 Fa oes gydag i ffodol i gydag yma. Ie gydag o'relu olygu o'r Cyngroeth a neu'r cyflinedd. neu o'r cyflinedd iawn. Welcome to this meeting of the Scrutin in Overview Committee. My name is Councillor Graham Coe and I am chairing this meeting. My vice-chair, Stephen Drew, is on his way but will be attending the meeting …aibos 10 minu'n ddweud am y dweud, ond yw'n ei ddweud. I will introduce other attendees when I invite them to speak. Those in the chamber are reminded that this meeting is being livestreamed. The normal procedure at Scrutiny and Overview Committee meetings… …is to review and recommend issues by affirmation. Only those members of the committee present in the Chamber… will be able to move and second motions to affirm. However, members present virtually may speak in the debate. May I ask those who are joining us remotely to ensure that their cameras and microphones remain off unless they are addressing the committee? For those of us present in the room, please ensure your microphone is close to you and you speak clearly when addressing the room. Finally, a report of this meeting will be presented to Cabinet on 12 March. Neither myself or the Vice-Chair will be present at that meeting, so are there any other members of this committee present that could attend that meeting? No, that's fine. We will circulate an email to other members to see if we can get someone to cover. So, I think we'll move on to the first item on the agenda, which is Apologies for Absence in. Apologies from councillors Bradman, Carn, Ellington and Ripth. We've got substitutes in councillor Bear Park, councillor Regrop and councillor Heather Williams. We've also got Apologies from three members of the Cabinet, the leader, deputy leader and councillor. So, the second item on the agenda is Declarations of Interest. Do we have any members that would like to declare an interest? Councillor Stobart. Thank you, Chair. I'd like to remind the committee that I'm a board member of South Cambridge Investment Partnership. Thank you for that. Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you, Chair. Just of note, on item seven, obviously, as I'm presenting that, I will effectively withdraw from committee and not take part in that part, from that perspective. Thank you. Councillor James Hobray. Thank you, Chair. So, through this council, I'm non-executive director of Urban and Street Housing, so I will step out of the meeting ahead of item eight. Thank you for that, Councillor Hobray. Any other declarations of interest? Okay. So, we'll then move on to item three, which is minutes of the previous meeting, pages five to ten. Has anyone got anything that they want to raise or anything they want to change on the minutes or anything they want to make us aware of? No, okay. So, we'll move on to item four, which is public questions. Ian, I don't think we've had any public questions. So, we'll move on to the first substantive item, which is item five, pages 11 to 52, which is the 23, 24, quarter three performance report. So, I will open that up to the committee and take questions or recommendations on that. Councillor Hobray. Thank you, Chair. So, I have several questions. I'm not sure whether to... Well, perhaps I can list them on at your time. Yeah. So, starting with page 17, I wanted to just comment that the application determination times at the moment are all looking extremely healthy, and I think we should be congratulating the planning department for achieving that. So, my first question was about PN510 and PN511. So, these both show big improvements across the last year, and I wondered if we have any structural understanding of how we've achieved those improvements and whether we could expect continued improvement or at least to maintain the high standards that we've managed to achieve at this point. And more specifically, whether or not the staffing situation related to the four-day working week has helped with these... improving these KPIs. I don't know whether or not we understand that, but I wondered if we do have any understanding of the structural reasons behind that. So, we'll take that first. So, I don't know if we come to his head there. Yeah. It is going to take a minute, but my question is still not really the best. Just taking on the question, you can come back to this. No problem. Go on. Do you have a second question, Councillor Hoveray? Yeah, I did have a second question. So, my next question was going to be about PN512. So, this has shown a gradual deterioration over the last two years. So, this is the appeal success rate, the KPI. I should comment that it's good to see we're still well within the government target here, but it is getting slightly worse. So, I wondered how much we understand about this trend over the last two years and whether or not it's related to the change in self-build targets that's happened in national legislation. And if that is the case, if there could be some explanation around that. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hoveray. Are we online? Lovely. Heather? Thank you. Can you hear me all right now? Apologies for that. So, I'll take the first question. So, PN519, the average time to determine validated household on a continual improvement with that. We have put in a targeted approach to try and improve our householder performance so that we can reduce the length of time that it takes to determine them through the process. So, that has been a continual improvement journey that the planning service have been on over the last two years. And it's illustrated in the improvements in the KPIs. Is that enough to cover that question? So, thank you very much for the answer. I did have a specific question about the staffing and the four-day working week and whether or not we understand any link between that and this improvement. Thank you. I think, as we said, we have managed over the last 12 months to have a sustained recruitment and retention within the planning service. So, we're moving away from the reliance on agency staff to permanent staff. And the feedback that we're getting is that the four-day week is a really positive indicator for the amount of people that are applying for job roles within the planning service and also remaining with the planning service. Thank you very much. I'm very happy with the answers. Thank you. Lovely. Thank you, councillor. So, my second question, which I've already asked, is about the PN 512 and the slight but gradual continuous increase in the appeal success rate and whether or not this is related to self-build appeals. No, it's not related to self-build. It's an accumulative performance indicator and it just shows the emerging picture as we move towards the end of the government reporting period. We can provide more detail if that is required separately. Thank you. Okay. Has anybody else got anything on the performance? Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you, chair. Just two questions. One of which, if I can refer to page 17, PN 511, on the non-major applications, I think it's quite a concern, particularly those with certain planning quite often, about the eight weeks or agreed timeline. Now, I really appreciate the household of planning applications are quite a big part of the non-majors, but not all of it unless that's not quite a like-for-like comparison. Obviously, we have, again, the agreed timelines being included. The target set by central government is obviously 70% of things done within that frame rather than the agreed timelines. So, I'm just wondering how we can create the breakdown or whether it's possible to be given the breakdown as to what is within the actual period and what is meeting the criteria thanks to a agreed timeline. My second question is just in relation to response regarding the four-day week, what data and what are the volumes of the information that's being relied on to make the assessment that that is what's helping with the recruitment issues? Because we haven't got a lead member for planning, I'll go straight back to Heather on that. Oh, sorry, I didn't see it, she's just come in actually, so I did check before. Chumi, did you want to come in on that first? Sorry, I defer to Heather because I've only just logged in, so I didn't quite hear the question anyway, but I'm sure Heather can answer the question. No problem at all, Heather. Thank you. Thank you. So in respect of the agreed timeline, we are doing some work on extension of times at the moment, so the indications from government is that at the moment we are allowed to have an agreed extension of time, and if it's within that extension of time, then that is considered within time, but we are doing some discovery work across the service to see what we're doing within an extension of time and without an extension of time, so we are doing detailed work on that. We have a live wiki page which has all of our performance on it, and that's currently assessed daily by all team members, so we're able to continue on that improvement journey that the service has been on for the last two years. In respect of the question regarding recruitment and retention, I think that is evident if you were to compare the number of applicants for job roles in previous years to more recently. For example, we had a job application where we received 13 applicants very recently, the most recent vacancy, and that's really positive as in the past we've not been able to recruit into those roles, so I think the number of applicants that are coming through is a good indicator and that data is available. Should you wish more detail? Thank you for the response and I know the extension of time is something that we've discussed over many years and it can be difficult to sort, but I think there is a potential shift away from potentially a situation where that's not going to be allowed or considered, so we need to be prepared for that. Just on the job applications, when people apply, are they specifically asked whether they're applied because of the four-day week or not? Heather? I should go to Chumi first, I think, and then she can defer that over. I will defer this chair to Heather. Thank you. Lovely. Okay, Jeff, memory? Yes, thank you, Jeff. Yes, that information is gathered and a report will be coming to Employment and Staffing Committee on recruitment at the end of the month. Thanks very much. Do we have Councillor Hobro? Sorry, I did have two further questions on the KPIs if that's okay. The first is on page 21 and this is a really very simple, basic question about FS 117. So this is, sorry, let me find page 21. This is the staff turnover rate and this doesn't clear to me in the report whether this is a percentage per quarter or a percentage per annum. I wasn't sure which it is and I wondered if it could be made clear on the page which of those two figures it is. John, I'll come to you in the first instance. Chair, if that's okay. I must admit I'm not sure myself, rather than give an incorrect answer, I'd rather get that information and get back to you if that's okay. Lovely. Happy with that, Councillor Hobro, yeah? Yes, thank you very much. May I ask the final question? Can I just bring in Kevin Ledger who's just asking to speak on that point just briefly? Kevin? Hi there, sorry to jump in. It was just to confirm that that one is for that particular quarter where something's kind of a measure or that's over the course of the year. We tend to highlight that that's kind of a cumulative year today figure but absolutely happy to look to see if we can make that clear in the title of the KPIs going forward. Yeah, so that would be a recommendation from you, Councillor Hobro, to make that clear essentially, yeah? Yes, thank you. That would be excellent. Thank you very much. Lovely. And the final question if that's okay. Yes. So this is page 22, the next page. And it's a question about ES412, which is the volume of residual black bin waste and I think 414 as well, the volume of total waste collected. So I'm really pleased to see that we're now logging this. And so my question was how are we obtaining the target and intervention levels for these two KPIs? I mean, I know that they're in some way based on previous figures but do we have a target, for example, to reduce these numbers by percentage each year or are they set, how are they set with relation to the previous year's numbers that we've recorded? So if I come to Henry Batchelor in the first instance, I think Henry, are you able to come in on that? Thanks, yeah. So the numbers are based on historical data. So that's, as you can see in the commentary, it's a new KPI we haven't recorded before but we do still have the data from previous years. So the target is based on what we collected in those specific months, year on year. If that makes sense. So we're just trying to, we're trying to make sure that we're improving for, you know, for specific months, year on year. And, you know, we are hoping it will improve because I think you may be aware we are going to start collecting food waste separately as well. So we're hoping that will reduce the amount of rubbish that is put in residual waste in the black bin. I don't actually know if there's any officers in the rooms, I can't see. But if there are any waste service officers that want to chip in there. In the room, I don't know if you want to come in on that bow day as well. Thank you, chair. Thank you for the question. We have set an initial target. I must say that this KPI is one that we have to look at more closely because the new target we have set lays into direct correlation with total waste. We can't have three targets. We can't have a target that measures total waste recycling and residual. One walk against the other. We absolutely have to meet recycling and residual. So we can have all three. So setting a target and reaching all three targets is almost impossible. So it's one that we're keeping at a review with Kevin's team and just trying to see how we can set a target that's actually achievable. So it's one that we need to review. So thank you very much for the answer. I will watch with interest as we work out how to do this. Thank you. Lovely. Thanks very much. Councillor Libby Earl. Can I just ask? I think we've dealt with this on several occasions before, but AH 211, which is on page 20, that target to re-lect housing stock within 17 days has been missed consistently throughout 2023 and it seems an extremely ambitious target given the difficulties of re-letting housing stock after they've made a clear up. I'm wondering if that's going to be revealed at any point and whether that target is perhaps a little ambitious. It holds us hostage to fortune if we're continually missing a target like that. Okay. I think John Bachelor is on teams. I am indeed, yes. Lovely. Thank you, Chair. Thanks very much for the question. In a perfect world, we would have reviewed this. This target and revised it. The reason we haven't is because of the current political climate and our relationship with the government, where we take the view that it would be unwise at this time to actually change any of the targets given that they're all under very close review in relationship to the four-day week. I would point you towards the house mark benchmarking where you will see how performance actually is in the top quartile of the entire country in that the average is 34.68 days. Nationally, we are achieving under 30 days if not a bit lower. So, yes, you're quite right. This isn't a realistic target, but we will review it when the time is right, but at the moment it isn't. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thanks very much. Councillor Bear Park, next. Thank you, Chair. I had a comment on SH332 emergency repairs in 24 hours and a question about it. Obviously, it's very pleasing to see that it's fairly consistently achieving 100% basically, so that's obviously congratulations on that, but I'd like to unpack that a little bit and understand what's the success behind that. Is it due to preventative maintenance, perhaps, being taken place, more preventative maintenance, and also what sort of volumes are we looking at in terms of emergency repairs, and lastly, what is constituting an emergency repair? Thanks very much. So, if I come to Councillor John Batchel again in the first instance. Yes, well, I mean, it is emergencies. Quite often this is about flooding in the house and fires or some other very serious issue, which we obviously give the top priority to and have an emergency team who will immediately deal with it. Given the other technical questions, I'm not in a position to answer those. I don't know if there is some officer in the room who might be able to do that. There is, John. I'll come over to Peter Campbell. Thank you very much. OK, so emergency repairs, as Councillor Batchel said, are emergencies. They can range from things like a lot of electricity, a lot of heating during winter months, a toilet that doesn't flush when that's being in the toilet in the property, ingress of water, et cetera. Obviously, there's a whole list. I can't remember them all. But what I can do, if it's acceptable, is to get a list of the repairs and provide the numbers against each of those categories, if that would be helpful. And yes, the amount of proactive maintenance that we do does help, of course, to reduce the number of repairs coming through this issue. But also, I think, we need to recognise that me, as a repairs contractor, on the new contract, have been extremely receptive to improving their performance and some of the recognition should go towards the contractor. Thanks very much. Councillor Stovart. Thank you, Chair. I wanted to add to Councillor Earl's question on age 211. I heard what Councillor Batchelor said, but I just wanted to revisit the question of what gets done. I think the notes are quite clear about the kind of situations, the scenarios that are seen during handover of properties. I was wondering what we were doing longer term to bring this number down. So it might be in the design of new properties that makes them more resistant to the damage that might extend the handover period. And perhaps better tenant relationships or attention from housing offices where there's a perception of damage being done. So I just appreciate a brief review of the factors in play and what might be being done about them to bring that number down. I'm commenting on the target, but on what actions are being taken to reduce the handover period. Thanks very much. Councillor John Batchelor. Yes, thank you very much for that. There's a lot of factors in playing here. I mean, the first thing to really understand is that this is a lot of processes going on within this one target. It's key to key. So it's handing over the key, the assessing of what work needs to be done, the planning of that work, the carrying out of the work, the advertising of the re-let and the actual re-let and then actually somebody going in with the new keys. So there's an awful lot of things going on here. What the current problems have been, at least in part, is that we have been taking over properties in very poor condition. Part of this is a hangover from the COVID period where we couldn't get into properties to actually do the plan maintenance. So a lot of the plan maintenance wasn't done during that COVID period. Equally, quite a number of people actually refuse plan maintenance because they don't want the disturbance and so on. I mean, we are putting in new kitchens and bathrooms and things like that. So that adds to the downward spiral of some properties as is mostly the elderly issue there. And all this there is considerably, you might have a run of, recently we had 14 houses handed back in the space of a couple of weeks. So it's very difficult to manage all these. So that's as far as I can explain it. Thanks very much for that. Councillor Stobart. Thanks to you, Councillor, for the explanation. Very helpful. Thank you. Do we have any more questions on the performance indicators at all? If we don't, which I'm not seeing anyone indicating, we will move to page nine of the agenda papers where our recommendations are. And I think we have noted and... Sorry, Councillor. Sorry for interrupting. Are you turning to the business plan now? We can look at that within this. I was doing it all within the same thing, but if you've got questions on that, I'll take that now before we go to the recommendation on page nine. So we'll do that now if you've got questions on it. So just bear with me. Page 28, item three. So right at the top of page 3B. In regard to this particular aspect of the shared prosperity fund, I was interested in the kind of objectives that might be being sought in this particular allocation. So what are the targets and the likely... the kind of outcomes that would be considered success in this particular context. So that's the shared prosperity fund, green business grant funding. I think we've got Peter McDonald on... Yes, we have on teams. So are you happy to answer that, Councillor McDonald? Yes, thanks, chef. So in response to Councillor Stobart, we will be bringing more detailed paper forward. We're just on the cusp of starting to open in April these grants. They will... they are targeted to continue all the way through to 2025, as we mentioned at full council before. So this is the first tranche at the scheme. To answer your question around objectives, there are various objectives around business growth, about green growth, about energy saving in some businesses. And there's also... we're trying to deliver a balance between money that is available for semi-rural and fully-rural businesses. And that's all part of the strategy within South Cams to get that balance. And then there's a big focus in terms of SMEs, and particularly those smaller businesses, certainly up to 10 employees. So watch this space. It is a programme running for the next two years. We've benchmarked and we've cooperated with other district councils in the area. East Cams also taught with the city, also taught with Hunts, that as much as possible, we've got a consistent programme right across the county. Thank you. Mr Stowe Barth. Chair, thank you through you, chair. Thanks to the council of Donald. Could I... Agreed, yeah. The nurses and colleagues. So just a little down the page, item four, region of learning. So region of learning, we hear about from time to time, and obviously this is a new initiative. But I just like a kind of impression of South Cams' contribution to that. And again, what we're hoping to gain, what are some of the objectives that we would like to see in the district from this. I appreciate that it is a combined authority-wide initiative, but we are making some input to it. And yes, I'd like to know more about our goals and objectives. Yeah, thanks very much. Councillor McDonald, I'll come to you again on that one, please. Yeah, that's fine, chair. So you see that this is a portion of the shared prosperity fund, which is a separate fund from what we were talking about a moment ago. And this is all about enhancing digital capability in businesses. As you rightly say, it's a CPCA, co-ordinated fund right across the county. So what we're looking to do is to, as much as possible, enhance the digital capability in all of these small businesses as we move forward. And part of that is their internal processes, and part of that is for them reaching out to potential customers. Thanks very much. Through you, chair. So, Councillor McDonald, so, if I were a small business, an SME, with a number of staff whom I wanted to train, what would be the means of accessing this fund, roughly timescales and kind of commitment of time and so on? So, through you, chair. So, in the first instance, contact the business team at Southcowns, and we will guide them. We will signpost into the areas, what kind of benefits we could offer. You can see in there that we talk about the skills brokerage. And this is all about assessing where they are in terms of their own capabilities internally and externally, benchmarking that against other businesses, and then bringing them up to a certain level. Again, it's a programme that's going to run over the next couple of years, so we will have time. And we're keen that we don't deploy all the funds at once, and we spread it over a period, so that our businesses become aware they've got an opportunity to input. Thanks. Thank you. Yeah, Councillor Stobart. Again, through you, chair. Thanks to Councillor Donald. There is just in this section, if I may, just one final question. So we're on to page 45, 5C. So top of the page, what I recall from our last meeting, we did touch on a culture, actually the wording is cultural strategy. We did touch on that, and I think it was downplayed somewhat. This is really quite an affirming mention of a culture strategy, and it refers to the recent survey of district councillors. That was a survey I know some contributed to and took quite a long time to get enough people to contribute. I'm wondering really where this is going as a strategy which is being developed and what members can do to ensure that it gains some momentum and delivers, at the end, a culture strategy. Thanks very much. I was thinking who to come to in the first instance. Jeff memory, do you want to come in on this first? Yes, just to say thank you to those members that did respond to the survey. That was really helpful. It would have been nice to have got a few more responses. What we're looking at now is what's deliverable resources that are available to us at the moment. Certainly looking at a cultural statement coming out which we're looking to do is to encapsulate what members are looking to deliver. Make sure we've caught the correct thing and then look at how we can go forward to deliver that. Work is progressing perhaps more slowly than we initially anticipated because of the demands of the team about dealing with the financial crisis that people are going to some of the resources that have been delivered into that. But it is continuing. I suspect we'll probably need to go out again and get a little bit more guidance from members because as officers we want to make sure that we're going to deliver what you want and not what we think you want. So there's more work to be done with that. It's moving more slowly than we've anticipated but it's not stopped. Thank you. No, just at chair. Thanks to Mr Embry for those comments. The kind of things that do come up from time to time is that public art in the context of the planning process and all the way to youth engagement and something I've heard discussions about storytelling around sustainability questions. These are all different aspects so we'll look forward to a kind of rich exchange and discussion around the kind of things that we do. Thank you very much. Do we have any other questions on item 5? Pages 11 to 52, which I apologise, Councillor Stobart, you are right, include both appendices. Any other? Councillor Hobre. Thank you chair. Sorry to ask another one. I realise I've already had my share. This is on page 44 in the business plan progress report and it's about finding information on the website. So I really had one comment about searching for information and also a question about the renewal of the websites that I can see is going on in item 4. So the comment was really that as with many websites then I found that the easiest way to find a page on the internal system is to go to a well-known public search engine typing southcams followed by the thing that I'm looking for and the search giants have search capabilities that are far in excess of the capabilities that almost any organisation can put inside their web system. So with that trick I've always found it very easy to get straight to the page within our system that I've needed to find. So I suppose my first question was what we're doing about search and whether or not we might be able to utilise that kind of technology. But the second question which is really my real question about this is with the new websites it's very easy to redesign a website using new technology in a way that uses a new generation of systems and technologies but doesn't fundamentally make it easy to find what you need. So I wanted to ask how we're testing this. Do we have sort of real-life testing of the new designs over a range of possible clients, people from outside our organisation to make sure that we are really delivering something that's easier to use. Thank you. John, did you want to come in, John Wick, councillor or Geoff member? Yes, lovely. Yes, Google as a home page is indeed quite popular with people that know what they want, you're right, and the website is being designed, taking that into account. So those people that know exactly what they want will be able to go directly into the website. Not everybody knows exactly what they want. What we're working on there is something, if you've ever used the NHS symptom checker where you go through new answer questions and depending upon the answer to that question you can ask them the question, guide into the right place. What we're working on at the moment is something similar to that. For people that have a general question but might not know the jargon, might not know what it's called and need some additional guidance, that will certainly be in there. And of course we're looking to expand our web chat functionality so if people just are a little bit stuck, they can go into that web chat and ask the questions. Now yes, indeed, we're very conscious of the fact that it's great for technical experts to come up with these ideas, but we will be doing testing with real people. I haven't got a date for that yet at the moment because we're still working on the content. There's hundreds of thousands of pages of content that we're having to go through and make sure it's accessible and clear and understandable. So we've not got to the stage yet. We've got a minimum viable product to test. But I'll be happy to come back and report to the scrutiny committee when we've reached that stage and invite members to go in and have a go themselves, which all the feedback is much appreciated. Thanks very much. Councillor Hobre. Thank you very much, very thorough and reassuring answers. Thank you. Lovely. Councillor Stobar. Chair, thank you. So a foot of page 34 about what we're doing concerning water supply, and I realised what a huge issue this is, but I just wanted to point out that while supply is the big thing, consumption is the smaller but still significant factor. We don't have an objective. I wondered if it would be feasible simply to be gathering data and intelligence. I believe that's going on anyway, but to make it more explicit we would be, as a district, very well informed about the water saving measures that can be deployed. It's a moving target. It's partly technology, it's partly culture, but it would be, I think, helpful to have something down there in the business plan about what we're doing on the consumption side. Lovely question. We've definitely touched on this before about consumption and things from a planning point of view. Chumi, I don't know if you want to come in for the first instance. If not, I've got Heather in the room. I think I'll go over to Heather. Thank you. Sorry, take difficulties, but yes, please go ahead. Lovely. I'm having the best of days. That's okay, Heather. Yes, so obviously water scarcity is a big thing at the moment, so we are looking at measures and studies that we can do to reduce consumption. That's not just in the planning service, that's also in other services as well, such as housing, et cetera. We are also part of a water scarcity group that we feed into, where we look at all sorts of different mitigation that could be used to try and help with the water scarcity issue that we have at the moment. It's very early days, but it is very high on our agenda to make sure that we do try and address that. Counselor Stobart. Yeah, through you, chair, thanks. I don't know whether that means it appears on the business plan, but it sounds like a good level of activity. Thank you. Do you want to see more of it on the business plan, Counselor Stobart? Is that what you're asking it to be referenced within this document? I want to ask the question, would it be appropriate to have it on the business plan? Yeah, okay, we'll know that when we take it back to the plan. Lovely. Do we have any other questions, any other speakers on this item? Counselor Drew. Thank you. If I may refer to page 44 of the report, and go to what is 5B2, where it says to carry out a review of the Greater Cambridge Statement of Community Involvement, SCI, which outlines how communities are engaged on planning-related matters. We're struck by the fact that, obviously, we discuss a lot the fact that we live in one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing area in the country, and we know, as has been talked about with the KPIs earlier, that there's a huge amount of work that the planning department does in relation to meeting various targets of doing things in enough time. I often hear things said either by Counselor Hawkins as the Cabinet Member for Planning or Planning Officers about the work that is done to ensure community engagement and involvement. But I'm always struck by the fact that they have an incredibly complicated and difficult job because one of the things that I've heard a number of times is how the multiples of the number of planning applications that are made in our district compared to a standard rural district around the country, and we've heard, even Kelly, for instance, talk about the amount of work that the Planning Office has to do. So I was wondering if Counselor Hawkins as the Lead Member for Planning could give us a sense from her perspective as the Lead Member for Planning of how successful she thinks the Planning Department are being in this incredibly complicated and difficult environment in South Cambridge that she operates in in getting a really positive engagement with parish councils, with developers, with residents generally, because I think that would give us a bit of flesh on this item here. Counselor Tubey Hawkins. Through you, Chair. Hope you can hear me properly this time. We can. Good. Our planning officers have a challenging job to do, balancing the requirements of our residents versus all these statutory consultees versus the requirements that the applicants want, which is to get planning permission. But we have come a long way and I know that officers are going the extra mile actually trying to make sure that applications are determined as quickly as we can. In fact, with the residential applications, I think we are doing an average of six weeks, six to seven weeks at this point in time, which is less than the eight weeks statutory requirement. Of course, some of the bigger sites will take longer. But we generally do make sure that we consult with neighbours when applications come forward. And also with the emergency local plan, we did go through quite a detailed consultation engagement period. Not waiting for residents to come to us, but we went out to them to ask them for their views. And we did get quite a good feedback. So in terms of this item, and I think also just to let you know that actually I've just today signed the updated statement for the SCI, which will be going to Cabinet I think next month. So yes, officers are doing the best that they can with engaging our communities. And of course, we hold forums for parish councils. We hold forums for agents and developers. And yeah, we're open to improving what we need to and listening to our residents whom we are here to serve. Thank you. I was actually in my head thinking that I would ask Councillor Hawkins if she wanted to identify one thing in particular that those who work with the planning service could do, which would support the work of the planning service. But just as I was about to ask it, Councillor Hawkins then gave us there at the end. So therefore, I always love it when my follow-up question comes towards the end of the original question. So thank you very much, and I'm very pleased to hear everything that's been said. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so have we got any other questions on this item? Anyone indicating to speak? So if we go to page nine of our agenda papers and have a look at the recommendations, I think we have reviewed the document and we have made some comments, questions, and Ian's noted some things in terms of recommendations. So I think we've done that. Is the committee happy that we've done that and asked questions? Lovely. Good. So we'll move on to the next agenda item, which is item six, the homelessness strategy, and that is pages 53 to 130. Who would like to start on this item? I've got Councillor Peter Fane indicating to speak online. Thank you, Chair. Just before I speak on this item, there are a number of mentions in this, of course, of Shire Homes, but I am not remunerated and there is no reference here to the budget for Shire Homes, so I'm not regarding this as a conflict, but I thought I should just remind members of my declaration. I would be happy to come to my questions further down the agenda on this item if I may chair. So I'm happy for others to take their questions first and I will come back to it when we get further down the agenda item. Do I have other speakers on this item at all? Councillor Richard Stobart. Chair, thank you. So a first reaction to the, particularly the review of 2023, but then how the strategy is set out was what a thoroughgoing and incisive piece of work it is. So I think that's what strikes you first, but I think any discussion of homelessness is somewhere between the general and tracking things and developing strategies in the individual stories because homelessness is an individual story for somebody who, for whatever reason, has lost their home. So keeping that balance, I think, is important in the way we think about this. Now, so first comment about the way the report, particularly the review report is laid out is, and this is a question, is there any way of bringing into this the kind of the anonymised anecdote or the notable successes or the lessons learned? So it reads very well, but it lacks that kind of personal aspect and I think sometimes a document can come over much better if there are those, if you will, highlighted success stories. So that's just a comment, maybe from a more personal point of view, but I've got a bunch of questions. I might come back to them later, but I just wanted to ask this one question about homelessness. It is said that homelessness is the result of quite unstable personal conditions. So somebody who's working two jobs and just managing with the rent fails on one job, maybe loses it, and then within a few days can be out on the street. So this instability would characterise homelessness and this is leading to a question which is, how accurate is that as a kind of statement of what is happening in a homelessness situation and how is that informing the way in which the strategy is developing from the 2023 experience to the 2024 proposal for how we address homelessness in the district? Councillor John Batchaner. Yes, thank you, Jim. With the three main reasons that people come home as firstly, simply the ending of the current lease and then difficulties and actually finding alternative accommodation. The second is essentially families getting fed up with people sleeping on their settee or whatever. And the third issue is domestic abuse. So the three main reasons people are coming to us, obviously our strategy is perfectly straightforward in that we have a statutory duty to accommodate the homeless. Our first duty is to do our best to make sure we do not become homeless. And I might say that the team has been very successful in this, in 65% of everybody comes to us as homeless. We are able to find accommodation. We have a range of ways of helping with forward rents, with deposits, that sort of thing, which are often a difficulty for people. So if we can't actually avoid homelessness, then the next duty is of course to find proper accommodation. And one of the key factors in this is our relationship with Peter's area. The name of the company has just escaped me in a senior moment. I know it will come back. So we have the company that actually provides something like 100 units that we can use for temporary accommodation. We also use 30 odd houses for our own temporary accommodation. And in extremists we have the option of bed and breakfast that we try to avoid. Now I don't know if that's actually answered the question that was asked, but rather than continue with my one hour speech, perhaps we go back to the question and see where we are with that. Thank you very much. Councillor Stobart. Through you, Chair. Thank you. There was a kind of a nice overview, but I'd just like to add, how is it changing? How is what we do changing in response to a changing world? So the kind of steps that you described, if for example the demographic of homeless people in Cambridge is shifting whatever reason, how are we reacting to that and making sure that if it is more young people, more single men, what are we doing to address those particular pressure points? Councillor Batchner. Yes, thank you. Specifically, we are currently working with Irmin Street using some homeless money to purchase properties which are suitable for single people. One of our big issues is single men coming to us. And of course in the overall terms of our own housing, they are a very low priority and the chances of them getting into a property are quite low. So with Irmin Street, we are buying a number of houses, the number yet is probably 4 to 10, which will be specifically for single males who are the priority and the ones we find the most difficulty with accommodating. So that is a change because a single male has been largely left to his own devices but we are making it an effect to actually accommodate them as well. Thank you very much, Councillor Batchner. Councillor Stobar. Yeah, through you, Chair. Councillor Batchner, thank you very much. That's a good illustration, thank you. Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you, Chair. So looking first at page 70, first question. The reasons for the homelessness, I think everybody will find quite sobering, particularly the breakdowns of the increase of cases in relation to domestic abuse. And I'm just wondering with the change of nature for the homelessness changing so much, how is that being handled and also for officers, how is it being handled to support those in those cases because they can be incredibly difficult for the officers, obviously helping in those situations. And so just how is that, what changes are being made for that purpose? Obviously HMOs wouldn't necessarily be the most appropriate way to deal with that. Shall we take that one first? Yeah. Councillor Batchner. Yes, thank you very much for that question. I think I believe Susan Carter is with you in the room. I think she would have a much more detailed knowledge of this particular aspect if I could pass it over to her. Of course. Do come in. Thank you. Yes. We do work very closely with other agencies that support people with domestic abuse. We do support staff as well. We have systems in place that we can refer staff to if they need additional support, particularly if they're dealing with quite some trying cases, which they absolutely do. We did recently get the accreditation from the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance, so we've got a programme that ties in nicely with the homeless strategy in terms of how we will address domestic abuse and how we treat that. So there's training as well for staff around that. Thanks very much. Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you, and I think as well it probably would help members with a bit of support from officers, perhaps in training, but I know I myself had residents come to me to support them through that process, and it could be a bit difficult because it's not quite straightforward to know how best to handle it, so perhaps something to support us to help officers when people come to us. That would be great. My other question, Chair, is on page 75, and it's just in the employment status of those under duty. There seems to be quite on the top one about not known. Is there any thoughts as to why that would be? It seems to be sort of out of kilter with previous years. Councillor Batchelor, in the first instance, we've got also Peter Campbell in the room. Yeah, two table people for me, I'm afraid. Oh, come on, John, I've got faith in you. Peter Campbell, please. All right, thank you. The not known is something that we've highlighted actually through this process when we've done the review and we want to improve on that going forward. We have had a new recording system for the way we record details through this period, which may have impacted on that. But the employment, we would hope, would be relatively straightforward to pick up through people's details. So we just need to make it sure that it's recorded properly. Happy Councillor Williams, yeah? Okay, so we'll now come to Councillor Peter Fane. Thank you, Chair. There are references in this report to the appropriateness of HMOs as one way of contributing to the way we deal with homelessness, particularly for single person accommodation and to the Shahomes pilot scheme, which is quite limited, five houses, 21 spaces. And I would feel that is not sort of mainstream to the council's provision. In addition, what is happening there is that we are converting houses which may not originally have been appropriate for HMOs to HMO purposes, with some success, I think. But I'm wondering to what extent we need to start considering the provision of HMOs alongside the provision of affordable housing in new developments because sometimes HMOs can be controversial, but they do meet an identified need. And they are, in my view at least, probably better when they are designed for the purpose. But we don't specify, I think, any number of HMOs as part of the design process for new developments. And I wonder if we could address that issue at some point. Councillor John Batchelor. Well, it's a very good point. But that's a question essentially for the planning department because they have to actually put that into their condition. From our point of view in housing, I'm sure we would support that. As I was mentioning earlier, we do have a programme now of four or five houses being bought. So these are not houses of multiple occupancy. These are unsuitable as one bedroom properties for single people so that they can actually build a life for themselves. Of course, clearly, HMOs are largely of a transient people. So they've got somewhere a base in order to build their life elsewhere in due course. So I would certainly support your view, Peter, and let's have a chat with planning and see if we can get it conditioned. I'll just bring Peter Campbell in. Thank you. I think the housing needs information that we've got does recognise the shortage of accommodation for single people. The issues around HMOs is that by their very nature they require quite intensive and therefore expensive housing management. So they're not all that as attractive to develop for external agencies. So if we were to plan future HMOs, we'd have to take account of the additional costs of the management and make sure that came from a reliable provider. Thank you for that, Peter Campbell. Can I just come in there as well about the suitability of vetting tenants for HMOs and what might be done additionally if you're placing someone in an HMO? Yeah, the nominations for the HMOs through Shirehomes Lettons come purely from the Housing Advice Service. So there will be discussions in terms of if the individuals are likely to be suitable for shared accommodation prior to nominating them for any vacancies that come up there. Thank you. Councillor Peter Fane, did you want to come back in at all there? Chair, I entirely agree with John Batchelord. This is a matter for future review, I think in conjunction with the planning service and we should recognise the difficulties that are likely to arise because these may be less attractive and we will maybe have to consider whether specific provision should be made. Thank you chair and through you. It is interesting that this issue of HMO is being thought of as something that is down to planning. I would have said the opposite, which is that it's a housing requirement and if that is the case, then as we would normally do anyway when applications come forward for larger sites then we'd ask for that to be included in part of what the developer would be providing. I'm happy to discuss with housing on this to see how we can move forward if that is where they want to go, but I must say this though. Again, because I have the personal experience, I declare, yes, HMOs tend to be more management intensive, but they're also very useful in terms of the fact that they will cater for, especially in the future, and also HMOs vary in the types that you can create. So there is a way in which you can have potentially small self-contained units, even within the building as an HMO, or where they share kitchen and other facilities. So there is more to discuss. Yes, we might need more management, but I think there is a need for that. I think it's important that HMOs can be more management, but I think there is a need, and we are not meeting that need, which is why we have lots of single men sleeping on sofas and friends' places and things like that, and they're at the bottom of the housing need. So we need to cater for them. Thank you. There, Councillor Hawkins. Do we have any other speakers? Councillor Paul Bearpark. Just a few days ago, the housing minister said that no faulty fictions would be outlawed before the general election. They may or may not be, because it's been on the cards since 2019, I think. If that was to happen, given that end of private rented tenancy is the highest, the biggest reason for homelessness, would that have any impact on these figures? I suppose it depends on the reason for the end of private rented tenancy. And then, if that's the case, does it change the strategy in any way? Thank you. Councillor John Bachelet. Well, it won't change the strategy yet, because it simply hasn't happened, has it? As you say, Councillor, they've been threatening this for some time. Will it affect things? Of course it will, because it's just another nail in the coffin for private rental landlords. There has to be a balance in these things, doesn't it? And I think this just makes it more unattractive for private rental. And we do see at the moment, given the disincentives of landlords, that the amount of property actually available on the market is very low indeed, and getting smaller. And I have to say that part of that is the policies of this Government. Thank you very much. Thanks very much. Councillor Paul Bearpart, did you want to come back in on that? Or are you happy with that? I suppose just through you, Chad, just trying to get an understanding. When we talk about end of private rented tenancy, obviously there are multiple reasons for that. And just kind of breaking that down a bit might be useful. Okay, yeah. So I think the answer is yes to that. There are lots of different reasons. Is that what you're saying, John? Councillor Batchur? Yes, there are. We don't necessarily have this data. We're talking about the private rental industry. We don't control it anyway. So I'm not quite clear how you would collect that sort of data. Was the frust of your question, Councillor Bearpart, that you wanted to see these measures introduced more quickly? No, I wasn't making a comment on whether it should be outlawed or not. It was more about if it was outlawed what the impact might be. But obviously it sounds like it would be difficult to assess that impact. Perfect. I think Councillor Batchur has addressed that. Any other speakers? Councillor Richard Stobart. Thank you. It's okay to comment on the strategy proposal, not just the review, so anything in this section. Anything within this section? Thank you. So I have a question about data collection. So if I could just refer to the action plan and monitoring on page 124, refers to a series of what might call point measurements. Which are monitored, I think, quarterly. What I'd like to ask first question is, so point measurements are good, but how about the trends and then comparison of the trends with trends in other similar places. Is to get an impression of how things are changing. Maybe they could change quite quickly in the case of certain of these observed variables. And as we are thinking, as we have been about improved data collection and data management in the council, how could the homelessness strategy benefit from generally improved data collection management and the kind of ecosystem in the council which is simply able to handle data better. Thank you for that. Councillor John Batchelor. Thank you, Chair. I think that that sounds like a question for Susan. Lovely. Thanks, Susan. Thank you. The homeless data is recorded on a different system to what the council produces. And then we have to upload that onto a government system. So to get our statistical results each quarter, it's actually two systems that aren't directly council-owned or run systems. In terms of monitoring the trends, that's something that we do look at on a quarterly basis. We also look, as a sort of Cambridge, a sub-region as well, we look at those and go through sort of any outlying figures that might come up and see if we can learn from each other in that respect as well. Thank you for that, Councillor. Oh, Liz, what? Thank you, Chair. Just to add to the question about data. So it's really early days, but it's very clear that the use of AI and data could potentially help us in a lot of areas in our work. And one of them is looking at where people are at risk of homelessness based on the data that we've got across the council, which are not from housing necessarily. So I think it's really important that that data team that we're proposing to start, that we propose in the budget is supported because this could really help identify all sorts of preventative work and I guess things that we don't even know about yet in terms of AI and the amount of data that we have in the council that we're simply not using. Councillor Stowbarr. I say through you, Chair, encouraging response. I mean, I think what Sue is commenting on was some of the issues around data, different systems, and maybe different underlying architectures as well, which makes the reconciliation of data quite tricky. But I think this approach where you look across the enterprise, if you will, and seek to make connections and look for interdependencies and so on is a very good way to go forward and can begin to be predictive in some of the ways that we were thinking about earlier. So yeah, good answers, reassuring. Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you very much, Councillor Stowbarr. Do I have any other speakers on this item? Okay, so if we go to page 52 where the recommendation is, and I think we have reviewed the report and made comments and recommendations to Cabinet when that comes forward. So is everybody happy that we've done that? Agreed? Yeah, lovely. Okay, so we will move on to the next agenda item, which is item 7, pages 131 to 138, the Conservative Group Budget Proposals for 24-25. I think Councillor Heather Williams has indicated at the beginning that she will take questions on this thus remove herself from the committee at this point. So do I have any questions on this report before it goes to full council? No? Councillor James Hobro. So I'd like to make a comment really about the proposal to freeze council tax. So we're in a period of very high inflation at the moment and the council tax freeze means a substantial cut in income in real terms. So at the moment 95% of councils are raising their preset by the maximum of 3%, which is well below, still well below inflation. And I understand that the government's financial settlement for local government is based on the assumption at all councils are likely to bring in an increase of the maximum of 3%. So many of the services that this council provides are aimed at helping the most vulnerable members of our community through the cost of living crisis. A large real terms council tax cuts at this stage would put severe pressure on those services. So it does concern me that putting our support for the most vulnerable members of our community at risk is absolutely the wrong response to a cost of living crisis. I think it would drive up inequality and it would hit the people who need our help the most. So that's my observation on the proposal. Councillor Heather Williams, would you like to comment on Councillor Hobro's question, comments? Yes, thank you. So in relation to the council tax freeze, there's the element of political views on this which would be reserved for council, but just from a scrutiny point of view, you're right a lot of councils are increasing, but not all of them have had year on year increases in the way that this council has. They're increasing potentially for the first time. And in relation to the comments you make around inequality and cuts and the like, I think had this been an imbalanced amendment, I think it would be merit to what you were saying. However, this amendment is fully balanced, so it has an ill effect. So those services that are referred to, so that go to those most vulnerable people, they are still protected within this because it's completely balanced. And you can see very clearly on pages 132 through to 135 and beyond very much how and where that money would come from, and none of those are taking away from vulnerable services. There's nothing being taken away from homelessness, for example, or benefits or the like. It's other areas, and in one case, doing things differently. It's just a different way. Thank you very much, Councillor Williams. Councillor Hobro, did you want to come back there? Yes, so I really wanted to point out that keeping the budget the same for a particular service amounts to a cut in the time for inflation. And so those cuts are real, they might not look like cuts on paper, but they are real when the costs of providing the same services are going up substantially. Thank you very much. Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you, but I would distress that obviously those areas were not changing those. So the amounts going forward are exactly the same as the administration is proposing. When we look at where the money is coming from, it's actually things like the political choice for having a four-day week. It is about the allowance that us as councillors have. I mean, the fact that we would have less money in our pockets has nothing to do with cuts to those people less vulnerable. It's about doing transformation in a different way, which is less expensive. Again, that's not something that takes money directly from frontline services at all. And the money for those areas which you rightly raise are things that need to be protected. The money we were proposing is exactly the same amount of money that the Lib Dem Administration is. So there is no difference in our views on those. I think we've always agreed on protecting those vulnerable frontline services. Councillor Hobro. Are you happy with that? Yeah, thank you for the clarification. Thank you. Councillor Tom Bygott. Thank you. You're just a point on inflation that Councillor Hobro mentioned. If every player in the economy increases, so if every council increases its council rates, if every business increases its prices, and if every employee increases their salary demands, then that is the mechanism that keeps inflation going. So the only way that inflation can actually slow down is if some players in the economy decide that now is not the time to be increasing their requirements. Thank you for that comment. Is that a question for Heather Williams? So he's more of a clarification on that point. We're actually helping to solve the problem of inflation by not being one of all the other players in the economy who are putting their prices up. Yep, thank you, Councillor Bygott. Did you want to come back on that, Councillor Williams? No, I think I appreciate the clarification, and only that I completely agree. And also I think it's important to bear in mind that this is something that, yes, we have those services to protect the most vulnerable, rightly so, but actually day-to-day living for a lot of people is difficult, and council tax is one of their most import, you know, highest bills after rental mortgage. Perfect. Do I have any other questions on this item? Good, okay. So I think we have done as required and noted and made comments before this comes to full council. So we will move on, and I propose to make a slight amendment to the agenda here. So I'd like to take item nine next, which is actually the work programme, before we take item eight and leave that till last, just in case we feel the need to go into closed session on that, which I don't think will be necessary, but just in case that is the case. So item nine, pages 217 to 230. Has anybody got any comments or questions on the work programme at all? Stephen and I will continue to meet with officers to update the work programme, and obviously there are things that you want to bring forward. Please let us know and do that as soon as you can. Lovely. Councillor Stobart. Chair, you said as soon as you can. Are there deadlines that we should be aware of? Ian, deadlines on that? I think the first meeting where it's very crucial as much, and the deadline there, I can't be specific about it, but if you require information from officers, I presume you would need some kind of report, then between now and the meeting on 21st March, for which the agenda would have to go out on 13th March, we're running a little bit short of time to get reports written for you and checked, and then to the agenda and published. So that's the real deadline, but I can't be specific about an actual date. Thank you, Ian, and thank you for raising. That's important that we get things on to the agenda in a timely fashion. So if nobody else has got any other questions on the work programme, I'll move on to item eight, pages 139 to 216, and obviously as part of this agenda item, if we are raising questions on anything in the restricted papers that may be commercially sensitive, for that we would have to, we've been advised to go in the closed session for that, so it might be those questions that we take up with officers outside of the meeting, but if we need to go in the closed session, we can do so. So if I take questions on that, please, from the committee, Councillor Stobar. Chair, so let me, I have a bunch of questions, but there was one in particular, and I need to be perhaps advised on this as to the confidentiality, but the relationship between Street Homes and DIO, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, is frequently commented on, and in some places it's regarded as important, in other places it seems perhaps a little awkward and difficult to predict, so what the DIO is doing in regard, for example, to the properties in Water Beach, proposing to sell them, adds uncertain to the environment in which urban street housing is acting. So you just wanted to explore or enquire a little bit and explore. Yeah, so I think, Councillor Stobar, given the nature of the question going into probably, we would need to go in a closed session or maybe email Cabinet members prior to the meeting, if you're happy with that, yeah. Of course, we've got certain constraints to follow, so I was really probing. Yes, probing. Yes, that's it. I mean, what are we trying to do stuff that we don't need to go into closed session and then go into closed session? I mean, I think there are some points that are worth talking about in closed session. Fine, in that case we'll do it that way. I've been with people long afterwards. Have you tried to do the public stuff first? Happy to do that. Councillor Drew. There's a comment really in relation to that. Definitely it may well be the case of that as the legal advice, but I would like to make the point that I find it fascinating that in a democracy, one government organisation trading with another government organisation has to be discussed away from the public. The public own everything the council does. They own everything the government does. Yet we are going to go into closed session to discuss what one part of the government does in its relationship with another part of the government. This hardly strikes me as representing transparent, open government. It strikes me as us, as part of the government, seeking to keep secrets from the people about their money, what is done in their name. I accept completely that the law may require us to do this, but I would like to make the point that I remain extremely concerned by the principle that hiding things from public knowledge is not a good thing. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Drew. I know other members had concerns about this. Councillor John Williams. Thank you, Chair. We can't speak for the Ministry of Defence here. It is wrong for us to be discussing any plans that they might have in public. I'll come to Councillor Heather Williams next and then Councillor Stobart. Thank you. Obviously Paragraph 36 does refer to the fact that we do use MOD stocks. I don't think that's commercial sensitive, but the details potentially would be. I'm just trying to say that there is something there, but I completely understand Councillor Drew's that a closed session should always be a last result. To my questions about, obviously there was a change with the administration about making it travel to work area, and I'm just wondering, steering clear of the very controversial East West Rail section, but something like Cambridge South Station becoming open, whether we're looking at the infrastructure such as that to potentially make those connections to travel to work at the same time, even though geographically it might be a larger area, and are we focusing on the time for that rather than the geographical distance because I think that would benefit our administrative, if we can ensure it's for the lead member that that's being looked at as well. Councillor John Williams. Thank you, Chair. Obviously the travel to work area is not determined by us. We use a set model, which is used by the county council, but clearly take your point, where there are changes to transport facilities, then that may well have a bearing on the travel to work area, but obviously we can't consider that until it happens, and I understand East West Rail is a few years away yet. Councillor Heather Williams. Yes, so I think the things, we do use the travel to work area, obviously this is a business owned by the council, so it's not a requirement that we have to have that prescribed travel to work area, so a bit of a, we could not use that, we could use something different and have our own definition of it for this company potentially. Councillor John Williams. Yes, the reason we use the travel to work area is a useful way to demonstrate to the Public Works Loan Board that we are keeping within its walls regarding the criteria for loaning money to us from the Public Works Loan Board. So for example, if we were to borrow money outside of our area, say for example, if we bought property in Nottingham, it would be extremely difficult for us to demonstrate that that was for the purposes of regeneration within South Cairns, for example, and not purely for yield. Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you. I'm just asking for some open mindedness to make sure that residents can benefit. Erma Street has been a fantastic project that the council has pursued across different administrations. So I think, going forward, we just need to make sure we've got flexibility and not wedded to something, and of course demonstrating the fact that we would comply with PWLB, but I just think a more open minded approach to that would be beneficial. Thank you, Councillor Williams. I'm going to come over to Councillor Stobar. Chair, thank you. So maybe I could just backtrack on my question to a risk question, because what I wanted to do was look at the risks in, as regards relationships with partners, you can say partners in general, but also the thing that seems to be top, and it's certainly top of the risk register that appears in Appendix C and do cut me off here if I'm straying, but minimum revenue provision issue is highlighted as very significant. It comes top of the risk register, and I think we ought to be able to explore that and its implications. There is a consultation we understand, and there may be different scenarios that unfold from industry housing depending on the results of that consultation. So I hope I haven't exceeded the bounds there, but I believe that's important to know about and to comment on. Okay, Councillor John Williams, did you want to comment on that at all? Sorry, yes, I mean Peter will be happy. Okay, Peter Campbell. Sorry, no, I'm sorry. So the government issued a consultation around providing minimum revenue provision when you make loans to organisations such as our ministry. We've never had an outcome of that consultation. Generally, it's thought that you don't need to provide minimum revenue provision that is like her ministry. You've got a good strong asset base there. Generally, when you make a loan, when you make a loan, the intention is that at some point that loan will come back. Minimum revenue provisions to me seems more relevant to the building of a leisure centre or an asset line where there will need to be a repayment of the principal in the future. I'm not expecting to hear anything from the consultation. It's a good couple of years, I think, when the consultation came out. And I think central government realised that any local authority with a wholly owned subsidiary line we have, it is a really big issue for our revenue account. I'm not expecting to go anywhere, but I think it's right to register that list there because the consultation is actually still open, really, until we get something out there. Councillor Stover. It's like a black cloud on the horizon, but a long way away. It's not coming any closer, but while it lurks, I guess it stays on top of the risk register and we simply note that. So, through you, Chair. Thank you for the comments. Thanks very much. I'll come over to Councillor Van der Weer. I was also going to ask about minimum revenue provision as well, so I think we're done with that. It was explained to me a few years ago. I think it was explained to me, and I understood it then. You've reminded me about how it works. The idea would be that you put some money aside to build up the capital in case you didn't, I mean, to be paid back, essentially, isn't it? You're effectively taking money out of your revenue budget and set it aside for a future repayment at some point. Thank you, Councillor Van der Weer. I'll just bring Councillor John Bachelor in who's indicating to speak at this point, I think. You're on mute, Councillor Bachelor. Sorry, Councillor Bachelor, we can't hear you. I think you're on mute. Sorry. That's okay. Sorry about that. Just to say that John Williams and myself have joint plitting responsibilities for Irmin Street. So I just wanted to comment on the MRP as far as I understand that this relates to any money you actually borrow from the government. I think we ought to be clear that the entire investment so far in Irmin Street has been from our own resources. So perhaps someone could confirm that that wouldn't come into the MRP issue if I'm allowed to ask a question myself. Yes. Yes, okay. So I think do you want to answer now, John, or can we move on and No, we do move on except another element that it is an important item and we all need to be clear. Okay. What I'll do is I'll bring Peter Maddox in now then to clarify that. Right. So there are assets we do provide and it's not just about borrowing externally. MRP does also apply sorry, I'm going to be at the front. MRP does also apply to what we call internal borrowing. So by us using our cash resources for Irmin Street that is effectively internal borrowing because the thinking is longer term we may need to go out and externalise that by. It's a little bit complicated if we did decide or if it did transpire that we needed to provide MRP on Irmin Street whether we've used our own resources or whether we've gone externally wouldn't actually matter. Thank you very much for clarifying that. Councillor John Batchel, is that okay in terms of clarification on that? It is. It's fine, thank you. Cheers. Okay, so I'll move on now to Councillor Bair Park. Thank you, Chair. I'm going to dwell on this point because in the risk register this is quite high likelihood and it's also quite high impact. But I think John and Peter were arguing for the likelihood being quite low but the risk register had been reviewed by the Irmin Street Board who obviously saw that it should be high likelihood and high impact. They also looked at the mitigation and the mitigation is quite low so they affected it by one point so they couldn't identify good mitigations for this. So I think it would be useful to explore a bit further than is in the report at some point maybe not now what the implications are if the Government decides that there should be a minimum revenue provision because I'm kind of hearing I'm seeing some contrary evidence here all contrary positions here with John and Peter saying it's not a very high likelihood but in the report it's quite high likelihood. Councillor John Williams. I think from I can't speak for Irmin Street Duncan made this space but obviously from their point of view it is a high risk from the councillor's point of view it's not a high risk because we can always get our money back from Irmin Street. So we're looking at it from different ends of the telescope which is why it's a high thing for Irmin Street, not necessarily a high thing. Can I say that we also have amended reviewed and amended our commercial income strategy to explain it better so if you look at the revised strategy hopefully MRP has explained a bit better but it is an issue agreed because it was raised by the independent peer review but we are of the opinion that does not apply to Irmin Street. Councillor Bear Park. So I think what we've got in the appendix in the Irmin Street report is a risk register from the Irmin Street point of view but maybe what we need is a risk register from the councill's point of view. Councillor John Williams did you want to come back there? I believe it is on our risk register but I don't know if we can find it for you. It came to audit and the street was on it at Audit and Court Governance Committee. So maybe we can send some information to clarify to Councillor Bear Park to that effect following the meeting. Councillor Bear Park did you want to come back? That will be very useful. I understand the distinction now and if it is being covered elsewhere in Audit Committee then I'm comfortable. Thank you for raising it. I think it's good to clear that up. And Councillor Stover. Chair, so could I ask two things? A general suggestion, the document the business plan is quite technical as we've just illustrated and footnotes would help and some extra definitions would help but could I just focus on one thing that's not mentioned is the term thin capitalisation which I'd just like a brief comment of what thin capitalisation is and its relevance to the urban street housing business plan. Okay. Yeah, so I don't know from someone from the urban street housing. Yeah, I think that would probably be out of it. It's a tricky one because the business plan is obviously a financial program and it contains a lot of financial information and thin capitalisation is probably one of those one of those things I couldn't explain in layman terms to be honest. I'd rather get back to you on it and speak to an accountant who could give our urban street accountant so he would give a definition of that if you don't understand it from the business plan. Councillor Stover. Through you chair. Does it touch on anything that we would be interested in as a committee for example the risk facing the business? Is there risk associated with that do you think? No, there's no risk. It's a financial tool instrument or Peter might be able to help. Peter, I was just going to say my understanding of thin capitalisation is when an organisation's level of debt is much greater than its level of equity. That's my understanding of the term and that would sort of make sense given the water with the fact that our industry is basically run on loans from the council so that's my understanding of thin capitalisation. So I think we'll get some more clarification prior to the meeting. Councillor Bander, why did you want to come in at that point? I don't think it affects risk because it's wholly owned by the council. The funding is the same source and Heather Williams on this point? Just on thin capitalisation like many of these things is sort of categorising things and how you deal with it doesn't have like a monetary effect really on its big debates how people like Peter and myself are and our money and accountancy so I don't think it's of concern from the monetary purposes in my view. I think we'll get I think we've had a few comments on it. We'll get some further clarification on those points just to clarify to the committee regarding the risk. Councillor Stovart We're just to finish from the points that Peter has made and Councillor Williams it is a conscious decision around a business model so that's the business model but it follows from equity and loans and that's all quite reasonable but it is a conscious decision when the business was set up that this would have this character so that's well understood and thanks colleagues for your various explanations. Lovely, thanks very much. I think we'll move on. Councillor Drew, thank you. Before I ask my question I find that in all these matters raised to emergency I do seem to constantly be the person who picks things up and has problems with things. I need to say that I have a problem with the conversation that's just been having this committee. I don't think it's acceptable for a report to be put into this committee that members of the committee may not fully understand the terms that are used and when it is then asked for that term to be explained that the officers or whoever are unable to properly explain what the term means I simply don't think that's acceptable. We are a public body we have a responsibility as councillors to hold whether it be the administration or the officers to account and we as councillors should be able to rely on the fact that any papers that are put in front of us any terminology that is used if we ask for that terminology to be explained I think it's entirely reasonable of us to expect that that terminology to be explained to us so I'd like to make that as a point for future reference across the councillors a whole that if terms are going to be used and councillors are going to be explained I would expect that officers will be able to explain those terms to us. My question relates to point 26 and 36 and is about I suppose risk in one respect but I suppose also is about the principle of the way in which the council works with Irmin Street so if I look at point 26 and it says Irmin Street housing then lets the property at market rents to facilitate a reasonable payback on the investment entirely reasonable sensible comment this is what obviously Irmin Street is set up to do so therefore this within the business plan is suggesting to us very clearly that this is the way Irmin Street works if I then go to point 36 it says the company offers some sub market rental accommodation particularly in the MOD lease stock and then it talks about those things from there and the question I really wanted to ask was what is the process that is used to find the appropriate balance between those two things because on the one hand Irmin Street is quite rightly operating within the market at market rents and is seeking to make a return on the investment made a profit if you will in order to pay back the loans that the council gives to it but we also have Irmin Street again quite rightly acting as I suppose like a social housing agent I know it's not strictly speaking the same that we use but in here offering some sub market rental accommodation so I'm just wondering how the council in Irmin Street finds the balance between ensuring the market rents and on occasion doing things as it says in the statement here sub market rental accommodation which I assume means there is a lower income or a lower profit or something of those things just wonder what the balance is and how we ensure that keeps Irmin Street in a position to be repaying the loans that council gives Councillor John Williams in the first instance Thank you The relationship between Irmin Street and the council is that it's wholly under the subsidiary of the council but it trades at arm's length from the council so we don't tell Irmin Street how to run its business and Irmin Street borrows money from us on terms that we agree with Irmin Street in fact the full council agrees what terms we should fund Irmin Street but at the end of the day we do not have control over how Irmin Street delivers its housing all that we require of Irmin Street is for it to repay the loan that we have given it so we do not dictate to Irmin Street how it should go Councillor Tree So to explore that a bit further in this regard are we therefore saying that Irmin Street as a business is making the decision in 0.36 to operate away from what 0.26 says which is it does things at market rates Irmin Street's decision to operate in a slightly different way not quite at the full market level is a decision that Irmin Street takes completely independently and is no way influenced by the council Yeah, absolutely Great, thank you That's it Did you want to come in at all on that? You're happy That's fine, that's absolutely the answer Councillor Van der Waite Yeah, so we're council approves the business plan as I understand it that's why we're just looking at it now and then full council will and then Irmin Street then operates within the parameters of that business plan was my understanding I mean if that's Quick calculation of the situation Is that what you have? Yeah, Councillor Drew, do you want to come back? Okay, so to further explore that point then if I take Councillor John Williams' point entirely, absolutely clearly that this is a decision for Irmin Street completely and if we accept the point that Councillor Van der Waite is making there that the council has to agree the business plan does that not then mean that the council could choose not to agree the business plan so therefore the council could send the business plan back to Irmin Street If the council can reject the business plan and can send the business plan back to Irmin Street does that not mean that the council can influence what Irmin Street does? Councillor Williams John Williams In theory we could reject the business plan but it is for Irmin Street to produce the business plan not for this council and so therefore you know we cannot direct to Irmin Street to do something in its business plan we can either accept it or ask for it to be looked at again but the way that we work is that we do not instruct Irmin Street in its commercial activities because it is a commercial it is a company that works in the open market and the decisions it makes is Irmin Street's decision within that commercial market Would it be fair to say that as a council since we have to agree the business plan of Irmin Street Irmin Street when developing its business plan is doing so interpreting what it believes the council will be considering to be right so therefore when Irmin Street presents its business plan to the council Irmin Street has taken into account the expectations and views of the council both as the owner of Irmin Street and as the provider of the loan is that fair? Irmin Street has two council representatives on its board and those council representatives are there to represent the interests of Irmin Street I apologise for the fact that we are at 7.30 and I have no doubt that the whole world would like to move on but as colleagues will be aware I consider these things to be incredibly important and I'm not sure I fully understand exactly the answer I'm being given If Irmin Street would present a business plan to the council that the council was to reject Irmin Street would have to change its business plan to put it back to the council so therefore Irmin Street's business plan has to be in line with what the council is willing to pass therefore it is reasonable to suggest is it not that Irmin Street has to take into account what the council wants when it comes up with its business plan so therefore the council does influence Irmin Street's business plan Councilor John Williams As I said if we do not approve Irmin Street's business plan it goes back to the Irmin Street board and they we consider their business plan but it's not for us to dictate to Irmin Street what is in that business plan Can we agree on the word that we influence No Okay, I'm sorry councilor Williams I'm going to pursue this a bit further If Irmin Street present the council with a business plan that we don't approve of if you're saying that they don't we don't then dictate to Irmin Street and you're also saying we don't influence Irmin Street what do Irmin Street do when they get the business plan sent back to them by the council in principle do they sit as a board and go we're not going to take any notice of what the council thinks because that doesn't strike me what happens in principle should the council reject Irmin Street's business plan Irmin Street's board will sit there and we'll have to take into account the fact the council has rejected their business plan therefore by definition Irmin Street are being influenced by a decision of the council are they not Councilor John Williams we have two representatives on the Irmin Street board they will look at and they will consider what has happened and then they will represent Irmin Street to us we will not tell Irmin Street what should be in its business plan it is a separate commercial entity I just want to bring in councillor Batch who wanted to make a comment and then you wanted a point of interest there ever councillor Williams okay councillor Batch there thank you chair just trying to be helpful Irmin Street is a limited company so its legal position is precisely an independent completely separate from our own but in the real world you know the reality is that the board is made up of two of our own councillors and two of our own officers the majority on the board um one would assume would be looking after the interests of South Council District Council but as a legal entity as a director of a company your first loyalty in theory is to that company although do we actually have a legal officer with us this evening if you're interested to hear his view we do have John Murphy John did you want to briefly come in John good evening all I I think I recognise that this is an engaging debate but in corporate law Irmin Street is a separate legal entity and directors on the board and the corporate law will have to act in the best interest of that corporate entity I think that is all I would say in terms of legal I would leave it to members to continue the debate okay thank you for that input John Murphy Council Williams did you still want to come in or does that clarify yet come in then thank you I was trying to help rather circling that yes we can reject it but essentially the board can do what it wants but as has been said it's a company owned by the council so I think it's a bit like when you I remember my dad saying to me when you want to learn to drive you learn to pass a test and then you learn to drive afterwards it's an element of that sort of nuance here but just to be clear on company's house it's actually three office local government officers and two councillors that are registered on company's house so I just you might want to have a little look because I think one of the people that looks out killed us would be told two and two that could be different on the board but company's house but just to give reassurance when we also look at the people with significant control of south council limited it's in the domain as south council district council because they have more than 75% of shares so the council does is the person with significant control of the company because of course we have the shares you might want to check the offices but I thought that might help for the public domain to know what's registered at company's house thank you for that councillor Drew thank you councillor Williams and to councillor Bachelor and everyone else for the answers given the answers given are no doubt absolutely entirely factually correct I'm absolutely crystal clear on the concept of company's house the concept of shareholders absolutely crystal clear on the legal matter whatsoever I'm not in any way challenging that being the reality I'm not in any way saying that isn't the case what I'm getting at here is I am I think I find it interesting that the council is so absolutely desperate to avoid saying that it in any way influences any decisions made by Irmin Street this seems to be to me what the answers to my questions are getting an absolute wish to in public be crystal clear that from the council's perspective the council in no way influences anything that Irmin Street does I have to say that I simply don't think from a logical and realistic perspective that is the case I think the council does influence what Irmin Street does because Irmin Street has to get its business passed the council so when Irmin Street sits as a board the council thinks thank you thank you councillor Drew councillor Paul Bear Park yeah I just wanted to come back to risk again to the council so obviously with investments that councils make there is a risk associated with them and sometimes you know councils get into difficulty because of the investments they've made and maybe not understood the risks properly there is some in this report there is paragraph 30 to 32 which talks about risks and opportunities but it's quite thin there's not a lot in there really and I kind of it might have been helpful certainly from my point of view if there was a bit more discussion about the risks associated with this from the council's point of view not from Irmin Street's point of view because we are being asked to make appropriate recommendations to cabinet I mean personally I would say maybe the cabinet understand the risks so they don't need that information but from my point of view it would be much better that I'd quite like to understand what's I'd like to have a better discussion of the risks because obviously it's very important from an investment point of view what the risks are to the council councillor John Williams this is a discussion to be had when we discussed our commercial investments along with all the other commercial investments Irmin Street is a commercial investment along with all the other commercial investments we had it's treated as any other investment where we have lent money in order to receive interest and that interest is our income and therefore we treat Irmin Street as we would treat any other the ice cream or lending money to Campbell Sports Centre or purchasing a property on the cabinet science park you know it is a commercial investment it is different in that it is a wholly owned subsidiary of this council and has representatives of this council on its board and therefore its business case comes to this council obviously other loans that we've made other people don't do that but basically it's the same principle and it's the same risk and the risk we we ask ourselves is at the end of day will we get our money back that we've lent the business now in Irmin Street's case because we own the company you know we own the properties we know the value of those properties and at the end of the day if it came to it we could sell Irmin Street and get our money back so you know the risk with Irmin Street is actually not less than it is because it's a commercial investment council bear park yeah through you chair I think I understand that but in this case we're talking about this particular report we're talking about Irmin Street and I suppose as a scrutiny committee if we're not given the information about what those risks are it's quite difficult for us to make a recommendation to cabinet on what thank you I think on reflection there's probably a fair point that we could put more on this report I think council Williams is absolutely right that we have a number of other touch points of risk, the risk strategy the investment strategy and so on but for the benefit of members on this committee we will look to have a more detailed section on risk for this report that carries sort of significant investment in the future thank you thank you for that council Stobart just to thank you chair just to pick up on one point which is somewhat related to the previous discussion but it's perhaps more general in significance is Paragraph 33 and 34 on page 140 on climate change so what I'd like to explore two parts what is it's outlined in a little bit of detail here but what is in fairly broad terms the plan, the process to improve the energy performance of the housing stock of Irmin Street but secondly if I decided not to proceed to and sometimes the housing stock can be represented by its SAP tests and we'll follow a certain kind of distribution it could decide Irmin Street could decide to hold the mean of that distribution lower because it would be perhaps cheaper to maintain so there's a decision which would reduce the value of the stock would be at variance with what South Camp's policy would be in regard generally about housing so there are things that Irmin Street can do which diverge from if you will council policy and also diminish the value of the holding so sorry I'm rambling a little bit here forgive me addressing climate change is something yeah Irmin Street should be doing but could deviate could choose not to pursue such high goals and therefore save money so where does it sit where does climate change addressing climate change sit in the Irmin Street strategy currently go straight to the Irmin Street housing team for that one so just to clarify and confirm Irmin Street does run as an independent company it's run by council officers myself and my team and we're supported by new members and the executive directors we are mindful what the council's priorities are and we do always sit to work within what the council's policy is climate change being one of them however you're quite right to say that we are restricted by not making a loss of course because we need to pay the interest back to you so it's very important that our budgets balance and if there was a situation and there hasn't been so far in 10, 11 years of trading whereby we we have to compromise on something like improving the energy efficiency of the council as opposed to paying back the interest rate that the council wants then we the first people to find out about that would be the council via the board and via the liaison meetings we have with council Williamson bachelor but I can confirm at the moment the in the budget following the stock condition survey that we are able to proceed with stock improvements with regard to energy efficiency and stock improvements in general we just have a stock condition survey which outlines for the next 30 years what the investment will do to keep it well maintained energy efficiency so there aren't any plans to deviate from that and if they were it would be in the business plan thank you for that happy with that council statement I'll move on councillor Heather Williams thank you I think this would be useful as obviously looking to improve and help the report touching what councill Bear Park mentioned about risk so you can see in the Audit and Corporate Governance agenda from the 12th of October 2023 that strategic risk 25 SR 25 relates to Ermond Street and in that it says the risk is that Ermond Street housings investment fails to deliver the return now it has an inherent risk of 16 it has three control measures interest rates rise strong financial management then there's house price deflation house prices are more resilient in ownership business model is less dependent on property values rental income is more important third control measure is the property condition properties are generally new and in good condition ESG will complete a stock condition survey to allow a long term investment plan together with an acquisition disposal strategy so then that reduces in the re-evaluated risk of eight which is in the amber and the final note that is over time the consequence of house price inflation will mean that value of assets will continue to grow providing a buffer to ESH and protecting SCDC investment so the council does have it's odd to think it's not for me to sort of defend but I'm saying it is there in the public domain and perhaps lifting that which we already have erm could have helped this sort of avoid this situation and it's all getting very hungry erm but if anybody does want to see I'll say it's SR 25 on the community report on 12th of October 23 so council willingness your recommendation is some of that is lifted in these reports in future I don't see how it hurts but it could help we'll note the recommendation erm Peter Cameron can you just go back on the other point about the risk the council of not maintaining the stock of course the royal directors of Irming Street had to safeguard the company and they've got a responsibility to do that so people wouldn't be performing their roles off directors if they allowed the deterioration in the housing stock and the value of the stock and moreover with recent changes in legislation there is a responsibility there is an expectation that a rented stock is maintained at an EPC level seeing above and that's also helping to drive the MG improvements within the Irming Street stock so the risk there is actually very small thank you for that and councillor Stovarts do you want to through you chair that's an excellent explanation so it's a risk mitigation step so the choice of the board's structure you know is such that and in the setting of the statutory framework that follows but making the risks more open and explicit I think would be a better illustration so we'll take that back as a recommendation as we said are there any more questions on this part of the report now I am happy to take us into closed session if councillors feel that they've got additional questions that require us to do that questions that couldn't be directed through officers or cabinet members potentially outside of the meeting but do people feel that they have additional questions that they would like to take us into a closed session from here in that case I won't do so and I will come back to the recommendation so if we look at page 137 I think we have reviewed the contents of this report and we have raised questions and made recommendations is the committee happy that we've done that sufficiently agreed lovely thank you that is the last item on the agenda Ian have I forgot anything at all good what is the date of the next meeting it was the 21st of March the date of the next meeting is the 21st of March so we'll see everybody then thank you for persevering with that right that we scrutinise that in a thorough way so thank you very much