 Wonderful. Thank you very much, Chair. You are now live. Thank you very much. So good morning members and officers and any members of the public of viewing this live stream of this meeting. Welcome to this meeting of the South Cambridgeshire District Council Cabinet from my kitchen, as you can see. My name is Councillor Bridget Smith and I'm the leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council and I'm chair of the Cabinet. For the information of members of the public, the Cabinet, which is made up of myself and eight lead Cabinet members, is responsible for most council services for preparing the budget and the council's major policies and strategies, which are then considered by full council. Now this is the fourth virtual meeting of Cabinet, so bear with us if we have any technical issues, but actually I think we are getting better at this, famous last words. So first, just a few housekeeping announcements. Please would you make sure that your device is fully charged and that your microphones are on mute unless you are invited to speak. And when you are invited to speak, please unmute your microphone. And when you finish speaking, please turn your microphone off straight away. Speak slowly and clearly and please don't talk over or interrupt anybody or it just gets really difficult. And then please switch off or silence any other devices that you have, which is reminds me to switch off my own phone, so they don't interrupt the proceedings. So the normal procedure at Cabinet is to take votes by affirmation and we will continue with this tradition. And when we move to a vote on any item, I'll ask if members agree with the proposal. And if any member wants to either vote against a proposal or abstain, then a roll call will be taken. And I'll then ask Cabinet members to speak into their microphones so their vote is clear both to the Cabinet and to those watching this webcast. And members should respond for against or abstain when their name is called. So there's business on this agenda, which is confidential, and this is referred to as exempt business. And if the committee agrees to exclude the press and public at item 12 or 12 or possibly 13, the live video stream will end. And then I'll let members of the public know when this is about to happen and things that are confidential. It's usually because of commercial sensitivity. Okay, thank you very much for your patience. The technical issue should now be resolved and you are live again. So welcome back after that short short interlude. I hope people have used it to go and grab a cup of coffee. So we were just on the actions taken under the chief executive delegated powers which have been implemented during the coronavirus regulations. Members you're asked to note the report. Does anybody have any questions on the report? Hazen cut some band wire other any questions coming through on the chat. No, there are no questions. Okay, so we know so we note the report. So moving on to item seven, which is issues arising from the scrutiny and overview committee council Chamberlain. Would you like to introduce this report and let me know if you'd like to speak before any of the items. Thank you very much. Just to add a couple of things if I may to the report, notably under the scrutiny improvement review section. I'm pleased to confirm that we have established dates for a triangulation meeting on the 21st of September. That will include just a small number of us, but an all member workshop has also been agreed and established for the 30th of September. That will be organised by CFPS and I promise this to be a very, very interesting session, I'm sure. Other than that, I think Victoria has done a great job in summarising a meeting and I'm more than happy to move that forward to you. Thank you. Thank you very much. So members you're asked to note the report from the scrutiny and overview committee. Thank you very much. So moving on to the first major item on the agenda, which is the 2020 to 2021 quarter one performance report. And I'm just going to introduce this item which appears at page 15 on your agenda. Now obviously life has been pretty nuts for the first quarter of this year. So if you look at the appendix B, which is the business plan action update report, you'll see a very frank resume of the impact that the COVID pandemic has had on our business plan. And there's very little that hasn't been impacted, but I think officers have done a very good job in giving a full explanation about things that haven't been able to happen as fast or haven't been able to happen at all. Because quite rightly as the district council, we have mobilised all our actions into dealing with the pandemic, supporting vulnerable people, getting I think over £25 million worth of grants out to businesses, feeding hundreds of people in South Cambridgeshire on a weekly basis. So all the stuff that went to the top of our list of priorities because of COVID. So it's not surprising that it's impacted on delivery of our business plan. However, what I am pleasantly surprised by is when we look at our performance, it really has not impacted on very much of our performance at all. In fact, I think performance has held up remarkably well. And there are some areas where we're seeing things in the red, things like early on housing rent collection went down, but now that's back in the green. Not surprisingly, the amount that's spent on bed and breakfast accommodation has gone up significantly, but quite rightly, we can't leave homeless people without homes during a pandemic. So, you know, we have had to deal with that willingly in exactly the same way as all councils have. There's been a slowdown in re-letting housing stock because we haven't been able to go into houses. Our contractors haven't been able to put in new kitchens and paint walls and things like that. But this is all stuff that's getting going again. And in some cases, actually our performance has increased. And that is down to the extraordinary efforts of our executive management team in making sure that our workforce were well supported to work at home. That they had all the kit they needed. They had chairs that didn't give them bad backs. They had extra screens and lots and lots of effort from our HR department to make sure that people's health and well-being was well looked after. Because, you know, even though some people love working at home and we're getting lots of feedback that people have valued not having to commute into work and they've valued the amount of time that they've been able to spend with their families, there have been negatives and particularly people trying to balance caring responsibilities or people without sufficient office space in their homes, which makes life stressful. But we have done way more than, you know, many, many other councils in making sure that we've been caring for particularly the mental health of our staff. So, you know, my thanks and congratulations go to all of our executive management team and in particular to Liz Watts, our chief executive. And I think that's why we've actually fared very, very well because we've looked after the people who are actually doing the work and having to keep the show on the road, which they have had to do. So, if there are any questions on this item, I'm happy to do my. So, Aidan, do we have any questions? No, no. Okay, good. So, the cabinet's recommended to review the KPIs results and comments at Appendix A and progress against the business plan actions at Appendix B. Leader, Councillor Delacy is asked to speak on this item. Oh, right, so Councillor Delacy, I'll stop and you can come in. Thank you very much indeed, leader. You will know at previous meetings I have made a heartfelt plea for more information than just an average. And I'm very pleased to report that I've spoken both to Peter Maddock and Jeff memory. And they are working on a plan which should provide us with a great deal more information on performance indicators in the future. And I'm delighted to report that. But I'm slightly surprised looking at my Bay Noir, the contact centre, a wonderful improvement and no commentary. And I'd be interested to know if there is anything worth saying on the contact centre because I'm really impressed at what's happened there. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor Delacy. I was very pleasantly surprised that the performance of the contact centre has become so brilliant, really. People are having to work from home. But I'm going to ask Liz actually to come in because obviously that needs looking at to analyse what has actually driven that improvement. Because it's really important that we capture that and carry it forward. Is this going to respond or is it going to Jeff responding on this? Thank you, Liz. Happy to pick that up. Although Jeff may want to add. So certainly we knew towards the back end of last year that we had taken a lot of extra new colleagues in the contact centre and there was a lot of training involved. And I think we've now got to the point where everybody is well trained and able to respond to all sorts of queries. Moving home has been positive for the contact centre. I think I took a report to Scrutiny at the last meeting and did a deep dive on some of the service areas and the contact centre was one of them. I think some of the improvement in performance from home working is down to there being much fewer distractions at home. And so people are just able to really hone in on kind of answering calls and queries. There has been a slight that there was some drop in demand in the contact centre. But broadly speaking, I think we're now sort of back to normal and a combination of all of those things has meant that performance is really good now. And as with a classic kind of local government approach to things, Councillor Delacey, when things go well, we just assume that you're happy and we don't shout our own praises. So that's why there's no comments in the box. Thank you. Thank you very much. Does anybody else want to comment on any of that? No, good. So yes, it pleased me very much and we've got to make sure that we capture all this excellence. So I'm going to propose this. And I think Councillor Williams, I think you're going to second. Yes, I'm happy to second. Okay, so we've had no questions. So I'm going through my script here. Members, the recommendations have been moved and seconded. The recommendation is set out at paragraph 2.1 of the agenda. And cabinet's recommended to review the KPI results and comments at Appendix A and progress against business plan actions at Appendix B. So, do members agree with proposal? We agree. Thank you. Does anyone wish to vote against? And does anyone wish to abstain? Thank you. So cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. Thank you. And moving on to item 9, which is the provisional general fund review and capital outturn. Councillor John Williams, please would you introduce this report? I'm pleased to present this provisional year end position for the Revenue and Capital General Fund for 2019-20. This is provisional because they have yet to have the draft statement of accounts for 2019-20 approved by external auditors. This is the first budget of the new administration and the provisional outturn shows that South Cambridgeshire is financially healthy, going into what I'm sure will be a very challenging 2020-21 financial year because of COVID-19. As to the revenue outturn, you can see from the table at paragraph 3 on page 40 of the agenda pack that the provisional outturn is estimated to be £19.3 million, a variance of £1.3 million on the total revenue budget. The reasons for the most significant variances are given in paragraph 5 on page 41 of the agenda pack. Two to note are the £0.6 million extra cost incurred by not recharging some corporate services to the HRA to better reflect actual work undertaken and the offsetting of this additional cost by saving of nearly £1 million in non-operational budgets, where it is worth noting that investment income and expenditure was 0.6 million above budget due to commercial rents. As to income from taxation and government grants, you will see from the table in paragraph 7 on page 42 of the agenda pack the income from these sources was £5.3 million above budget. Deducting the £1.3 million over spend and taking into account the £0.6 million contribution to the reserve assumed in the budget, this gives us nearly £4.7 million to transfer to the general fund reserve, bringing the total of the reserve to £16.5 million. The reasons for this are explained in paragraph 8. It is worth noting that the growth in business rate income has been substantial since the setting of the baseline, but no allowance was made in the 2019-20 budget for a business rate surplus. This has now been rectified in the 2020-21 budget. This report also reviews our earmark reserves, which as of the 31st of March stood at over 29 million. The major reserves are explained in paragraph 11 on the agenda pack page 43. One in particular, which is new to the Council, is that for property investment. This reserve ensures that funds are available to meet any costs that do not fall within the responsibility of our commercial tenants, and this fund will be reviewed as our commercial portfolio grows. We also have a transformation reserve of nearly £4 million. Turning to our capital fund programme, we set a capital budget for 2019-20 of over £44 million and achieved an outturn of £42 million. Of the £2 million underspend, over £0.5 million was mainly due to Ermond Street not drawing down on loans for the purchase of properties as expected in the budget. As a result of this, this amount will be carried forward to 2020-21 and bring the total available for Ermond Street to over £17 million for this financial year. Also, we underspent the budget for purchasing commercial properties by £1.1 million because work on 270 Cambridge Science Park started later than expected. I'm also asking that £105,000 is transferred from unused funds in the Airmark Reserve to the LED Street Lighting Replacement Project to enable ornamental lights to be provided in conservation areas as requested by parish councils. I'd like to take this opportunity of thanking the senior management team and all officers of this council for helping us to basically keep to our budget in very different circumstances, and I do congratulate them on the outturn of this budget. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Councillor Williams, and my thanks as well to the officers who've done a sterling job here. I believe that Councillor Hazel Smith is going to second this. Can you confirm that, Councillor Smith? Yes, thank you. Thank you very much indeed. So are there any cabinet members who wish to speak on this item? No, and I believe I've got Councillor Heather Williams waiting to speak from the member. Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you, Leader. I'm going to put my camera off because I think we're having issues with the Board Bang, but can I just confirm you can hear me okay? We can, yes, thank you. Thank you. So I've got three questions, one or two relate to page 41 of the report. So it says that we have savings of £156,000 in health and wellbeing. I was just wondering if you could elaborate as to how those savings have been found. Under the Corporate Services 9 it mentions a redundancy out of budget, but I'd just like to know how many redundancies we've made in the last 12 months. And the final question is on page 45 paragraph 17. It refers to the investment budget for 2021, and I've heard from the Leedsmen for Finance about the transition across from the previous year. But how much for the 2020-21 budget is there left for investment purposes as it stands at this moment, please? Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Councillor Heather Williams. Councillor Williams, can I pass those questions on to you please? You can, but unfortunately I can't answer them here now. I don't have that information, but I'm happy to supply Councillor Williams with that information. Okay, and we've got to know to those questions. So Councillor Heather Williams will get back to you on those and give you a written response to them. And that written response will appear in the minutes as well. Yes. Okay, thank you. So are there any other questions? Okay, thank you. So members, the recommendation has been moved and seconded. I'm not going to read it all out because it's quite long, but it appears on page 39 and page 40. So do members agree with the proposal? Yes, agree. Thank you. Does anyone wish to vote against the proposal? And does anyone wish to abstain? Thank you. So cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. And moving on to item 10 at page 49, which is the 2020-21 Revenue and Capital Budget Monitoring and Councillor Williams again, please, would you introduce this report? Thank you, Leader. There has just been one word to sum up the first quarter of this financial year, and that word is coronavirus of course. Overall, we have seen on the one hand significant underspends due to COVID-19 disrupting day-to-day council activities such as the collection of waste and the repair of council housing, whilst on the other hand overspends as we have supported our communities in the lockdown period. In response to financial returns, the government has provided additional funding and having covered our additional costs directly attributed to COVID-19, we are expecting the losses from reduced fees and licenses to be recompensed to. This should be sufficient to meet the financial impact on the general fund. The revenue budget summary position can be found in the table in paragraph 21 on agenda PAC page 53. At the end of June, at the end of 30th June, our net surface expenditure was £131,000 under the expected spend at that point of £1,485,000. A full table is provided at Appendix B on agenda PAC page 61. Appendix A on agenda PAC pages 58-59 shows that savings income that were expected to be achieved this financial year. The income from investments is expected to be at risk from underperformance of urban streets, although since the writing of this report, the additional rents from further commercial acquisitions may offset this. Also because of slippage in capital projects, some anticipated savings are likely to be delayed until 21-22. On Appendix C1 on the agenda PAC page 63, there's a breakdown of the significant items of variance from the revenue general fund. The government called upon the council to distribute the COVID-19 council tax hardship fund to those receiving local council tax support, gave business rate relief at very short notice and distributed its grant funding schemes, including the small business grant fund and retail hospitality and leisure grant fund. I'm sure you'll agree with me that the finance and newly created business support teams have performed exceptionally well in these tasks, aided by members and their local knowledge. To date, some £24 million has been distributed to around 1900 local businesses. It's too early to make predictions for the outturn at the end of the financial year. The economic and social recovery is going to be long and my guess is that we won't see a clear picture until at least quarter three. As to the capital programme for this year, it is summarised in Appendix D on agenda PAC page 66. No surprises to see that COVID-19 has fairly affected the start of the programme. Once again, it is too early to predict the outturn for the year. As the report says, this is being reviewed on a regular basis. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Councillor Williams, and I believe Councillor Tumie Hawkins is going to second this item. Can you confirm that please? Yes, Leader, I'm second in this item. Thank you. Thank you very much. I congratulate officers on the clarity of presentation of this report. It's easy to see at a glance what is going on, and that's very nice. So are there any cabinet members you wish to speak on this item? Yes, Councillor Handley. Just to really echo what Councillor John Williams said about the way that the council distributed the grants to local businesses, I really was really quite impressed by it, and I've been complimented by the service they received by local businesses. So it's a thank you to the officers. Thank you very much, and that thanks comes from all of us. We got the grants out incredibly quickly. It was a slick operation, but helped by members as well. When we got down to the last few who were proving difficult to contact, members took to the telephones themselves and wrote letters themselves to track down the last people in their own patches, and that got an awful lot more money out of the door. I think Councillor Peter McDonald is indicating that he'd like to speak, probably on this subject. Thank you, people to mute. No, I can hear you. Oh, good. Okay. Thank you, Leader. It was just a comment to thank members as well, because especially in phase one of the grants, but also to some extent in phase two, we got a lot of support and help from members to be able to find the businesses that were quite hard to find at the beginning of lockdown, especially. And that's really appreciated by me and the officers. Thank you very much indeed. And actually, Councillor McDonald, your efforts have been considerable, and we are all very, very grateful to your efforts as well. So, I believe Councillor Heather Williams would like to speak on this item. Thank you, Leader. I just got a question around page 61. And it was touched on slightly by the lead member for finance around the investment income, because obviously there is a difference there, significant difference. And I just wanted some reassurance that it's COVID related and not any other underlying issues. And the statement that was made read the types of investment and their performance. Would the lead member of finance be willing to share the evidence and information that led to his statement there with other members? Thank you. Councillor John Williams. Thank you, Leader. Well, the evidence, my statement is based on the report. So, the evidence I've got there is the evidence that gave is actually contained within the report. But going back to the commercial income, it is explained why the report does explain that why commercial income is slightly down on budget. And as I explained, it's due to the fact that Irmond Street has not drawn down as much of its loan as we expected, because it has not been purchasing properties. Thank you very much. Councillor Heather Williams, do you want to come back on that? Thank you. So, I think the answer would be that it's COVID related and not other underlying issues, which was the question that I gauged from the answer. But my request was for some bit more detailed information as to the performance of our individual purchases, which I appreciate for commercial reasons may not be able to be included in this report. But I think a more detailed look at how certain investments are doing would be appreciated by members. Leader, I'm quite happy to share that information with Councillor Williams. Obviously, it is private and confidential and she needs to not to pass that on, but I'm happy to. I'm sure I can cope with that, Councillor Williams. Okay. That's really good. So, if the crew, Councillor Williams, can make contact with each other outside of this meeting. I appreciate it. Well, Peter, I'm the head of finance. I'm sure we'll supply him with the information. That's excellent. Thank you very much indeed. Are there any further questions? No? Okay. So, it's recommended that cabinet A, acknowledge the forecast for 2021 revenue out-term position against the approved revenue budget shown in Appendix C, the projected major variances with reasons for these variances and the action being taken to address the underlying issues. And B, acknowledge the latest capital program 2021 to 2024-25 and the action and variances if any, as shown in Appendix D. Do members agree with this proposal? Agree. Agree. Agree. Thank you. Does anybody wish to vote against the proposal? And does anyone wish to abstain? Thank you. So, cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. And moving on to item 11, which is the housing revenue account and is Councillor John Williams again. It's me again. I'm going to be quite brief on this because it's clear that we have done extremely well on the HRA. We have made, there's been a small underspend and there has been a small increase in income and as a result we're able to put some money into reserves and some two million into reserves. And if you look at paragraph six, there's a table there which explains that. And on the capital side, I'm delighted actually that we've spent more money than we intended to on our new homes build program. And as a result of that, we're bringing forward one and a half million pounds to ensure that we can continue with that program. So I think well done to our housing colleagues, particularly the new build team for delivering those homes ahead of schedule. You'll see from this, it's extremely good again. Like the general fund, the housing revenue account is in very good health. And I commend it to you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Williams. And I believe Councillor Hazel Smith is going to second this item. Could you just confirm that? Thank you, Chairman. I would echo John's comments and congratulate the staff on a very good out turn here. Yes, good out turn in challenging times. Are there any questions from Cabinet on this item? No, and are there any questions from anybody else? No? Okay, so moving on. I'm not going to read all the recommendations again because there's masses of them. So Cabinet's requested to consider the report and the recommendations as set out in the paper. Do members agree with the proposal? Agree. Does anyone wish to vote against? And does anyone wish to abstain? No, thank you. So Cabinet therefore agrees this proposal by affirmation. So we are now moving on to the three C's, shared service partnership renewal agreements. Now there's the detail here is in pink confidential papers because this is obviously all commercially sensitive information. And if nobody wants to discuss anything within the pink papers, then we can stay in public session for this. But if anybody would like to discuss the content of pink papers, then we will need to move into private session, closed session. So could you please indicate if you would like debate on the information in the pink papers please? No. Okay. Councillor Delacy. I think Councillor Delacy wants to speak on the substance of the item. That's fine but not require us to go into private session. I think most of what I want to say concerns typos. I don't think anything relates to the real substance of the material and therefore it might be more sensible if I simply send you an email with my proposals rather than having to go into a closed session. That's really kind of you, Councillor Delacy. Thank you very much indeed. And if those, yes, those go to Democratic Services, but please copy me in, copy me in as well. Thank you. So I think this is Councillor Williams yet again. So over to you, John, please. Thank you, Leader. I move the recommendations in agenda item 30. Members who were on this council prior to the election in 2018 will know that Lib Dem Group was very critical of the loose nature of the agreements for our shared services and in particular the lack of a strategic direction and soft governance and the recharging of costs between partners. This was therefore one of our first tasks upon taking control. I'm pleased that we are now able to deliver this partnership renewal agreement, which as you can see from paragraphs 10 and 11 on agenda pages 68 and 69 now puts the shared services on a more contractual arrangement with strong governance to deliver the cost efficiencies and resilience that we should expect. So I would ask you to support the recommendations. Thank you. And I believe the recommendations are being seconded by Councillor Toomey Hawkins. Yes, Leader. I am pleased to second this item. Thank you very much. Now, Councillor Chamberlain, I think I know because scrutiny and overview was spent considerable time over the last two and a half years actually looking at our shared services. So I'm sure you'd like to comment on this. I have to say that I very much welcome the report. I think that putting the agreements on a much more sound basis is exactly the way forward. And I'm sure that my colleagues at the scrutiny committee will be delighted when this is approved and inactive. Thank you. Thank you very much. And my thanks to scrutiny and overview committee for all their contributions to this because they have played a significant role in shaping this up into something that we're all happy with. And partnership working is good stuff in this current climate, but it has to be right and it has to be strategic and it has to have tight legal controls over it. And every member has to be an equal partner. And you've done considerable work and I'm very, very grateful. So if you pass on my thanks to your committee. Thank you very much indeed. So do we have any comments from cabinet? And from anybody else? OK, so members, you are asked to note the report. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. So we've now got to the bit of the agenda where we have to go into closed session. So I'll read the proper script here. We come to the point in our agenda where we need to consider whether to exclude the press in public from the meeting. This is because the next items contain information which is commercially sensitive. Members of the public are advised that if cabinet agrees to exclude the press in public, the video stream will end. So thank you very much for participating. So I move that the following items of business contain... Leader, please apologise. Chief Executive, Liz, what's wanted to come on this? I think it might be on the nature of the decision actually. Yeah, I'm really sorry to hop in here. But actually the recommendation on the previous item was to approve the partnership renewal agreement. It was our mistake that we gave you. No, our mistake, leader. So if you could... Let's take the HCC7 is to approve my agreement. Okay, yes, my apologies. I was reading the wrong bit here. Okay, so just going back to the previous item which is the two street C's shared partnership agreement. If I just make sure I get this right. So it's recommended that cabinet approves the partnership renewal agreement for three C's shared services, brackets, ICT, building control and legal. Pan, do cabinet approve of the proposal? Does anybody wish to vote again? Sorry, I don't think you talk. Yes, somebody does. Sorry. Anyone wish to abstain? I'd like to work out whether that was an approve or a reject. Anybody wish to abstain? Okay, therefore the cabinet, therefore approves the proposal by affirmation. Sorry about the interruption. It might not be the last one. This is live TV, anything can happen. So excuse me a second while I just find my script. So going back to the recommendation for the exclusion of press and public, I move that the following items of business contain exempt information falling within paragraph three as set out on your agenda and the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information. Is that seconded please? I second that. Thank you very much, Councillor Van Der Wire. So do cabinet agree to the proposal? Agreed. Anybody vote against? And anybody abstain? All right, so the proposal is accepted by affirmation and we therefore move into a closed session and we say goodbye to members of the public and thank you very much for participating in this meeting. I hope you found it interesting. Are you just waiting for Erwin to confirm? Yeah. Sorry, members, I have to shout it across to the floor later. Here we go. Can you repeat that for me, Liz, I couldn't quite hear you. Yeah, we need to go into private and off live stream. Apologies. I can confirm that you are now no longer live. Thank you.