 Thank you, and good hours. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to this meeting of South Campershire District Council, Scrooorthy and Overview committee. My name is Councillor Stephen Drew, I'm chair of the committee. May I make a few housekeeping announcements? Those present, including any members of the public observing or any public speakers, are asked to note that this meeting is being filmed and live streamed. By your presence you are deemed to have consented to be filmed and to use of those images and sound recordings for a webcast. Mae oedd yn ddiolch i'r ddechrau hynny, mae oedd yn gallu gweithio'n ddiolch cyfnodol o'r ddiolch sy'n gwybwysig oherwydd y rhai o'r ddiolch ac yn ydymai i'w ddysgu'r ddychrau. Roedd yma'r hynod yn mynd i ddweud o'r ddysgu'r ddysgu, arall y ddysgu'r ddysgu, a bod yna yn gwneud arwain i'r ddysgu'r ddysgu, ar ddysgu'r ddysgu'r ddysgu, o ran y cynnwys bach ei ddweud i fod yn mynd i gwith gwaith i gwrth gweithio'r dod i gweithio'r cynnwys bach chi'n gweithio'r cynnwys. they wish to speak by raising their hand. I will ask the vice-chair to note the order of speakers both virtually and in the room. Committing Members present, I will now invite each of you to introduce yourselves. Members, after I call your name, please introduce yourself and say which ward you represent. As I said earlier, my name is Councillor Stephen Drew, and I am one of the members for Canborn. My vice-chair is Councillor Graham Cohn. I am one of the members for the Fendit and Falkbourne ward. Paul Bear Park. Thank you, chair. I am a member for Milton and Water Beach. I'm substituting for Councillor Rippeth. Thank you. Councillor Sue Ellington. Good afternoon. My name is Sue Ellington. I am a member for Swaybacy Ward. Thank you very much. Councillor Peter Fane. And Councillor Sally Ann Hobart. Thank you, chair. I'm one of the members for the Melbourne Ward. Councillor James Hobart. Good evening, chair. I'm James Hobart. I'm the member for Foxton Ward. Councillor Helen Leaming. Good evening. I'm Helen Leaming. I'm one of the... Councillor Richard Stobart. Thank you, chair. I'm Richard Stobart. I'm one of the members for Gertin Ward. It includes the villages of Brighton and Maddingley. Councillor Aiden the Bandoir. Oh, I'm Aiden the Bandoir. I represent the villages of Barrington Ward. And Councillor Heather Williams. Good evening, chair. Heather Williams. I'm rectoring the waters ward and I'm substituting for Councillor Bygott. We also have Councillor Bunty Waters present. Good evening. Thank you. Barhill Ward. Thank you. Councillor Bradman. Thank you, chair. Good evening. I'm Councillor Anna Bradman. I'm three members for Milton and Water Beach Ward. My apologies, Councillor Bradman. I did not realise your hand was up because I'd missed you out completely. I must confess I was thrown by the fact that Councillor Bear Park substituting meant you weren't first on the list today. And I thought very carefully about it as he was speaking and then decided to ignore you. I do apologise. Thank you very much. I believe you have some cabinet members present. So, Councillor John Williams. Thank you, chair. I'm Councillor John Williams. I am the lead cabinet member for resources and also one of the members for Fendin and Four Bull Ward. Councillor Brian Milne's. Good evening, everybody. Brian Milne's deputy leader and member for Sourcing Ward. And Councillor John Batchelor. Good evening. Just trying to get the camera working. Right, okay. Yes, John Batchelor, a member for Linton and Cabinet Member for Housing. Thank you very much. And based on my faux pas of missing Councillor Bradman earlier, can I just check there are not any more councillors present before I move on? Excellent. Thank you very much. We also have a number of officers present. Liz Watts. Good evening, chair. Good evening, members. Liz Watts, chief executive. It's a madduck. Good evening. I'm Peter Madduck. I'm the head of finance. Ian Senior. Hello. I'm the scrutiny and governance advisor. Aaron Clarke. And Aaron Clarke is present. There you are. Excellent. And Bodeos. Bodeos, I had a climate and environment. Thank you. And okay. Bodeo, I think it would be quite good if you turned your camera off. Yes. I was very good to make that suggestion. That might be a good idea. And I think at the spring, I think that's everyone. No, I do apologise. Thank you very much. And Peter Campbell. Best for last, Peter Campbell, head of housing. Okay. This is not going very well. First of all, I ignore Councillor Bradman, then I failed to see the person who was covering half the screen. I should be trying harder from now onwards. Excellent. Thank you very much. Okay. I can confirm that the meeting is quarrex. There being at least four scrutiny and overview committee members here in the chamber. If any time a member leaves the meeting, would they please make that fact known to me so it can be recorded in the minutes. Finally, reported this meeting we presented to Cabinet on the 20th of March as neither vice-chair nor I is likely to be at that meeting. Is there any other committee member willing to present that report? Councillor Stavart, we are looking in your direction as you have volunteered a number of times recently, but I see a shake of the head. If you will chair, I'm unavailable on the 20th and I'm sorry, but normally I would do it and I will do that duty in the future too, but the 20th, I'm not available. That's okay. No problem. Thank you very much for all the times you've done in the past. Is there any other member present who would be able to represent the committee on the 20th of March? Okay. I shall move on and Councillor Bradman may come back to us on that. Excellent. So, item two apologies. Chair, are there any apologies for absence? We've got apologies from councillors Tom Beigolt and Judith Repeth who are both committee members and we also have apologies from councillor Bridget Smith and councillor Dr Tumi Hawkins. Excellent. Thank you very much. And item three, declarations of interests. Members are required to declare the existence and nature of any interest which affects or relates to any item of business to be considered and explanatory note for councillors include immediately after the agenda. Councillor Williams. So, Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you. It's going to get really confusing. Is that next to each other? So, just that the Greater Cambridge Partnership is mentioned, it's only in the minutes, so I don't see it being an issue, but I am a member of the Assembly. Councillor Stobart. Thank you, Chair. So, I'm a director of both South Cambridge for Investment Partnership and South Cambridge of Projects, both of which are part of the investment strategy at South Cambridge District Council. I've taken advice from the monitoring officer and the advice is that I may participate in the discussion but not engage in any vote or decision making activity. Thank you very much. Councillor Hobro. Thank you, Chair. So, through my membership of this council, I'm a non-executive director of Urban Street Housing and which is mentioned in the investment strategy, it's a part of the investment strategy. I've also, like Councillor Stobart, I've also consulted with the monitoring officer and given the same advice that I can participate in the discussion but should not take part in the vote. Thank you very much. Then are the members. Councillor Fane. Thank you, Chair. I am a director of Shire Homes, which is not mentioned in this investment strategy nor directly affected. I have not been advised I should not take part in the debate or the right. Thank you very much. Are there any other councillors who wish to raise a matter related to possible conflict of interest? Councillor Bradman. It's not a conflict of interest but I can report to Cabinet if you wish. Thank you very much. Excellent. There we are. Timing was perfect. And if I could just ask Councillor Libby Earle to introduce herself to the meeting. Libby Earle, councillor for Slawston Ward. Thank you very much. Do you not see any other hands at this point? I do not see anything raised online. So, we shall move on. So, we have three sets of minutes that we need to go through for. We have had a number of meetings in a short window. As you can see, the 15th of December, the 12th of January and the 19th of January. So, first of all, we shall raise the issue of the minutes of the 15th of December 2022. Councillor Leaming, I believe you have a correction to mention first. I do. Thank you, Chair. In the minutes it said that I attended the meeting remotely but actually I was still in person. So, if that could be corrected, I think that would be great. Very much. Is there any other councillor who wishes to raise any issue in relation to the minutes of the 15th of December 2022? Nope. In that case, they may ask by affirmation for the acceptance of those minutes. Thank you. The minutes of the 12th of January, 2023. Do any councillers wish to raise anything in relation to that? Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you, Chair. On page 11, I do not appear to be in the list of attendees. I was here in person and I am quoted in the minutes. So, we should be able to do that list. Thank you, Chair. Excellent. Thank you very much. Is there any on else who wishes to raise anything in relation to the minutes of the 12th of January? In that case, can I ask for by affirmation the acceptance of those minutes? Thank you. And the third meeting in that period of just over a month was on the 19th of January 2023. Does anybody, any councillers wish to raise any points in relation to those minutes? Nope. In that case, then, can I ask by affirmation the acceptance of those minutes? Okay. Thank you very much. Our fifth item on the agenda is public questions. We do not have any public questions for this meeting, which means we now move on to the three items which form the bulk of our agenda. Gender item six, the investment strategy followed by gender item seven, the quarter three performance support and then agenda item eight, further support for cost of living crisis for South Hampshire residents is obviously quite a meaty agenda. We are therefore seeking to run with approximately 45 minutes of time in the meeting per item. If you are speaking at 45 minutes, I will not stop you speaking. I will not say that we cannot have a bit more, but in general terms, I will make us aware that we're coming up to that point. And if we can seek to try as hard as possible to stick to that, that will still lead to us having a meeting which is still approaching two and a half hours. So therefore, a good use of our time, but we can be as efficient as possible. So in relation to the investment strategy, who would like to start us off with a point for a question, please? John Williams may be about to get to the best. Do you want me to introduce it? If you wish to introduce it, councillor Williams, you are welcome to do so. But obviously, the paper was issued beforehand, and members have had the opportunity to read, but we are more than happy for you to give some explanation if you wish to do so. Well, I'll give a brief introduction then. The investment strategy clearly changes from the previous investment strategy as a result of the changes to the public works loan board rules. We have revised it so that there are now basically three types of investment. There's service investment, which includes social capital. There's commercial investment, regeneration, which we've produced a revised matrix, which will find on page 54. And then there's investment partnerships, and we have two investment partnerships, one with Hill and one with Barbara Beatty. The target income from these investments is from the service investments. We're looking at 2.5% return, and on commercial regeneration, we're looking at a 5% return. And one thing to clear up is that the changes to the public works loan board are not retrospective, so that we can continue without purely commercial investments for yield, and can continue to, if we want to, increase investments in those investments going forward. But any new investments will require us to be guided by the public works loan board rules. You might say, well, can't we invest, can't we find borrow from other sources? Yes, we can, but the problem there is that once we do, we can't then use the public works loan board for loans, and the public works loan board continues to offer us the best interest rate, so we would be foolish not to take heed of their rules. So that's the main change to it, and Mr Maddox and I are open to questions. Thank you, Chair. So a few questions really about the big picture, and perhaps two around risk, but the risk in the sense of what risk is the council prepared to take in order to balance investment and return, and how is that, in a sense, quantified and regulated? And then a related topic would be what's the ethical framework in which the investment process operates? Now, that might be implicit. I may be asking a question out of turn here, but just a brief summary of the ethics, and would that include, for example, if through a pattern of investment, there was investment saying fossil fuel, some aspect of fossil fuel, would that be picked up as part of the process of evaluating an investment? So two things, risk, council's appetite for risk, and the ethical framework in which the investment process operates. Councillor John Williams. Thank you, Chair. On risk, we have a risk register. We also apply, if you see in the document, we also consider risk against each investment, and we have a criteria for that. And as I say, as far as commercial regeneration is concerned, we have the matrix, obviously, against which we can apply risk. On the ethical side, of course, we are governed by the council's policies and the council's business plan. So whatever we do with regard to the treasury and investment strategies, they are guided by the policies of this council and by the business plan of this council. So we don't operate independent of those policies. So if it is a policy of this council not to invest in fossil fuels, then we will not invest in fossil fuels. Okay. To interpret, I've seen... Yes? Yeah, just to say that appendix one, we've got the responsible investment policy there, so have a look at that. And that should outline the approach we take, but obviously with select and particular investments, it goes through a fairly rigorous process anyway, which we can expand upon if necessary. Okay. Thank you. Councillor Heather Williams. Sorry. Councillor Stover, are you happy for me to move on that your questions have been answered appropriately? Yes. I'm satisfied with those answers, Chair. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you, Chair. My question is around page 54 in regards to the sort of track changes that have been put on for location and tenancy strength being reduced. I do get a sense of deja vu, Chair, because I know I've raised this previously when we've looked at different revisions. So I'm wondering if Councillor John Williams or perhaps Mr Maddox can just let us know where it was originally, because I know we've already stepped those down once before. And there was a bit of a debate around tenancy strength being a higher priority in the waiting factor. I'd sort of ask if Cabinet were minded to look at that again in increasing the tenancy strength, especially in the current climate, Chair, in the waiting factor and the scoring criteria. Councillor John Williams. Thank you, Chair. I think, far as I was aware, this has been slightly altered as a result of comments that we have received in the past about the way we look at the investments. I think also I have to take into account that things have changed in that we are now looking at commercial regeneration, not purely in commercial investment. And therefore, tenancy strength when you come and look at commercial regeneration is of a lesser importance in a way than it was in the past when we were purely looking at tenancy in order to provide us with income. So I think you need to bear that in mind for that change. Because clearly we could well find a serious situation where we are investing in a property that doesn't have any tenants because it's in a very poor state and we want to bring it back into use. So therefore it has a little bit of a lower score than it would have had if we were just purely looking for tenants who were going to deliver us lots of cash. Do you wish to add anything to that or do you wish to add anything to that, Peter? What should I do particularly? The emphasis of the strategy is rather different to what it was. Obviously it is really quite a key element when we virtually completely yield but as Councillor Williams alluded to, it's more likely now that if we're regenerating the property that must be up. Certainly investment properties have become the dot where we change, where there's a change in tenants will obviously be looking at that because that's obviously very important for those properties and I think that's obviously going to be key element for those properties going forward. It's probably less important for things like car commercial regeneration particularly that there aren't any sitting tenants. Thank you Chair. My first question about what the original scoring for those two were because obviously it would be interesting to see what it was when it was first initially set up so to say we have had a debate over the reduction of location tenancy in the past. Yeah so I think, sorry. Are we going to carry on with Peter? I'm just going to apologise, I'm afraid I don't have that information. No that's fine, I sense by what was happening here and by you that I was carrying on here so Peter or Liz, whoever is carrying on, Liz is definitely pointing to Peter. So I can see it was tenancy, it's changed to eight whether before it was higher than certainly from the previous iteration I see it. At some point it may have been higher than tenancy. Sorry, just to pick up on that as well that when we started to look at investing beyond Erman Street into other sectors it was very important at that time that we had tenants that had a very good record that were demonstrating already that they had a good ability to provide us with a good income and so tenancy was very important in the early days, the tenant was very important in the early days, not so now with the changing emphasis. Okay, councillor Williams to go back to you, are you happy to move on at this point or anything further you feel hasn't been answered? I'm happy to move on chair but would appreciate the offer that Mr Maddox made to look into the historical context of this. I'm sure that's been noted by Peter and by Ian so that's fine. Next up is councillor Cone. Thanks very much chair and mine's just a very quick brief point on page 36 around training for officers and members but mainly around training for members. I was just going to ask A, we think that the training is currently a good enough standard when we're making very difficult decisions around investment and risk and should there be a set criteria around what training councillors should have undertaken when they are directly involved with making decisions on those investments. Councillor John Williams. Thank you chair. That's a very good point and it's very important I believe that members of this committee should be able to assess the strength or otherwise of a particular investment opportunity and therefore be able to make a decision accordingly. So far as I'm concerned I've been to sit for training etc on this and the investment governance board which this goes to first before we make a recommendation. Members of that board are also given training and I think in the past we have given training to members of this committee may be given that we have now basically a new committee that that we should do that again. I think that would be a very good idea. Can I just check in? Councillor Fane, did I see your hand up a moment ago? I did, so I've written your name down while Councillor Fane was speaking. So I'll come back to you first before Councillor Cone. Are you happy for us to move on on that? I am chair, thanks very much. Okay, I've got Councillor Fane and then Councillor Heather Williams and then Councillor Stoibart. Councillor Hope I, did I see your hand as well? Yes. So Councillor Fane. Thank you chair. Councillor John Williams referred to the I think in relation to PWLB rules principally, the three different categories of investment including investment partnerships outfinding number four, page 49. I wondered how the green energy projects at five on page 50 would be assessed for the purposes of target yields bearing in mind that they can be either service and can for instance deliver returns in terms of reduced costs or they can be commercial and also the rates of return can vary quite markedly with very little notice in response to changes in government policy and support and so on. Councillor John Williams. Well if unless they're part of a regeneration package then I think we would we would be looking at those types of investments as a service investment. You know I would deliver in our residents a better grid capacity or enabling us to as with this building you know use our assets better and in order to to get better energy efficiency for for our assets. So we wouldn't be investing in I don't we would be allowed now if we were going to go down the public works loan board route. We wouldn't be allowed simply to invest in green energy in for yield we just wouldn't be able to do that. So it was either would be as a social capital or it would be for regeneration. Is there anything to add Peter on that? Yeah I think just I did ask that PWLB directly about this point because obviously it was of interest to members and their view was that it was fine as long as there could be some connection to the district to the benefits of the district. So you know if we were just to do it for yield I think they would probably say no but as long as we could demonstrate some sort of service element and benefit to the district then they'd be happy with that. That's fine back to you. Thank you chair. There are some current developments for instance in wind energy. It is possible that there will be further investments of or renewed investments in onshore wind including possibly in community turbines just an example of the sort of investment which could be directly linked to this area could be relevant to PWLB but could be both service or commercial in nature. I mean maybe that is just a mixed category. Okay thank you. Councillor Fane if you take your final bit there was more of a point rather than a question in a less and less councillor job. Yeah I yeah and in that case I can just check that you're happy for us to move on that your questions have been answered Councillor Fane. Okay so next up is Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you chair this was just following off Councillor Cohn's question that might be helpful to know is we had a finance SIP for training which was very good we had a day of that that was in July 2018 and we also had in November 2018 commercialisation training which you can remember the workshops and we'll have that I think Alex Collier so that's was quite some time ago and they were I thought very beneficial and perhaps we could look at revisiting that but I would stress it should be for all members and open to all members because of course these decisions come to full council and so can I stress that if we there should be a training plan attached and it should be for all members. Thank you and next up is Councillor Stobart. Thank you chair so so this question is kind of not centred on but we can start off with section six of the main report on page 36 governance arrangements so my question concerns the pipeline of investment possibilities so at some point you know people are out there as it were beating the bushes looking for investment possibilities thinking them through and presenting them to council I think the section six gives a nice summary of the the structures in place in the sense to receive and then process, analyse and put forward investment possibilities but my questions really around the pipeline process I'll be sure for example that you know what summarised in paragraph 6.2 is strong enough you know particularly where there is such a competition for possibilities of investment and is that is that pipeline you know maintained is it documented is there a kind of proper process of slimming it down or asking questions why isn't it fuller why aren't there more things so sorry I'm a little simplistic in the approach I'm thinking about a sales process but actually there's probably a lot of analogy between attracting investment and processing it through until there is a proper project in place so I think for us to summarise this as a question what is the nature of the pipeline that in a sense connects the ideas that are out in the wider world and those things which become really serious propositions for South Cambridge and District Council to invest in and what are the numbers and that could be a bit of an abstract thing what are the numbers associated with each stage do we have to be getting like 20 possibilities to get down to one which is suitable what kind of ratios are operating in that sector so um I hope that's enough of a question or is enough there's enough substance for a question there thank you Councillor John Williams um can I ask um these are things going to answer that please what's thank you and through you chair I'm subbing for an end's worth today he leads on the investments just she um and I think it's probably useful to understand the history here council's debate so you know pre the pwld was changing the council had identified through only 40 million pounds of investment was looking at significant investment in commercial property for commercial income and at that point we had quite a big pipeline in terms of commercial property being put put forward to us by agents and that pipeline went through the processing appendix here with the the grid and the scoring and so on and went through the process of investment strategy and investment governing boards um things have really changed since then and what we're really looking at investing now is is much more local projects where the chance are we may even be involved in the project so if you look at for example um North Star it may be that we're investing in the enterprise zone there um the renewable energy project in the depot which you know we don't own the site but obviously we're working closely with the owner to carry out that renewable energy project and so the pipeline is really different uh partly I suppose it's driven by the change in rules so we're doing different sorts of investment um which means that we have less money to invest and it's much more local we also have the business support team which is a team of four people who are working on a daily basis with businesses uh kind of small medium and and larger ones and you know they're specifically sort of um empowered to look for potential investment where they would meet our investment criteria um so but I guess areas where there's a kind of gap in the market where a business couldn't go to a bank but we feel that there's a sort of a solid reason to perhaps do a joint venture or to invest in a business which otherwise just wouldn't be able to happen so it's it that the stories since I've been here in three years has changed very very radically um and and therefore the pipeline and the way that it's generated has to that's a stabot thank you um through you chair thank you for the um that that description of the change of era if you will um and I think some of the things we've been speaking about already in regard to why would you do projects um I think uh there was I can see how that fits so thank you for that well we could probably dig deeper but I think that's a very satisfactory point to reach in our understanding of how projects come into being thank you thank you very much and councillor Hobo thank you chair so I had a question about section eight the uh the prudential indicators and um it's uh if we go down to 8.4 where um there's a table that uh shows the debt to net service expenditure ratio so this is on page 40 um so uh really what one small point um which is that it took a while for me to work out where the numbers in row b come from commercial investments I think they're the cumulative total of table 7.2 which uh outlines the amount being invested every year on top of the existing investment and uh that wasn't totally clear when I first looked at this table but the real question I had was about um row c in that table the net service expenditure which as I understand it represents the um the sort of the the total expenditure of the council so it's the size of the business as it were um so the numbers there for 2023 24 are much larger than they are in the following four years so it's it's running at about 22 23 million in the subsequent years but but but in this uh coming financial year it's at 30 million and of course that jump affects all of the numbers in the next few sections which are percentages that are as a as a percentage of that total so my question really was what why is there such a drop in that number and what what does it mean and does it matter um that it's jumping so much in terms of assessing these percentages that that sort of um follow from it thank you councillor John Williams speaking about it yeah so so you're right um you know row b is just sitting down and that service expenditure for 23 24 represents was currently in the budget so that was the budget last week wasn't it um so um and the figures that we show going forward are from our millions now I'm aware that the 30 million looks very different because of one or two of the items within the 23 24 budget so I'd need to go back and check why that's such a big difference one thing that we have been discussing and I'm going to do a little bit more work on this okay so we've got a ratio there but what does that actually let me is that good or is that bad and I think probably what we need to do is do a bit of benchmarking with other authorities see how we compare with others because the attempt of that ratio is to see well you know our our investments out of kilter with the size of the authority because that's what it's trying to represent um and we probably need to do a bit more work around well okay 806% in 2025 26 how does that compare with others um what I can say it's significantly lower than what it was before as Liz mentioned earlier in the talking about a larger amount of investment and consequently you have larger figures there which um you know we've been looking at sort of 14 times we're now looking at eight times so it you know on the face of it it looks a bit more manageable I don't think there was any problem with 14% and I don't think there's any problem with sort of eight times but what I would call up to is check it against other authorities just to make sure that that seems reasonable to my mind it seems reasonable but I think it's worth doing that extra piece of work just to see how that compares particularly given some of the um some of the high profile cases we've heard in local government these times. Councillor John Williams. Thank you chair I'd just like to reassure the committee that um we did do some benchmarking um back in 2019 when we set out um on a commercial investment and at that time um what we were proposing was not out of uh step with what other local authorities were doing but clearly we need to re-look at that given the changes to the public work loan board changes and also what has happened recently with some councils thinking bubble can woken and uh spell form where they have clearly overstretched themselves and have got into trouble with with their investments we're nowhere near what those authorities are the situation that those priorities are even but it's worth looking at this again given the change in circumstances but I think you know you can see that we have uh rowed back on our investment um plan uh for the coming five years and and therefore I'm pretty confident that you'll find that these figures are reasonable uh in comparison with our other local authorities that are doing what we're doing of our similar size to us. Peter again. Yes I've just had a look at our budget actually there's uh it's an interesting point here because there's there's our revenue contributions of capital rather skewing the figures this year so we have a we have a three million contribution to capital from our revenue budget now that's not in future years and when we get to twenty four twenty five budget we may well have a figure there so actually that is actually skewing the figure so I'm I'm actually thinking we've probably stripped that out so thanks for raising that we'll have a look at that. Okay councilor Hoveray back to you. So thank you very much I mean I think you've answered the question satisfactorily just just my I mean to um my final point really that my question is really about making sure that the figures are meaningful and that they there's any trends that we see and there are meaningful trends um so I think yeah finding some way of estimating the net service expenditure without perhaps taking the actual figure to give a stable indicator perhaps with the sort of the problem yeah thank you very much. Okay are there any other councillors who wish to answer a question in relation to this item at residence? Do you not see anyone else? Um in that case then I suggest that we'll move on thank you councillor John Williams and Peter Maddox for your responses and contribution on our first item there I'm sure you'll be back again in the next one when we go through the quarterly report so that brings us to item number seven which is the 2022-2023 quarter three performance report so sorry councillor Bradlund. Just a question do we need to say that we note it? Yes nothing you're quite right in that case then these colleagues are we happy to say that we note the report. Agreed. Okay thank you I think I was a bit thrown by the fact that it didn't take 45 minutes and in my head it was just time to move on thank you councillor Bradlund Okay so 2022-2023 quarter three performance report so colleagues we have all had the reports we will have the opportunity to look through so if I can ask councillors if there anyone who wishes to start us off with questions in relation to the quarter three performance report councillor Leeming. Thank you chair and I would like to ask a question please about point AH 211 which is on page 66 of our report is to do with relete and housing stock so there's two questions that I would like to ask about this really and I think we've mentioned this in the past but I'm wondering whether the target of 17 days to relete the housing stock is realistic and whether we should review that as a target and my second question is there's a very good explanation in the comments about what's actually happened and the behaviour of tenants at the moment and it implies that it's taking longer to turn properties around and if this is going to be a long-term trend if this is something that's not just a one-off if it continues is this something that we should look at in terms of boosting um boosting the maintenance work that that's happening in this in this area so I understand that um it's it's me as sort of performing this maintenance work but is this something that we should look at in terms of their contract to see whether they need any extra capacity. Thank you councillor John Batch for the first instance I'm afraid to say John we are not being blessed with your dulcits tones thank you yeah first one okay yeah thank you chair and thank you for the question um you're an absolutely right uh the 17 days um hasn't been achieved in um in any of the time that I've been associated with housing um and we've recognised this um and um are reviewing the um the targets entirely because this this covers much too much activity is key to key so is when the keys are handed over and when we when the new person actually takes the keys to go go in so there's a huge deviation of what could or could not happen in in between so we're going to change this um by breaking down the targets into its component parts i.e. What has to happen immediately we've taken over the property i.e. the level of repairs and so on and then the other key element is how quickly we can actually turn round at the re re letting so um for the new financial year there will be a new target figure and it'll be more precise and and hopefully much more meaningful than the one we've got now thank you chair and do you wish me to go to Peter for anything to be added to that or are you content that's gone john any more wish to add yes peter i'm sure if you want to add a lot yeah no i just want to say i mean just to add to what john said is that he's quite right everything he said but this isn't something that that we are being complacent about um what we do want to do is to um uh we understand this is a trend that's happening nationally many organisations are finding the really times are are are going up but having said that there are other organisations are performing better than we are what we want to do is to um a number of things to break down the information that as kind of the bachelors mentioned but also spend some time seeing what the best in class services are doing to see what we can learn from elsewhere and what we can transfer bikes of district in order to improve our service okay great thank you very much cancer lee main thank you very much that's that's very helpful actually so um when when we see this in the next report will there be a number of benchmarks i'm just sort of looking at it will be broken out into sections so there'll be the time taken between turn around between the tenant handling the noticing perhaps inspection time then maintenance time there'll be a number of separate measures is that yeah so so what we're doing is that we'll look at breaking this this down so remember that the information you've got is quarter three so quarter four will probably come in as existing formats and we'll change it after that um what we're also doing is that we you know this is obviously of concern to officers and also to our tenants so we're working with the tenants groups as well and see what information that that they want so i'm not going to guarantee you now exactly what the format's going to be but i can say that we are going to devise it much in a way that consulate bike was explained that's the levy that's the levy and in terms of sort of reviewing the long-term trends if is this something that we are going to have to um to change how how we operate or how we ask mirrors to work if for instance we're seeing more tenants living properties which need major refurbishment works if that's a long-term trend again it's something that we want to learn about a bit more before committing to this quite often the the properties that need work extensive work coming out have been properties that have occupied by for a number of years by elderly people and people with who've been in ill health for a number of years and they've refused improvement works whilst they've been tenants so that might just be a a short lived case which are naturally come come to an end so um but we are we are also seeing an increase in people who are abandoning the properties so so just leaving so there may be people with mental health problems etc we need to you know examine those to understand what we can um from the tenants who have left us um to try to understand why things are happening as well as the figures and as I say also benchmark those against other organisations who are doing better than we are thank you thank you very much mr come looks really good answer and and thanks for all you're doing to support residents and maintain these important assets to the to the council thank you thank you Councillor Heather Williams thank you chair oh i've got a couple of questions but um i'll stick on the same thing if that's all right on the average days to relax and then the satisfaction with responsive repairs um mr Campbell will know of a particularly difficult situation i had in one of my villages of repairs that went on for some time and and that was because of the having issue with the roof and having to have the solar panels removed because they've been on there for some time and then put back on and that obviously meant there were lots of different things to try and to repair it so i'm just wondering whether it would be helpful to have sort of a breakdown of what type of repairs that we're doing because obviously that's going to affect some of the averages um if it's substantial work like roof or whether it's minor works and whether we collect that data so we can see if there's trends of particular things um and if that information could be available to members i sort of ask because um sometimes i do worry that we don't sort of monitor how the houses are being kept sometimes um and i think this alludes to it in the last paragraph about pre termination inspections because um i know that we do the walk arounds i've been a walk arounds of the housing offices and that's great um but i'm wondering how often we actually do um sort of house inspections as you would if you were in the private rental sector and and the such like because the people desperately i'm very nervous actually about changing the target i'd be much happier hearing how we're going to meet the target um because obviously we don't have enough affordable housing for everybody so we need to make it available as quickly as possible um and i'd be really interested to see the nature of the repairs that are being done uh because from that there may be something that some remedial works that we could do across our stock while the tenants are in place that would help with that um so chair i think that was that and the responsive repairs can't you okay so councillor john bachelor yes thanks very much for that um yes i think um councillor williams uh what you're laying out there is is almost precisely what we're actually doing uh we already have different categories of repair by you know large jobs small jobs and so on so those are all identified so um as we work up the the new breakdown on this particular thing um i think we will be using those certainly um on the what else do we have the tenants right the the time taken and um when i first got involved with this we had quite a lot of houses which were under repair or more often waiting for repair for some considerable period we have actually looked at that over recent year or so and i can now say that um houses which are being out of use for more than six months are now only three of those two are six months to a year and there's one property over one year um i think that's as far as i can go i'm sure peter um has more yeah so um yeah just to come back about the the information uh uh required uh yes we have a whole suite of performance indicators that we get off the um of the mirrors contract uh and we really present a small sub-section of that within the within the key performance indicators so we will retishud all that is collected in the background uh and is shared particularly with our tenant's groups as part of the of the contract monitoring um yeah we can look at how to you know how to make more of that available to um to members uh but you know also there's some reluctance to make this report all real long if it can send all the details um coming to the issue about property inspections um we do not carry out periodic inspections um of all our of all our tenancy properties and a compulsory inspection uh would be treated as an unfair tenancy term and in fact you know that they uh occasionally when people have tried to do that the legality of that has has been challenged and overturned and it's also massively an expensive project to to complete so what we do try and do though is to make sure that well we recognise that our tenants are visited by a whole range of officers at different times under different circumstances and what we've tried to do is to make it as easily as possible for any officer who's visited in the property to report issues of repairs issues or indeed disrepair issues back to us as soon as possible and we take appropriate action so for example members will recall you know there was a recent communication centre which included to all members uh to officers how to identify uh damp and moulding properties so that can be reported back towards as quickly as possible so that we can take immediate action rather than waiting for a formal inspection so Heather Williams thank you chair and I appreciate it saying not want to everything to this report but I think particularly if targets things are being looked at and being changed um it'd be very helpful if a note could just be distributed to all members just so we can have a a fuller understanding of what what's what's what and part of my question that perhaps I didn't phrase it very clearly chair was about the responsive repairs and tenants being satisfied to me that links with us taking longer to sort it out how much is of this is delays in being able to get there to repair the properties or how long the repairs are taking and that's what i'm trying to look is it as a response rate or is it just with we cannot meet the levels of repairs needed in that time frame you got to come back on that again Peter Campbell sorry go to Peter Maddox if you like yeah Councillor Williams so so so you're relating to the it's definitely you despite my test to transfer it um so yes so so you're looking at um ah204 tenants satisfied with the responsive repairs um and look we are the information bill we're getting on the formance of from me is for the responsive repair so these are for tenancy properties um it is telling us a different story it's telling us that the majority of repairs are are are completed on time yet satisfaction although improved is not improving to the um to the same extent as we would um we would hope so what we are doing and it's mentioned briefly in the text is um we are suspicious that the methodology that um choose to collect that data is is flawed and that's leading to people um who are dissatisfied with the with the surveys um to uh all the reports so we're looking at engaging with a a independent research company to carry out an independent survey um of the repairs so we get a a more accurate figure this is and this that also reflects the concerns from the housing regulator um who you're following the the feedback from Grenfell wants to make sure that we have more accurate information from tenants um so in the future and this again from from april will start to use a different methodology um for the uh sentence satisfaction and we think that will provide a more realistic figure councillor the audience happy to move on okay councillor badnon thank you chair i just wanted to observe that on a h 211 the average days to relet all housing stock on page 66 although the um actual is showing us red and we had discussion about it i just wanted to observe that the graph on the left hand side of the page shows that actually this has improved significantly um over the last 18 months a year and so i just wanted to thank the officers for the work that they must have done and uh the improvements that we've been told about with the contract with nears which have obviously ended up in resulting in a in a much better record than we've had in the previous year so i just wanted to say thank you yeah thank you councillor badnon councillor Hobro sorry can't you may just add to that of course you may yes um yes i i think thank you for those comments um of course the unfortunately that the the early stages on on the graph um reflect the um the the the covid period so it's not that it's not representative of the longer term trend but i wanted to inform members as well as the actual figures from for january available and there's been a continued improvement and now we're down to 25 days for january thank you councillor Hobro thank you chair and i had a uh a question uh about uh the um the kpi for household waste collection so this is page 68 and uh the indicator is es 418 uh i actually have two questions um perhaps i'll just ask the first for now and maybe i can come back with this second if that's okay um so my first question was looking at that um kpi over time then and i can see that that there's a bulge in the figures every summer they they sort of go up slightly presumably because there's lots more compost um and then it comes down in the winter but the overall trend um between july 2021 and the present does appear to be one of um it coming down slightly and now i i accept um i've read what's written in the in the comments about the December figures i think that applies just to the month of December that's just passed so my question really is whether whether uh this um what looks to me like an overall trend in the wrong direction um is is interpreted as such um and if so if we have any understanding of the reasons for that because i imagine that we're hoping that this indicator will over time gradually increase as we have more and more recycling okay can i go to Councillor Brian Milms and I see he's got himself on the screen ready Councillor Brian Milms in the first instance as the deputy leader and then i'm sure we'll be going to Bode next so um we actually increased the target figures as you'll see from from the graph there was a jump and if we'd have left them as they were we would have still been passing the targets but we want to move this in the right direction we want better recycling better lack or improved lack of contamination of black bin waste uh with which is going to landfill and this is part of a behavioural change that we're going to have to get adopted by our residents and that's going to take time and effort to do and we're already going through that process of trying to get people to uh uh do better uh waste management as they put their bin waste out every week Bode I don't want I don't know if you want to add to that uh thanks Councillor Milms uh thank you thank you chair I think that's right what I would just add is that um nationally there's actually been a trend downwards so the actual UK recycling rates went down in 2020-2021 there's a lot of change going on nationally to do with packaging to do with how people deposit materials on the carp so that lots of new regulations coming in so we are reaching a point where we're getting quite stagnant and we need to make a step change to increase the figures that step change will likely come from how we collect other materials so what we're going to be doing later this year in collaboration with other district councils uh recap authorities in Cambridge and Peterborough is looking at the overall strategy of how we manage waste and what are the actions we can be doing just to push those numbers up but I think the main thing is there's a lot of change going on nationally with packaging waste with well how waste deposited post COVID people are creating waste in a different manner some deposit their materials in the recycling centre some at work so there's a lot of compounding factors but we we've bucked the trend a little bit by maintaining where we are not dropping compared to national figures but we will be providing we'll be developing a new overall waste strategy in the course of this year we should then put out in a good place to increase the rates so thank you that that's an excellent answer um thank you very much um so so so if if despite the uh the downward trend um that we see here we're still ahead of the national trend then that that sounds like very good news thank you may I ask my second question yesterday thank you um so the second question is it relates to a question asked at the previous meeting when we were discussing the business plan and um and I think we put in place a high level target to reduce the overall volume of waste that we process uh in addition to looking at the percentage of waste that's used and I wondered if we might consider perhaps having a KPI that allows that overall volume to be observed over time and I wondered if you could if there could be some comments on on how it has changed over time and whether or not um we might consider adding a KPI to to watch that figure yeah we we do uh do audits of the waste collection process to to to measure uh what people are putting out uh less than on a frequent basis um I don't know whether uh make turning that into a KPI in its own right would be useful certainly worth considering for Bodium um Henry Bachelor who's now got that portfolio um but um you're you're right in general in that the um target is to reduce waste wherever possible and obviously to increase wherever possible recyclable waste and we see significant changes going on in the packaging industry where we're moving away from plastics to recyclable materials so back to paper and starch-based packaging which is which is helping the process and I think there is a general growing awareness from the public of reducing waste so we're going back to days when I was growing up I've gone to the greengrocer and having your vegetables and tomatoes if there are any put straight into your shopping bag rather than to be put into separate bags and then taken now so so it is a part of that circular economy that we're aiming to improve our performance and again I'll give Bodium a chance to add anything that he feels he'd like to thank you chair we actually do have a parameter that we track this is the amount of residual waste so after recycling and composting what's left in the black bin we actually track that and that's on a pretty good trajectory what I think you had asked before was how much waste we produce as a whole which we we have the figures but we don't track that there is a national target coming into force soon so what we will do is that we will set our own targets based on the national figure so we don't duplicate the effort but we do track residual waste we give an indication of how much waste people are producing and so far the trajectory is good and in the course of this year once DEFRA sets the targets it's going to be about a 20 30 2050 target for the overall waste generation per household then we will mirror that and set more stringent targets for ourselves locally so thank you very much for the answers so I think if I understand correctly then that would be once we have a DEFRA target once the national framework is clear would that mean that we would then add a kpi to track that target and and if so then then that's a great answer to the question thank you and I just comment that I feel that if since since our tagline is that we're green to the core if we're not watching this and if this isn't sort of captured somewhere in the in the figures that we're watching I think it would look a little bit like an anomaly and so I'd be very happy to hear that that that's being added in response to the DEFRA target thank you need to move on okay councillor Heather Williams thank you chair on on this subject um yeah I think it would be really useful to see sort of the residual black bin waste that there is because if we're encouraging people to have less packaging and everything else and supermarkets doing that the fact that our recycler is coming down isn't necessarily indicator that everything's going wrong if I think personally I'm more interested to see where sort of the black bin waste is going and you know there has been like say habit change as well um I can say that you'll never find milk bottles plastic milk bottles in my rubbish and would never have done because my daughter's godfather's the milkman so that's quite handy um and but we can see that more people are actually returning to those to those ways and what I think would be really good to hear back from on on this topic is a couple of us I think in Milton so I'm looking towards Councillor Anna Bradner and Councillor Bear Park you have a food waste trial in Milton and I have it in half of my ward I think some in Linton as well it's not saying that I don't know if all members are aware that it's sort of happening and it would be good it's been trialled for quite some time now it would be good to get some feedback to see how that's going and whether that is improving things when it comes to the green waste and and where that's at I think that would be quite a useful and interesting thing for this committee to look at. Yeah please me just move on yeah okay um Councillor Paul Bear Park Oh thank you chair um it's a question on the same topic actually is in terms of the way this is reported um we've obviously got dry recycling and composting kind of reported together but obviously they're completely different types of waste um and I think if they were separated out we may be able to see what's happening with the two types of waste I mean I've mentioned previously I think in uh see our committee meetings that um I'd like to see a little bit more home composting rather than the heavy compost being transported by vehicle many miles uh in the in the in the waste vehicles it seems that you know the many benefits to home composting um you know people can then use that compost themselves sorry some you know my certainly my green bin gets very heavy uh in the autumn and I definitely think I should be doing some more composting. Would you like a response from Councillor Mills or will you take an answer? If you'd like to respond yes yes excellent councillor. I think I'm very much in agreement with Councillor Bear Park for um comments about home composting for example anything that can stop us having to collect and take away and then dispose separately it would be a benefit to us obviously um and you know the reduction of black bin waste is is clearly critical because if that goes to landfill we do do sorting of that so try and improve the performance of black bin waste um anything that goes to landfill is charged to us so anything that we can reduce our black bin waste the better for us for the service and we are moving in the right direction there's national legislation that Bode has referred to and that's going to bring in significant changes related to the food waste program and separate food waste collection but that's going to have to be resolved we have to resolve national consistency in terms of waste collection and disposal and we've got extra complications locally where the the if we change the profile of our waste collection then our waste disposal authority the county council and their contract has to also make similar changes to their processes as well so that's an additional complication that we have to deal with thank you baby anything to add to that thank you Jack can I just add do we actually have a subsidised home composting scheme so across the recap authorities uh Cambridge and Fittable we have a fund that provides a subsidised home composting bins to all residents up to a limit so we actually very actively encourage home composting and it's something that we would want to request support of members as well to make that uh more known to them in their in their parishes we we very actively promote home composting okay thank you councillor Bethart oh yeah thank you very much maybe that's something for the next South Cams magazine to promote that then and councillor Ellington thank you Jim um I have to put in a plea here that we have to teach our residents not to put the leftover Sunday dinner and so on in the home composting from my daughter who runs my pest control company only told me today how many people uh are suffering with rats because they are putting food we're in appropriate food in their composting okay thank you councillor Ellington um I assume you're making that as a statement rather than looking for councillor Milnes to reply because I'm sure he'll not safely and agree as will Bode yes okay excellent I shall move on uh councillor Anna Bradnham no okay um then it just leaves with me um if I could just take us back to sorry to me now by the way if I can just take us back to the figures in relation to the housing repairs because there's something that struck me and I wonder whether or not it could be something to explain something if I was to start on the housing figures in relation to the fact that for emergency repairs inside 24 hours there is 100% of those being completed which is a really really positive figure and suggests that there's a really good response to what people are doing so I've now found out on my screen it's SH332 on page 66 so as you can see for October November and December we have 100% of emergency repairs completed in 24 hours which is a really really positive figure and suggests a really strong response and then struck by the fact that for AH204 we obviously have talked about the fact that we have a relatively much lower level of 10 satisfied responsive repairs of around 90% in both September and December and I wondered councillor John Baxter in the first instance if you had any thoughts about how there seems to be such a difference between those two figures thank you chair um well one there are different things entirely in that you know an emergency repair is an emergency repair and you know maybe you are flooded out or something like that and clearly we're giving that the top priority the going back to the satisfaction responses I mean I've never been satisfied personally with these because the response rate is so low we're talking about something like 15 to 20% response rates because we they meers is using a system based on email and text contact um as Peter has outlined we're looking to go to a completely different and much more professional way of dealing with this in that we will actually phone up people who had a repair and actually ask them you know standard and significant questions so that we're actually getting the proper response um as Peter also said about the current situation that you know there's no incentive for anybody to respond unless they've had a bad time I mean it's quite amazing that we're getting around 90% satisfaction out of that really um so that's that's my view of that German just have anything to add on that no I think John's covered pretty much everything but just just to add to put a bit of a meeting on that so emergency repairs covered in 332 are probably less than 10% of all repairs and they're the ones that you know carried out as it says as an emergency loss of heating, lighting, no flushable toilets etc so really proper emergencies and if we do not get to those quickly you know people really do suffer so that's why I give that the priority. The responsive repairs overall on 204 of the satisfaction rate is a much wider cross section uh of all of all the repairs uh and you know as as I've mentioned and John John's also said is that the the methodology appear to be letting us down and we've got an opportunity to make that much much better. Okay great but I would still say that even though as you say it's only 10% of action is those emergency responses we do slightly sometimes hear about situations where councils do not respond really quickly to people's complaints and do not respond really quickly to complaints about things that happen in their houses so I would definitely like to flag up the fact that that the fact that that is a consistent 100% figure is something that should be really flagged up as a positive thing. Secondly I wanted to flag something up on page 68 which is SF 786A which is staffed sicknesses days per full time equivalent, shared waste services only and I really wanted to flag up the fact that the explanation given and the text there I thought was an exemplary example of leadership and management in terms of looking after staff. There's clearly where there is an issue in relation to staff's attendance and being supported there's really good information in there about how staff are being supported to make sure that they feel motivated and cared for and then talks about training folks and nutrition health and I think that's a really excellent example there so I wasn't particularly looking for a response beyond hopefully perhaps a nod of yes that's what we think but I think that was a really really example and I found the information there incredibly positive to think of and I just had one more thing that I wanted to flag up which is CC 305 which I've now lost on my screen I do yes CC 305 will talk to page 69 um and building really on something that Councillor Bragan talks about earlier in terms of trends already within that data we can see an increase the number of formal complaints being resolved within timescale just in September and December from 84% to 91% but looking at the blue line going backwards we can see that there has been a significant improvement in the proportion of complaints being resolved in the timescale and I just wondered whether there could be any sort of further explanation given to the committee on how that has been achieved because I think that you know we ask questions about things when they go wrong quite rightly but this for me really highlights a success story so I wondered if we could have some more detail on that um I'm going to go to Councillor Mills in the first instance simply as the deputy leader but he may wish to defer to someone else so um you'll notice this is a Jeff memory item on here and Jeff is very busy with with his transformation programme so the chief exec might want to say some more I've just seen you pointing at her thank you thank you through you Jeff that's a disunholded the memory um so we weren't really hard at this uh our performance was not good and that was clear for you know probably over a year and we've really really focused on on resolving keeping um complaints uh in hand in hand making sure that we're responding in the timely manner that there were identified complaints champions in every service and you know it's it's it's hard work is the answer to the question and uh I think we just need to be really careful now to maintain that great thank you very much um in that case then I do not see anyone's hand so I'm then happy to move on to our next item which is item eight the further support for cost of the living crisis of South Cambridge a residence um I'm conscious that at least two of our cabinet members have to move on to another meeting within the next 20 minutes or so so therefore if I can ask colleagues we'll go straight into it rather than particularly hearing about it so if councillor colleagues would like to ask any questions at this stage I know there will be other people who are capable of answering the questions but I know we are going to lose two of our cabinet colleagues very soon so um councillor colleagues who would like to start us off with a question or comment in relation to the further support for cost of the living crisis of South Cambridge a residence so Allinson's hand up already thank you chairman um I have run two uh cost of living days in my patch with great support from South Cams I have to say basically revenue benefits HIA and the community um but village people are very very reluctant to be seen attending what might be construed as and I want what additional steps are being taken to really reach those who are really in need before a crisis strikes thank you we lost you in a moment there but I felt we got the gist of your question there um councillor Milne should I come to you in the first instance here in terms of cabinet before you defer perhaps to an officer if you wish to do so well I may bring Liz waltz back in um our lead member is absent this week is on vacation so apologies for Bill Handley's absence um the um the dilemma that we have um is is one that is replicated across social care that people don't want to be seen to be um in receipt of benefits quite quite frankly um it's something that people avoid so um I think the atmosphere uh many of our warm hubs uh for example and I know other examples of food hubs um one in Haarston for example is very conginial um and it's very difficult to distinguish between volunteers and visitors um it's not set up that way and they've been very careful to do that and that's something that I think that we could usefully emulate if we're not already doing so so um a valuable point uh that we don't want people being embarrassed and therefore missing out on benefits uh and and help that we're we're offering thank you chair um I think councillor Anderson's got a really good point uh I think it's a topic that we've discussed in the office before um we saw this through the COVID pandemic as well where you've gone kind of hyper hyperlocal support you know people are not being as keen to to seek support from their uh from their neighbours um I think in this report we've got a couple of elements that that try to to look to address this where we've got some really targeted kind of uh contact of residents who we can identify through the data that we hold within the council there's work to do to make sure we target that to the right people but again trying to reach people who perhaps wouldn't step forward and make them aware of the various support that's available um and also I think there's just work here as well trying to try to kind of make this move on the the sort of conversation here not just to be around that stigma really of the people who require support backs the sum of the work that tries to pull together the cost of living support that's being proposed particularly around the kind of sustainable food network also has kind of quite a kind of green agenda aspect to it as well so I think that that's a something that obviously is important to this council and to our residents as well so I think that it's a challenge it's one that we're aware of councillor Elinton and I think it's one we're going to have to keep trying to sort of chip away at to be honest. Thank you I do agree I was quite the the incident that really brought it home to me was that I was running one of these action days deliberately on a Friday afternoon in the building next to the school where everybody parked their car in order to come and collect their young child and the number of people I heard saying no I won't go in no no I won't go in when it was there on their doorstep deliberately placed there for their help but some of the other mothers would have seen them going in and it was just very evident and I think we all need to find ways and share that knowledge amongst ourselves as those in order to help the communications team find new ways of getting to across the the line as it were thank you very much thank you councillor Elinton councillor co. Thanks very much chair so my question was around warm hubs on page 77 and really I was just seeing if it is possible to get any further information on who is using that the warm hubs and really what they are being used for so they may have very other good community benefit other than providing people with warmth essentially or people that are unable to manage heating bills and so forth and in my experience having spoke to residents that have attended warm hubs it's quite often not to keep warm essentially it might be for very other genuine reasons like social isolation you know playing board games interacting with other people community groups but that they are not you know seeking warmth essentially which is kind of what they were set up to do but they may be having very other you know worthwhile benefits I just wondered if there was any way of quantifying that I know further on in the report you allude to the other community benefits that they are providing. Councillor Mills. Now Councillor Cohen is absolutely right in that the usage of the warm hubs has been for a variety of reasons you mentioned social isolation and loneliness in the community is a very well known problem if I'll refer back to Gareth who would like to just I didn't realise he was in the room so I would have introduced him earlier in the previous question had I realised and I'd like to thank him and his team for the fantastic work they've been doing on this programme again above and beyond so thanks thanks to him and his team. Gareth thank you chair and I think probably my short answer would be I completely agree with Councillor Cohen I think you've completely hit the name that is what the evidence is is telling us but that's conversations around that huge impact that social isolation has on health anyway so we know that around a thousand visits a month to warm hubs but I agree kind of to keep warm is probably not the the primary reason for visits in the paper you can see that we're trying to although there's going to be further data that we get from the warm hubs towards in in a bit more time so we'll have a bit more summary of all of the work that's taken place so far probably that'd be around May and we don't want to lose the momentum and that's hence why we're bringing the report now but in the report you'll see that there's kind of a evolving warm hubs you know learning from the first phase looking at kind of how they're branded and I think that kind of comes back to Councillor Winston's point as well but that's not it's still not going to be you know easy but and also the report sort of touches on the sort of the integrated care system as well you know probably all agencies thinking similar here is not to lose that momentum and the conversations there around financial kind of support for programmes such as that which were very kind of positive that would be in a good position particularly if we took forward this programme to secure funding as well so um yeah so I think I'd probably just echo your your views Councillor Cohn and it will be interesting to see that full analysis that comes out in the in the sort of weeks ahead okay thanks very much okay councillor Badnan thank you chair um so firstly I want to preface my question with the fact that I'm very happy that we're supporting individuals families and businesses that need our help but we'd like to see some data uh to justify the ongoing support so paragraph five on page 74 of our agenda refers to the cost of living crisis continuing to have a major impact on people in South Cambridgeshire and paragraph six refers to the crisis impacting on people even with moderate to good incomes as well as those already in hardship um so and I appreciate that in November we agreed at council to provide a range of support targeted at more vulnerable residents and that our current offer of support ends in March 2023 and that we need to make a commitment to that if we want to continue but the report is written in quite general terms and I understand probably why but it doesn't say what is the data that is driving our understanding of the number of people that are in need so I for example would suggest that before this paper goes to Cabinet we you might excuse me you might want to add something like data from the trust of trust about the number of food uh vouchers that are being required or evidence of the number of people seeking help from our customer uh control centres saying you know asking for help financial help or help with food or the number of people who have welcomed and accepted the opportunity to have electric blankets and and slow cookers that sort of thing so that we have some data driven justification for this as I say I'm absolutely not saying we shouldn't be doing it I'm just saying I think it might be useful for us to be able to justify the the um the commitment and the support that we're making thank you councillor mewns all I do is agree with councillor Brannum and I'm sure Gareth and the team are going to do that evidence that we have elsewhere John Huntington Charisee and Sourston here has seen I think three or four times the normal call on their support services locally so that it's an indication of the type that councillor Brannum wants to see and then I'm sure we can build up that that data in the coming months Gareth councillor mewns said I think it's a really good addition to the report um I thought councillors might I could just give you a few highlights just whilst we're in the meeting um I'd love to say that this work colleague did um so around 300 people have been supplied with electric blankets uh I think as I said warm hubs constantly getting over about a thousand visits a month um that food parcel service which provides parcels to people who perhaps can't can't connect to a a food bank in in kind of normal ways so we're seeing around about 10 parcels a week delivered there and I think we'll see that continue to to increase um just to add to councillor mewn's point in regard to uh John Huntington Charisee so Cymru City Food Bank um have seen a 40% increase uh on 2021 in number of people supported so that's uh 13,580 last year um we worked really closely with Hope Community Interest Company in in Camborn who have supported over 60 clients since January 2023 and that's a rise of around 50% since 2022 um citizens advice have seen a 29% increase in crisis support when people can't afford to to eat or eat and they've seen an 87% increase in energy support over given in 2022 compared to 2021 um in regards to sort of the council we've got our income maximisation officer um which we've had to some time prior to the the crisis being declared by the council um who's had 56 referrals in the past two months alone which is sort of double the average of the previous 18 months and the community's team have seen over four times the amount of people contacting that team for support over the last two months compared to the two months previous um I think that's the key information that would probably give you a picture of I think what members as you as you alluded to Councillor Bradnam the picture that we believe you see but some of the data that quite rightly will be able to feed into the report to to give that more context and Liz what's anything to add thank you Gail thank you and through you chair I think there's um historic data which is really important but for me um what's also important is analysing data to enable us to target and support more carefully and that's set out in power graph 34 of this report so we have loaded data in the council but we've never been had the resource to allocate to layering it on top of each other and for us to be able to say okay from all the data that we have these you know these are the people that we think will need to support so at the moment we're getting people come to us and there's probably a a cohort people who just either don't know about us or don't get to us for whatever reason so I think that that part of the of the project in terms of doing much more sophisticated data analysis is really important to thank you and I'm very glad to hear that data will feed into the report that goes to cabinet but the other thing um to to reinforce what is what has said is that um we know from the integrated care system um the director of public health that there is an understanding that you never can pin down exactly who needs your help and so actually it's better to give it to as many people as you can um because somehow somewhere along the line it will filter down to the people who really need it so um in the same way that currently the heating is being subsidised currently you know that that went out to everybody because there was that's the only way you could be sure of helping everybody who needed it thank you very much and um I'm sure the report will be the richer for it thank you um just before I move on just hitting seven o'clock councillor Mills am I correct that you and councillor Batchon need to leave at seven o'clock that's fine um so what we'll do for the questions carrying on now is councillor John Williams is you'll be the cabinet member mainly I'm not going to necessarily expect you to answer you are always welcome to answer obviously um what I will do is I will defer to Gareth each time in the first instance but should you wish on behalf of the cabinet to pitch in then obviously please do do so so thank you councillor Batchon and councillor Mills for your attendance councillor Paul Bearpark um thank you Gareth um really wanted to express my wholehearted support for these um ongoing targeted measures um and in particular the uh the funding of a dedicated officer which I think will help with the targeting concerns that people have raised here um I can see you know there are multiple overlapping benefits with the support that's been given whether it's in terms of health um you know reduced energy bills um social social benefits um I do fear though that um with the increase in the energy price guarantee by an extra 20% you know which on average will take the right the average bill to an eye watering 3 000 pounds a year is to be honest it's going to swamp anything that we can do as a council which is so disappointing that it's rising again um but my question really is I can see how the question for council Williams actually I can see how the uh it's built up from the bottom up in terms of the budget but how do we define what's affordable from the council's point of view when deciding what what the budget should be for this sort of thing that might be you council job Williams actually has okay um well first of all um we've been working and Gareth will explain this we've been working quite closely with um other agencies particularly uh integrated care and um we have a pretty good idea as to what sort of um amount of funding that we can get from other sources apart from the council um so we can then understand what we need to deliver in order to release that additional funding and it's really is a matter of seeing how we can maximise that funding from elsewhere through the release of our funding which is why um we're looking at around 200 000 pounds to to put into this pot in order to receive the additional funding to enable us to you know deliver this package of measures so that's really the the starting point really is to is to understand the the um the way we can release funding from other people and to maximise that funding and then that determines what we need to put into the into the mix I think right to that thank you chair um I think the anything I'd add here is we've moved really quickly you know councils declared a cost of cost of living crisis in September um by November we had a package of measures agreed by cabinet and really been sort of moving with existing resources to to move forward there you know in a matter of months it feels like we've made great strides what I feel this report does in regard to that balance between a longer commitment and affordability is tries to deliver programmes that give the opportunity for them to be taken forward in a more sort of self-sustaining way and I think that we very much see some of the kind of sustainable food network really you know tying that together and creating something that has more of a sort of lasting legacy into the future um you know probably some of the projects we're working on at the moment are things that we probably saw us doing you know 12 months ago or a bit a bit further um but it does feel that um there's been good conversations with Councillor Williams in regards to kind of that affordability obviously that would be a cabinet decision but I think this commitment does really unlock that additional funding for other partners as well to make it you know a really kind of far-reaching programme with that commitment into into two years and I think that the balance for us in regard to putting forward the paper was really keen to try and look for something that gave give us sort of two years of commitment to give us the opportunity to really do that work that that Liz Watts described around that the more analysis of data because I think just kind of one year we'd be looking at these kind of programmes but wouldn't have really got under the skin of how much more we could do around data um but obviously always a decision for the councillors in regard to that balance of financial investment versus affordability but this is a programme that is doesn't have a ongoing commitment on the kind of the council's general fund thank you councillor for that part yeah no thank you very much for those answers nothing further to add okay thank you councillor Sally Ann Hart thank you chair um just referring really to um I think what councillor Cohen's with me at page 77 paragraph 30 and this idea of the evolution of the warm hubs into these community well-being hubs um and so a couple of parish councillor meetings this week where they were already thinking about you know the warm weather's probably going to get warmer but we still recognise there's a need and and talking about that sort of social and emotional warmth not just physical warmth um and it was really to to see this written here about how we can take this forward how it can be community led um I take what councillor Erlington said about you know perhaps stigma being associated with that so I'm just thinking in terms of moving forward perhaps as members encouraging our parish councils to be thinking about how these evolve and saying to um these community well-being hubs had some fantastic pictures on a parish council report last night of people playing indoor bowls at one of these meetings maybe it's something as I say that we could as as members getting to our monthly reports to looking into the future because each community is different has different needs and it may be in terms of the south camps magazines and article you know for the summer to as far as possible normalised people need the social beings we need contact and there's nothing wrong with seeking it and I think what it has done has offered this awful situation an opportunity for for people perhaps to go back to those spaces that were closed during the pandemic and and feel the warmth that's there um interestingly as well the the people actually providing the support saying how much they've got out of doing it you know people who perhaps would never have got involved at a chair of a parish council saying how much he really enjoys going to the to the groups and meeting members of the community that he'd never met before so I think we've got wonderful opportunities in the more we can publicise it moving forward it then I say that community cohesion idea comes back to the floor so thank you for for all you've done to support it be happy for me to move on so I thought yeah take his statement okay council home sorry councillor Heather Williams thank you chair just um a couple of things just wondering whether we keep a list of whether we ask parish councils about um parish hardship funds or charities like I think one was mentioned earlier a lot of my parishes have a town done charity um just think when people get in touch with us it you know they're probably going to need a lot of support maybe not so much maybe something we can't do that that a parish charity um could help with and the other thing is that while we work on district boundaries many organisations don't um and there's one that I put in touch with a while ago about um can give support quite often in emergencies but there's bed for cheer base but they would if it was you know in my ward for example they would come and help and I'm just wondering how much we're reaching out to and when we're consulting taking advice and seeing whether our residents are going outside as a district to seek support because I know half of my residents would go to Royston before camp born or anywhere or even Melbourne or anywhere else or they'd go to Biggleswade and Potton so um I think they've got a similar issue on the Linton side people going south from Walden or what have you so just want to make sure that we are helping the residents of South Cambridgeshire not looking at just what's in South Cambridgeshire if that makes sense to you. Gary. Thanks thanks Councillor Williams um I think in regards to parish hardship charities I think it'll be an overwhelming yes please in regard to colour those linkages and any further information we're always building up our kind of knowledge that we've got to provide support in case people come directly into the team rather than directed to local members and to local community so um I think we can definitely look out for Chris Richards reaching out to members on that in regard to kind of like outside the area and serving our population rather than our geography and again absolutely um in regard to working with partners and the information we provide you know we've got those subtleties around Royston, the Havel and different areas where actually services are accessed kind of beyond our geographical boundaries um but again if members have any sort of local knowledge that they think that perhaps officers may not know we've you know as I say we're really building up our our kind of um tools in the toolbox in regard to how we can support people and the the better information we have the better but we are already certainly looking at serving the population rather than looking within the geography. Very great, Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you chair and that's really good and I just sort of reference to something that we learned I think through the pandemic was I remember there was something that we had done and we were advising residents to go to Bar Hill when actually what there was the ability in Royston so you know it's well just trying to make sure that it's it's local um we just didn't know what was happening in Royston at that time so um that'd be really really helpful. Great thank you. Councillor Stobart. Chair thank you um I've got a long line of questions and answers I don't have so much to say but I just want to underline the point that um every parish is different and every parish is approached all of this stuff very differently so Councillor Hart underlined that really very well um so the kind of things that might be a challenge I think um through you chair there's what's made a very good comment about the importance of data so if you have for example um a lunch club that closed down during COVID and reopened and and actually became a lunch club plus warm hub it would be very helpful to find out where that phenomenon is developing is it is it peculiar to certain parishes what kind of help is actually could be directed to that kind of thing uh and and do those things fall into certain categories um in Girton for example there's a Thursday morning gathering which has been going on for years at the the Baptist Church but the minister felt that the best thing to do is have that Thursday gathering in the afternoon when people were willing to come out wants to come out and actually get warm and have coffee and talk about their issues so I think um collecting data really invaluable being sensitive to local differences really really helpful and and the COVID to now cost of living crisis fuel crisis there's been a transition which has left a few things in its wake and things like lunch clubs never really picked up after COVID are probably there ready ready to activate um the role of parish councillors I think parish councils um could be to coordinate and facilitate and I think we've we've talked often about parish councils as um you know could be recipients of more help in that regard to deliver a service or to deliver an understanding of course reminded of that parish councils did a superb job during COVID at spotting the anomalies and the police like parish councils that report on strange behaviour in their villages because it helps them do their job as well so there's nothing like local effectiveness um so they're just a few thoughts chair I hope they're useful okay great thank you happy for me to move on and take that as just a point yes great thank you councillor Erlund I was going to um make a comment about the power of food banks and community gardens and plant based diets one of the issues with plant based diets is that they're quite expensive and they're also if you round weight clothes or Tesco's highly processed of all of the issues we have now is people eating highly processed foods but highly processed is easy cooking fresh vegetables isn't I suppose my comment would follow on from Councillor Ellington which is what what could we have some kind of help out there but people could access not feel sensitive being having to access but enables people to actually deal with vegetable based plant based diet because it's not that easy based with a celeriac and a sweet to make something that's palatable that your children will eat and it's actually going to cook easily we've provided slow cookers which assume that people are cooking from scratch I'm not convinced that they always are the cheapest foods and the things that we see in the food banks being taken up and have some experience of this are quick easy the tins the packets the frozen chicken nuggets etc and we've come to me to join that maybe we just need some kind of again bringing an initiative into the into the warm house or community centres to help people actually access the food that we're going to provide or that they're going to grow in community gardens to make it meaningful and to be encouraged to help the diet gareth so I think it's a really valid point and I think that another member made the point around the impact that we can have and where we need to focus our energy and resources and I think it's a challenge but I think the work around that's in the paper under point 33 on the south came to sustainable food network and I think that's where we can really look at the kind of art of the possible around that particular point because I think the sort of um yeah that it's a very kind of busy life for many people these days and some of the cooking from scratch is probably doesn't happen as much as perhaps it did in the past so I think that some of the things around kind of community vegetable gardens and trying to get that better kind of supply and encourage healthy eating and kind of community occasion I think it does begin to address some of those points but it certainly is um going to be quite an amount of work to really make inroads and into that area. Councillor, happy question to move on. Great, thank you. Councillor Leamon. Thank you chair. Firstly I'd just like to um thank gareth and the community's team um for their work over this time and I understand it's it's come on the back of a great deal of work following their response to the COVID pandemic and then responding to Ukraine um I'd also like to um reflect on the statistics that he's um that he mentioned in response to Councillor Bradlin's question um I find it very sobering and um quite upsetting to reflect that even in the last year there's been a 40% increase in food bank use within the Cambridge city area and that will affect our residents because the Cambridge city food bank is the hub for the trust and food banks across the the district um and I keep trying to think about what that means in terms of the implications for our residents in one of the wealthiest and most expensive parts of the country um it must be a great deal of inequality um I'd like to express my thanks that we're able to respond in this targeted way um and that these resources have been allocated um I've got a very specific question about the £206,000 um what is the timescale for this um this money that's been allocated so I can see that there is an officer that's been noted in the budget I'm looking at page 80 of the um agenda and it's point 37 there is an officer which has been allocated resources for two years the other things that are listed on this um sort of breakdown of cost it's not clear what the timescale is involved with that is this a reserve that's in place until the money runs out is it for a year the next two years that's my first question and my second question is building on the points that um that Gareth raised um about the experience of the users of the warm hubs um I understand that Camzaca are responsible for sort of running that across the warm hubs across the region um have they um are they monitoring surveying users on their experience have they been given sort of standard questions um and have the the users of the people that are turning up to the warm hubs have they been asked about um what are their further needs is there anything that we could offer that perhaps we're not or anything that we have offered that's been much appreciated just to kind of review of people's experience thank you that's John Williams I'm doing the financial bit also just go to Gareth you're doing the financial bit we have to do that I it is extremely difficult to see the forecast probably beyond beyond the next two years um it's very difficult to forecast beyond the next six months but at least we can identify um and focus um these this resource over the next two years which we know um we we can it's sustainable it's obviously going to be reviewed and we will be this will be under constant review and and I hope that um we will get back to account report will come back to cabinet at least every six months to to tell us how things are progressing and then we will then be able to look beyond the two years to see what um if any more additional support is required or whether or not this as Gareth said is sufficient to enable something sustainable to be set up and then to to to be self-sufficient in a way so we don't really know that is the issue um but at least for the next two years we will have this in place and I think we all hope that um within those two years things will get better and and that after two years we will be in a much better place that we don't require such amount of help but at the moment we don't really know and I think it's certainly need it's certainly we certainly need to be given the support for the next six 12 months 18 months 24 months but beyond that we need to understand and we won't be able to do that until we're a little way down the the the road to see how things are going to improve and where we may need to adjust our support to meet a new circumstances that may arise that we may not even think of at the moment I mean you know who fought two years who fought in 2018 that we were going to have a pandemic two years later so I think this is a reasonable time scale to do this but I can assure you that we will cabinet will certainly be keeping this under review and our officers will as well to see how things change and it may well be that this will evolve this will change over those two years to meet you know changes in circumstances but it's at least it's a start and we know we can fund this and we know that this is sustainable thank you chair um so just to address a couple of points from um officer perspective here is I think in um 0.28 there's the um page 77 there's the the cost of living crisis response strategy so you're absolutely right the report provides those overarching themes um I think if you were to talk to the team that's been working on this Chris and Leslie in particular they'd be really keen to see a lot of this work front loaded over the two years you know looking at a kind of a two-year commitment to give us some flexibility and some realism around deliverability um but also that ability to look at the the data work so I think that cost of living crisis response strategy sort of building on um on other strategies that we've got we'll be able to to map this out better to to provide that certainty um I think the other thing just building on Councillor Williams point around the the the time in an activity I think it's important to remember that the measures that we've put in since we declared the cost of living crisis and the cabinet report is we did have a lot of core activity that's already taken place within the council to support people with the cost of living um already and that's core activity that will remain and it's built into the council's plans and in effect funded through the general fund so this is additional activity um and then I think in regards to your second question on users of warm hubs um there is going to be more data that's going to be available around warm hubs there has been ongoing monitoring and and looking at that's why we know many of the kind of use of the warm hubs um a point that Councillor Cohn made around the the reasons for visiting and we've got some of the data around numbers but that sort of deeper analysis will help us build on you know perhaps what the warm hubs look like next um I think that's helpful and helps on those two points Councillor Eamon thank you very much and to Councillor Williams and to and for those answers are really helpful thank you okay thank you I have two more down and then we'll be done with this on to my pink Councillor Hope Ray thank you chair so first of all I I just like to say that I'm really pleased to see that we've got such a um a balanced programme of additional help around the cost of living process I think this is this is a really well thought out programme and I wanted to add my thanks to the team that's put together um so so I mean one of the elements of of this is that it's clearly a holistic approach to the um the cost of living prices itself but but also combining that with with um some environmental considerations for example and issues of food supply and and one of the points that that seems to focus on that most is the south cembrish a sustainable food network element so I just wanted if I could ask one or two questions about that um just to tease out some more details really uh so I mean first of all I was wondering if we know how how close we are to meeting the need for food banks if we have any idea what the need is um what what whether you know in terms of need that we understand or whether we believe that there's a lot of additional need that we haven't yet actually seen yet um and whether we're so the um I think the proposal was for um was it five five additional food banks so um I wondered whether that uh we feel that that's meeting the need we understand or how that balances against our understanding of the need for food banks also I wanted to ask about the strategy for them so um it's the idea to to provide a more even geographical coverage across the district or um I wondered if perhaps there's another strategy there um and I I also wondered if there's an element of trading or policy developments associated with this particular with the food network because clearly this is an expansion of something that was initially quite targeted food banks and individual provision um but but but this policy is is becoming much more broad it's integrating local food supply um local producers and uh bringing in environment considerations so I wonder if there's going to be an element of this um project which uh could provide training for the people involved or um will establish policies for example I don't know how consistent food banks are in the way that that they operate and whether or not we want them to be consistent um also that there are a number of smaller food banks that that they're not on the south cam's website they've just sprung up in villages um as community efforts to address the cost of living crisis uh and and I wondered whether these had been considered at all in the strategy um and uh if if we thought there was a need to involve them at all perhaps uh we as as ward members and parish councils might be a way of of getting in touch with with those uh if if if if it's seen as a useful thing to integrate them with the strategy so um yeah just a few questions there any comments on and any of that I'd be very interested to to hear more thank you thank you councillor um really good point I'm trying to address those I think I've got those jotted down so in regard to need I'm really difficult I've had that through the through the conversation in regard to trying to predict need um and the expansion of need that we've seen in the figures from uh sort of Cambridge City Food Bank which we're right doesn't just serve serve the city is south camsure as well um but I think that with our geography the um those kind of village based or hyperlocal support is really vital to us and I think in regards to a strategy that we're looking to suggest here is is more of one looking at kind of gap analysis so kind of mapping um the data that we hold around areas that potentially suggest that there's a greater need based on the data that we hold against the geography of the food banks that we're aware of including those kind of more um village based um operations um so I think in regards to any gaps that we've got in our knowledge of those um those village based kind of food banks we're always really really do welcome parish and member input into making sure that we're aware of those um we did a lot during the Covid pandemic to to map those um but it's really difficult to kind of stay on top of those because of lots of things kind of happen within communities um and I think in regards to kind of the way that they they operate there's obviously a big difference between um sort of trust or trust food banks and the way that they operate and through the voucher systems that that work in more local food banks that sometimes work in a very different way and I think that's okay and I think that we've all said that probably all the communities that you serve are very different and they work in different ways um but definitely there's things that can be learned and I think a lot of the things that we do within the communities team is to try and share that knowledge across the the district and beyond to make sure that we're taking that kind of best practice and we've kind of done that during lots of different things including the pandemic and other other pieces of work and community safety partnership as well so I think that there is things that we can learn I think I've jotted down and I'll take away that kind of training and policies element but that's probably not something that is something that we've thought about in detail at the moment um and I think I've said that in regard to the smaller food banks that that work more locally it is something that we've considered and I think when we're talking about food banks I do think that particularly if we're thinking them being sort of sustainable into the future I think that those very local village based food banks particularly where we've got a gap or we've got an area where perhaps the data showing that perhaps deprivation is higher um I think that's the area where as a district council we've got real value that we can really kind of create the support and support communities to kind of take the best practice from other areas and and replicate that across our across our area thank you great yes sir thank you very much for the answers I I mean I think this is a really interesting part of our response and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it develops thank you great thank you council batman thank you chair and I just wanted to remind members that the Trostle Trust continues to be my chair's charity um it was in 2021-22 and at the point when I could have changed the charity I chose to continue with the Trostle Trust because it looked to me as if the need for their um service was going to only get greater and that has transpired to be the case so just to remind members thank you thank you very much I have no more hands or anything looking down in relation to that item looking more around screen as well so therefore we are done so we have managed yeah with 10 minutes to spare meets the 345 minute deadline I think we took longer on that item so I sort on the first item but we've managed to do so very efficiently so um before we move on that item I think we just need to make sure that we have noted the further support for cost of living crisis for south camsha residence so we just affirm that we are happy to notice the item it's very quiet affirm but I did hear it from everyone thank you very much which just brings us to our final two things which is item nine is a work programme um myself and councillor Cohn and Insinia have had a number of meetings in the last few weeks since our last week overview meeting with various cabinet members and senior officers and others to make sure that we are putting together our work programme going forward and as you can see there from the agenda um we have items ready to the equality scheme update and progress support Ukraine update um in april there is the issue regarding new collection rounds um if I can just flag up that that one is a definite work in progress in terms of discussion what is happening um is one of those items that could go from being a one-minute item to something that could collectively lead to this committee spending three weeks in this room having the conversation and a form of somewhere between those two will be found um and obviously members will have the opportunity to be involved in that and then as we move through through June we have the court form performance report and such like so those are our items that are coming up on our work programme we are seeking to try to schedule as far ahead as possible um and obviously that relates to the council's forward plan so those are the things there that we are publishing we're trying to make sure that we fill ahead as much as possible you can see that we've also scheduled things right through to october and november at this stage and we've also started to put things down such as civil parking enforcement and others that we will put in as an appropriate time so unless there are any questions related to that item i shall move on okay so sorry my apologies i'm on the wrong screen and our next meeting is the 28th of march 2023 at 5 20 pm if we can note that and then just before I move on I will as always turn to Ian and say Ian is there anything that I have not covered not mentioned or not done that you would like to flag to the committee okay thank you very much um and if I just feel I wish to apologize for the fact that in the first 10 minutes of the meeting I seems to not quite to be on the ball um not entirely sure what I was doing there is annoying councillors and other such things I wish to apologize for that as chair I feel that once we got going we seem to be absolutely fine so thank you very much everyone as always for your attendance and with the time at