoided potentially so it's not you know just something to have on people's minds. Thank you and I think we probably all have you know similar stories you know recommendation five says to prevent homelessness we want to focus on earlier intervention to increase the chance of resolving applicants difficulties. We do need people to tell us don't we so so I think you know perhaps I mean perhaps I'll refer to Councillor John Bachelor about how we can you know how if there's anything we can do to encourage people to flag to us earlier on that you know there's a problem down down the road so that we can you know fulfil our intention of even earlier intervention. That's noted. Thank you very much I mean I'm sure we can use our magazine and so on to do that so thank you so if there's no more questions thank you very much. Recommendations set out on page 128. Do members agree with proposals? Anyone voting against? Anyone abstaining? Cabinet therefore agrees the proposals and item 11 gosh this is a long agenda today isn't it? Amendments to the zero carbon communities grant and that's Councillor Henry Bachelor is going to propose this and Councillor John Williams is going to second it so Councillor Bachelor please. Thank you Lady I'll be as brief as possible hopefully it's fairly straightforward so for those that are aware of the grant it's pretty one of the more popular grants in South Cams and has proven to be since its inception. One of the side effects of that is we do get to tend we tend to get more applications than we have money for in spite of us putting more and more funding into the pot every year. As a result of that we have to keep reviewing the criteria to make sure being as fair as possible to everyone so what we have in front of us today are some slight amendments to set criteria probably the easiest way to display that as if everyone looks at Appendix B all the changes to the current criteria for the fund are highlighted in yellow essentially the changes in summary are that we're just asking for people to get more than say one quote if they're applying for solar pvs to ensure value for money not only for the applicants but for us as the fund givers as well and then also if the project the applicant is applying for is related to nature then we do try to redirect them if possible to the community chest by diversity pots which is another fund that this local authority facilitates therefore leaving more money in the ZCC grant available for for the other applicants who wish to apply. There's also some slight additions regarding regulatory consent so one of the questions we now ask is do you have all the various permissions needed to undertake the project should you be successful so things like planning permission highways permission etc so that's just another sort of belt and braces addition to the criteria. I think those are all the changes I'm going to update on verbally I appreciate we have a raft of officers who have appeared on the screen who may wish to add something but that's all I will introduce for this item thank you leader. Thank you very much Councillor Williams. Thank you leader I don't know if all of them wants to add anything too. Thank you yes so thank you to Alla Gibbons for the report and also to Alex Nelling Day for the work that she's done. Would either of you like to raise any issues? No I think that was an excellent summary thank you very much. The only addition would be that there's just some tightening up of the requirements we make for groups in reporting they're avoided CO2 emissions that are now required to use the sort of prescribed methodology so we can compare those like for like that. That's it though thank you very much. Thank you anything else you want to add to Councillor Williams? No okay fine okay so so this is really about making some changes that to make sure that the quality of the applications coming in makes it easy for us to to process them and allocate money to the best place so we know we're one of the few councils I imagine in the current financial climate who are able to give out grants to communities of this this type you know we're surrounded by councils who are axing all of that all of their grant going at giving at the moment. I spent yesterday morning chairing the environment and communities committee at the combined authority where they've allocated a couple of million pounds to to zero carbon and environmental projects and some of that money is meant to go down to community level they because of capacity issues they didn't manage to get it mobilised last year so the members of the committee have done a big push yesterday to get get that all rolling and actually to get us as local authorities more involved so I'll be talking to officers further about that in the next next few days. So any questions from cabinet members? Any other questions from anyone else? No okay thank you very much indeed. Thank thank you all and thank you thank you Alex and so recommendations are set out in the paper does that the members agree with the proposals? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? Cabinet therefore agrees the proposals so item 12 now increase the increasing protection for high streets 80 80 m so this is a new one. Jolly good so we've got Councillor Handley is going to propose this. Councillor please make Donald is going to second it and have we got we've got an officer online. Marvelous thank you okay right um Councillor Handley. Thanks a lot leader um it's sad that um attacks on ATMs in villages is very very common um of course these attacks don't just affect the companies that own and operate the ATMs it means a significant loss of service to our residents especially those who can't access alternative electronic methods of banking um the other thing is repeated tests from ATMs increase the risk of the service being discontinued permanently and that's happened in a number of wars including my own sadly there I'm sure everybody in the room will be understand that uh the there are a number of different ways that criminals might attack these these machines but ram raiding is one of the most common um you know stolen vehicles it's driving into the building where the ATM is located um four point is they need to get close to the ATM to remove it and it's heavy because it's heavy um this is about trying to make it harder for them to um get close to the ATM with vehicles and lifting equipment that's what this is about um anti-ram bollards can be used uh but the proposal here uh is to actually use heavy duty planters um which have the advantage of being sort of an attractive street feature as well as an obstacle to the thieves um the other advantage is that with the local community is invited to become part of the make the the management um and they can decide how the planters look is part of their street scene so um at the moment we only have one site confirmed and that's um in the co-op store in Campbell and the proposal here is that we agree to that project or that particular project uh proceeding now the the funding for the project uh is going to come from it's coming from the shared prosperity fund uh it's a one um one of funding of 100 000 um it seems to be often the case with combined authority bidding process there's a tight application deadlines and this is why in the report apart from a camborn proposal that the number of planters in their location is not it's not defined yet um the police are advising um officers uh that work is ongoing and the report will be updated as soon as as soon as they can the officer officer recommendation is on page 248 of uh well 248 of the um the online version um and that's to proceed with the protection of the ATM at the co-op uh in schoolway in camborn and then to delegate to the head of transformation uh in consultation with myself decisions on additional locations should they be fine found thank you thank you very much indeed uh council mcdonald thank you chair i'd like to second and if i may just say briefly um obviously this area uh crosses over to responsibilities between communities and business support um the business support team is very happy to uh support this and work with the community's team uh work with the police and of course also work with farmers because um this is the uh the one of the problems is uh the theft of vehicles from farms which are used to ram rate so i'd like to support it thank you thank you thank you very much indeed i wonder if this you know this might encourage some of the banks to put some of these atms back in such as the one in gambling gay which that could be uh bank got ram raider so hard for so many times that closed down and then the co-op uh got ram raider it was almost a weekly occurrence so we've lost ours i have to go to bedford should for an ATM uh so yes welcome this uh councillor john bachelor just to say much the same as you in linton the carp has been ram raided numerous times over recent years um the only issue now is is it too late because they have already withdrawn that facility um so you know but i support anything that may make a difference yeah we could have done with it a few years ago couldn't we really but anyway better better late than never um linda do you want to is there anything you want to add looking on looking up at the screen i'm sorry um nothing really further to add i think we've highlighted everything in in the program in the paper um we would just like to continue as i said with the camborn one just to to see what we can learn from that installation and we are looking at a second tranche of sites probably around 14 or so over and above the 14 that police recommended as the high high risk areas to see whether or not there's more we can do there um during the next 12 months so it won't just stop at this first group super thank you very much indeed it'd be nice if comms picked up on that when it's it's done and we've got some nice pictures and things because it's a good good bit of partnership working thank you very much linda for all your hard work okay so if there aren't any more questions um recommendations are set out on page 248 do members agree with proposals anyone wish to vote against anyone wish to abstain the cabinet therefore agrees the proposals thank you very much everybody and now mobile warden schemes additional additional funding uh council john williams is going to uh propose this and council bill handily i believe is seconding it so council williams thank you leader i think um this district council certainly within cambridgeshire is unique in that um it supports a mobile and community warden scheme where um volunteers or um carers go in and and um see people that are homebound many elderly people uh making sure they're okay maybe doing shopping for them and cup of tea for them etc um most of these schemes are run um by national organisations like huk um but in south camps we have for some time now supported local schemes uh run by parish councils or other other community groups uh to do this it's been a bit of a postcode lottery though and only about half of our parishes actually have such a scheme um and so in the coming year we we are we've asked the consultancy to come in and look at the way the schemes are run um to understand how sustainable they can be and to see whether or not um we can put a a model together to um encourage other groups other communities to um also introduce these schemes so that we have them across the the district now um unfortunately age out of the 40 odd schemes that we run 11 are run by age uk and uh they came to us literally just a few weeks ago to say that because they'd lost funding from other uh elsewhere that they were proposing to close the 11 schemes that they run um and clearly that would make a um be great concern to our local communities um because of the um the support that they give and we had to take some action to ensure that we at least keep their schemes going for the next year while the review is going on uh by the rose corporation um whether what what the outcome of that review is going to be um I can't say um we certainly would like to be able to continue um to support these schemes and we would like to see them extended across the district but um you know as as age uk has shown um they are fragile you know financially um they operate on very low margins and in age uk's case they've actually been subsidizing their schemes from elsewhere which is what made them vulnerable when they have lost funding um so for this coming financial year only I'm proposing that we do um support uh the 11 age uk schemes to ensure that they continue running while the review is happening so that at the end of the review hopefully later this summer um we will then be able to um put these schemes in south cams and a much more secure financial footing so that we don't have the situation where um we we have confronted with a scheme folding actual notice because of lack of funds uh and and also resources because um you know these schemes rely on um employing people to go and um and and regularly visit uh people in their own homes um and like everything else you know there is a finite number of people who are available to do that so again you know the review will also be looking at not just the um the organisation and the and the um you know the way that these things are are managed but also the costs and how the costs are managed and where the resources come from so I hope you agree that we should continue uh we should provide the funding so that the age uk um schemes can continue for the next 12 months and then obviously there will be a paper coming to us um later um next financial year to make a decision on how we go forward in the future with these schemes thank you councillor Handley absolutely um back councillor Williams on this um the community's team has already done a great deal of work here the the decision by age uk came as a bit of a shock a very unwelcome shock um but this will give the scheme a little bit of time give the team time to decide how this scheme should continue how it can be sustainable and still deliver the services that people of many people have become dependent on so very welcome intervention um and I'm absolutely welcome it thank you very much indeed um I mean the appendix a shows the hard facts of the deficit that each of the schemes is is running at yet we're in a really fortunate position here that we can step in and you know give this a stay a stay of execution because that's really what what this is um so I you know and my huge thanks to Catherine Hawkes and Emma Dyer for all their work I mean are we talking to parish councils about them making contributions to to this because of course you know they do have discretion over their over their preset and it is the sort of thing that a parish council might think it's appropriate to step in and make a contribution towards and what if anybody knows that Emma probably gives some detail I mean I have to admit that um parish council support is a little bit um patchy yeah yeah I know I mean I wonder whether we should be writing to parish councils just explaining explaining the you know explaining how critical this situation is and you know just giving them giving them the opportunity and you know just saying what the consequences because you know this is this is about keeping people in their in their own homes who otherwise would not be in their own homes councillor Milnes I think I was one of the points I was just going to make that this is a very critical element of maintaining people's ability to live independently um so we should be seen I would suggest in the context of a wider integrated healthcare service in social care um I think as a parish councillor I might struggle a little bit just on a technicality of whether it's within our remakes as parish councils to contribute to this I know the people who take this service are generally paying in part so they make a financial contribution I also know that it is a real contributor to people's abilities to stay whether it's delivering a paper each day because they can't make it to the shops as something as simple as that or making sure they've got the drugs for example when they need them and it is relatively small amounts of contributions that are making a substantial difference so um although I'm as a parish councillor I wouldn't be unhappy to do that I'd just be cautious that we aren't giving them additional burdens that they aren't obliged to do no okay at the end of the day any one of us might might need these services um Emma do you want to come in thank you just to say regarding parish councils um we are in regular contact with them and as part of the process we will actually be sort of encouraging them to um obviously you know contribute to these schemes which we know obviously do a lot of good within the district so thank you good good good okay I mean hopefully their their district councillors will be able to um you know perhaps we need to supply the district councillors with some some information in these areas to help them and that they they might be able to help facilitate those conversations with their councils um any other cabinet member before I come to councillor Williams no councillor Williams thank you so in my patch um my little corner of the world uh the parish councils are do contribute quite a lot so I've come to give them a grant as well but they're almost independent mobile walking schemes um and they run very well and very efficiently but I do think there's an issue with age UK sort of that sustainability because obviously you can't every year be be topping up the bills so I understand that but I think um it's something that uh I think parish councils are probably already doing their bit um and a real understanding of how they've got to this situation would be really good and perhaps there's some actually business support that can be given to them I know there are charity but there may be efficiencies that could be made that way because it's something that I'm sure everybody wants to see continue um councillor Ellington would never forgive us if we didn't continue it so please do support it well yes and and nor would councillor hails either so um so absolutely so I mean I think the work we're doing is is is that work um Emma when do you want to respond to that the work we're doing with age UK to try and help them deliver a sustained service that is sustainable and not hanging on year to year so we've commissioned um an organisation called rosary generation which you might be aware of um and we this is like a six month programme where we are sort of looking to see where we can um make efficient you know make them more efficient and um learn and record the data I think that's one of the key things and then what we're going to do is we'll get a final report um which will tell us basically you know a social return on investment figure so obviously how cost effective these schemes are but also it provides an opportunity for schemes to learn from other schemes so if there's something that one might not know about is that you know what's funding here or you know you could be recording this or have you thought about doing it like this this is giving them sort of opportunities to share good practice so um hopefully you know that that will help age UK especially good and I I imagine we are you know we're going to continue having um fairly strong words with the county council because these are I reckon about 150 160 people who are not in residential social care because they're being kept in their kept in their home so you know the burden then falls elsewhere um okay thank you very much indeed uh so so the recommendation is that we allocate just under 100 000 pounds to uh age UK to keep these 11 schemes going for the next year while this um other work goes goes on and then you know very sadly we'll have to review it in a year's time but hopefully and it'll be a it'll be a less pessimistic picture by then so thank you very much indeed do you members agree with proposals anyone wish to vote against anyone wish to abstain cabinet therefore agrees the proposals so moving on to planning from social care and this is the greater Cambridge plan making time deadline this is complicated I don't care what anyone says so uh so thank you very much so councillor to me Hawkins is going to present this and I'm very happy to second it so starting with you to me and I see you've got lots of lots of officers um around ready to answer questions so thank you thank you leader uh the local plan timetable gives details of timings that local authorities produce new or revised development plan documents setting up policies in their area now for us in greater Cambridge uh we actually set out and agreed our current timetable back in 2022 but we are not able to meet the timings in that timetable for a number of reasons and we now need to update it and besides the December 2023 written ministerial statement by the right honourable Michael Dove um requires us to uh all councils to actually provide an updated timetable to Dlock so here we are taking steps to do just that now our new timetable or rather data timetable is not dependent on what I would say are forking factors um I think we're already aware of those but I would just remind us what they are water supply is a very keen one um and we know that the environment agency's concerns about the impact of water abstraction on the aquifers has led them to objecting to three major sites in our current adopted local plan and um also on our emerging uh joint water chemical plan um we did ask for help from the Government and they were quiet until Mr Gove's announcement of his Cambridge 2040 plans to build 150 000 plus houses in the greater Cambridge area he then set up a Cambridge water scarcity group to address this issue for which we are thankful and we're trying to work with uh the group to come forward with um options to solve this problem I think uh your last Friday there was an ELGA water summon that took place which council leader you chaired um one of the panels um but the point is that there needs to be um a resolution of solutions on providing um both short and long-term solutions the second factor is the transport strategy um and of course the role of transport corridors in supporting planned growth um with appropriate sustainable travel options through the work of the command authority and the greater Cambridge partnership now we know that the suspension of the making connections proposal and the pausing of c set um due to cost meant that um new modelling work is now taking place for which we now await the outcome however um I think remember that last week um at the project announcement um Jeremy Hunt promised 10 million to be invested in Cambridge uh to unlock delivery of crucial local transport and health infrastructure now I suspect part of that is probably for c set but um I'm not sure about the details perhaps um but we need to wait and see what the outcome of that will be when is to go the third point is on the Cambridge wastewater um relocation thank you that's what I was looking for um and of course we know that the development of north east Cambridge is dependent on that and it's currently going through its development um consent order process now the that consent order process was submitted one year later that we had expected and now the decision is expected by the end of 2024 so that itself may change we don't know and the new national plan making system is also a factor where the government is making changes to how local plans are created um at the main points being that the former stages should be completed within a 30 month time frame now those LPs that want to adopt plans currently under the system we have now must submit their plans by the end of June 2025 we are not in that position um so looks like we might be preparing a plan under the new under the new system and just to add one more the Cambridge 2040 well the impact of that again is something we don't know so all these factors outside of control um and we just need to um sort of put this put this up formally um in our revised timetable and also write to um deloc to tell them what the new updated um local plan timetable is I will therefore uh like to move the recommendations which are in paragraphs for A to D on pages 261 to 262 of the report in front of us I must say at this point that these issues and more recently the Cambridge 2040 plans have resulted in a lot of work additional work for planning officers for which we are not paid we have asked for some grants and I think we're getting some grants so that would be good but I also want to give official credit to the team and find them for their hard work and their dedication um in trying to get the best outcomes for residents through all these unknown factors um just want to ask I don't know if Caroline has anything further to add um but at this stage thank you thank you very much can I can I ask a question so where are so I mean I met with Michael Gove and uh and with other leaders uh before the announcement of Cambridge 20 what's now 2050 and you know did a real push for us to be one of these front runner pilots um have we had any feedback on that that at all and have have any councils been made front front runners that we know of thank you chair um no at this point there have been no front runners identified through through deloc at this stage uh we we're continuing to to raise that at officer level and the recommendation before you is to uh seek agreement from uh from cabinet to continue to push for that um quite firmly um we think that's really important important to be in the space of discussing and the evolution of the new system because the consultation so far there's there's quite a lot of question marks and exactly how you would take it forward and clearly for us having done so much work already uh it's important to ensure that the system enables a smooth transition for those authorities that are partway through plan making into the new system thank you okay so I've got a I've got a letter in my inbox from Michael Gove that landed last week um to which I haven't yet yet decided how to reply but I think I will reiterate that in response to him to his letter that came came last week um and there's a real sort of headline that actually this is this will allow us to make process progress because I think you know we've got to be the most complicated local plan in the whole of the country by by a country mile haven't we and you know it's it's you know we think we're just on top of things and then then everything changes you know there's no water there's no power there's 150 000 extra houses there's you know the gcp doesn't have the money to deliver the infrastructure it's just um it's a thing of nightmares actually isn't it and uh yes and I hope you're not all doing it in your spare time actually by the way so um right any questions from cabinet um councillor melons yeah just wonder why my uh disappointments about the amounts of uh and the huge amounts of uncertainty for the 20 40 stroke 50 50 000 250 000 um in terms of reference yet um and yet declared by um michael gove as a place with very special circumstances in terms of greenbells amongst others and I think uh you know if anything we can do to encourage uh michael goveney's divine to deal up to help us uh transition to the new system as rapidly as possible would be most welcome thank you do we does that so if so do we have any detail about you know if we did manage you know if we were accepted as a front-runner pilot what you know what we get for that I mean do we get do we get I hope we get money actually um but what support do we get that actually allows us to deliver in this much shorter time frame is that have we been told that uh there really is no uh information on quite what that would mean it's something that was uh referenced in the um you know in the material put out uh with the new system but we've not heard anything there's been no formal um uh communication to invite us to any any authorities to put themselves for the front-runners or what that would mean um but yes absolutely it's important that we uh we do engage in that and push to be engaged uh because it's really important to us and we're really important to you know to the country so hopefully we're in a good place to you know to push to be uh in in the space okay jolly curis so we want to be what we want to be it but we don't know what it is but it's got to be better than what we've got chief executive please thank you chair and I think the only um thing that I would add is that you simply can't transition all planning authorities at the same time because you'd have a massive bottleneck at 36 months when everyone's trying to have their plan inspected so that's part of the reason why they're doing this sort of transitional approach as well as obviously I suppose trying to learn from their early authorities in terms of understanding what works and what doesn't uh thank you that makes sense and as a council had had its last local plan in inspection for four years four and a half years four and a half years so that was one of the worst in the country um yeah we kind of we we get that all right so thank you very much any questions from anybody else so I know I've got some members online please do feel free to ask questions if you're online as well giving up your mornings okay thank you very thank you uh thank you to Karen and Jonathan all your all your team um imagine there's never a never a dull moment but never a free moment either um so the recommendations are set out on pages 261 to 262 do members agree with proposals anyone voting against anyone abstaining so cabinet therefore agrees the proposals thank you very much everybody so moving on more more planning stuff statement of community involvement and councillor no I dropped ahead councillor Tumi Hawkins is going to propose this and councillor Bill Handley is going to second it so councillor Hawkins uh thank you leader uh first of all I want to make a correction please um paragraph 4c should read delegate to the joint director of planning and economic development in consultation with the lead member for planning policy and development management the authority to make any necessary editing changes to the statement of community involvement prior to publication have you have you got that paper thank you very much indeed okay noted thank you um as you know we are required to publish a statement of community involvement and review the statements at least every five years and our last one um was due for review or is due for review now which is what we've done um the statement actually describes how our residents and businesses uh and interest groups can get involved in the planning process um uh you know how we make policies and neighborhood planning um we know planning can be a very motive issue um is also misunderstood by many and usually given a bad press especially when decisions are made according to what a material planning considerations but not the liking of local community um it is why we felt it was important to go to public consultation so residents can have the opportunity to understand the process better and tell us what they think um we did the consultation even though it is not statutory requirement for us to do that um we received 53 representations and the results are in appendix 1 of the report on pages 287 to 321 and officers have been able to take into consideration the results and made some modifications um using that feedback and of course uh just a highlight of those are in paragraph 11 on page 283 of our report so I will sort of you know highlight all that but I wish to make some important points um as a local planning authority we encourage applicants to engage with the planning service um and the local community early in the process before submitting an application now table 3 on page 346 gives a summary of the planning process and all the applications that we receive are available to view online and a weekly list of validated applications determined are made available for parish and town councils and any other interested parties who want to know about um or keep up to date on the planning decisions in their area the pre-app stage is where an applicant can discuss with us their proposals with planning officers and the relevant statutory consultees so they get appropriate advice understand policies that apply identify issues um and opportunities and what information they need to uh they need to submit this is very important and we we engage we we encourage um applicants to do that and of course if the advice is followed obviously the application that is submitted should then sort of go through the process more smoothly the other thing that we encourage a lot is engaging with the local community early um it's important that applicants understand better how their proposals will affect the community that they're going to be building in um and it's especially important if it's going to have a significant impact or the community or is considered sensitive um and just to say we you know we provide more information on the planning website about the pre-app service or how to request a duty plan officer service where members of the public can obtain advice um and guide that answer especially on household applications as well um because sometimes you know people only have the uh you know contact with us once because they want to you know extend the house or put something up and you know it's not a constant thing um I'll also mention that one new way that community can engage is what we call the urban rooms I know where in the rural area we don't like hearing the word urban but uh this is a place where the public can come together and actually discuss planning issues without you know oh i'll say without prejudice express their views and discuss about proposed developments now there is one being created now as we speak in Cambridge we call it the Cambridge room well you know um watch this space the more we bring that forward the more information I'll be able to provide um as we do that um we also know that there are many underrepresented community groups in the community that we want to engage with and as a start for the very first time um the statement includes the process of engaging with our young people um we have an award-winning youth engagement service which you call yes and um have given young people an opportunity to actually engage with some of the bigger uh planned opportunities so there's more that I can say about the statement of community involvement but I think I'll stop here for now um but we really encourage everyone to read that document it's very important we've made it very user-friendly I like to think and I want to say thank you um to the officers um I mean Terry is here if there's anything else I've missed that's important that you might want to add and to answer questions uh we'll therefore move recommendations in paragraphs 4a to the amended c um on page 281 thank you thank you very much indeed councillor Handley do you want to add anything I need to say I fully support this I mean since I've been in my current role it's been astonishing how much um people need to learn often about the planning process and I think any engagement you know all of this engagement I think will bear fruit um and it's to be encouraged and applauded thank you thank you and we all know you know the more you engage with people the better it is even if it's bad news you're engaging with them they just they like you know they have a right to right to know what's going on um and it's really and it's really difficult so so thank you thank you very much to all concerned but so it's a it's a statutory requirement I'm just confirming that we have this um so you know we've had a road back from government on equality diversity and inclusion I'm assuming that the um you know the appendix that that is the equality's impact assessment is part of the statutory requirement of of such a document thank you uh yes so both councils um require the equality impact assessment to be undertaken for any new policies um the council is looking to bring forward and it basically sets out how um you know the the policy in this instance will affect communities and various types of communities across both Cambridge and South Cambridge district areas um it's not a um a requirement um for the SCI to um have this in terms of like a national a national requirement but it's something that's done essentially at every local authority level so that's how it's kind of picked up locally lovely and it's obviously very important we'd be failing our residents if we didn't if we didn't include this thank you very much indeed are there any questions from cabinet or for anybody else no thank you very much indeed so uh we shall move to the recommendations if I can find them again it's quite a big document right I want to list them right here okay so recommendations set out on page 28281 uh do you members agree with proposals anyone voting against anyone abstaining so cabinet therefore agrees with proposals thank you very much for all your hard work so moving on to on the last leg two more to go uh item 16 revenue and capital budget monitoring councillor john william uh get that john bachelor hang on no no no councillor i've jumped ahead councillor john williams and councillor peter mcdonnell seconding thank you john williams thank you leader um well I hope you note this because in particular I would ask you to note the table in paragraph 17 um staff salary budget um if anyone asks me what has the four-day week trial done for you I will point them to this table because you'll see that there is no variance you know we sat in this council for years seeing variances particularly in uh planning and lesser waste because we've had to employ agency staff which take us over our budget and uh you'll recall at the beginning of the the uh last year um before the trial started that we were about a quarter million pounds over our staff budget on planning because we were having employ agency staff well look see where we are now zero we are on budget on our staffing costs and as I say if anyone wants to see what the effect of the four-day week trial has had on our finances look at the staff budget um table on page 411 um otherwise the only other um red uh indicator in this report is in housing and that's because we've underspent um um and um there is no significant overspending and no overspends of any significance whatsoever in this report so I'm really delighted uh for you to note it and for everybody to note it particularly those who have been criticising us over the four-day week trial thank you thank you well said councillor Williams our councillor and Donald well thank you leader I'd like to second um the recommendations and uh nothing to add thank you thank you thank you very much indeed any other questions from anybody no I think um those council give that eye teeth to be able to report as you have done just now councillor Williams thank you uh so if there's no more questions do members agree with the proposals anyone wish to vote against anyone abstaining no so cabinet therefore agrees the proposals and the last item is the review of the urban street housing business plan so councillor um John bachelor with councillor John Williams seconding thank you yep thank you leader well I think we probably all agree that um in street is one of the big success stories of south cams um and the huge thank you should go to Duncan Bessie and his team for the brilliant work that they've done um we're currently in a position where there's a contribution to our revenue stream of 4.5 million pounds and they have an asset base of something like 126 million pounds for the 100 million pound investment that we've made in this company so far this is the business plan to take us on for the next nine or 10 years um and it's the plan to continue this success so I'm very happy to move the recommendations which I'd point out is this is an information thing because the decisions about this are of course made by the board of urban street and not by us as such but we do take a close interest so I recommend that we note this report thank you very much and just before we come to your second uh can I just remind everybody that appendix a is an exempt item so if anybody wants to discuss the details in in the exempt business case we'll need to go into closed session so councillor Williams um thank you thank you leader I'm delighted to second this and um you know I agree with everything that there's a drama said about um urban streets in the way it's managed um can I um draw people's attention to paragraph 41 um of of the uh report uh and that to me sums up really where we are now with urban street it's come a long way from the days when it's purely there to make money falls and paragraph 41 shows how uh urban street is there to help us um with with the housing crisis and to ensure that we meet our aim of making sure that housing is truly affordable for everyone to live in and I commend um urban street and its management for for the work that it's done over the last few years with us uh to achieve um paragraph 41 thank you thank you very much indeed a huge thanks to Duncan for you know huge amounts of work um I just want to also commend scrutiny and overview uh for you know really you know squirreling down into the into the detail of this um at items number seven we have sort of recommended recommendations from them about footnotes to explain complex accounting concepts there are a number of accountants on scrutiny and overview so hence they got down into the into the weeds of it and lost some of the rest of us along the way but that would be helpful because we do all need to understand all this also wanting for greater detail of of any risks and of course you know with with councils falling over financially all around us it's absolutely appropriate that we give um every attention we can to risk um and yeah the rest of the things were about were about risk um but as council Williams has said you know this delivers substantial amounts of money into our revenue accounts that allows us to do some of the things that we've been discussing earlier in the day like you know shoring up um mobile mobile warden schemes um so any questions from any other cabinet members no Duncan's one thing you want to say we covered it jolly good just come here for a for a listen all right thank you very much indeed um so recommendations on page four three one do members agree with uh proposals agree anyone voting against anyone abstaining so cabinet therefore agrees the proposals thank you so sorry that was rather longer than usual but i think we were pretty efficient um that brings the meeting to a close the next meeting of cabinet is on the 16th of april thank you very much everybody for your time