 Mae'r bwysig yn ffonsio ar hyn oes. Rwyf yn wneud amser y cimd-dwy yn bwysig eu ddweud, felly byddai'n rhamwy, rwyf yn ddod yn dweud. Rwyf yn ddweud. Rwyf yn ddweud. Rwyf yn ddweud. Rwyf yn ddweud. Rwyf yn ymddydd y cimd-dwy. Rwyf yn ddweud. Fel yw'r ysgrifennid yn y cwmwyno, mae'n hynny'n dod yn gweithio'r llwyr sydd wedi'i gweithio'r ddweud a'r adrodd yw'r ysgrifennid yn ei wneud yn hynny'n gwneud yn y cyfnodol. Yn ddod y gweithio'r amser, mae'n ddweud ydw i'r wneud i'r gyfnodau yn ysgrifennid yn y gweithio, ond mae'n gwneud yn y ddweud. Nawr對不起, mae'r ffordd iawn o'r wathau, ond mae'n bach ffianfair yn ymwng gyda'i gweithfeydd y ffordd iawn. Ond o'r wathau, dyma i gael i'ch gweithfeydd gafaf o'i gweithfeydd gweithfeydd. Yn gyfer ylleydd, mae'n gweithfeydd eich gweithfeydd o gwbl ei dynnu i gael i gael nifer o'r ddiwein. Ar rai gael ymlaen, iddo ddim yn f trucsio deallu ei wneud gyda'i gwaith ychydig eu havithbwyniad at about 3.30, but please signal advice, chair, if you would like us to consider a break rather earlier. This meeting is quaint, so we will now proceed. Item number one, apologies. Do we have any apologies for absence? Thank you, chair. We have apologies from Councillors Drew, Hales, Jacksonwood, Ellington, Osborne and Banderwire. I understand that Councillor Hoffman is joining us online and maybe Councillor Warren Greenway may do as well. Is that right? Yes. So declarations of interest. Do any members have interest to declare in relation to any item of business on this agenda? I see Councillor Richard Stobart. Chair, thank you. So I'm a board member of South Cambridge Investment Partnership and otherwise known as SKIP. SKIP is explicitly mentioned in item 8B and 8J. I've discussed the matter with the monitoring officer and this is an other registrable interest and there is a direct link and therefore I will leave for items 8B and 8J. Thank you. Councillor Williams. Thank you, chair. So I'm a member of Greater Cambridge Partnership Assembly of which there is item from the report and the unirations piece. Right. Do any other members have a similar declaration to that in relation to the Greater Cambridgeshire Assembly? I see Councillor Paul Bear Park. I think that is it. No. Councillor Hannah Bradman. Chair, I have been advised that as a county councillor it might be wise to point out that I have an interest. I'm not quite sure in which bit but I'm happy to declare it and also I sit on the combined authority scrutiny and overview committee. Right. Do any other councillors have a similar declaration in relation to their county council membership? Councillor Donald, Councillor Howells, Councillor Atkins, Councillor Susan Bender Van. Have I spotted them all? Councillor Brown-Millans, Councillor Batchelor. Yes, I can recognise Councillor Atkins earlier. I think that is... Yes, we have got that one. Thank you very much. It's very helpful to have all these other members repeating the declarations but if we focus at the moment on county council declarations I think we've got them all now. Now, Councillor Bradman, you mentioned also that you're a member of the combined authority scrutiny committee. As am I, it's on our... Just as I think, Councillor Peter Sanford. Thank you, Chair. I have declared an interest as a non-executive director of South Council-amitted trading as Urban Street Housing. I will be leaving the room for item 8G. And I think, Councillor Hobro. Yes, thank you, Chair. I'm also a non-executive director of Urban Street Housing through my membership of this council and I'll do the same and leave item 8G. Thank you. Now, at this point I should declare that I am a director of Shire Homes, which is mentioned in item 8G. So, although that is an other registerable interest, it is indirect and I have no proposal to leave the chair or leave the room. Any other declarations of interest? I think that's done. Thank you, Members. Obviously, if any interest becomes apparent later in the meeting, would you please raise your hand and declare it at that point? And I remind Members that they need to keep their register of interest up to date and inform democratic services of any changes. We then come to the minutes, which are on pages 17 to 36. I'm going to take these separately for future reference when seeking to refer to your agenda. It is best not to pull out the constitution. But the minutes are on pages 17. We have firstly the minutes of the meeting of the council. This is extraordinary meeting on 20 November. Do any Members have any amendments to make to those minutes? Councillor Bradman. Thank you. We note that on page 17, item number one appears to be repeated, but not quite the same each time. So, for example, Councillor Dr Aiden van der Vea has been mentioned in the second apologies, but not in the first. And some Members have been given their titles as Dr or indeed, in one case, Professor and some of not. So, could we just get that clarified? I propose simply that we take the second of those paragraphs in place of the first. It appears to be the correct version. Is that acceptable? Any other amendments to those minutes? Okay. Can I take it by affirmation that we accept those minutes? Oh, a bigger bottom. Sorry, Chairman, that was my fault, not yours. Chairman, I would be surprised if I didn't give my apologies, but I think I did give my apologies. Thank you. Yes, perhaps we could note Dr Cowell. No, Mr Howell's apologies as well. Right. Councillor Bradman, would you want to come back again on that? Only that the same thing applies to the second set of minutes. Right. Well, we haven't got to the second set of minutes quite yet. So, can I take it that we accept the minutes of the meeting on the 20th of November by affirmation? Thank you. And now we come to the minutes on page. Oh, there were other long minutes, weren't they? Oh, there we are. Page 23, the minutes of the meeting on 30th of November, and for consistency's sake, we have the same issue. Can I take it that the second paragraph on apologies is preferred to the first? With the additional amendment that Councillor Osborne's name does not have a U in it. Thank you for that. So, with those corrections, any other corrections to those minutes of the meeting on 30th of November? I've seen none. I propose. So, Councillor Byger, yes, I had proposed that we move to the second of the two paragraphs of the apologies, if that's right. Any other amendments to those minutes? So, I propose that we accept those as a correct record. Can we take that by affirmation? Thank you, matters. Okay. So, announcements from the chair. I don't propose to make any announcements. Members will know that we have a celebration coming up of our 50th anniversary celebrations on 20th of March. However, there is a question relating to that later. And I propose to make announcements or to give a comprehensive answer to that question later. So, we want announcements from the leader and cabinet leader. Do you have any announcements? Thank you. I know that the chief executive put this in her report, but just in case anyone hasn't read it. The council has been shortlisted twice for the four day week campaign, a four day week project. The IESC, which stands for improvement in efficiency social enterprise, has shortlisted us as one of three in the efficiency and effectiveness award. And the LGC, Local Government Chronicle, has shortlisted us in their innovation category. So, yes, we look forward to seeing the results. The IESC ceremony is this coming next Wednesday. Thank you for that announcement. Do we have any announcements from the Leder Paid Service? Item six then, questions from the public. I'm going to take the opportunity, as usual, to just remind us all of how this works, that any questions or statements made at the council meeting must be within the scope of our public speaking scheme. And the requirements set out in that scheme is that it has to be about a matter of which the local authority has a responsibility or which affects the district. It has to be not a matter which falls within the remit of cabinet or a committee or subcommittee. And we do not accept questions or statements which are seen to be vexatious, defamatory, frivolous, discriminatory, offensive or otherwise inappropriate. And I generally take advice from our monitoring officer on those. And if, as chair, I think a speaker is straying outside the scope of the scheme, I will step in with a reminder. Now, we have received two requests to speak today. The first is a question submitted by the chair of Tewisham Parish Council, Councillor Amarani. I believe Councillor Amarani is not able to join us, in which case I have agreed to read out her question. I do not propose to do that. I just intend to draw your attention to the question as on the agenda. That is on. Thank you very much. I should know by way around the agenda by now, but thank you for your help on that, members. So, the question is listed in your agenda. And I think that Councillor Tumie Hawkins is going to respond to that. Thank you. Thank you. I think, first of all, I just want to thank Mrs Amarani for her question, and I'm sorry she's not here today to ask it. And I do hear her concerns on properties being left empty by people who have bought them as investments, but that is their choice as the owners. Secondly, it's worth clarifying that the council is a local pine authority, and the responsibility is to create local plans and policies that identify where development should take place and guide decisions on applications that come forward in those areas. And where planning permission has been granted, it's shelling with conditions, and it's up to the developers to build out as granted, and then to market those properties as they see fit. Property sales or disposals of properties on the open market is not a matter that can be controlled by the council. But finally, we can look into discussing with the local developers on those sites whether the market locally and how before they open it up to the wider international market. Thank you. Thank you for that response. Councillor Francis Amarani is not here, so there will be no supplementary. We have a question submitted by Mr Matthew Sitchell, who I think may not be with us, so I propose that we... Thank you, Councillor Mills. We have a question from Matthew Sitchell who I now think we've established is not with us, and therefore I propose that we send Mr Sitchell a written answer to that question. And then we had a third question submitted just within the time limit, which I'm therefore sorry is not on your agendas, but I'm delighted to ask Mrs Naidu who is with us to ask her question. Mrs Naidu, please. Hi. Thank you to the chair and the fellow councillors for having me here today. I deeply appreciate it, and I truly, truly hope you're going to help me. My name is actually Dr Mirasini Naidu-Wat. The question is, the first question is basically, my husband has multiple scroses, unfortunately, and is in a wheelchair. And unfortunately, my mum has also had a fall and is also in a wheelchair. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial that there are no delays in the response time if the fire crew attend a fire emergency at our house. Why are the council not applying to the magistrates' court for an injunction or a planning enforcement order to remove the wrongly erected obstructing fences, which will cause a delay in response time during a fire emergency, putting our lives and the lives of the firemen who come to help us at risk and also potentially increasing the damage of our property? Thank you for your question. I'm going to once ask councillor Dr Timmy Hawkins to answer this. Thank you, chair. Mrs Naidu, thank you for coming out today, and I am aware that you have had a series of, through you chair, I am aware that Mrs Naidu has had a series of interactions with our planning department, and that this matter has been exhaustively investigated, including by the director and assistant director of planning, as well as the compliance manager. And the outcome is that there is no breach of planning. Therefore, there is no action that we can take as a local authority. But, as a gesture of goodwill, and having spoken to your local councillor, Dr Shrugwun Abathacharya, I'm happy to come out and have a chat with you and see if there's a civil way in which we can assist you, but the council cannot do anything else on this. Thank you, chair. Thank you for that answer, Mrs Naidu. You do have the opportunity for a supplementary question, if you want, or you may choose to take up, indeed you could do that and take up the offer of a visit to see if we can find some civil enforcement method that could resolve this problem. Do you wish to ask a supplementary? Please. Dr Tumi Hawkins, in order to get the necessary planning permission, our home 48 wood-filling, then Plot 37, Temple Grove, would have had to have a protected amenity line for mandatory fire access and the mandatory turning facilities. Dead-end access routes longer than 20 metres require turning facilities. So, for health and safety reasons, big trucks delivering heavy goods, the workers can't carry the heavy goods from the road. So, where or why haven't we got our turning facilities? Thank you. Thank you for that. I don't know whether councillor Hawkins wishes to come back further or say we will do our best endeavours to deal with the problems that you have raised with us, but that it isn't an enforcement matter for this council, so our ability to resolve it may be limited. Councillor Dr Tumiw, did you wish to come back further? I will come, but just very briefly. I have said this, there is no planning breach that we have found. You are making or you have made some specific references, which again, whatever they are, they are not planning breaches, we have looked into this. So, I'm afraid we can't take this further as a council and I repeat, as a gesture of good will, I'm happy to come out and talk to you, together with your local councillor, but that is as far as we can go. I can see that this hasn't entirely satisfied you, but as a council we will do our best to help if we can within the limited powers available to us. Thank you very much for putting your question and I'm going to move on to our next item in fact is petitions. I think I'm right in saying we have no public petitions right. So, we then move on to item 8A on your agenda, which is on pages 37 onwards in the printed version and I call on councillor John Williams as lead cabinet member for resources to present the report and move the recommendation. Thank you chair. I move the recommendations as printed in the paper. As the report explains, we review our medium term financial strategy twice a year and last time it was reviewed, it was in November and I'm bringing forward the current review which takes account of the, hopefully the budget, the general fund budget that we're about to agree later in this meeting. A couple of points to note from this I think, if you look on the table on page 41 in the agenda pack, you'll see that at the end of the five years we're looking at a deficit of around about 4.8 million, but this is really mainly due to the fact that we're having to make provision for a fair funding review and this is something which government has promised or threatened whichever way you look at it for the last few years and every year when we come to the financial settlement it has pushed it back another year but you'll see from the figures that this has the effect in tying up in this case some four million pounds which we have to basically have in reserves in case we lose the business rate income that we currently have and as you'll see there we're anticipating that it could be hard because of the fair funding review and this just you know shows how local government is really tied to a system where we don't know from one year to the next what our financial settlement is going to be and if we had government to produce a medium or perhaps even long-term plan for local government we will be better able to therefore look ahead and plan our financial resources accordingly without having to second guess the whole time whether or not we're going to have sufficient money one year to the next to pay for our services and it's interesting to note that if we didn't have to make provision for the fair funding review then we would actually have made a small surplus every year for the for the coming five years. I'd also point out that the MTFS also takes account of our transformation program and the fact that we are looking over the coming couple of years to look for savings of 1.6 million having already made savings over the last couple of years as part of the transformation program I'm delighted to to say and you will know that this year for example we've made savings of about a quarter of a million in webs and bends so this demonstrates that we are doing our best to make the council continually looking for productivity improvements in your communities and to produce deliver best value for our residents but as I say at the end of day we are hamstrung by the fact that government doesn't give local government a long term we're even a medium term financial plan against which we can plan our future thank you thank you do you have a second of the proposal council Bridget Smith did you wish to speak I'll speak briefly now thank you so you know we've witnessed willful neglect from the conservative government for well over a decade now threatening the stability of council finances up and down the country of all political colours demonstrates that government is failing local communities and starving those communities of the funding that all councils need because all councils want to deliver the best services for their residents we're now seeing the cliff edge reached for many councils and deep and damaging cuts being made because of the failure of the system implemented and stuck to by this government and with no indication at all that they're going to change their views to provide the proper funding necessary for those of us who really make a difference to people's lives and your district level we affect 100% of people's lives at our county level it's about it's about 20% of people benefit from the nomad responsive services which are running out of control at the moment so council williams has already referenced the failure to provide a multi-year local government financial settlement demonstrating that government isn't serious about local government and it will not give us the financial certainty we know but this report shows that despite the disasters facing very many councils up and down the countries this council's finances are really strong and that's in no small part thanks to the sound financial decisions made by this administration and our staff of officers over the past six years thank you very much thank you does any member wish to speak on this item council Heather Williams thank you chair um so it probably won't surprise many that i'm going to pay particular reference to pages 40 and pages 41 just to help give members a particularly with the table on paragraph 26 but obviously in paragraph 21 it is a shortfall sand bit four and a half million last year last year we challenged the reliability of savings and budget pressures in the light for light table of paragraph 26 because we were very concerned that the budget pressures would increase and that the savings wouldn't be found and that would leave it a further budget gap so a year on we can see in the like for light comparisons of 24 25 alone that from last year budget pressures are up 610 000 um and savings you know down not identified where they're going to be and so this is increasing the budget gap and it is an increased position from where we were this time last year and that i find is very concerning and you know strength is something that's always subjective and open to interpretation but for myself a four and a half million budget gap really is not a strong position and i have further concerns in relation to this budget gap potentially expanding further and this is something that's been brought to my attention of what other councils have had meetings on and have been discussing um as early as june last year at the city council in relation to the shared way service which is a you know department that we share together and this is to do with the mrf contract so Huntington so not conservative led council Huntington that is a little bit larger than us but not you know not a massive amounts they are making provision in their accounts for 900 000 pounds in that report relating to the mrf contract because i believe it's still being out and negotiated now we don't appear to have any budget for that here there's no reference to it so again i find myself in a very concerning position that i don't believe that the budget pressures are realistic i think if that comes in at a much higher sum which is forecast then that is even going to have to be used for reserves but ongoing will be a problem and will be a burden to this council and i feel that the agenda item as it currently stands will just mean that we are getting into an even wider budget black hole as a council as a consequence and uh i won't support that council or dr Richard Williams okay thank you yes right i'm expecting um a member of finance um yeah so my question relates to uh paragraph 16 17 18 which is on page 39 to 40 so those paragraphs reference various statements from ministers affecting the financial settlement there's one statement that's not mentioned and that's the statement that the government may impose financial penalties on the council given as a result of four day week which it now seems like we're going to have indefinitely without any vote of members so does the lead member think it's wise to factor in provision for the financial penalties that the government may impose due to the council ignoring that government warnings before i call on the lead member to respond are there any members who are not members of the williams clan who wish to contribute to this debate i think then i come back to council the general here to respond thank you chair uh picking up the last point first of course this council hasn't made its decision as to uh what it intends to do about the four day week um we are still in a trial till the end of march and then there will be a report to this council um and then we will be able to once we know what the government's financial penalties are so we can then identify what effect that may have on our financial situation we can then go out to consult um and then we can come back to this council for this council and all members to make a decision about what to do whether to continue or not so it would be very premature for us to be putting something in the medium term financial strategy um the medium term financial strategy is based on the facts that we know at the moment and the certainties that we know at the moment plus second guessing what the government's likely to do in terms of financial settlement but in terms of four day week of course we don't know idea what the government intends to do about that should we go ahead with it and therefore we can't make any assumptions for the midterm financial strategy maybe the member obviously could help and and ask his government to tell us what the financial levers are going to be so we can uh make some assumptions but at the moment we can't do that i'm going back to um the leader opposition said about um this year's budget compared to last i would ask you to look at appendix aid which is on page 53 and this compares um the coming year financial year 24 25 against the this year the current financial year and if you see um the net operating expenditure for next year is actually less than it is for this year this year we are looking at an out turn of 29 million or 20 nearly nearly 30 million next financial year we're looking at an out turn of 26.7 million um and as a result of that um we're this coming from actually we're looking at a surplus of around about 4.4 million to go into reserves so to suggest that actually things are getting worse um i would suggest that you look again at the table thank you um i'm proposing that we move straight to the vote point of information from councillor Williams point of information and personal explanation just one of the things that um was referenced there obviously i was comparing and made very clear like for like for this year from the previous years report so appreciate the leader members taking us somewhere else but that is not what i was saying in case the leader member misunderstood what i was expressing but equally on the information side it was said about the mtfs is based on what we know well actually when it was moved it was made quite clear that it was based on including the future budget proposals now budgets are not you know unless you've got a very effective crystal ball sorry councillor Williams this is no but this is important chair so if you could give me a piece of information that everybody should be aware of you know it's forecast therefore it is not on what it's known it's on assumptions and so things like the mrf contract which i have not had a response on should be included and four-day week should be included because it is based on assumptions not on known information as the lead member suggested that's the point of the budget right well i will ask the lead councillor just to respond to that new information in case that changes anything and then i propose that we move directly to a vote councillor john Williams my understand on the mrs it is subject to the department of environment and maybe the lead member for environment can can throw some more light on that yeah i'll choice you chair so yeah so the mirth contract has its commonly known it's still out for tender at the moment so we don't know we haven't had any kind of response to that so we don't know what the figure will be so it's very difficult to include an accurate figure or even a rough figure at this stage in the in the mtfs and as councillor john william said we also need some input from them deffa as well on that so that's that's the position we're in with that okay so members we have to take the vote in the light of some uncertainties which are beyond our control we're told uh and i propose therefore that we move direct to an electronic vote if we could set that up right uh so if you uh wish to vote in favour of councillor john williams uh recommendation resolution then you vote green if you wish to vote against then you wrote vote red and vote yellow to abstain have we all voted bear with us a moment i think there may be one member who may need some help to conclude a vote no we have all voted um so we have approved that resolution by 27 votes to eight with one member abstaining i'll then move on to item eight b which is the 2024 25 business plan the action plan for that business plan on pages 55 of your printed agenda onwards and i call on the leader of the council to present this report and move the recommendations thank you very much um so if i can direct you to appendix a page three um where in addition to this has been um a vision a vision statement so the vision sets out how we as a council can and will have a positive impact on the future of all our residents in south cambridge uh it's a plan for growth growing our services and making sure that those services are sustainable long into the future it's a really liberal vision for south cambridge and as liberal democrats we believe in the fundamental values of equality liberty and community and these i think you can see are embedded throughout the business plan and our vision for the district our workers council is pushing to realise those values across the whole area our party constitution begins with the words the liberal democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair free and open society in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty equality and community and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty ignorance or conformity and this business plan sets out the steps that we are taking to help build exactly that society so setting this vision out explicitly like this was recommended by the lga peer review um and our inclusion in it in this document shows that we're proactively addressing the recommendations that were made in that review so you know we i weren't going to all the details but um you know we highlight what we're doing for growing local businesses and economies and we know that our work is helping businesses specifically SMEs to grow and that this in turn will help local communities to thrive it will bring jobs to the area it will secure jobs it will it will create opportunities in our villages for everybody to access high quality jobs which is essential to make sure everyone can live their lives as as they want to and on housing i'm immensely proud of what we've achieved together our work as a council to ensure that housing is truly affordable for all is essential to give residents the freedom to live their lives how they want and we recognise that everyone deserves a high quality safe and affordable place to live and our plans are ambitious and we'll make sure that the south cambridgeel continues to be a leader when it comes to building homes in 2017-18 the conservatives oversaw 736 completions of which only 180 were affordable in 2022-23 we've overseen 1500 completions and of those 472 have been affordable and being green to our core is our overarching priority and we know now more than ever that climate change is the single biggest factor facing our whole world it's not some far away problem we can ignore or bury our head in the sand over and it is affecting south cambridgeel our water scarcity crisis our air quality problems the extreme weather the flooding we've seen the heat waves all the direct consequence of climate change and so being green to our core is a linch pin of all the work we do as a council and demonstrates how fundamentally serious we are about collecting climate contacting climate change even the face of the apathy that we are seeing from government at the moment additionally you know the work that councillor handily has led on cost of living crisis which councillor Henry bachelor of led has led on minimizing waste increasing recycling all plays into this all plays into our green to our core agenda and very critically you know becoming a modern and caring council because back in 2018 actually we weren't a modern and caring council we were quite we were quite old fashioned and staid so our transformation work unlike another council isn't just about saving money we're not from when you talk about transformation employees of councils you know think it's think you know it's only going to be about saving money but actually for us it's about finding ways to improve our services particularly services for residents and using our resources more efficiently and effectively in order to deliver the most greatest impact and as an administration working with you know an outstanding staff we have been innovative in our ability to find solutions to the problems we face and that's why we're trying in the four-day week to solve our recruitment and retention crisis and we have been way more successful than any other council in the country in addressing something that's been very very critical to us giving the services that we need to give to our residents so this council is additionally picking up from the corporate peer review we're creating a member development plan to make sure that um councillors have all the skills and knowledge needed to help all of us best support our our constituencies and our constituents and our residents so it's not all about the council doing stuff it's you know we as we as members need to be well supported so that we can do all that I know all of us for political colours want to do in order to serve serve our residents so thank you very much thank you leader do you have a seconder for your recommendation council mills did you want to speak now or reserve your comments to the end of any debate I'll work to the end thank you that said I think councillor Graham Cone thank you chair and I just had a very brief question on page 82 I think it was yeah page 82 objective five um the the first bullet point there and it goes on to say 36.14 but there's no measure for for that at all I'm assuming that's a percentage figure or is that um it doesn't have to be now but can we just clarify how we're we're measuring what that is actually a measure of there because on the other ones it's sort of stated but on on that one it's it's not councillor mill can I ask that you come back to that in your in second speaking seconding this later so I can then because that's a question I think can be either answered now in the debate or later uh so I now come to councillor Heather Williams sorry which air can I just ask for confirmation which page the council comes sorry um council mills it was page 82 objective five thank you and it was the first bullet point 36.14 um I was just saying there's no no measure there so I just wonder what the measure was yeah thank you councillor Heather uh thank you chair um so my first question is around page 75 objective one because it refers to two million of savings delivered through the transformation program by the end of 2024-25 however the mtfs that we've just state we've just voted on states about 1.6 million by the end of 24 25 25 26 and then we've also got paragraph 26 somewhere else saying that savings 701 so can the leader be assured and give an explanation as to how given we've got these different figures how they correlate together I've said it's page 75 um and uh so how they correlate together and whether it's realistic given the fact that the mtfs has quite different figures my second um issue is one that I hope will be taken in the spirit of why it's being raised but it's on page 76 objective three and on there it says about generating rental income from the renting out of the hall and office space now myself and others have raised issues around security concerns about how we ensure that we protect staff and in those situations we have had staff of this council verbally and physically attacked we've had councillors threatened and I fear truly fear it will be too late by the time that the administration acts on this and to be quite clear I think I've raised this at every opportunity I continue to and I've got a clear conscience if anybody else gets hurt and I think there is a definite feeling that it's slightly ironic that we're not getting security answers on this when on page 78 it refers to people feeling safe and that's genuinely not how everybody feels so I leave that one while I with you while I move on to a different part of the report um which is in relation to page 83 and it refers to the mystery shopper exercise which we know is an expense that was paid out for the trial and it seems that it's due to be um repeated now it's not necessarily a bad thing to check in now and then but it should be of the whole authority not picking on one department and the fact that yeah the contact centre is going to go through this again and yet we can see from the data that has been submitted to government the weekly data we can see relation to emails but actually there is no tracking of how long it takes someone to get a response and that between the 30th of october to the 4th of febru there were nearly 200 000 less outbound emails than inbound so either we're getting an awful lot of spam or some emails are not getting answers and that in turn would put stress on the contact centre when people ring and you might you know think that this isn't important leader but actually it really is chair it's important that people get answers to their questions in a timely manner we sometimes are dealing with the most vulnerable people in our communities and I just think that to put this and to actually take calls take time from officers that mean they're not actually helping residents again with nothing else anywhere else I think is incredibly unfair unjust and looking at the wrong problem look at the emails monitor it properly please and as for some of the other things you know yes there will be things that we do agree on here I'm not saying there aren't but overall there's absolutely no way that I'm supporting this but particularly for the financial expense that it incurs but also the fact that safety is not being considered properly in my view. Thank you for that and next I'm going to call councillor Dr Shabona Batajaria. Can I just say yes normally I think yes yes I think we're happy for the leader to answer those now. Thank you thank you I'm very grateful so I'd like to chair answer the last point and then I'd like to ask councillor McDonald to answer the question about safety and councillor Williams to clarify about the budget so on the mystery shopper so it was a really good piece of work and I spoke to a number of people from the contact centre who were really pleased we did it particularly the lady who scored 100% and wrote me a really lovely email to say how pleased she was that she'd had the opportunity to demonstrate to us all how great she was how super her work was and I went down and had a lovely long chapter so it wasn't something being done to them they're not being picked on they actually welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate to us you know that they are doing a really good job and when they you know if you look at the sort of infographics that we did on it it showed that we compared absolutely brilliantly to other councils so you know this is what this does is create an opportunity for us to celebrate members of my staff here who actually quite often go unrecognised because there's that you know they're sat behind a computer they're sat at the end of the phone you know dealing with stuff day in day out but actually this was an opportunity for us to highlight how how well they did on the subject of emails I really am not going to comment on you know bits of data picked out of the blue with absolutely no context at all I mean that's suffice to say that you know if you send an email in it may well be that we pick up the phone and ring you up and answer it you know emails don't always generate another email in in response so you know that's completely out of context data which until we have until we have a context to it is meaningless to me but if I could first my colleague to chair to ask your colleague I think council Heather Williams has a point of information and it was just that I could provide the data I mean it's 200 000 it's not a couple and I can provide it it's a data you've been providing so I mean I I probably get about 200 emails a day I certainly don't send out 200 emails a day I don't think there's 200 unhappy people waiting for a response from me quite honestly I think we have some matters here that we may need to come back to after council just before we resume the debate I think Councillor Peter Macdonald could you keep your answer as concise as possible to the points that were raised I will chair thank you um I'm sorry if Heather got the impression that that somehow um with regard to security which is obviously priority number one for the staff and the members that there's not clarity on that that that's certainly not the intention we're going through a process at the moment are weighing up the options between for example having staffed security compared to or alongside technological technological solutions for example card access to the lift and the gate access to the stairs so this will come back to scrutiny the the reason she's not heard more and I'm sorry we've taken some time over this but we're we're wanting to go through it carefully it is to make sure we get the right answer but it will be presented before we progress anything thanks chair thank you we now have some other contributors to the debate Councillor Dr. Shabernam at Chariah thank you for your patience thank you chair my question is simple and straightforward page number 64 and there is no reference of Cambon High Street so I have asked several questions on Cambon High Street since 2018 and our high street still looks the same in 2024 as it used to look six years before so how can I or slash we trust this local government that Cambon will see any Cambon will see any high street or improvement in in our high street I mean in the in the near future that's a matter matter leader or member of the cabinet to come back to you later in responding to the debate Councillor Dan Lenton thank you chair just to draw everyone's attention to page 80 with the number seven objective how early we achieve this objective seven b delivery of civic hub containing health library and community facilities I just wanted obviously in the light of the question we had from the public earlier and the importance that access to health care is for people's well-being just to cross reference that to the press release on the 13th of December last year which referenced community consultation meeting rooms multi-purpose spaces for meetings and groups of visiting community workers including police and potentially NHS services so essentially this is about GP services for north stowe and about health care services for north stowe what do we need to do to change that word potentially NHS services because the number one issue is someone who's in north stowe at the school gates every day someone who's representing two of the villages on the north of north stowe the lack of a GP the lack of health services in north stowe is starting to cause people genuine concern of the time we've heard today thank you chair councillor dr Richard Williams thank you very much chair um I've got three points to make the first two relate to items on page 67 of appendix A of the business plan first of all point five cv c five talks about east west rail apologies and talks about securing all possible mitigations can the leader please outline for us what those mitigations would be what mitigations the administration the liberal democrat administration is is seeking how can this be made acceptable specifically would the um believe in the administration commit to opposing very strongly the severing of communities along the latter part of that line from arston through to little shelter particularly newton and arston also on that page five c two uh this commits the council to supporting the implementation of the cambridge and peterborough combined authority transport connectivity plan to reduce car usage and congestion could the leader clarify if there is any proposed measure that she would not support specifically road charging um because this seems to write something of a blank check uh so would she commit to not supporting road charging and then uh thirdly my final point on page 77 point four we will make it easier for customers to access and carry out transactions online could i ask what metrics are going to be used to define or to decide what is easier how is easier to be measured because i think a lot of people are finding it harder not not easier to to uh contact the council at the moment but how will easier be defined as a very vague to them thank you well i see no other contributors to the debate on this so we will come back to council to brown melons who was reserving his uh comments in second again and there will be an opportunity to answer the questions in responding to the debate if you want if you would like sorry there will be an opportunity to answer the questions later i have councillor lemie wanted to answer the question i ask the question i think thank you fair um i'd like to ask a question about page 77 um point five a roman two um it's specifically about uh partnership group camber 125 um i'd like to ask the administration about um how they see the significance of camp 125 um it's sort of into resolving uh long sounding issues in the town and whether the creation of this group shows um the value the council places on this thank you i see no other questions uh council we have a lot of business to get through today and therefore i'm allowing a number of questions to be answered together in order to save time um i think we now come to council to brown melons you seconded the recommendation did you want to respond uh i'll say a couple of things um that really echoing the leaders comments were a council of continuous improvement um and uh all the work is not yet done we're continuing with that and we're based on a foundation of sound finances innovation green to the core and i'd just like to thank the council officers as a whole group for the extended the support that they've given this administration in delivering that continuous change it clearly troubles me uh that you've got concerns over safety at work um i for the first time ever walked out into our high street and felt concerned that i might be attacked verbally or otherwise that's a very disconcerting thought um and i think councillor mcdonald has already sorry to to you chair but i think the um the response that councillor mcdonald reference is appropriate that we take these things into very serious consideration there's a couple of points perhaps to answer them in regard to road charging we've got no plans to support it but reference Hugh Merriman who was on the working party that suggested there was a 35 billion pounds black coal and road charging was probably uh the only solution to that so a reference the the government's uh on transport minister in that regard uh just one uh thank you to my colleague councillor bachelor henry bachelor uh there was just a missing word in uh the paragraph 82 and that was a 36.14 tons reduction uh compared with so we're tripling the amount of reduction uh since the previous record um and i think that's as far as i'll go in my second thing to keep the thing short uh leader you proposed the recommendation did you want to ask any of your other colleagues to assist in answering questions before you sum up well through you chef um i can answer some of the questions of me put very very briefly um councillor Lentill it's down to the it's down to the NHS about GP services you know our job is to you know make sure that they're hearing the voices of local residents but at the end of the day it's they who decide um on east on east west rail until we add the detail of the route um you know we there's there's not that much we can do other than and we've had quite a lot of successes in getting to reduce the height of embankments and so on thus far but until we have further further details um you know we're slightly hamstrung in actually talking about the detail of mitigation but we most certainly will um on you know what what might possibly be implemented in order to get cars off the road i personally don't rule anything out because i think it's absolutely imperative we get cars off the road um because our carbon emissions are 25 percent above the national average here and so you know something's got to happen that makes a difference um you know the the mayor's piningol is hopes on buses so let's hope there's going to be a lot of buses um how we how we define easier well i suppose you know the the the the glib answer that is we ask people if it's easier um and i'm i'm absolutely certain that if it's not easier then our residents will tell us um and on cambridge 25 i think it's a really good initiative um you know we've we've got the the forum up at north snow which has been immensely successful in in making sure that that the council um us and all the other partners are hearing the views of residents and i'm very very pleased to see um this this initiative instigated at cambridge and i hope that it now manages to speed up addressing some of these issues that people have been very frustrated about for a number of years thank you leader i proposed to move directly to a vote chair before you respect the two million saving correlation and the high street have not been addressed there can be no guarantee that all the questions will be addressed but i think councillor peter mcdonald is in a position to address those specific questions yes recently chair i'm conscious uh councillor batter janrea was asking about the high street so it's very the short answer is very much on our radar when the shared prosperity fund was first released and discussed with dooluck it was from April 24 to March 25 so so um cambourne and some other projects are on the on the radar and there's a process to to be gone through and that will be started and fully communicated in April chair i think that the questions have all been addressed whether or not the satisfaction of those who asked them councillor john williams if you want to add anything oh yes can i respond to councillor ever williams well i did invite councillor rydw i'r leader to ask members of the cabinet to help respond to the questions so yes please yes so right okay um yes as you know and this came before i think how school can know of you um a couple of months ago that the transition program has been revised and the date shown in this document isn't correct so the information given in the mtfs is the correct situation um not not on this table unfortunately this was not updated as a result of the of the review of the transition scheme transformation scheme but you know there have been savings already made as you know um called for millions was savings were made in have been made in revs and bends they've started to look at the waste service and uh we are looking at say 1.6 million over the next two years uh savings over the next two years which have been put into the coming years budget and the budget after that and the year financial year after that so i do apologise that this table was not updated thank you councillor williams well the motion is before us you're proposing an amendment that chair to propose inviting amendment if there's error and inaccuracies in the report should the recommendation not be to have this item then corrected rather than voting or something that is known to be incorrect give us a moment to assess that suggestion and we will come back to councillor williams are you able to put forward a verbal amendment um well i was just going to suggest that we live to the chief exec to make any factual changes to this table um so the the issue is raised by councillor williams were factual matters which i think can be corrected on the record um i don't think there is any purpose in members here debating them and we don't have a verbal amendment or indeed a written amendment to do so so i propose that we now move to a vote and ask the chief executive to make any necessary factual amendments afterwards is that acceptable can we take that proposal from myself by affirmation yes so i think we now move to an electronic vote please so if you support the recommendation as put by the leader then you vote green if you oppose it then you vote red and of course you have the option of abstaining is that everyone as everyone voted who wants to vote so that recommendation is accepted and passed by 26 votes to nine um now before we move on to the capital strategy item eight c i'm just going to take a very short adjournment for a moment to take advice so bear with me if you would i think that's a very good suggestion so we'll take actually 10 minutes for a break um now rather than later thank you members welcome back to this meeting of the south games district council for council we have reached item eight c capital strategy um which is on pages 85 206 of your printed notes uh and i call on council John Williams lead cabinet member for resources to present the report and move the recommendation thank you chair um i well i'm in recommendation that um we approve the revised um capital strategy um the document is attached as appendix a and the changes are in red can i call for a seconder council of british smith leader if you want to speak on this or reserve your comments till later i reserve my comments thank you leader now let me make it clear that i am taking questions and points of debate together uh in order to speed things up and i am taking a number of questions together which i know is a bit of a strain for the uh those responding and i will probably take rather fewer questions um do you have any questions or comments from the floor on this item council Heather Williams thank you chair there was not not much shock in the room that i had something to say on this item um so if i could draw members' attention to page 104 um so and number two first of all it's just a clarification because those of us that sit on order committee or i'm probably scrutiny as well see this is that um because of the way interest rates have been and the fact that short term interest rates are lower than long term there's been um a pattern of short term financing so but with the purpose of reinvesting um now given this says that it uh accept on a short term basis that sort of implies that you can go above so just wondering when addressing those uh loans short term loans for the monetary gain but for the purpose that of a long term investment and keep being refinanced um is the lead member for finance classing them for this basis as a short term or a long term debt um and then my that's that's my question but my comment as well is really a concern around page 105 number four with that authorised limit now i do accept uh that you know the overall intention to borrow from the investment strategy is reducing and i do believe we said it was unrealistic at the time and i welcome that the administration is now starting to recognise that and steering away from what it was before and returning to things such as urban street which has been a fantastic financially lucrative investment for both administrations hours when it was started and in the past um if the lead member chair wants me to clarify anything again more than happy to do so but um the authorised limit is of concern to me you know and i'm not prepared to sit here and authorise an authorised external debt limit up to 26 of nearly 450 million i'm just not prepared to do it thank you councillor williams any other questions or points of debate uh who's going to respond to that second or council john williams thank you chair um this document sets out the limits that are imposed on us by the prudential indicators okay doesn't mean to say that we are going to borrow up to these limits it just states what those limits are now if you know from the um there is a paper here that talks about our capital program and you can see from that paper that we have no intention of borrowing anything like the limits that we are now to borrow to you know this doesn't indicate what our borrowing is going to be in future years it does do it sets the parameters against which we can borrow for capital projects and you know the biggest obviously the biggest loan that we have is the 205 million that's you know housing revenue account loan which was taken out as a basically to bribe the government to stop so that we can we could keep our council rents and use that money to build houses but at the end of the day this is not this is not um this is not what it was about because they said to us if you don't pay us the money we won't allow you to to keep your council rents so that's a bribe to me sorry i don't see don't understand where the leader opposition is coming from because this document simply outlines the parameters in which we have to work to when we come to our capital general fund capital expenditure there was a a verbal disagreement going on there outside the review to this debate i think council Heather Williams maybe had a point of information she wanted to raise simply that it's inappropriate to say that this council either took or received a bribe you you bring the whole council into dispute if you suggest such and i think that's important that that is clarified councillor John Williams you prepared to modify your language slightly in that respect we had to give the government 205 million pounds to enable us to keep our council rents and we had to borrow that money and that is a huge debt against the housing revenue account which our council tenants are having to pay towards so you know you can think of it what you like okay well i i note that councillor Williams did not use the contested word in his response and i proposed to regard that matter as closed do we have any other contributions to this debate i have one further but just before we do that i think councillor Bridget Smith said she wants to respond at the end so councillor Dan Lenton thank you chair i just wondered whether councillor John Williams would be in a position to suggest the kind of capital projects he imagines when he thinks about this very large sum of money being added to our debt ceiling and does he or not also worry that increasing the debt ceiling rather leads us into temptation thank you councillor Williams did you want to respond to i we just asked the member to refer to the paper on the capital program when we get to it so i think that is a question we will come back to later on today's debate on another item councillor Bridget Smith you seconded this and reserved your comments i'm nothing to add and councillor John Williams i think you responded i suggest we move directly to a an electronic vote at this point we set that up please so as usually if you accept the recommendation which is moved by councillor John Williams you vote green if you rejected you vote red so members please ignore what is on the screen in front of you that's what they're merely for your entertainment we will come back to the correct result in a moment no i'm not proposing that we hold the vote again we merely showed you the wrong result and we are now showing you the correct results i believe it is we will rerun this vote from scratch and i'm grateful for member's suggestions on it but that is my decision so we will redo this vote on eight c capital strategy please can you start again that's everybody we've all voted and that recommendation is accepted by 26 votes to eight with no abstentions so we will now move on to item eight d treasury management strategy which you'll find on page 107 of your written papers your printed papers um and again i call on councillor John Williams lead cabinet member for resources to present the report and move the recommendation again this is the annual review of our management treasury management strategy the revised strategy is attached to us as appendix a and the changes are in red and again there has been a few changes to clarify uh things but otherwise um and obviously update the figures but otherwise it remains that it was last year thank you councillor williams uh you have a seconder i think councillor leader councillor Bridget smith did you want to speak reserve my right reserve your right to speak do we have any questions or comments on this councillor Graham Cohn thank you chair um my question was on page 117 um paragraph 6.3 where it says the it says that the council was expected to need to make further borrowing by the end of the year um so i'm a little concerned that we're borrowing even more um is the lead member happy with that statement i hope that the lead member can comment on that later uh i'm going to come to councillor Heather Williams and then i have councillor Michael Atkins after that any others councillor Heather Williams uh thank you chair so through yourself i've got a couple of things on this one um if i could ask members to open the packs at page 118 119 and here i'm looking at paragraphs 8.7 and 8.11 and the main crux is three new words which is in red in 8.7 that says and lower risk it's got effect in lower risk now risk um all depends on its criteria and while there can be lower risk because it's cheaper so there is a higher risk in the fact that if you found yourself in a position where you couldn't refinance it you've then got to come up with a lump sum and actually in later reports we see how actually it's identified that the need to keep refinancing does pose higher risk so i think for that statement to be there in a clear and accurate and transparent way you must identify the risk of which it is perceived to be lower because myself looking at this and looking across and you look at 8.11 and it says about the rise in interest rates during 23 to 24 means that more favourable debt rescheduling opportunity could arise in previous years and of course if you have we all know if you've got a fixed rate mortgage rather than a variable rate mortgage you have more certainty and therefore mitigate your risk equally you know that if if you are refinancing a certain amount every year or remortgaging then it's higher risk because you could end up with that lump sum and what happens if you can't refinance and that's why I think it's it's probably quite right actually in 8.11 that there could be opportunities and we've seen this through audit and court of governance it's something we've refocused on actually around that short term long term borrowing so I don't feel that that paragraph there is is accurate enough to give a transparent view in relation to risk because it sort of suggests that there is none and obviously their their council is exposed to risk when looking at that and I'd also just like to bring people's attention to page 126 now in here the interest rate exposure has been removed and this goes into my early statement about variable and fixed rates now I appreciate we can see where the liquidity in e has been removed it's now in the liability benchmark and we can see that quite clearly however what's not clear is whether as it was the authority minimizes its risk to interest rate changes by undertaking all borrowing in a fixed rate product and I can't see anything here that gives me that assurance that we'll be taking fixed rather than variable rates and I would appreciate unanswer from the leave member for finance or the leader whoever wants to answer it as to whether there is the intention to use variable rate borrowing so that's my second question and then if we could take page 135 and xc we can see on the external borrowing and the volumes and while we disagree on certain wording I think you're right alone had to be taken for us to be able to be clear to keep not the rates or the rents but to keep the council houses and I believe that that was a difficult decision by the administration then to make that decision and keep our council properties but I stand by that decision that was made by previous administrations I think that was a brilliant thing that we did I think we all benefit from it however I don't see that in the same way that there was that just cause for that investment and to protect our tenants the external borrowing the reasons for its increase are not comfortable with I do think that there could be different choices made by the council by the administration and that could lead to very different outcomes um and so I will not will not support um not support this but if I could have clarification as to the other two issues I very much appreciate it chair and I think it's important for the public perception yes before I ask councilor John Williams to respond and clarify these points I'd like to call on councilor Michael Atkins thank you chair and just to say that I welcome this updated strategy I think the changes from the previous year bring welcome clarity in a number of places I personally remain satisfied that the council strategy for borrowing and investing remain prudent and appropriate and the Audit and Corporate Governance Committee will continue to scrutinise the actual treasury position on a regular basis against this strategy and the council's overall obligations thank you very much just before you respond councilor John Williams I think councilor Toby Hawkins wants to make a contribution thank you chair just a point of correction if I may the housing stock was retained not because the administration decided it but because the outcome of the it was a consultation with the tenants and the tenants voted that they wanted to stay with the council and that is why the council stock was retained thank you councilor John Williams did you want to respond to the questions and comments addressed you earlier thank you chair I will pick it up on council Cohen's point first of all um as you'll see from the capital program um there is an intention to borrow more um in order to um provide loans to erm street and so therefore that is correct and um we will discuss that when we come to that particular report um when it comes to um whether um taking out short term loans are a lower risk or not um I think that needs to be taken in conjunction with the minimum revenue provision which um is is obviously you are aware that we have to make the vision when we take a loan out um to enable us to be able to repay that loan and um and so you know when it comes to a short term loan there is less risk or lower risk there is no there is no such thing as no risk and we understand that but um it just refers to the fact that in a when come to look at short term interest rates um compared to long term rates at the moment there is a lower risk in the latter um on with regard to um I think you've mentioned um the issue about interest rate exposure and I think really that has been partly answered um you know there is a gain um whether we use a fixed rate or not this enables us to be more flexible again to reduce the exposure to risk and you know again as I say reason we've made this change is to enable us to be more flexible when it comes to raising money um to enable us to spend on capital projects capital projects actually which uh have bought this council in over seven million pounds of commercial revenue a year so I think that um that is those loans are well spent as you well know um we do not take out the loan or we do not loan money on to erm and street um without ensuring that we are going to cover the cost of that loan and in fact as you know from our investment strategy we look for a return above interest on our loans that we give and also on loans that we take out to buy commercial property so the chances that you describe where um you know we can't repay a loan actually for no other reason a minimum revenue protection would would and that would would prevent us from being in that situation so I you know understand your your concern but I can reassure you that um we we are well aware of uh the risks involved and we are taking every action to ensure that we cover those risks and in fact as the peer review um reported um our financial management at this council is extremely good uh I'm just going to come to council Heather Williams who I think has appointed information just before I do that let me say that we are straying into some of the matters which are going to be dealt with later on in item HG but I think you have appointed information relating to this debate on this item is that right a personal explanation on some of it just in relation to my concern is about the issue of the refinancing and the timing and the liquidity because obviously a lot of these loans are higher than if you look at the liquidity allowance but um I don't believe I had an answer chair on whether we are now moving away from before where it was all fixed rate is the lead member saying that they will now consider variable rate borrowing well lead member that question was put to you before do you want to add anything to your I was sorry I I thought I had answered that and basically what this does is give us more flexibility right I think that is the response to your question to the subsequent clarification I see no other contributors so I suggest we move directly to an electronic vote on this please yes that would help so members I'm hoping this is going to be a vote on the treasury management strategy 8d um if you support the recommendations you press the green and if you oppose them you press the red have we all voted right so that treasury management strategy is approved as recommended by I'm sorry I didn't see the figures what the numbers again 27 28 just the record we move on to item 8e local council tax support and again I call on council John Williams to present the report and move the recommendation thank you chair well I hope I do hope this is something that we can all agree on the revised local council tax support scheme has been enormously successful it introduced a bounding system that made it easier for people to use and and then last year we ensured that for those mostly need could get a maximum award of 100 percent so it is being revised in line with the consumer price index as it was in September as you know we referred to that period that date to set things like this so um I hope that there's going to be no um you know that we can all agree that this scheme should continue and be updated to 6.7% in library to CPI as it was last September thank you council Williams do you have a seconder for your recommendation councillor Bill Henry do you wish to comment on this at the end please does anyone wish to speak on this I think we have councillor Heather Williams councillor Williams thank you chair and those people that have been at this council for quite some time will know that this is one of my favorite items to vote on off the calendar year because when I was first election 2018 it was one of the first things that I got involved in and I remember sat at that table with councillor Braddom and councillor Tim Hawkins um and the bounding system we debated that really fully but for those that weren't around then it was really important that we gave people some certainty and we appreciated that there is always with bands a little bit of a you know a cliff to and hill to overcome um but it was something that I think we all felt the certainty was incredibly important um and we have always supported it and I will very happily support it again please don't make changes uh and then I think we have councillor Heather Leaming thank you chair and I'd like to ask um how our um relief given to the poorest in our in our constituency um how it compares to to other districts in Cambridgeshire just before you answer that councillor Williams um any other contributions that are made I think not councillor John Williams uh thank thank you chair well um in Cambridgeshire um Cambridgeshire South Cairns Hunts and the City offer up to 100% relief East Cairns offers up to 91.5% Fendland 80% and Peterborough I'm afraid to say a very poor 70% so that means the poorest people in Peterborough I expected to find at least 30% of the council tax in Peterborough which I find I don't know if other people here would join me but I I do find unreasonable and hits the poorest in our society well councillor Bill Handley you wanted to reserve your comments actually councillor Williams has just said what I was going to say um but no just just to say in conclusion that you know there's a question later in the proceedings about the cost of living support that this council has undertaken and I'll be able to fill in some details later so I fully support this yeah thank you councillor Handley let's move directly to the vote now risky I know by and good suggest we might be able to do this one by affirmation that is seconded by councillor Sanford Icy and Affirmed so we can move on to item 8f the review of revenue reserves councillor John Williams again thank you chair well I'm happy to recommend that you consider this report and note the movement in reserves are set out in appendix a and you'll see in appendix a the MR reserves are all counted for in that appendix happy to deal with any questions as a result and do you have a seconder for your recommendation councillor Bridget Smith leader anybody any councillors want to speak on this item councillor Heather Williams thank you chair and I appreciate don't want the the longest meeting in south camps history other than the water beach planning committee because nothing could beat that time um but just on page 157 to say the he council so I think that might want some tidying up um but for myself yeah we still have significant sums in the transformation reserve and I just don't think that money's been spent in the right way at all there um and will not support this at all do you have anyone else want to speak on this or do you want to ask questions I think not leader you reserved your comments if you want to add anything at the stage nothing to add councillor John Williams did you want to respond to the uh debate no shall we just move directly to the vote and I think we'll do this one electronically please so if you support the recommendations press green if you oppose them press red by the way this I think there may be one or two more still to vote so that is vote is supported 27 votes to eight including apparently councillor John Williams um so we can now move on to item 8g Irmene Street Limited you will recall members that we had a declaration of interest earlier on indeed more than one declaration I believe two members are leaving the room including my vice chair I propose that we ask councillor Sally Ann Hart to stand in or sit in as vice chair during this next item can we take that by affirmation thank you members right so council we come to item 8g um relating to Irmene Street additional funding on page 163 of your papers and I call on councillor John Bachelors leave member for housing to present the report and move the recommendation thank you very much for care um I'm delighted to present this report and move recommendations and I'm ever hopeful that this perhaps is not a particularly contentious item because I think all members appreciate that Irmene Street has been a huge success and is contributing to this council um massively just on the case of revenue the interest that they're paying is well in excess of four million pounds that's something on the order of 15 percent of our budget requirements and the company itself we've already invested 100 million pounds in it and the asset base is now worth well in excess in the excess of 120 million so it's a brilliant business well run um and I think I'm sure that all members would want to join me in congratulating Duncan Bessie and his team who created this business from scratch and also you know credit where credit is due this was set up underneath the previous administration and so you know that's at least one good thing that's come out so good business contributing financially not only financially they're also significant players in our homelessness policies where they're working in partnership with Shire homes making properties available for the homeless and part of this additional money is a contribution of half a million pounds from our homelessness budget which will allow them to buy houses that are suitable for the largest element of um awaiting this which is single people and in fact single males who are desperate to find small properties or have homes of multiple use um and through the urban streets work with Shire homes we will be making significant contribution there as well um and that's what I'd like to say thank you thank you councillor bachelor you have a seconder for your I second reserve my thanks councillor John Williams thank you and do you wish to comment now or reserve your comments no I reserve my comment councillor Graham Coe thanks very much chair um three I just wanted to echo the comments that councillor bachelor had made I think it's a very well run business and I think the board which is comprised of both councillors and officers does a very good job at keeping that revenue stream coming into this council meaning that we can spend that money on frontline services for our residents so keep up the good work thank you I think I saw councillor Mark Howell move marginally which means he wants to continue into the debate um you didn't chairman but I will say something I'm glad that it's all working well it was very much a big effort at the beginning we were rightly scrutinised because it was such a new thick departure for what we normally do but it's worked well and no matter which party is in control I think we're all very proud of urban street housing and we'll continue to do so thank you chairman councillor bachelor did you want I'm sorry I think there may be a councillor Heather Williams forgive me councillor actually councillor Heather Williams how could you forget me chair um so yes as others have said and councillor it is your baby isn't it it gets referred to as very much you know and and it was a brave step I think everybody recognises and it was the right one and we will always support where we think the investment is suitable well we think the decisions are right for residents we're not here to oppose just for the sake of it we do it when we justly believe that there is a difference of opinion that's and just to just to say about the efforts for single males I have had an incredibly difficult issue in my patch with somebody that has a terminal brain tumor and just a year older than me and it's taken us a long time to resolve it um and it's it's difficult as councillors you're going to sit here and don't worry chair I'm sure test your patience later on when it comes to the general fund but there are lots of things that we do in our day-to-day case work which is why we sit here um and I want to particularly pay a thanks to Charles clay who went above and beyond as an officer of our council um I possibly am going to increase his case work by recommending him to all councillors um but the efforts that have been done to resolve the case ultimately um and we need to make sure we don't have more incidents like that so fully support this I see no others councillor John actually did you want to respond to that well I guess it's a thank you very much and um I quit by selling the head if I might right um we're not going to allow councillor John bachelor to quit in any sense uh I think that's one we can take by affirmation I propose that we do so my vice chair seconds that affirmation agreed thank you members and before we invite or as we invite two of our members to join us again I think it's appropriate that we should pay credit to their efforts as members of this council in contributing to the work of ermine street limited so I thought I'd say that while they're still out of the room share their brushes so if you give us a minute we will reinstate ourselves and resume business in a moment right well as we we resume I owe just pay thanks to council Sally and heart for standing in there even if only rather more briefly than she anticipated and we now move on to capital capital programme for 2024-25 that is item 8H on your agenda pages 171 onwards in your printed papers and I call on councillor John Williams to present a report and move the recommendation thank you chair well I move the recommendation that you approve the revised general fund capital programme as outlined at appendix a I would like to add that the this capital programme includes the water beach renewable energy network the north stow community centre the north stow phase two pavilion the electric vehicle charging facilities a new vehicle for the environmental enforcement officers new refuge collection vehicles and of course the 2 million that we've agreed a 20 million that we've agreed for ermine street housing so I do hope that this council approves this revised programme for the next five years and you have a seconder councillor Bridget Smith leader thank you to any members want to speak on this item councillor Mark Howells thank you very much indeed chairman chairman I draw your attention to page 173 and the first paragraph conveniently labeled aim and it says there how 298 000 is going to be spent with regards to the design fees for the glow carbon homes in Campbell what I'm going to ask is I know I'm disappointed that the road is not going to be built for the school what I am going to ask is with regards to that particular design fields if the briefing can contain some information with regards to a pathway or cycle way for the children to use with regards to that particular development it would be much appreciated and I'm sure the safety of the children is paramount to us all and if that could be added I'm sure we would all we would all like to see that in the future thank you I'm going to ask councillor Stobart to contribute at this point just chair thank you point of order I think if this debate will continue I need to leave so councillor Stobart has a direct yes I think we'll just give councillor Stobart we hadn't anticipated that it could move on to this item but councillor Stobart is a director of the South Cam's investment partnership so we'll just give councillor Stobart time to leave the room who would like to respond to that point on behalf of the councillor Williams thank you chair I'm happy to yes far as I'm aware it does include a cycle way and pedestrian access through to the school from the business part thank you chairman thank you very much councillor Heather Williams thank you and so in relation to this document there is things of merit we've just discussed Erma Street and I can say on those decisions when we can agree we will um also in relation to things like Norstow I mean we were calling for what we've now got way before it was um and that was a closed session debate so I can't go into it but you know we fully supported and backed that and indeed when it then came back through in the way that we said it should in the first place then we also supported that however for us to vote on this and be fully we have to agree with everything in it because you are voting on everything um so when those individual projects come through that we agree with I'm sure you'll have our support however as was just referenced I mean this and I sat on planning committee um and I was not prepared to be honest for the level of emotion that was involved in that I don't believe that skip actually benefited a Cambor residence in that way we know that there was concerns from the school in fact we had you know we were accused of opening ourselves up to fatalities in that situation because of the way it was conducting and there is money for that project in this report and while there is money for projects that we just cannot agree on and I appreciate you know concessions great but ultimately I didn't support it then I don't support it now and anybody that is uncomfortable with that proposal right outside this building has been developed by this council should vote against this and I will vote against this particularly spending more money go back to the drawing board on that one and take the residence of Camborn with you next time please just to emphasise that we are considering the capital programme for 2024-25 including some assurances just given we are not revisiting the decisions of the planning committee at this stage um any others want to comment on this item councillor Bridget Smith you seconded did you want to uh no nothing to add nothing to add councillor John Williams did you want to respond I think then we moved directly to a an electronic vote please so if you accept the recommendations as moved by councillor John Williams you press green if you oppose you press red thank you chair that's all the votes right we should so that is everyone has voted who wants to vote uh that recommendation is accepted and approved by 24 votes to eight after we get invite councillor which is still about to join us again thank you I'm just going to pause for a moment to give councillors about time to return to us members we're just going to pause probably right I said we would pause briefly I think we just have let's move on um we get to item eight I which is the summary general fund revenue budget summary general fund revenue budget yes um I call on councillor John Williams to present the report and move the recommendation thank you chair um grant me great pleasure to uh move uh the budget for the coming financial year the general fund revenue budget um I think the officers have done a tremendous job in um not only identifying savings um but also developing the facilities and the services of this council for our residents and this budget is set against a challenging background for us we have a rising population increased costs due to inflation and I will remind you that inflation is still increasing at over 4 percent and we have a national homeless crisis and that crisis is affecting us and we've just spoke about that in the report on urban street um however despite all of that the plans um retain the council is one of the lowest taxing authorities in this country we are proposing a five pound increase for the year which works out at around 10 p a week and um we're able to do that and yet still have a number of important developments within the council in in investing in our communities um I'd like to say that um one of the reasons for being able to do this is that we have found um we have reduced our costs particularly through the transformation program and um through prudent financial management and robust investments uh we have actually increased the commercial income uh to this council to over seven million a year um we have also um seen council tax um increased to just over 11 million a year and um as a result of all this um we are able to um develop uh the council in a number of ways um for example uh zero communities fund um we are giving more support to that uh we are also um employing two more environmental enforcement officers uh to deal with uh fly tipping um we uh put in the budget uh money for four more new neighbourhood plans we are able to continue to support the homes through Ukraine um we are investing in our learning and development team and indeed the number of apprenticeships that this council is now offering I think it's 36 um and uh we are also able to increase a post in the contact centre with a concept centre manager we have a tackling isolation officer um we have also been able to um we're we're also able to um increase um a number of other posts and increase staff in very important areas such as the money um helping people helping our tenants with uh with their cost of living so all in all um this budget despite the very difficult um circumstances we face ourselves in with rising costs is actually growing and I commend the officers for that so I'm hopeful that uh we can approve this budget going forward as I say it's very interesting that um our our council tax level is actually there are three it's one town council and two parish councils actually have bigger precepts than this council so I think that indicates how we've managed to keep a council tax down while improving our services and meeting the challenges of the cost of living crisis thank you you have a seconder I think Dina did you wish to comment on this they're probably like to talk at the end uh councillor Heather Williams I think you have an amendment for us yes chair if you're happy we'll move our budget proposal forward then so these are the budget proposals that's set out I think on page 225 of our printed notes you'd like to move your okay um no the they're not being seconded yet John seconded by councillor Graham Cohn and I'm now in position to ask councillor John Williams whether he wishes to accept the amendment no I don't accept the shock and shock ripples through the council councillor John Williams there so I then come back to the seconder of the amendment to find out whether he wants to speak now or reserve his comments I'm happy to reserve my comments councillor Heather Williams thank you chair um so through our proposals what we have tried and there are as I said earlier things we agree on and we've kept those and things that we disagree on we've changed it's it's quite straightforward really in that sense um I note what was said in the introduction of the substantive item was that keeping council tax low I mean to be clear this council over the last cross administration has taken the legal maximum that it is allowed to increase year on year so I find that bit difficult and actually although the reference is made to those small amounts for a lot of our residents council tax is their highest bill after rent or mortgage and you know we can't we were told earlier you know we can't resolve every issue at district level but we can show solidarity and we can play our part and at the moment I think it's vital that we do show that you know we have got um increasing house cold bills have had COVID-19 pandemic to put immense pressure on we have the Russia Ukraine war um and you know we are paying financially for that although I would say while we are paying financially the people of Ukraine are paying with something far more valuable and I think we ought to consider ourselves lucky that that is the method in which we are suffering through this so we propose to freeze the council tax because we feel it is important and it's important to support everybody because not everybody fits in a box but a lot of people people are struggling for the first time perhaps in their lives and it just rubs salt into the wound when they see things like council tax going up particularly when the controversial decisions around things such as the four-day week etc are put into play now where we would like to spend additional funds I'm going to take it through the report just to stop everyone having to get repetitive strain from their wrist flicking the papers to and throw so I know you're all keen to hear and listen um planning enforcement we were at committee the other day where we have someone on long term sick and we've got another vacancy as someone leaves the authority um and we really do think that we've heard earlier actually around planning enforcement even though there's debate as to whether it can or can't be enforced it's a really important issue and for safety and for for residents have trust in the system so we think that needs bolstering I do hear what the elite member for finance said in relation to two more environmental enforcement officers but let's be clear we currently have one three you know it's incredibly hard when you look at the cases that's still way above 100 plus persons for case so this would really help in reducing that workload and then we may be able to see more than one prosecution in 500 or so many and also it's important this is something it has been referenced um environmental crime it's difficult because we are in a rural constituency I completely agree so it's important that we make sure that people have the transport to enable them to be able to travel around and that's something that we've sought to address so these are very practical I appreciate the the council tax is one of spirit but they're very practical suggestions along with the contact centre you heard my concerns around safety earlier for the renting out of the building but equally I do feel that there'll be more pressure put on the contact centre when that happens inevitably people will turn up one here for meetings with people that are not this council and we need to make sure that we keep those call times down and that people get to where they need to and quickly when it comes to tackling isolation that's something that's very tricky and it can be on a case by case basis and I you know commend Councillor Sue Ellington that is constantly on us to make sure this is top of the radar and I'm pleased she does so that's something that hopefully will help to address that the self financing so we can see the majority of the money is coming from the transformation department it's a department that has seen an extraordinary expansion over recent times that's a lot of salaries and to be honest I do not see the value in what's coming forward as warrants the cost and the millions and millions that's been spent on it because we've had delays on the savings and some of them we don't really know if we're actually going to realise and for myself it's not the transformation is a bad thing but it's about how it's done and I know members agree with me on on our side that it needs to be more transformative of culture and the self financing transformation scheme would encourage a culture of continuous transformation continuous idea you know coming through and that people are rewarded um as a consequence and we will reward the ideas of our officers and we reward that height um hard work we're also suggesting that now is not the time to be spending a hundred thousand pounds on on the data the new data we already have people that do and do feel actually if we scrapped the four-day week and due to the procedural issues and procedural changes there have been then we would be able to have the capacity to do these things thank you chair um I will I will wind up I've got two small points one of which is the responsibility allowance we'll go on later to discuss that further none of these things that we are proposing to take the money away from have anything to do with those frontline services that were referred to earlier and I think it's really important to to remember that and to look at where the money is coming from we do not need four magazines a year it could be done in two and we do have a duty on fraud and I hope that even if you don't support these now and I appreciate there are political dynamics and for us to respond to that you will look at what we're trying to do this is balanced this is doable different choices can have different outcomes I said would you wind up I didn't mean quite so many additional points but thank you for your can't blame for trying um I have two other speakers listed three other speakers listed councillor Tom Bygott thank you chairman I would like to support this amendment while it's true that local government has stress on its finances um it's even more true that our residents have stress on their finances so they've had the war in Ukraine leading to enormous increases in the cost of eating homes they've seen high inflation leading to enormous increases in the price of food and this year is one of those years when we should freeze council tax so most most of the years in the I think 17 years I've been a councillor I voted for an increase but there have been a few occasions and the last one was when we had the um general financial crisis in the early 2010s in those instances when there's an enormous crisis financially for ordinary people those are the years when we should um freeze our council tax now as my colleague councillor Heather Williams mentioned this is a self-financing proposal and what we are doing is taking enormous costs out of the transformation department and bear in mind that prior to 2018 this was an extremely well-run and very lean council um do we really need to be spending nearly four million pounds to um find savings um so we believe that this would be better this money would be better spent on things that our residents are interested in such as planning enforcement in viral crime contact centre and tackling isolation now one of the things that um the lead cabinet member for resources mentioned earlier was inflation um if every player in the economy if everybody asks for a pay rise if every company asks for higher um prices then that will just infuse inflation so while it's true that there is high inflation by increasing council tax we are putting one extra little piece into inflation and it's really the um the impact on our residents that we're here really to to most be concerned about thank you thank you councillor bygwrth councillor dr Richard Williams thank you very much chair um I I'm going to speak in support of the excellent budget proposal put forward by my group I'll just highlight a few of the key things that I think are very important firstly I agree that we we shouldn't be raising the council tax um again um we raised the council tax by the maximum last year we're proposing to raise the council tax by the minimum this year we shouldn't be doing that we should be doing our bit to help and given the reserves um or the demand web proposing to put into reserves we could well afford not to raise the council tax um this year the additional planning compliance officer we all know with ward members that enforcement is a key topic enforcement isn't in great shape in this district we know that from information we were given at the last planning committee meeting there's a significant backlog of enforcement cases that backlog it was confirmed to the planning committee has gone up in the last 12 months um it is vital that we get on top of planning enforcement there's a lot going on in planning as we all know in this district planning enforcement is not an area where performance strongly so I very strongly support the additional planning enforcement officer which I think our residents would support um as well I couldn't agree more about the transformation department transformation should be something that's bottom up not top down um I've always been slightly amused by the W1AS title of the transformation department and I think most residents will be battled to know what the council is spending four million pounds on transformation to achieve with 63 staff transformation should be organic and it could be done much more cheaply than much more effectively than is currently the case so I'm very strongly in support of this proposal thank you councillor Williams uh councillor brawn milms uh yes thank you jet um the leader of the opposition started a contribution to this conservative amendment by talking about people who are paying financially and I was um not entirely surprised uh here are not to mention the uh trust parteng period which is such a measurable damage to our economy I was a huge contributor to the cost of living crisis that we're now enduring so it's a bit rich uh being lectured on uh finance and prudence uh by the opposition and uh we not only have that as a history but we've got an upcoming um budget um that the IMF has said doesn't make fiscal sense um so we've got more of the same to come giving tax breaks for the rich uh while penalizing the poor uh so I think we shouldn't take any lessons from the party opposite thank you thank you councillor milms um I think we should do our best to keep this debate two items within the control of this council and not speculate too much about a possible budget next week um who do we have next I think we have next councillor back dot bachariah thank you jet I will support this budget and page number 20 uh 226 number five tackling isolation officer tackling loneliness at the nice living officer average 30 residents like that here average 30 residents in south kimbershire suffer suffer in loneliness and this includes 37 suffering in mental health in this district strange lonely all loneliness is a is very much a strongly associated with with the with the mental health issues including depression anxiety stress and this may happen due to um this may happen due to the workplace family related financial situation or um or because of the surrounded first growing societies strange alone and not getting any help can uh can also affect the mental health conditions and the and it contributes and it will finally go to the NHS system another important issue is the integration along with the biomedical campus and the very first growing technology based corporates who are here near here in the near in the Cambridge is actually brought a huge diversity in the current south kimbershire demography and population what social integration policy does this does this council have people come here to support the economy stay on their own like an isolated island without having an immediate family background or support also the also the war affected victims who who moved to this region they got some financial support but i think tackling isolation officer can work deeply with the with the with many communities and and manage their loneliness overall thank you thank you we have another a number of other right other contributors to the debate councillor james hobran thank you share so i'd like to highlight the fact that we have a duty to deliver value from money to our taxpayers and this includes finding efficiency gains from win wins in policy decisions and one of the win wins in this administration's budget is the recruitment benefit that the four-day working week has brought to individual departments such as planning compliance in addition to the savings of several hundred thousand pounds that it's bringing to the overall budget now i know from my case working planning compliance that this department was struggling to recruit before the four-day working week trial began and had in fact had no applicants whatsoever for a full-time position that was advertised shortly before the trial since the trial began the same position was re-advertised and attracted multiple good applicants which allowed the council to recruit a strong candidate to a full-time position and this has improved our ability to deliver a strong compliance service the opposition group is clearly concerned about compliance but their amendment would erode the win wins that we've built up that benefit this and the other departments adding another position to a department this futile if you can't even recruit to the existing ones so i plan to oppose this amendment as it's not properly costed and appears to place ideology above the important practical consideration of using policy win wins to approve the value from money that we provide to taxpayers thank you thank you now we have a number of other speakers i propose next to call councillor Evan Leeming then councillor Anna Bradnham councillor Richard Stobart councillor Susan van der Ven and then the move of the original motion has the right of reply at the close of debate on amendment have i missed anyone out i think on the amendment or on the amendment right um so we'll come next to the council okay thank you uh so i come back next to councillor Helen Leeming i'm going to pick up a particular point in the budget in the alternative budget which is the transformation figure the 3.89 million um i'd like to just clarify uh where that has come from um i understand that it's it's come from the data submitted to do-look um as part of part of the return yes so i think unfortunately that's created an element of misunderstanding um because this this line in the budget it doesn't only relate to transformation i think the full heading of that section is transformation corporate services and HR so within that heading is transformation the community's team the communications team the digital team the policy and performance team HR health and safety emergency planning personal assistance and the facilities management including the cleaners so and also some of the homes for the ukraine team also sit under that heading on the report so i would just like to ask whether the conservative budget really does intend to um treat those multiple services across the whole of the council um as redundant i are you aware of the measurable harm that the proposal to remove that would do with the debate i don't think that was intended as a question for the the mover of the amendment nor was it i think intended as an allegation about my views um that's all right uh so i propose to come next to councillor brattner in that case we move to councillor Richard Stobart chair thank you um so i'm looking at page 227 an item 10 data um i just wanted to comment on the need um we will occasionally see in an organisation like this if the need for specialist support to certain things so one of the things um i think the council will be aware of is the increasing amounts of data um information um that we are handling you know from our residents from tenants from businesses from government um and it behoves us to treat that data with respect and to make sure that the risk and timing associated with it are as crisp and sensible as possible now um when we're talking about data the need for specialist support is is absolutely required you know the terminology of data the work of a data scientist for example is rather special um and um has received quite a lot of emphasis in terms of the professionalism and the techniques that such people have to acquire so i think um and if i can just reflect on a moment on perhaps a notional return on salary that we might see with specialists of this type um so in general you know if you go and hire somebody with technical capability they can command somebody like about five times their salary um there is a rather spectacular figure that's often quoted in manufacturing of 20 times return on salary um which a specialist typically an engineer can attract so i think we can expect from well deployed and well recruited experts in the field a very good return on salary which will more than counterbalance the investment of of salary in the first place so i would say that um the criticism or the comments in item 10 will be i think overwhelmed by the kind of returns that we see in a well managed group so i would suggest that that's not appropriate and uh yes together with the rest of the suggestions i would oppose this amendment councilor susan van den thank you chair um yes so the local authority exists to provide services to all residents and especially our most vulnerable residents um we've heard in spades today the many many ways the many many things that this council does to support our most vulnerable residents um there have been references to unpredictable pressures that come our way ukraine was mentioned climate change is going to present us with unimaginable new pressures we can't even begin to quantify that so we have an enormous amount of risk coming our way council tax is a basic tool um not using it is a false economy in my view and i think we only have to look at cambridgeer county council which has been through this experiment and is on a much weaker financial position than it might have been um and as a result it is not able to support our most vulnerable people uh in the ways that we all would like it to be able to do so i i i don't support the the proposal and i'm sorry i would like to say one thing about the magazine um the magazine reaches people who are digitally excluded and um it is a practical publication it's inclusive that's what always jumps out at me it's cheerful it's helpful um we had a recent mapping exercise to understand um where the magazine was not uh reaching households uh a fantastic effort was made in my own word i can say that uh i had an enormous number of emails from people who want that magazine and it wasn't reaching them and i just thought it was a quite a strong testament as to the popularity of that information coming quarterly thank you and now i call on council rigid smith thank you very much um so i won't be supporting this mode this amendment not because i'm politically polarized but actually because it's completely irresponsible um it's not self-financing because actually it would result in a reduction in services and a reduction in our ability to make realistic savings uh to the running of this council so the the council tax increase amounts to 42 pence a month for a bandy house and we've already unanimously supported the 100% discount that we offer to those people who are struggling most and you know quite a few of those people are people who are actually working and that's the sad thing about life in south cambridge at the moment is that you can be in work you can have two of you in work and you can still be find life very financially challenging so you know we are already doing not there but you know we in back in 2018 we inherited a really really low council tax base for because of years of not increasing not increasing council tax and you never catch up and the demands on our services go up and up every year and you know this is an increase well below inflation which is why you know we we are putting a lot of effort into our investment strategies in order to relieve the pressure on our residents the reality is this year that 94% of councils are looking to increase council tax most of those by the majority cases and that's that's councils of all all political political colours because you know this this government have left us all in such a mess as right regarding council tax so i mean so councillor williams has said you know we're rubbing salt in the wound well the question is is the cat conservative police and crime commissioner rubbing salt in the wound when he's increasing his preset by 12 uh 12 pounds 96 260 higher than we are proposing our increase so i think the conservative supports us i suspect they're supporting him whereas they're not supporting us so if i just run through some of the details um additional compliance officers not enforcement compliance you know the the planning service have not indicated the need for any additional additional compliance officers if they identify the need then you know we will consider it seriously on environment crime uh the budget already contains provision for two new officers to deal with fly tipping and for a new vehicle for those officers so that's all positive um on the contact centre increasing the staff there the kpi's actually suggest this isn't currently needed but again if the staff tell us they need more staff then we will have a sensible conversation with them about it um tackling isolation it's possibly a good idea but actually you can't say you want to start tackling isolation and then say you're going to have half the the magazine as council of and then has quite clearly pointed out it's an it's a really valued link that that deals with isolation by telling those people who haven't got access to uh to the internet what what's going on um council Smith could you draw your comments to your colleagues please if i just if i may make us a couple more points on this on this four day week you know i know we are politically polarized about about that and we're never we know we're never going to agree but the reality is it's saving money and it's improving services and you know it's a bit wrong to be opposing something that is saving money and then just one more thing you talk about axing the data team the corporate peer review advised us to you know start using our data better we can't do that if we don't have the people who can do it thank you chair thank you council Smith uh before we proceed to the next speaker i thought it'd be helpful to just remind ourselves where we have reached in this debate on the amendment moved by the leader of the opposition um the move of the original motion now has the right of reply uh at the close of the debate on the amendment uh the move of the amendment has no right of reply to the debate but the seconder of the amendment reserved his comments earlier on and we'll now be able to speak and we will then move to uh a vote so i now come to the um mover of the original motion the right of reply to the amendment which is councillor john williams thank you chair well this is a bit of a Alice in Wonderland uh budget proposal uh williams could i ask you just pause for a moment oh won't you uh councillor williams forgive me i thought it was important that we just check that we are following the right procedure and i confirmation that we are so please forgive me for interrupting you but if you would now like to resume thank you chair yeah this is a rather an Alice in Wonderland proposal because on the one hand um it's by freezing council taxes reducing our income and then on the other hand it's taking away um very valuable uh work being done by for example the transformation department um in reducing our costs so it's a double whammy from the conservatives reducing our income and reducing our savings um take take the transformation department for example they call it a transformation department actually it's much more as has been explained more than a transformation department and i think this sort of sums up the whole problem of this budget because contained within the transformation department is the um it's the community's team now um i assumed that your tackling isolation officer is would be in the community's team but you're going to abolish the transformation department so you're going to abolish uh the community's team um you talk about additional contact centre officers um they come under transformation but you're you're going to abolish the transformation department so you're going to abolish them Rwy'n bwysig lleidol iityrsau'r hyffordd posisturu ac yn deall yn gwest teşekkür. Rwy'n bwysig lleidol i 아이 ei gallu chi os inni gwerdd. такое yng ngynhoclif POCHau'r Felly, yn grwybodaeth a'u unsiwn, yn buhau. Fan hynny'n gweithio am bobl i'r unrhyw ffordd o'r ffordd rwyf. Rwy'n gweithio am bobl i'r unrhyw. mae'n dweud yn y mynd i'w ddysgu'i ganddiad â Chyfodau cancer. Rwy'n gweithio i'r unrhyw na hefyd yn hynny? Nid yr unrhyw rydyn ni'n fwy o'r sfeidio. Rydyn ni'n gweithio am bobl i'w ffordd arŵr yn fawr. I do mewn, can you please wind up your speech and I shall try to apply that to all members equally. Council of John Williams. That, thank you, chair. Well, I'd just like to say, you know, it says in their report, I can't deny this in black and white, that the transformation department cost 3.894 million, okay, and that it has, and it's been expanded by 63 staff, and in fact later on there's a question which is saying that there are actually over 100 staff in the transformation department, but that relates to all the areas that fall within the transformation department, and as I say, you know, if you're going to remove the transformation department because, presumably, you don't like savings, you don't like us transforming and finding more efficient ways of working, then some of the other things that you've got in your budget also fall, because those people would be in your transformation department that you are abolishing. Right. Now, councillor Heather Williams said that she has a point of information which I'm sure she will keep very brief and to the point, and then councillor Graham Cohn will have the opportunity to and to just, yes, the question is does councillor Williams have incorrect information on the material point? Yes, chair, and there's also a personal explanation, so and actually councillor Leaming was also incorrect, so if you actually read all of point nine, it does say that the proposed removal of that 3.8 million is 306,000, now that still leaves 3.5 million to spend on communities, on contact centre, on everything else, it just would be part of a transformation department, so there is still 3.5 million in that pot, so what is being said is factually incorrect and not in the papers and completely made up, and in relation to my personal explanation, it was said about salt in the wound, I actually referred to the fact that council tax going up, while council officers are being paid five days' money for four days' work, that was the point, that was the point that I said there was salt in the wound, that's so I was taken out of the test. I've been able to councillor Graham Cohn who has the opportunity to second the amendment. Thank you chair, I will happily be second in this amendment because I believe it's what our residents really want, so it's what people are asking for, so if we look at the contact centre, it's our front of house, people want that to be well staffed, they want their calls answered quickly, if we look at environmental crime, our residents want us to keep our streets clean, if we look at planning enforcement, our residents expect fairness, there are many good things that we haven't disputed in this budget, but we believe that these costed things and we've demonstrated where we would find the funds from, and again I would say actually our residents would agree with us about where those funds should come from, should we be paying vast amounts of transformation, should we have a four day week cost in this council, they would say no, so I think a reduction or freezing council tax and the things that we put forward are what this side are proposing and what our residents would expect. Thank you members, that brings us to the end of the debate on this amendment and we now move to a vote on the amendment as proposed by Councillor Heather Williams, can we set that up and just to remind you that if you support the amendment you vote, you press the green and if you oppose the amendment you press the red, there with us, there with us a moment we think one person has had difficulty completing their vote, I think that is everyone and that amendment is defeated by 26 votes to seven and we then return to the debate on the proposal as put forward by Councillor John Williams. I think I have a proposal that we move straight to the vote, is that second in, I think I agree with the leader of the opposition, this matter has not been sufficiently debated now that the amendment has been defeated there may be scope for further comments on the substantive motion but let me see if there are speakers. Now those who have already spoken on the motion may not speak again at this stage except of course the chair's discretion as always, so anyone who has not spoken to the main motion previously who would like to speak now. So I think that nobody apart from those who proposed it has spoken on the main motion so I think everybody is entitled to vote so I will then take Councillor Heather Williams, then Councillor Richard Williams, then Councillor Tom Beigott, then the leader and that is it for the moment. So Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you chair, so reasons that I am dissatisfied with the budget and we did seek to try and address this, if you look at page 187 paragraph 27 you'll see yesterday although transformation meant to be saving money, yep it's going up again and huge sums and as we said couldn't even take 300,000 of about when voting it down, also on page 197 when you compare this to last year there is a huge difference in the depreciation reversals and other adjustments, I mean it's nearly seven million's difference so perhaps the lead member for finance could explain that variable. Also on page 205 we have a huge variation in acquisition and development from the original estimate of 70,000 now down to one, there may be reasons for this but I think it needs to be said and needs to be explained and overall to be quite honest you know we've had the debate on the amendment I know you won't wish to repeat that chair but in a slight reply I do think the spending on transformation is out of control and it's not delivering the savings just like we were told it'd be a million then 770 then 400 then the reality is 300 that's double service turns out it's 200 now we're at 150,000 and when it comes to credibility the issue isn't our figures they are costed and balanced and they're costed by officers of this council so I hope you will retract that in the estimates and saying that they have no place in reality or whatever Mr that's what I said you know these are important decisions you're putting council tax up it's just tax to the max mentality there are and just saying that it's always someone's else's fault in this chamber it's government's fault it's you know oh it's housing issues it's this that and the other you know we are here to do if you really think sorry chair not yourself but if the administration really thinks that they are so powerless and it's all this big nasty other person and they've got no responsibility why are we here and that's why I focus on the agenda that we have in front of us I was challenged as to why I didn't bring in national politics because I'm sure plenty of us do that on the doorstep but when we are here in this chamber we are here to debate the papers and represent our residents and we are doing that in the best way that we see possible and you know there's no more no more wriggle room from this if you're going to vote this through you have to accept and take responsibility not you chair administration because people are going to really be really disappointed and I am fed up of going places and being the joker council to be quite frank you know it needs to change and this budget does nothing to address that and it's a very sad day in this chamber thank you very much thank you very much chair um page um 187 again in paragraph 27 the proposal is to reduce spending in the planning service by 1.2 million um that is very concerning aspect of this budget and one of the reasons why I will not be um supporting it so we've already had um the Liberal Democrats voting down our proposal to increase resources for planning enforcement and now with this 1.2 million cut in planning they're actually proposing to take money away from the planning service the last planning meeting just to give them some statistics we were told that there are 398 open compliance slash enforcement to make this an awful um proposed cases that are more than six months old and we were told by enforcement officers that that number has gone up in the last 12 months 398 compliance enforcement cases open for more than six months enforcement is not working we all know enforcement is not working because our residents email us about it weekly so rather than putting resources into planning to resolve that problem we actually here have a proposal which is taking money out of the planning department and I cannot support that it is totally the wrong priority. I now call on councillor Tom Beigart. Hey Jim so I've got a question it's on page 209 and on that page you'll see a table and the third line item down is delivery and strategic growth sites and you'll see that the number changes quite dramatically over over the years so it starts off at just over 2 million then it goes down to 1.6 1.3 and then in 24 25 4.67 million so obviously quite large amounts of money and it'd be interesting to see what's actually going on there but my question is that I understand from the four-day week reports that south cambridge here pays 62% of the cost of planning service um if officers don't um do um record of their hours how do we know that that 62% is correct thank you uh councillor Bridget Smith uh thank you very much um so this is a budget for growth as I've already said about our business plan growing our services whilst making sure our council's finances are sustainable long into the future and we know we are a financially sound and a fiscally competent council because the independent court repair review told us we were so you know we're one of the few councils still giving grants to people so you know we've given out in the last four years half a million pounds in zero carbon communities funds suffoc has axed all external non statutory funding and that includes funding that was going to district councils to help them deal with homelessness they've axed all the funding to to theatres and to let to leisure facilities you know we are actually increasing the amount of money that we're giving to communities to help them do things for themselves it's actually the basis of local of localism actually and we are one of the few councils who are still upholding localism with financial support so actually this government um are requiring us to demonstrate continuous improvement um through the introduction of productivity plans how on earth do we do that without a team of expert officers within the organisation to do transformation work that demonstrates that continuous improvement in productivity we have Michael Goath who wants us what's this area to be the UK silicon valley that's pushing growth you know we are a pro growth council which is why i imagine we're still around the around the table in discussions until the point which we found out what Michael Goath's vision actually actually is um so you know we are we have to we have to have a budget that delivers on growth not just to deliver the growth and the ambition of this council but actually you know part of council's job is to help government deliver on their priorities as i mentioned right at the beginning we are shortlisted for two awards because we are recognised by the sector as being at the cutting edge of innovation so that we are very very far from being the butt of jokes maybe conservatives are the butt of jokes but this administration is absolutely not the butt of jokes the sector recognises us as being innovative way over and beyond what most other local authorities have actually got the guts or the expertise within their officer corps to deliver so we thought that are the budget delivers two more um two more compliance of environmental enforcement officers for environmental crime four new neighbourhood plans just shy of a million pounds on homes for Ukraine which is ring fence funding coming from government for which we're extremely grateful we're creating two new posts to deal with litter picking along the highways i'm sure that's the sort of thing that most a lot of other councils are actually acting we're investing in a learning in a learning and development team to as i said before to make sure that we are all well and proud as members to continue to deliver thank you thank you very much perfect response uh now uh council by god has i think already spoken yes i'm not sure this is the point of personal explanation of what we've ordered but am i entitled to your question answer to my earlier question thank you i've requested council john williams will be summing up and may choose to respond the only other speaker i see in the debate is councillor Pippa Haley's thanks very much and i'd just like to reiterate something that the leader has said um and which i think is is absent really from the um conservative amendment it just shows the strength of this liberal budget that's being put forward and that's around what affects most of our residents both old and young and that is about the state of their environment the state of water within our district and also climate change we had alongside cop 28 when unfortunately the government was doing rowing back on our pledges we held locally the south came richer local climate cop as a conference where we had representatives from almost all of our villages who were involved in our zero carbon community grants and their own actions on the ground it is one of the most popular and i know that comes from all councillors of all political persuasions know that this is one of the most popular grants that there is and it has catalyzed both hope and action by communities to work together with us to reduce our emissions but not only that to also address the biodiversity crisis and the loss of biodiversity and we continue despite government now saying that local authorities cannot ask for 20% biodiversity net gain but we will continue to pressure for that and we are working alongside our communities again with the zero carbon community grant and the community chest grants to provide stimulus support for them to also take action in terms of their local nature conservation actions too that is one of the things i think we can all be proud of in this chamber we know that our communities want it and i'm so glad that this continues to be a pillar of the budget going forward thank you thank you we now move to councillor john william as the mover of the original recommendation will reply to the debate and after that we will move directly to effect thank you chair well first of all in response to councillor bygoth i will respond to his question when we deal with questions so that's that's the first thing on the points that were made on councillor Richard Williams talking about the planning budget because that's a net figure that's taking into account the increase in income that planning intend to to do in the coming year they've been very successful this year and increasing their income and i'm sure that that success will continue into the next financial year on the regarding i think the leader opposition referred to a table paragraph 27 which showed our spending and reduced spending and increased spending and you referred to the increased spending for transformation once again you failed to notice that it's actually transformation hr and corporate services and some of the savings are actually attributed to that because we have moved staff from some departments into that department so again you are failing to recognize that that department actually does more than just transformation um i think you know there is a there is a fundamental difference here between the two groups and the fundamental difference is this that lib dem is want to take this council forward a lib dem is want to recognize that the world changes and that we have we need to be working smarter in better ways to ensure that we get better value for what we do for our local residents and one of the ways in doing that is to ensure that we have enough staff to deliver those services and the way we get enough staff in a very competitive labour market is to offer better terms and conditions than other people and we are seeing that that is working the four day week is delivering us more candidates for job positions it is delivering us um filling us filling posts in a permanent way um and not having to overspend our budget to pay for agency staff on short term basis and I get away from this um talk that we haven't met some sort of target in in savings for four day week actually if you go back to the report that was uh the four cabinet in september 2020 we weren't talking about saving a million pounds that figure was what it was costing us at that time you go on to another paragraph lower down it explained that we couldn't possibly fill all those posts that we had um temporary staff in because of various things like they were very short term or they were they had to ask you to sum up please but at the end of the day it meant though we've managed to fill 10 of the most difficult jobs and that was saved as money so what I'm saying is the fundamental difference between your budget and our budget is that we are innovators we are finding ways to find the savings to increase the income and to deliver a better service for our residents thank you councillor williams um I don't recognize this as being my budget or anyone else's um we're debating the uh the general fund revenue budget um and we now move direct to the vote and I'm going to take this vote of course electronically so if you support the recommendation as moved by councillor john williams you vote you press green if you oppose that you press red and of course if you wish to you can stay that's good so yes we are voting on the general fund revenue budget and that is the vote currently up on screen that should be everybody matter right so that proposal and the general fund revenue budget recommendation is approved by 26 votes to seven members before we move on to the next item I'm proposing that we now take a 10 minute break so if you could resume here at 525 this section of South Cambridge District Council meeting uh on 27th of February and for clarity we're now at item 8j the housing revenue account the revenue and capital budget and for clarity we will be taking the revenue and the collect the capital budgets separately under this item um so I call on councillor john williams the cabinet member for resources to present the report and move the recommendations thank you thank you chair um yeah I'd like to move the recommendations with regard to the housing revenue account and the review of rents and charges um it's extremely difficult um for us to um to um put together a budget which is actually going to be able to help us deliver the growth in um the housing program that we need and because the as you know because the housing revenue account is ring-fenced then what uh charges and what income we get for the um housing revenue account um has a bearing on on what we can borrow and and as a result of that what we can spend or what we can build under the capital program so it's not been easy but I think in the circumstances we have no other option but to recommend that the rent increase and also the shared ownership rent for shared ownership but I'll I'll leave it there thank you and you have a seconder councillor bachelor did you want to um speak now or reserve your position to the end in the interest of speed I'll speak now if I could chair thank you very much as councillor Williams has just said um the money that tenants pay has to pay for everything in the upkeep and over 5600 houses that we currently have in with this level of increase which you know we're doing reluctantly but it has to be kept in mind that this is the government formula um so most places will almost certainly be doing much the same um if with this we are running a deficit budget this year and probably next as well um you have to also bear in mind that of our total income from rents more than 20% of that has to go directly to government um in interest charges on the 200 million pounds that we were required to borrow from them and that is an ongoing um cost probably for next 30 years you should also bear in mind that some 40% of our tenants do receive benefits and their rents are either paid in full or in part there we also have support grants because we do recognise that there's a group of people which you might describe as the working poor who don't qualify for benefits but are in desperate need so we have recognised that now providing support there so with our affordable housing next year the average rent will be 126 pounds a week and for our affordable properties it'll be 170 pounds a week this is very considerably as you appreciate below um well well below market rates um represent extremely good value within our um area so other than that I too would recommend remove the recommendations thank you councillor bachelor um does anyone wish to speak on this councillor have them please uh thank you chair so when it comes to the new build programme the capital programme the administration will have our full support however we are concerned about the increases that are being made for affordable rents I appreciate the comments that have been made by councillor john bachelor chair in relation to those on benefits but there is that bracket that are going to be affected by this um and our concern is that there is not sufficient mitigation against that at the moment to be making these increases and also you know we have the the increase on shared ownership as as well I think I appreciate it's a difficult situation and it's hard but I do think there could have been changes and different um allocations of funds in a different approach would have been enabled for the capital programme to be you know pursued whilst not increasing the rents at least not increasing them as much as they were perhaps they could have been a little bit of leeway and I think I think all members will understand our difficult decision to not support support this because of our concerns however um as you know we'll take the revenue bit I I assume the political arithmetic will mean what that will pass and then we will support your capital programme but right now I I'm just not comfortable supporting the increase thank you chair can't slow williams did you wish to respond to the debate um I'll do it at the end I thought you might be at the end that's great good I think as I said earlier you know um the as we all know the housing revenue account is a ring-fenced account and as you can see from the appendix b um that um you know part of the income that we receive from rents has to go towards um the financing of the of the capital programme and the two go together you know so you can't continue to have our good capital programme without having some funding from rents towards it so I as John said we regret this but we've looked at various other scenarios but um we've done some other modelling but at the end of the day if we want good quality council housing we want to continue with the refurbishment of our council housing to bring it up to a really good so that it is inexpensive to live in and we want to build new more council housing to offset not just right to buy but actually increase the housing stock then I'm afraid we have no choice but to increase rents by by the 7.7% right I'd now propose we move to the vote just to be clear the recommendations are on page 231 and we are dealing with the HRA revenue budget that is items 2a, b, c, d, b and f and we will come back to the remaining items of this agenda so on that basis if we could set up the vote we're ready to go um as usual if you accept the recommendations as proposed by councillor John Williams you vote by pressing green if you oppose you vote by pressing red have we all voted that's uh 27 us remaining and the uh the proposal as moved by councillor John Williams was supported by 21 opposed by six so that is passed and we now move back to what you might call the other half of that item which is the HRA capital budget and again I come to councillor John Williams thank thank you chair I I moved the capital program for the housing revenue account and you can see I'm particularly proud that on paragraph 65 on page 242 our record since 2018 of delivering more council houses than have been sold under right to buy or disposed of in other other ways and you can see there that over the past 10 years we've now ended up with a net gain of 46 council houses it seems to you know be an awful lot to to be able to do that but as you can see in years past this council has suffered by the right to buy scheme with our best housing stock being having to be sold and and that's not having the means to to replace it until the government changed its regulations and allowed us to build more homes so you know I'm very pleased that um we are we've turned the corner and we are now starting to increase accounts from housing stock and uh and I'm you know this this administration is determined that we should continue on that path council John bachelor yeah happy to second this nothing further to add councillor other ones thank you and I think it is important what we're referencing between you know previous decades um on this that we do appreciate that there were very different circumstances as councillor John Williams said about the right to buy changes but also there was a requirement for us to sort of take down rents as well and in certain times when the economic situation was difficult so as far as I'm concerned both the previous administration did their best to in the parameters they were working in and I hope on this and we are supporting the Lib Dem's current administration proposals to try and get the maximum out of this we've always always agreed on that shows that we can agree sometimes before I go back to council John Williams do we have any other speakers on this item councillor John Williams did you want to add anything to what you said I think maybe we can take this one by affirmation proposed I agreed thank you so we now move on to item nine which is the council tax resolution for 2024-25 and you'll find this on page 259 onwards of your printed papers and I come to council of John Williams to propose the recommendation thank thank you I'm not going to make one speech I'm just going to propose a recommendation on the paper thank you and you have a seconder council leader thank you leader does anyone wish to speak on this item councillor Heather Williams just for clarity chair just you know we don't want to rerun if we can the debate of the fund but I think it's pretty clear that we're not happy with council tax increases and we'll vote against the resolution do I have any other speakers on this item councillor Williams do you have anything to add let's move straight to an electronic vote please so those in favour of the recommendation is moved by council John Williams it's green and those opposed it is red I think we may have one more to vote have we didn't see anyone leave the room okay so all of those present have voted I think we want to vote give us a moment right so all of those present we want to devote have done so and that council tax resolution as proposed by councillor John Williams is passed by 21 votes to six I will just pause for a moment to let councillor Stelbot return to his seat before we move on to the next item well we now move on to item 10 which is the review of polling districts and polling places and I will present this report as chair of the civic affairs committee the civic affairs committee recommends that council approves the adoption of a revised schedule of polling districts and places as laid out in appendix a which starts on page 283 and I think it's important to bear in mind that while the attorney officer is independently responsible for running elections the council upon recommendations of the civic affairs committee has responsibility for keeping polling districts and places under review and there have been several changes to our existing polling district arrangements proposed creating new polling arrangements for Canborn, deleting an obsolete polling district, updating arrangements for Mali and for Impington South and also councillor Garvey has had to leave us but on a query that she's there oh she I beg upon councillor Garvey gave me her apologies immediately before we started this item and my eyesight is obviously defective I think it was councillor Garvey who raised the query regarding the polling district arrangements in Eddington and revised arrangements there are part of this proposal um and so the the returning officer will keep under review the arrangements used in Canborn, Histon and Impington, Gamlingay and Milton so with that the civic affairs committee has recommended met in December and has recommended to council the adoption of the revised schedule as set out at appendix a does anyone want to speak on this item councillor John Williams thank you chair can I just ask that light cam gertran and we had Stoke-unquay district split between the new development in Mali and the village and it would be helpful if we also had a map showing the the new arrangement for Mali that's exactly where the boundary is or who's in the still in the village and who's in the new development that would be very helpful I'm good to refer that to I think the answer is yes we can produce such a map similar to the one on page 289 councillor Heather Williams thank you chair and apologies if I missed it but I wasn't oh we know you moved it I wasn't sure if I heard a seconder if you haven't got one I'm willing to give a seconder but I didn't hear it sorry um on on the item itself I think perhaps I want to I need all to ask councillor Paul Bairfark to second it formally before we yes I'm very happy to second motion chair thank you for that councillor Heather Williams if you'd like to start again that thank you um well I don't need to offer to second it now so that's what hopefully that means you can take by affirmation um just as I normally do put the the call out about making sure that we're always checking in on Tadlo because it's what I think the only one where it's in somebody's house they very kindly open up their house but I do think that's something you know um I get nervous if they ever consider selling their house thank you any others wish you'd speak on this councillor Dan Lantel thank you chair I'm assuming that the William Highgate being deleted SD2 is why we've now got for over on William page 286 William South for parishes of William and North Stove Bowman Hall and North Stowe community centre um those two locations are not especially close to each other um what what is there an explanation for that thank you I'm going to ask the head of electoral services to respond to that hi councillor Lentel that's um no William Highgate was created because of a community governance review that took place between William and over a few years ago uh the boundaries have now rationalised and become the case we don't need that polling district anymore it was between the two parishes it doesn't serve a purpose anymore William South is because of new parliamentary constituencies being formed along war boundaries a different time to when our wards were created so it needs to be there because of the moment in the current parliamentary constitution it's a very technical answer sorry in the current parliamentary constituencies it falls in a different constituency to the rest of William once the new constituencies constituencies are in place we will be able to in a future review of William South as well I hope that makes sense yes councillor Lentel so just to confirm this would be a polling station for residents uh along the old long stance and uh parish boundary this isn't for the whole of the village William South is is a very small polling district this is between William and North Stove thank you a map would be very useful um any any councillor who wants to talk to me about maps i'm happy to help thank you so we have an assurance of map and I I fear the assurance I secured for councillor John Williams previously this is illegitimate because the motion hadn't then been seconded but I'm pretty sure we'll still manage to come up with a map um any others wishing to speak on this councillor Richard Williams tiny point chair page 287 in regard to Wittlesford if there's the parish of triplo triplo parish change its name to the parish of triplo he feels so good if we can update that yes um I think we may need to just check subsequently all the formalities that change of name to go through have been completed but I'm sure that can be a comedy yes right well look I don't see oh I do see a councillor Tom Byger thank you just on that earlier point um for my colleague councillor Lentel um the middle of these um three um columns uh where in Willingham South it talks about the parishes of Willingham and Northstow um are those the the locations where the polling stations are situated or where the um electors live because it's where the polling place is uh I'm good okay so um it says the parish of Willingham and Northstow but Northstow is actually a town rather than a parish that's one I'm certainly going to replace the head of electoral registration a town is a style of a parish so I think it's technically okay um the polling place is an area in which the polling is returning off from the site of polling station uh so it's always historic to be in the case in South Cambridgeshire that we've usually defined polling places to be quite broader areas in case we ever end up with a situation where a polling station becomes unavailable late in the day and so for Willingham South we have to define it as two polling districts because the polling station has to move depending on which election is happening so for those electors a parliamentary election if there was to be a bi election in the South Cambridgeshire constituency now those people would have to go to a different polling station so that's why we have to define the such I'm happy to change this is a live talk it's no problem for me to change it to a town of Northstow that's fine I'm happy to do that uh so I oh yes council have done them and told you have had a previous question and a comeback did you want to come to us again yeah just so long as Willingham comes before Northstow that's fine thank you let's now move to a vote um can we take this by affirmation I propose that we so do so we now move to item 11 which is the pay policy statement um and this is on pages 291 onwards correct and I call on council John Williams to present the report and move the recommendation thank you chair I move the recommendations on page 291 you'll see the report is as it says we are required to produce the statement and it looks back over the previous year um I'm pleased to say that our ratio the pay gap reporting ratio has slightly improved and we're now ratio one to six or just over ratio one to six um and that can we continue to have a mean gender pay gap or median pay gender pay gap in favour of females otherwise I'm happy to see and you have a seconder thank you leader council British Smith um does anyone want to speak of this item council I have the Williams thank you chair just just a couple of things um on page 300 and 301 I appreciate what's been said about the ratio being one to six point one but be careful how you read that looks like a lot of false stops but I think I'm writing six point one um it says that council does not have a policy on maintaining or reaching a specific pay ratio and I'm between the lowest and highest paid colleagues and I think this is something about equality is particularly with what's been happening with the four day week trial that's something that has concerned us most definitely when we had a situation where you had waste service and manual workers in 32 and desk space 30 I appreciate efforts have been made to change that but equally we can see again in the staff employment papers that there's an attempt to take away or provision to take away market supplements in waste but not in other departments and not in desk space departments so whether there's actually true parity going on in relation to that is yet unknown and I'm just wondering whether it would be advisable I would urge I know I know we're required to this but I would urge a policy on this because I think it's really important um there is also no reference to the four day week I think that is a mistake I think it should be included um and earlier on it was said about incentives um for people and actually I think on page 299 I was quite shocked with pensions 17% pension is quite an incentive local government I work for my mother and I don't get anywhere near that so I'll have to be taking that up um but also and what was said yes positive on the gender pay gap I accept that it means that but I do long for the time when we don't have to have gender pay gaps and actually it's not positive or negative it's just the best person for the job um and that's something that I hope that I see in my lifetime any other speakers councillor John Williams did you want to respond thank you yeah we'll take on board that so we now move to a vote let's be clear that we do not have a proposal in front of us to introduce a formal policy of improving that ratio but that is a suggestion which John Williams has said we can take on board so with that I think we now move to a vote I would propose that we do this by affirmation agreed thank you so we now move on to the swavesy byways rate for 2024-25 before I call on councillor Henry Bachelor I just want to ensure that there are no members present who may have a cunior interest in this matter good um so councillor Henry Bachelor thank you chair so usually this is quite an uncontroversial item it comes before us every single year at the budget meeting because we have to set the rates for the byways but this year we do have a slightly bit of controversy in the way that the word byways is spelt in the report so you'll see there has been an inclusion of a controversial letter E my view is that it doesn't shouldn't have the E but regardless of that we have the report as it is I would like to say or two thanks firstly to officers for obviously drawing the paper up and doing a lot of the negotiation with the relevant land owners who it's worth noting our ruling agreement with this particular rate which hasn't actually increased from last year so it's still set at £1.20 per hectare and secondly also to councillor Sue Ellington who I know is instrumental in these negotiations and where she here today I would have asked her to second this particular paper but I understand that a member of her group will be seconding on her behalf and does have a statement on Sue's behalf on behalf to read out so yeah I'd very much like to put this forward to council thank you chair councillor the Williams I think you have agreed to second this in Sue Ellington's absence I have as unfortunately she's had some sad family news so yes um and I have a statement from her happy to take that when Sue's will post I can make it now if you so wish yes I think it'd be suitable to read out that statement now if you would I will try to channel Sue but I don't think it'll work so I'll just read it as it is um so this is from councillor Ellington Swaysy Byways committee have managed the Byways she uses a knee by way over the year the dry summer helped to maintain a good surface with the grader the use of the grader to mechanically resurface has set a precedent in that instead of the local farmers carrying out the work by hand a contractor has been paid to use the grader unfortunately the very wet winter has resulted in the need for significant repairs as soon as it is drier however there is adequate finances available to carry out the work so that's that's the endorsement of councillor Ellington and in our group if Sue's happy we're happy so um I think you can take it by affirmation chair right okay so I suppose we take this vote by affirmation yes you were right I think I'm going to have to move to a separate vote on the E no it's not on the agenda uh report of the independent remuneration panel that members announce his scheme for 2023-24 um I'm going to call on the elections and democratic services manager to present this report Henry Francis thank you chair um this is the report of the independent remuneration panel uh I think the recommendations of the panel um hopefully very self-explanatory on page 309 of your agenda pack uh paragraph one um yep I don't think there's anything else to add to that right uh may I ask if we have a proposer councillor Milne's proposes you wish to speak to it yes very briefly um this is rather late coming forward and is uh from the current financial year rather than the next one because there was a delay while we replaced one of the members of the IRP it's also lower than inflation so we're taking a move backwards in terms of remuneration from a fairly low base still we didn't take the suggestion of the IRP back in 2018 and we've taken lower um than recommended on a couple of occasions since but I'm happy to support this recommendation at 5.4 percent um and um we'll revisit this issue again for next year before too long thank you and I believe councillor Macdonald you're going to second that do you want to uh to speak why just we do the end of the end if this if that is not the end so does anyone else which uh speak to this item councillor Heather Williams thank you chair just doing my job I don't particularly enjoy speaking this much um but uh I can understand why it's tempting and like councillors like everybody else are dealing with the cost of living but for me at this time it doesn't feel the right thing I'm pretty sure we say that it's small amounts but but I think there is some symbolic that we could do in saying that we're with people and that we're not going to to put it up um and it would be a small sacrifice for us to do but would actually probably mean quite a lot especially in a meeting where we've just you know had the council vote in favour of putting up the tax burden on residents it doesn't sit right it doesn't feel right um and we won't support it councillor damlan top thank you chair um I don't think there's anything we can do as a council uh that more angers and frustrates residents than to put up council taxes in a meeting uh put up council house rents in the same meeting and then vote that money into our own pocket now I appreciate the point that's made it's a small amount and I think that the principle uh is one that is rather binary um therefore I would strongly like to suggest uh the American constitution's 27th amendment um interestingly it was written by James Madison but didn't get ratified until the early 1990s and it essentially goes along the lines that uh remuneration for senators and congressmen should not change until an election has happened. Now I think that the job that we do is very important I think the work that um councillors do is um very significant in our communities but and I do think that the remuneration needs to keep a pace particularly with the cost of living but what we could do is to say we're going to take the tough choice but we're not going to take it for ourselves that's the bit that doesn't sit well with me that's the bit that's the reason I'm going to be voting against this and I would honestly urge folks we're here to represent residents this is not something our residents want us to do they do not want us to increase our own remuneration um and I will look forward to hearing from the uh the parliamentary candidates in the room on this subject thank you councillor dr Richard Williams thank you very much it's a short point hopefully I'm I agree with what councillor Heather Williams has said in general but I just want to flag up this new special allowances for members of the combined authority and um I think we do seem to be getting into a space where the committee allowances are a bit old because there are a number of committees where members which don't receive any allowance at all that includes JDCC which is a really significant amount of work um so you know you don't get anything for civic affairs again all of these committees carry significant work load so it does slightly worry me that we're introducing new um allowances for specific committees and we're getting into a very odd space of some that get allowances and some that don't I think that needs a comprehensive review if we're going to have these allowances for committee members before I return to councillor John Williams to respond do any other members want indeed before I return councillor Brian Mills do any other members want to speak on this debate councillor Peter Macdonald you reserved your position so it's now your opportunity to thank you I'm trying to be brief um rather like councillor Mills I'd like to thank the members of the IRP it's an independent process of course independent panel members they're not paid a great deal of money and I think for what they do they do a great job um everybody in the chamber will be aware that many members here have full-time jobs in addition to the council responsibilities and moreover a lot of members here are the family bread winners sometimes and it's happened to me our employers request us to take leave to attend meetings in council and our family suffer less time with us as as a result and we should never forget these considerations um last year I gave some input along with other councillors to review in a benchmarking of our allowances and that benchmarking last year found that we were well below most comparable councils in hunts east cams city and fenla. So on the proposals we have here at the moment the south cams allowance for example is already a thousand pounds below the basic allowance east cams and east cams conservatives have just voted to increase the basic allowance by 12 percent um and that would be then 1100 pounds above even the proposed new allowance that we have in south cams. So I think the increases are proposed here by the panel takes account of inflation takes account some count of the time members have to spend traveling for example outside south cams for combined authority workers um Richard Williams mentioned I think most importantly and lastly as we go forward we have to encourage people from a wide section of society to be able to join the council it's very important for the health of this council and I think the recommendations from the IRP make some efforts to recognize the investment of time and family commitment that people put in and we'd encourage people to come forward for this council in the future. Thank you chair. Thank you for this. Do you also add to I'm just going to say one thing in response to the council of lentels remarks because I think generally there's a sense of dissatisfaction with the process where we have to vote for our own remuneration. It ought to be different it ought to take it ought to be more inclusive more younger people should be able to come to these rather than as gray hair heading for retirement but not yet a situation so but I still recommend it to to the council and thank you. Thank you. Now I believe I may have missed council Tom Beigert council Beigert for the problem that I have is that we have now summed up the debate and therefore I'm reluctant to take further contributions to it. Do you wish me to suspend that decision? I think I probably have a discretion to do so if I've pressurized. Yeah could I do a point of information? Oh yes. So council I've done mention that Eastcams have put up their council tax but I believe they haven't put up their council tax. Does that deal with your point of information council budget? That it was not the council tax but the members' allowances that were put up in Eastcams as I understand it. Okay good. Now we now move to a vote it's clear to me we will need to do this electronically and before we do that I just want to clarify where we are on this. Just want to remind members we're talking about the current year's allowances and not next year's allowances and these are the recommendations of an independent panel that we appoint. I've no doubt that some of the comments which were made in this debate can be taken account in relation to next year's allowances. So we come to the vote which is to agree it's as on page 309 to agree three things. An increase in the basic allowance to 5,800. An increase to all the special responsibility allowances of 5.44% back dated to the start of the current year and a new special responsibility allowance 580 to members of three new committees of the combined authority. I take the point that there may be some inconsistency here but I think that is a matter for the IRP to be invited to consider on a future occasion. So with that I would ask that we go to an electronic vote if you accept the support, the recommendation has put forward proposed by Councillor Mills then you will vote green. If you oppose that then you would press red. Right. Is that everyone? Yes. So the recommendation on the report of the independent remuneration panel is passed by 22 votes for 5 votes against. Now before we proceed to any other business I have to ask somebody to propose that we should continue beyond the four hours limit. Councillor Brown Mills, do I have a seconder for that? Can we take that? Yes, I think I'll take these. Councillor Graham Cohn, thank you for seconding that. Can we take that by affirmation? Thank you. Right, we can now proceed to next business and this brings us to item 14, the calendar of meetings and I call on the elections and democratic services manager to present the report. Thank you chair. Just as per page 323 of the agenda this is to approve the calendar of meetings for the next new school year. Does anyone wish to speak to this item? I propose this. It may well be that somebody else was meant to but I just proposed it. Who wants to second it? Councillor Anna Brandon has seconded it. Thank you. So does anyone, now that we have seconded and proposed it, does anyone want to speak to it? Councillor, how do we do this? Thank you. Just that we did use to have a provisional date put in for even March or April and that's a meeting that seems to have been lost and the only reason I say that we used to put that in because sometimes we do have business that we need to sort out but before regulated periods and sometimes it's fine within it but it's a lot easier to take something out of our diaries than it is to try and find a date to put in it so it might be worth in the future just keeping that provisional date as we've done in previous years. I suspect that we can in fact keep provisional dates without them formally being approved as part of this calendar unless I'm corrected on that so having taken account of that can we then move to a vote? I think we can possibly do this by affirmation. I propose we do so. Can we do that? Is that agreed? Thank you. So we then come to the reports firstly of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough combined authority. The reports are before you. Do our representatives on the combined authority have any comments they wish to add to that? I see none. I see certain amount of concern on the faces of certain councillors. Did anybody wish to comment? Sure. Normally it's just a question of taking questions. Is it not? Perhaps you can say that again slightly more loudly. Sorry. Normally it's just a question of taking questions from members to any of our representative members. Yes I have invited any representatives on the combined authority if they wish to comment before we do that. Do any of our representatives wish to do so? Then we can take questions and just for clarity the combined authority representative is concerned I think are the Councillor Bridget Smith on the combined authority board, Councillor John Williams' substitute. On the overview and scrutiny committee, Councillor Judith Ripeth has now stood down. Councillor Aidan van der Veier is not here. I've now replaced Councillor Judith Ripeth on that and then on the Audit and Governance Committee, Councillor Jeff Harvie who is also not here. So any questions to our representative on the combined authority board, Councillor Heather Williams? Thank you chair. Throughout the report it does go into the Audit and Governance but I do believe this was seen by the board so whoever there was a representative on the day might be able to give some clarity. It is a bit of a sorry read. I'm not on the combined authority so we are reliant on our representatives feeding back to us and it is worrying in relation to the bullying references and the code of conduct complaints that are put inside it. We also can see that although we've not seen the report ourselves that the Mayor has apologised so I assume there's been, I think it's been quite clear there has been some wrongdoing by somebody somewhere for that to happen. It's very difficult for people in the public domain to really grapple with what has happened here and it's really worrying and is concerning because as has been said before officers of our council go and work and work with people at other authorities, they have meetings, we send councillors there and it's very difficult because we can't really see what's happened but what I also would like confirmed is whether any members of our council have seen in full the documents that relate to this and if they have did they agree to have them private so it couldn't be seen. I appreciate names might need to be redacted of the victims but we should have a bit more transparency that we've got and given what has gone on how is our board representative and our representative will combine authority as a whole. How do they feel about all this and should we be as worried as it appears in the papers? Councillor Bridget Smith. Okay what a shame to bring this up again quite honestly so I've spoken at length about this in the past there's a very very detailed report in Appendix 5 and the most critical so no I have not seen the report nor as far as I'm aware has any member of the board it was a recommendation of the independent panel that it was inappropriate for the report to be shared and therefore it was not shared so I haven't seen it but if you look at 9.4 it says based upon the evidence before primarily the report she was the view that the information contained in it supported its findings in conclusion that the mayor Dr Nick Johnson had breached the CPA's code of conduct in relation to civility and disrepute and you know on 9.3 it said there was no justification for any accusations of bullying and harassment and confidentiality and access to information for the accusations made there so you know the combined authority needs to get on and do its job and a line needs to be drawn under this it was all dealt with very very properly by an independent committee and it helps no one to keep on dragging this up so I am very confident that everybody is safe and happy at the combined authority and we need to carry on and get the job done of delivering on all the jobs that it is its responsibility to do council other williams I wanted to come back in I think thank you chair um I was very careful in the words that I used but I don't think it's a shame and I do not apologise for seeking reassurance about the safety of councillors and officers and I think to be so dismissive that is what was shameful there so okay so I am not being dismissive of this but you know we have rehearsed it in this chamber in in the past a full investigation has been undertaken all the evidence from that that report is in front of you you're aware that the mayor has apologised to whoever um and has carried out all recommendations so it's all been done and just you know potentially you know doing further damage damage to the reputation of the combined authority is not helpful council of dan lentell I think you had a question on this thank you I a million pounds was spent on this ethics report a million pounds when the people pay for something they should get to see it and the issue is not I don't think anyone has suggested that the mayor um has acted in inappropriately himself it's whether he allowed or encouraged behaviors which is covered on page 343 but the reality is this is about people feeling safer work we now know in the public domain that former employees have PTSD we know that they're not getting references to go and work elsewhere I'm sorry this is just here say I'm sorry I cannot cannot allow these these unfounded accusations to be made in a public place I'm afraid council's questions we can take them is okay is uh councillor uh Anna Bailey of East Cambridgeshire district council is she a liar because all I don't think that's the question we can take here council lentell before you proceed any further excuse me chair mine to all members here that we approve the minutes of the meeting on 30th of November and I'm just going to read to you the relevant paragraph the leader reported that a cross party committee had reached a unanimous decision regarding the imposition of sanctions on the mayor due to a lack of leadership regarding his response to a matter that had taken place two years ago the kind combined authorities monitoring officer had advised that it was not in the public interest to publish the full investigators report the leader that is council Bridget Smith expressed the hope that the combined authority could now focus on working hard for the residents it represented I would not want this this council to keep coming back to matters which we have dealt with fairly thoroughly in previous meetings council lentell did you want to add a specific question to your I don't want any allegations if you don't mind if you keep it to a specific question then I'll ask councillor Smith to respond given that councillor Smith opposed the creation of this office and quite rightly I've seen the speech she gave you it's a very good speech in which sorry what is your question councillor the question is why is it so important that an office that was never going to work be defended in this way that's the bit that I simply see or I do not understand why is it so important to defend an office this is fundamentally unworkable councillor Smith do you want to take that question so so that that is your opinion we we are a it's a combined authority we are part of the combined authority whether I at that time supported its creation is neither here nor there we've now got it and it's incumbent on us and in the best interest of our residents and of delivering value for money that we work with it and make it work and do not do what other people are doing which is try to take it down and destroy it it is not in the best interest of our residents now I'm prepared to take one more question on this did we have any any fresh questions on this I think not I'd councillor Williams no um you have had a question on this you have had do you do you really want to come back to it again or do you feel we can move on yes I have thought I saw councillor Williams put his hand up but in fact he was just telling me he was leaving so we don't usually allow further comments on this but if you want to I will use chair's discretion to allow it thank you and I respect that that's your decision and that other members should not be instructing you as chair as to whether you should or not should take things my question I do feel is unanswered because I asked whether arrangements were in place for our staff and councillors and have we checked as a council whether any of our staff because actually things like this can be incredibly difficult to come forward particularly if it does become big and that's not been answered chair I'm going to intervene here because I think we did if I recall address those issues at our meeting on the 30th of November so I am reluctant to even put those questions to the leader I do not want us to keep going around in circles on this issue when we have already discussed it fully do you want me to ask the leader to address that question are you happy that this is a matter that can be checked we're here to discuss the papers it's in the papers and that might be inconvenient but no I would like an answer to my questions it's not a matter of convenience it's a question of whether it has already been dealt with on a previous meeting we'd make a point of not coming back to matters we have already dealt with as recorded in the minutes of the last meeting councillor Smith do you want to add a further comment or shall we leave that all I'm going to say is that you know the under under the current mayor which absolutely was not the case under the last mayor all the chief executives of all the local authorities are heavily involved in the organisation they are all the heads of paid services and I am absolutely confident that all the chief execs will be doing it will be ensuring the safety of all their own staff for whom they are responsible I don't know if Liz Watts wants to add anything chief executive you want to add anything thank you chair I'm happy to confirm that I've got absolutely no concerns whatsoever about this issue I think that is as far as we can usefully go on that matter now we don't need to take a vote on this we merely need to note the updates the reports so can I take it that is noted thank you greater Cambridge partnership and this is on page 379 onwards council is invited to note the decision summary from the great Cambridge partnership this is not of course the minutes or the draft meeting draft minutes of the meeting do our representatives on the gcp have any comments to make councillor Brown knows any questions for councillor Brown knows I see none and again we only need to note this item so this item is noted item 17 the Oxford to Cambridge pan regional partnership and the notes on this are on pages 383 to 386 does the leader of the council want to add anything to these report can we note the reports as tabled by affirmation is that acceptable 383 to 386 can we note that report I agree by affirmation you want to speak on it good councillor Heather Williams thank you um so on this I have said before that I am concerned at the lack of it I mean it's a very small I mean blink and you miss it um and it's something that is meant to be doing a lot of work and I would encourage and ask our representative to put a bit more flesh into the report so I appreciate some of it will come from other places but there's nothing stopping um more being given we've not even had an introduction to it I just I just think considering what it's doing and I know we'll be told there's a website but actually there's more to transparency than a website it's not the answer to everything uh before I ask the leader to comment um I'm going to comment myself which I don't usually do um I don't think that members of this council would appreciate the agenda papers being increased in length by very much beyond 386 pages I do think however that a number of members of this council have an interest in finding out more about the Oxford to Cambridge pan regional partnership and that there might be other ways of accommodating that interest but leader I don't whether you would like to comment on this or indeed Chief Executive who I think wrote the report thank you so I'm going to say there's a website and there's full disclosure and transparency on the website right thank you for that um membership of item 18 there we are yes item 18 membership of committees and outside bodies so do the group leaders have any changes to committee membership they wish to share with council um leader thank you very much chair um yes um counsellor ripeth has been replaced on the planning committee by counsellor red grubb and counsellor garvey is the new substitute counsellor ripeth has been replaced on the cpca scrutiny committee by counsellor fein with counsellor stobart is a new substitute and counsellor martin carne has been replaced on scrutiny overview committee by counsellor bear park thank you very much to those members who have served and those who are agreeing to serve in the future thank you leader does the conservative group leader have any changes to announce as of 10 seconds ago yes um could I please put counsellor tom bygott as substitute for the jdcc in the place of counsellor graen coan thank you right we now move to questions for counsellors and I remind everyone that a period of 30 minutes is available for questions uh this includes questions where notice has been provided as set out with the agenda and if there is time remaining after those questions um we'll deal with questions which have been notified the elections and democratic services manager before the start of this meeting I think there were none no so and I think we will probably be kept busy with the questions we have on this year so I start with um counsellor helan lean could I could I just suggest something I don't know if all members would um acknowledge and and support it or uh written answers to be given so we could go to motions that is a one suggestion counsellor heather Williams chair that would literally be removing our right to supplementary questions I think if if members aren't present then written answers and if individuals want to but I wouldn't agree to a blanket because it does remove the supplementary right would you accept that counsellor? Yes I share your concern at that point but I think we have to allow members their their opportunity I'm not going to take further comments on this I regard that matter as a result so I come to the first question which has been submitted by counsellor helan leaning thank you chair and as written as on yes um and I'm going to respond to this uh the question to remind you is how to celebrate the 50th anniversary and the council will be celebrating that 50th anniversary on the 20th of march at 6 p.m in the street downstairs uh we have invited a number of speakers um there will be entertainment by I think two local groups and an opportunity to review and to view some of the key events that have happened throughout our last 50 years with a small exhibition in the swanley room um during the afternoon we will plant a tree to commemorate the 50th anniversary the Deputy Lieutenant has been invited to uh join us for that together with one of our apprentices um and of course all councils are invited as our long-serving colleagues uh this work the planning work on this has been undertaken by a cross-party councillor group um supported by the Tervi our democratic services team leader and of course all members are very welcome to be there and we do encourage you to apply as soon as possible so that we can organise the catering I'm going to add one thing which is that there are a certain number of members who did not come back for various reasons at the last elections and if any members are unable to attend and think it will be appropriate to pass on their invitations to whether to members of the group or to or to others who were um members councillors here until very recently that would be fine I would also add that the um there will be no alcohol at the event um because um we don't have a licence for it and um I'm told that members can bring their own alcohol but I'm not proposing to make this a BYOB party so I think we will have an alcohol-free event and enjoy it uh thank you councillor Leeming did you have a supplementary no um councillor Sally Ann Hart gone we'll give councillor Hart a written answer which is what she was happy to do councillor Eileen Wilson um has written has written I believe councillor Bill Handley is going to respond yes thanks chair um this is about the cost of living work that the council has been doing for some time now um delivering innovative solutions to help um the at-risk residents of south camps to survive them through the cost of living crisis that work's been continuing um 500 electric blankets were delivered directly to residents uh of which 421 were targeted directly at individuals on certain disability benefits and who are receiving councillor council tax support um with other blankets uh the remaining blankets being distributed by the council's income maximisation officers and GP practises um the mobile food hub which was set up in the summer of 23 has now expanded visit six villages each week and there's a seventh due to join the schedule soon the six villages identified were were identified by mapping uh sort of deprivation data from the council against where current food banks already operate um and uh mobile food hubs will bridge the gap between existing services um in addition to these schemes we're now finding new ways to sign post residents to the support that is available and which comes at a no extra cost to this council an advertising campaign's been run um we're encouraging residents to apply for the support which they're entitled a sponsorship initiative with the Cambridge independent newspaper and advertisements on guided bus busway um saw visits to the council's cost of living web support web page more than double um and uh we're also from from this year we were advertising um advertising was run from the council's own facebook page which had a reach of almost 25 000 people uh and finally officers ran a an online training online training sessions aimed uh this time at professionals and community volunteers who work with vulnerable individuals it's thought that speaking to them via these sort of people who already have their trust can overcome reluctance to engage uh because of the perceived stigma associated with seeking help in this way so um i think i'll leave it there i could add more but um i wouldn't encourage you to add more and before we move to our next question um i should say that we have a lot of questions to deal with and brevity in answering them would be appreciated um our next question then is from councillors yes i'm bygipard but councillor Wilson do you have a supplementary i don't have a supplementary but i'm just very pleased to hear about all the initiatives that help our residents for pure need thank you our next question is from councillors sinita hanzaraj um yes thank you chair has written has written thank you and i believe councillor bill hamlee is going to respond to this at um rather shorter length and briefs it's a shame because we've got such good news to impart i've got such good news to impart but anyway yeah the western park sports pavilion and north stair was opened in january um elite sports managed the pavilion and all of the associated sport pitches demand is really strong um the um it's already been well used by local clubs particularly since also the grass pitches were unplayable because of water logging um one thing i really want to say is that some of the 4g pitch the artificial pitch is open at certain times for use by young people free of charge and really pleased about that um i think again in the bet in the in the interest of time um i will make my full answer available um if that's okay with you chair yes i think that is something that would be encouraged in all these cases if we could have a brief verbal answer and the full answer made available in writing and i then move to the next question for councillor dan lentell thank you sorry yes is there a supplementary councillor no supplementary no supplementary um so i then move to the next question from councillor dan lentell thank you chair as on on the order paper and i'm very happy to take a written response that's very helpful thank you uh i'm sorry if you haven't been asked the question i can't invite you to give an answer councillor dan lentell did you want to review your original decision are you happy to take a written response i i i fear that uh has been made clear about the lack of security in the hall that i don't want to be attacked for keeping trespassing on everyone's time councillor lentell thank you for your consideration i'm sorry councillor bachelor that you will not have the opportunity to give you a verbal response but you will be able to give the the written response um it does also mean that councillor then tell will not get a supplementary uh we then move on to councillor heather williams i'm afraid that councillor the leader has had to leave us i don't know whether anyone else wants to respond and have half councillor john williams yes thank thank you chair just to say that um this is a subject of uh this was a subject of member briefings uh last week and uh it will be in the report going to employment staff committee on Thursday and they would add that back in uh november um it was quite clear that um the trial that the when the trial finished um the practice four day week practice would continue until the report was produced councillor williams did you have a supplementary thank you chair and i'm sure members will appreciate obviously the the submission date for questions was prior to the briefing i do appreciate that um but do you does the leader or the person speaking behalf of the leader really think it's acceptable for us to have to wait that long for something that affects all of our residents i think as we said that we should wait till the end of the trial so that the full 12 months of the death base trial can be taken into account also of course we've only just started the the trial and the waste services um but as i say both of that uh areas will be um part of the report well has been published so you know what's in the report the report's been published for Thursday's meeting and uh i'm no doubt we will discuss it then but our next question is from councillor Graham Cone as on the order paper chair and i think councillor Brad Milans is to respond yes so in the pursuit of brevity um i'm going to report councillor Cone for a brilliant timing because we launched the new insights last week uh it's available uh it's imperfect still a working progress but uh we're putting all the information that we can in there uh so it's a a major step forward and i think nickel simpson and the team for the work that they've done in producing that finally getting over our tenancy issues with access or not to various resources that we've had to work around thank you uh so councillor Cone did you have a supplementary uh just just briefly so i thank Brian Milans for that answer and i'm glad that we've now had it for what two working days prior to this question being asked having been without it for months and two systems not working not serving councillors so we can get to officers to answer our questions which has been chaotic to say the least i am pleased that officers have finally got this sorted out because it it needs to be sorted out for all of our benefits would he agree that um it needs to be kept up to date so things like uh officers phone numbers work phone numbers uh working hours the day that they are not here because of the four day working week and uh when they are not and in the office would be really helpful as well so when they are working from home or when they plan to be in the office um would also be helpful or councillors thanks very much councillor Milans yes so very quickly um agreed with everything except the uh where they are um i'm really not sure that that's something that we could commit to the other issues that you asked for are i believe uh mostly in uh in train uh so the consistency of information is for the moment a problem you know uh some some people have for example previously wanted to avoid having their photographs on uh insights um well no i am the son where they are is important yeah well as long as they're accessible it doesn't matter geographically where they are sorry camp brian uh Milans that's what i'm alluding to the fact that they are accessible we have their contact details and you know we know we've had a supplementary so we share an answer to the supplementary so we share that the next question which is councillor Tom Beigert that's on the order picture and uh i think councillor William you're going to respond to this yes sir thank you all right it's good to hear that staff have been telling you about how their productivity has improved since they started trial in a four day week yes there is evidence that process changes such as having shorting meetings can improve efficiency of what really drives productivity is when these process changes are combined with people working less hours overhaul allowing them to focus their energies and stay mentally sharp whilst working at pace there is now considerable evidence that shows that people who are well rested are committed to the organisation they work for and have a good work life balance are significantly more productive than average calculating how much of the improvement in productivity we've seen is driven just by process changes such as having a shorter meetings and how much is due to combining them with a working four day week it's not straightforward however on the council's internet people are sharing ways that they have found to streamline processes or improve the way they work these improvements are being documented so no matter what our ultimate decision on a four day week these process improvements will not be lost councillor Beigert do you have a supplementary um i don't think my question was really was really answered i mean were you saying that um it's difficult to actually answer i did i did pick that up in the middle back you didn't really give an answer to the question you know what what method do you use to work out the difference between um the um fewer meetings and um the four day work work well i suppose the ultimate is is whether or not they they complete their tasks and and whether or not we see any improvement in the quality of their work they're the things that we measure by and at the end of the day we measure overall performance through the KPIs so you know i think um going drilling down into such detail as you suggest would be very time wasting you know we don't have the resources to do that and clearly we are seeing improvements in productivity and um and therefore you know the current methods are i believe satisfactory no did you have a yeah no i realized i put um uh councillor on the spot there but could i get a written answer to that because he didn't really seem to answer the question properly thank you now we have a number of other questions tabled uh i see councillor Mark Hull is no longer with us councillor um richard williams had to leave us councillor shrivorna butch fire councillor bunti waters um so i think we should take note of a couple of points from councillor john williams answer just there about the improved productivity of shorter meetings um and uh perhaps move on to the next item all of those who were unable to be here to ask their questions will get written answers we move on then to motions um and members are reminded of the maximum period of 30 minutes is allowed for each motion to be moved seconded and debated um the first motion is standing in the need name of councillor dan lentell now councillor lentell you made the point earlier that you didn't want to ask your question on this issue of the white ribbon following the announcement in order to save time of the council excuse me to propose your motion uh sorry chair i i did ask for the count for the question to be asked i just followed councillor Peter mcdonald's suggestion of questions uh on the paper and uh written answers do you wish to propose your motion do you wish to propose your motion yes the floor is yours oh i'm sorry are my allowed to reserve the time to to speak afterwards or greenhorn here yes you need if you have a seconder i do the seconder can reserve their time to speak at the end right but do you wish to speak to propose your motion or leave it to your seconder um i think we heard an absolutely splendid talk uh last time we were all together about why this motion uh and the the actions that have surrounded it uh from elizabeth mcwilliams uh i thought she gave us an absolutely splendid thing i've read the uh the the minutes of what she said um i i would like to uh leave it at that uh if that's all right and say that the uh the motions it stands is uh you know we the the the action is now happening it's a very good thing um and uh look this isn't my lived experience i'm happy to sum up at the end but i hope that people will understand why i don't feel it's appropriate for me to speak to the ins and outs of an issue which as a guy doesn't affect me in quite the same way yes before i invite you to um suggest the seconder for this you've just said to me that you're happy to leave it with what elizabeth mcwilliams said at our last meeting very in mind that since then a decision has been taken so do you wish to look forward a seconder for your motion i do my seconder is councillor Judith Griffith so councillor Judith Griffith do you wish to second this motion yes i do and do you wish to speak now or at the end um i wish to speak now right that's why it's yours and firstly i would like to thank councillor until for bringing this motion to council for providing the opportunity to debate such an important and highly relevant issue a domestic abuse related call is made to the police in england and wales every 30 seconds domestic abuse is also a crime which is largely hidden and often goes unreported to the police the chilling statistic of one or two women killed by a partner or ex-partner every week sends a shiver down at all our spines no relationship starts with violence and indeed some abusive relationships are not violent however a rise in misogynist language which goes unchecked and is indeed sometimes normalized is often the root of abusive relationships the seeds of this misogynist language are sewn in the playground at school in the workplace or on the night out the malign influences on social media influencers on young in reference to girls and women often pass off as just banter is having a growing impact on boys especially and is now a major concern throughout the education system white revenue k works and violence against women through education of men and boys supporting them to take responsibility for their own actions and thoughts and to call out harassment sexist and violent behaviour when they see it and in turn empowering women and girls to expect equality and respect i also believe that the work the council is now undertaking to achieve white ribbon accreditation complements and strengthens that of the daha accreditation awarded to this council in december 2022 domestic abuse is scourge on our society in 21st century britain i'm therefore happy to second this motion in the fight to end violence especially against women and girls and also sometimes men in the home and also outside the home i hope that my council colleagues of whichever political colour will join me in supporting this motion thank you thank you councillor druth rippith i'd like to move an amendment which democrat sorry demographic democratic services have been made aware of i believe there's my paper to circulate okay i'm advised that yes you can remove that amendment is that amendment accepted by the movers of the motion yes chair i wholeheartedly accept and indeed i'm planning to second the amendment i see well before we consider that amendment the pervy is circulating it and i'm going to pause the meeting for a couple of minutes so that members can actually read the amendment do we understand this to mean that the entire motion has been replaced i'm going to just comment on that so this is the first time i've seen this amendment and it is in effect a new motion it is replaces the previous motion so unusually although the seconder has already spoken i'm going to use chair's discretion to invite the seconder to speak briefly to her amendment and then the i need to just check with the mover of the motion that he accepts this amendment in place of his motion council then tell can you confirm that you accept this amendment yes chair i've seen this amendment so when council ripeth has spoken briefly to this amendment i.e. this replacement motion i'll then ask council then tell to speak to it and he will have three minutes to speak to it and we will then if councilers want have a short debate on this before we move to a vote which i'm hoping can be done by affirmation but that is for councillors to indicate so councillor Judith Ricketh you have put down an amendment which is effectively a new motion i'm asking you to take no more than one minute to propose your amendment propose this amendment and i do feel in what i've said i have covered a lot what is here and everybody in the chamber has had a couple of minutes to read this in detail it is just emphasising again so important that this is a society problem but we need to do what we can to help in the fight against domestic abuse and through the white ribbon specifically domestic violence and i'd just like to draw your attention to the resolutions especially the second one about writing to the secretary of state for education and also the secretary of state for digital culture medium and sport because it isn't just happening here it's happening across the country and i think the more we can work with all levels of governments on this issue to raise the profile of it so it doesn't go on hidden the better thank you now council then tell before i've said i'd like you to speak on this just remind you you said earlier on that you didn't particularly want to speak on this issue because you felt it was for others and that you had a question earlier on um in relation to the introduction of this by the council and you said you chose not to ask that so if you would keep your comments brief on this that would be appreciated the floor is yours thank you chair um i'm sorry i have to ask am i speaking to the amendment or to the motion it's to the substantive motion they are actually the same thing now the amendment has replaced the motion the amendment has replaced the motion the floor is yours council and i'm are we debating or am i summing up a debate this is you're introducing this you're effectively seconding what was previously your motion right you have three minutes council then tell um eight years ago uh i became a stay at home dad and it's the best and it's the toughest job i've ever had my previous regular playing in uh gig involved international travel an expense account and a lot less human uh unparliamentary word being a stay at home dad has taught me an awful lot about myself as a guy one of the things it's really taught me is that as as a guy i have been hardwired from a very young age to see problems in a certain way to the the best resolution is to bring about an external force to to solve the problem i hit it with a rock and actually when you're a parent or in any kind of nurturing job you can't simply impose external solutions you have to nurture the solution from within and the reason that i was so drawn to uh white ribbon accreditation is because it speaks to something that i have learnt over the last eight years and that is that change doesn't just happen change doesn't just happen because you want it to happen change doesn't just happen because it needs to happen change happens because we make it happen and the best way to make change happen is through education men need to change the world has changed and in some ways the world has not changed actually what needs to change is men and their relationships with women their relationship particularly uh with uh young women and with women in contexts which frankly our ancestors didn't have to deal with they you know i'm just as i'm the first member of my family to be the full-time carer for our kids since we all climbed down from the family tree there are people in all sorts of new situations and new gender roles and the only way that we're going to make sense of it the only way that we're going to be inclusive the only way that we are going to fundamentally improve our society is that good old-fashioned thing education education education and i'm so glad that we are doing this and i'm so grateful both to councillor ripeth and to Elizabeth McWilliams for their work in bringing it about and advocating for it obviously i cannot speak to other people's lived experience but from my own men have got a change we're only going to change with education i commend the uh motion to the council esti thank you thank you and just to clarify because you have accepted the amendment i the motion it is now effectively your motion so i will now open this for debate and at the end of that you will get an opportunity to reply to the debate before we move to a vote on that do i have anyone wanting to speak to this amended motion let's call it that councillor carne and then i briefly want to council leaving and then councillor coe councillor carne i i i want to briefly speak in in favour of of this motion and i'm very glad to see how it's been amended i think it's been much improved by the amendment in particular in drawing attention to all forms of domestic abuse i think about 90 percent of domestic abuse is men of women but there are 10 percent which is women of men and also in i there were perfect experiences that were happening within same sex relationships so these basic violence is wrong and abusive relationships are wrong i would also comment that it's interesting that i think a study was done of men who were a men's attitude to women and a men's general attitude or in terms of control and it was found that two thirds of men generally are peaceful don't tend to have but what am i call abusive attitudes towards women no matter third are and the problems always arise with this one third of men who have this attitude so it means that there are means of targeting and we have to somehow work out how to target and how to find the people that we need to address and trying to modify their behaviour um so um so i'm very much in favour of this and means which kind of i'm i'm keen that we look forward to means by which we can make progress in in achieving that in reducing all forms of abusive relationships here in all forms of domestic relations thank you councillor carne councillor breadman okay councillor breadman doesn't speak on this councillor neeming thank you chair and i'd like to speak in favour of this amended motion um so one of my duties is sort of a wider council duty is to sit on the domestic safety um the domestic safety partnership so that that role involves um the seeing statistics of cases in our area and the most serious part of that role is actually sitting through domestic homicide reviews um so i from personal experience and sadly from professional experience now over the last nearly two years um i i can see um it's it's our duty to to do all that we can in on this subject um to to strengthen our response to to this this crime which is often insidious um in our area and to increase education um in the wider community and i see this motion as complementing the work of our community teams the community safety partnership team and the work that's already undertaken by the housing team with the Daha accreditation um but all i can say is that anything which strengthens our our response to increase this education in this area is undoubtedly a good thing thank you thank you councillor heather williams i'm sorry councillor co yeah um thank you chair um i was just gonna um say that i wholeheartedly agree with what is um presented in front of us both with the original motion and the very extensive sort of amendments that that we have which almost rewrite but there's nothing in either that i disagree with or um you know wouldn't support as a councillor or or as a human really um but um i think really the the principle for me when you look in at the white ribbon campaign and go through their documentation it's pretty clear from what's on their website and uh their documentation as to what they're getting at you know this motion really could have been does that we support the the the white ribbon campaign and there's lots of stuff around it both in the new uh amendment that we've got and in the original which i also support and agree with but it it's all part of of that really what what is within there um that their charity has been set up to deal with as we heard last uh meeting from Elizabeth councillor audience thank you chair um when it comes to the white ribbon campaign and the the content that we've been asked to look at in the context fully supported um i am going to raise my procedural concern and i stress now this is not a political one with the procedural concern when we bring motions such as this to full council there are often numerous reasons why sometimes personal sometimes professional sometimes in relation to our residents and when we craft our motions we do so in the hope that you know there might be amendments there might be things i've had it in the past and and there's been numerous times when actually you negotiate wording and i'm happy this is a complete rewrite and while i still support it you know this is not a question of my support at all for the principles here i think it's absolutely wrong that on an issue like this there has been a complete there was so many ways to yes improve yes merge and i worry for the precedent that it sets for the ruling group to just be able to completely rewrite you have the political arithmetic i accept that but surely the sentiment of the motion which we all agree with could have been found a different way than completely rewriting and i am i am very concerned that that become a dangerous precedent when it comes to the white ribbon campaign itself as council co was said i'll support it um and happy to i do think though i don't think that we would benefit from multiple amendments but the request in the leader i think it should have been the chief executive which would have been more of a non-political function if the chief executive to write all the chairman on behalf of all of us um as opposed to the political leadership so i do feel that there are changes that could have been made um it's a really important issue it's something that goes unnoticed day in day out and it's something that scaringly we as women are taught to accept to a big degree just banter or they didn't mean it there's no harm in it they didn't actually do anything all of these things accumulate and it's incredibly important that it's not a man a man versus women approach it has to be that everybody male female those you know that don't um assign a specific gender it's everybody to call it out when they see it but call it out and not confront to king particularly in politics we want to confront things we want to tackle it head on we want to go for it actually that's not always the way and we and it's a very fine line that we will have to walk all of us most people i'm assuming i know i have myself had casework but we're having to rehouse people in domestic abuse or child cruelty situations um it's not easy i referenced earlier about the tough job that we do and and i will support this please think about the precedents you set when rewriting something like this because this debate could have gone a very different way it could have been perceived as politicalisation of such an important issue that needs to be non-party and that may not be the intention of the action but as i sit here now that is how it appears and if it is that's dangerous thank you chair i really am happy to see this put forward here on this platform in my all my entire professional life in various different aspects from um newborn babies etc to whatever i've had a lot of experience and insight into domestic violence yes it includes education but it is multifactorial and it's not easy for the untrained person to understand now personally um i would be very happy to support this because i think the council can really help by providing resources they're not enough safe houses maybe um in other ways financial and otherwise so whether whether this motion should have been rewritten or not is is not something that i can say but i am just very glad that somebody has taken this on board and um that will and we and i hope we will be proactive in supporting what we can do as a council for this subject thank you council hands rosh thank you very much very helpful i think we now come to i don't see any other contributors to the debate so i come back to council then tell to summer thank you chair and thank you members for your comments and insights um i don't again i'm i'm not going to speak to other people's lived experience i will just briefly answer councillor heather william's concern about politicization um i've had a very strong assurance um that the letter that will be sent on the council's behalf by the leader uh will be uh strictly within the spirit of this debate and strictly within the spirit of the uh non-partisan um accreditation that we are seeking um i appreciate we've got a lot of other business to get through but again um i'm really glad i am really glad this is happening this is the right thing um and i'm very glad that the decision was taken to simply do it um and uh i'm glad we've had this debate and i hope that the uh the vote that we're about to have uh seals the deal thank you thank you members uh yes i am going to move to a vote um can we do this by affirmation agree so this motion as amended is approved by affirmation i'm going to take the opportunity to remind council of the background to this this council had already agreed to pursue white ribbon accreditation i would say to councillor heather williams i agree with some of her concerns on the procedural matters i had not seen this what i was told was going to be an amendment until it was placed before me i don't believe members of the Lib Dem party had but i'm not sure about that i have no knowledge of it and it is clearly not the right way to proceed in order to get an outcome that we all support that could have been done without this concern but the point is that we have just voted for this amendment and we are all in support of it and let's try to focus on that rather than the procedure which went behind it i assure the leader of the opposition that i work very carefully with the procedure in the case of future amendments to make sure that this is not done in this way thank you i'm not posing to take comments on that i want to move on to next business if i may right okay let's take a we'll be back here at 25 past seven members welcome back to this meeting of the south cambridgeer district council on the 27th of febru we are now live we are still quarat and we have we move on to item 20b a motion standing in the name of councillor heather williams the motion is before you councillor heather williams thank you chair i i hope members will be pleased that my motion is very short um and gets to the point um i am known for sort of one liners because i i do think it is um you need to be clear what we're asking um period poverty is something that very often doesn't get spoken about um but actually does affect and i think actually oddly on the back of the motion we just had it it's kind of fitting that does feel a sort of a female related agenda right now however it is important because there are lots of complications and also is a complete lack of confidence and people can feel quite ashamed when they go through something like that it can lead to a lot of embarrassment it can lead to health problems and it's something that could very easy go unforgotten that there is fantastic support out there that are people that are doing things um and and it's great to see that and i thank members you know hopefully i'm assuming of everything this evening this isn't the most controversial thing in the world um but just for those that um don't realise you you've got vending machines even in this council and the cost of a single sanitary tower or tampon is astronomical um a you need to have the coins which in this day and age there's no given we're so used to contact this um but it can be extremely expensive you never know for some especially younger people when it's going to happen there isn't that chance to be prepared and and it's very difficult and there's lots of things that go along with that period poverty is not just about the sanitary provision there is also the pain relief some people are very fortunate they never have a single cramp or pain through the process um some are not so lucky and i have sympathy with those it's something that is seen as something we shouldn't discuss we shouldn't just you know it's seen as you see people get awkward actually it's a completely natural thing that happens you know we can't help it we can't stop it nor should we at the end of the day we are all here through that process because it's an important part of of you know how we have children um and the concern is very much that it could so easy be under looked but it would make such a difference to people's to people's lives um so i'm hoping that while we can't become a pharmacy but there are things like heat packs um as well as sanitary tower provisions things that would help support people through um a very difficult time i appreciate the details of how it's done and advertised could be different but this would be a step today to at least send a signal that um that we recognise it we hear it and that we'll try to try to do what we can thank you new council over Williams do you have a second of your motion happy to second the motion thank you um does anyone wish to speak on this motion council of brown mills i'm sorry through you chair i thank council Williams for this agree um we um i mean the council is already providing some sanitary products you probably know that council Williams probably knows that um for the people who are struggling with the cost of living crisis um and i think we the council also provides short term payments to those people who um which you know prefer that disposable sanitary products but you know this is a well documented national issue um and we you know fully support the motion um i would have seconded it if i had the chance as well um there are things that we there are things that the council do there's mobile food hubs south council itself lots of different ways that we could um we can help here the council can help here so i hope that kind of does any other member of council want to speak to this motion council of brown mills very briefly chair um i'm not afraid to use the term menstruation and um i don't think we should be but we are um and that's a cultural issue perhaps but i was very impressed when i went to meadows community centre uh because they've got unisex toilets there and they've got products available uh they've got incontinence pads they've got sanitary towels they've got tampons the whole whole lot uh dispensing drugs is more problematic okay thank you um but absolutely nothing to disagree with here i think you know very simple and relatively inexpensive interventions like this got to be applauded so thank you for bringing it to the council council richard stonard thank you chair and just briefly um period poverty um you know has has a strong impact on younger women particularly in the educational setting and um you know it can i've seen accounts of um young women missing out on education simply because they can't get access to sanitary products so um i think any anything that we propose if it was you know oriented towards you know that that group of younger women um that would that would be great so i think the um you know the motion is is excellent but it could have this extra dimension uh and perhaps with the involvement of schools so i'm speaking for the position of almost total ignorance but if if our view of this was to include school provision and a degree of discretion as well then uh it would be so much richer so that's my view chair thank you for the opportunity thank you councillor leming i'm very happy to support this motion and i think it's ensuring people live with dignity and i'm very happy to support it thank you thank you councillor riffus i think yeah i'm happy to support this motion um it was just also to say like well i work in a um state secondary school and um free sanitary products are provided across the state sector and obviously it's kept in the room so um they can be easily accessed but this is the kind of thing we should be doing in any um council building anything that well we have an influence and um yeah so it's not a sort of a shame or anything to have to ask or have to go and um get um not be able to afford products i thought i'd just point that out thank you i don't see any other speaker councillor cohen did you want to the second did you want to apply for debate did you want to uh i'll need just to um you know agree with what's already been said really it's actually especially what councillor judiff ripeth has said because i think um it this motion will bring us very much into line with other uh public sector organisations it will also bring us into line with private and charitable sector organisations which are having these discussions and um you know bringing these policies forward as we speak as well so i think agreed councillor how the williams did you want to sum up thank you chair and i appreciate all the positive comments that have um been made and the fact that um yes that menstruation is not it can be said um i brought something very similar on breastfeeding when i first got elected um and i know that was something that again nobody disagreed with but just haven't thought about it because they weren't in that point in their lives and and uh i think this i feel very similarly to to this i hear what you say in relation to youth and there is there is issues around that particularly challenging um at the start because things can be very unpredictable as i said it's hard to prepare and i wasn't suggesting prescriptions chair i was sort of heat pads and the like um but but i wouldn't want it to be exclusively because actually what we see is postpartum and a lot of issues come into play and also a lot of issues when women hit menopause um in that you know it increases um and can be longer times and that can become quite challenging because the expense is then for a longer period and sort of more unsustainable it's i think it's something that um i really appreciate that everybody has has supported and i hope to see see it in the council soon right um now we move to a vote i feel that we can do this without any doubt by affirmation is that correct can we agree with your ideas we then come to the next motion standing in the name of councillor Anna Bradlin uh councillor Bradlin would you like to move your motion please thank you very much chair um i wanted to uh move this motion because uh it's something that's very close to my heart i uh some of you will know i'm also a county councillor and i chair the corporate parenting subcommittee at the county council and in that role we as county councillors are reminded regularly that we are corporate parents to our children in care and i checked the data for this morning is that we have 652 children in our care within the county of Cambridge chair obviously fewer within the district but this is important these are children who have been brought into our arms as corporate parents because they have suffered abuse or trauma or huge anxiety um at the hands of their own parents their birth parents or for some other reason and so these um i'm privileged to meet these a sample of these young people who are representatives from the children in care council who come and speak to us at informal corporate parenting subcommittee and sometimes some of them are shy some of them are confident some of them are exceedingly resilient given what they've gone through but all of them have a residual vulnerability and i would remind members that's even when they've been adopted um they they then come out of county council care and they are then looked after by adopted parents so all of these children need our care when they are children and young people but of course then they move on as young adults and what this motion attempts to do is to treat that care experience as a protected characteristic so that we as councillors have are mindful of their needs when we're setting policy and where possible that we listen to their needs when we're setting policy so this motion has been agreed was agreed by and passed by county council i'm very pleased to say in may 2023 when i seconded the motion and so i'd like to bring it to us here because we had um the most eloquent young woman speaking to us who had been a care experienced young person she was very capable but she pointed out things like the abuse that she had experienced as a younger child caused her difficulty in maintaining friendships it caused her difficulty even with writing essays ultimately she had um she was start she had commenced a university course and was doing really well she'd never had the experience of writing an essay before because she hadn't had that parenting for herself um so often these children or young people moving on in care they feel alone they don't have the same network connections that we have sometimes enjoyed as children of adults parents with connections um and so this group is really vulnerable and need our support to proceed with their education with starting to find work with seeking benefit payments all of these things that and of course seeking housing and in fact those of you who are members of scrutiny and overview will know that i asked our housing officers to consider allocating homes or bearing in mind at least care experienced children in their allocation in our allocation of homes um so these these young people continue despite their resilience and their their um extraordinary courage in proceeding with their life um we need to take them into account and so that is why i'm suggesting that i'm asking we should take into account care experienced as a protected characteristics so that we bear it in mind and in every report that we write that we bear it in mind uh when we when we're setting policy thank you chair thank you councillor bread do you have a second of your motion yes councillor pepper halings will second it did you want to speak for an hour later um if there are any others want to speak first please they do and i'll speak at the end does anyone want to speak to this motion councillor i don't know which was first so forgive me councillor Heather Williams thank you very much sir sorry i took for the first spot this time councillor um completely support what councillor and a breadman has said in the motion um i recognise that i've been very fortunate and very privileged in my life and my upbringing um but others don't have the same and and i have seen the impact that things like even people that have been adopted to very nice affluent families struggle with and that struggle of identity i'm a firm believer and it's something that we all sit here and we all have values right and when we decide and we sit what we what we want to do and values that we try to rule our life by and for some people that's political religion whatever it may be um but a strong belief that i hold is that it's important that regardless of how somebody starts in life and their circumstances that they have the ability to become the best that they can be and i think that is that is also how we get change positive change um is to really make sure and those early years we know how important actually not to five by the time someone's seven quite often their characters for their life are set and i know county council the way they they plan as well and forecast what the needs are going to be from people from such a young age and as a as a parent it's scary actually the responsibility that you feel for that and and i'm sure all parents second guess themselves themselves um because we want to do the best for our children and and for those that are growing up in care that's incredibly different not to have that that family support um and or also potentially had bad experiences and there are lots of reasons why a child will be put into care it's not always because of abuse it can be bereavement you know it can just be people are put up for adoption because they're loved but people can't cope and all those mental health issues in the family there are so many different things that it's so hard to know what is the right thing to do um and so anything that we can do to just keep that value of ensuring that we're doing what we can to ensure regardless of the luck that we have as to how and where we are born that we are not prohibited on what are you we are able to be supported to be the best we can be to thoroughly support that chair thank you uh now next i think we have councillor Graham Cohn and then council items um i'll just briefly so i think it's an absolutely excellent motion because what it does is it seeks to protect some of the most vulnerable children in our wards um and it very clearly indicates how we as councillors and as a council would seek about going about that and i think it's very very good yeah it's an excellent motion i'll be supporting it councillor Eileen Wilson thank you um i started out my civil service career in the early years as a social security benefits officer and so i fully support this motion because quite often the people i was visiting who had just moved into a new home were care leavers and they they really did struggle it was a struggle for everything claiming benefits getting the home together and no family support and sporadic support from once they'd left care um there wasn't always a lot of support in those days so yeah i really support this motion i see no other speakers councillor Pippa Haley did you want to speak as a seconder of the motion thank you and it's really good to hear the support for this motion in the room um across all old parties and i think as many people i think and i'll include officers in this as well councillors on officers we've got personal experience of how important the protected characteristic nature of this motion is and how life changing that can be and i just want to share one story and that's about jazz jasmine she's the eldest of three children um and she and her two siblings were brought into foster care the day before school term started they hadn't eaten for three days they had no school uniform no school materials no school bags anything the youngest was five they were immediately put into a foster family um unprepared for for school jazz was eight years at that time eight years old ten years later part of a loving relationship with the foster family she got through a secondary school and her a levels and um entered university during her first year as she herself had expected her mother was found dead as she entered her second year as most students moving out into independent accommodation with friends she was required to declare that she came from a care situation that she'd been in care she was refused rental accommodation even when the foster father offered to pay 12 months in advance when pushed the rental provider said that they just couldn't risk it having faced as councillor Bradman has said that resilience and all the barriers up until then to then face this next barrier where technically she was homeless as all her friends moved into that house and she didn't and that's where it brings it back to this council because it's by being a protected characteristic that this puts the burden and the requirement on public bodies to give priority consideration and in our council that would be priority consideration for social housing for example for children in that care jazz is not from south cambridge a district council and full disclosure it's my brother who is the foster father and he and his wife jazz now sits on the panel for foster parent selection on that committee so again it's the voice of those who are care leavers who should also be brought into consideration to talk to their own experience and it's the author of the report which is the independent review of social care which is the basis for all of the recommendations coming out of the county council and others who congratulated the government on taking action particularly the department for education on some of the recommendations however he was shocked that the government said it would not adopt legislation for the protected characteristic and that is what has led to councils across the country taking it upon themselves to enact the possibility to make this a protective characteristic within their own domain and I would just hope that we can all adopt this and vote for it but also that we do think that there's still a battle to be fought at the national level around this thanks councillor braddon did you have anything to add to that as proposer of emotion thank you chair but thank you very much for the support across the council chamber for this I just wanted to point out also that of course that young people themselves often want to be invisible they want to be treated exactly like any other child they don't necessarily want the fact that their care experience to be noted um so it's up to us you remember that that principle that we have to extend our service so that the we give them we enable them to take the same opportunities as any other child or young person and so that means us going the extra step to make sure they have the step up so that they can take the opportunities that we can give them so um you know we we are corporate parents at the county council but we have a duty as public officers to um to be mindful of their needs and to improve our understanding and you know one of the things to bear in mind is with the best will in the world sometimes foster placements our children want us to call them homes of course not placements there's a little diversion on that county council used to refer to this as placement when they're placed with a foster carer and the first thing they said was can you change that can you call it something different we don't want to feel like pieces on a game board and so we said what would you like us to call it and they said could you call it homes please so we've changed all our paperwork at county to refer to homes when we're dealing with them people so it's our duty to change the way we behave towards people who have extra vulnerabilities to give them the same opportunities as the more fortunate children who have not been in care so thank you very much indeed everyone for um your support thank you we now move to the vote i'm going to suggest we can do this one by affirmation thank you thank you to all who took part in that debate um that brings us to item 21 chairs engagements they're on the papers in front of you i'm not going to go through them i would nearly add that i was privileged on the 26th of january in addition to attend the citizenship awards at the county hall as the guest of council sabastian kindersley's chair of the county council i was very impressed i think 28 people took up citizenship that day about 600 do so in this county and i was impressed that they undertake an exam which i certainly would not have fast so with that i merely remind you that the next council meeting will be the annual meeting held on 23rd of may again at 2 p.m and with that i declare this meeting closed at 1955 thank you all very much thanks chair