a'r un i'n eistedd i'r ambi o gwneud yma e evolving fel y maeddaeth. Rhaid i. Rhaid i'n defnyddio'r gwn ystod yn ei sprwydd iawn, ddignirio. Ddiolch, fe edrychu. Felly, gyda o gyfrinwyr, ar ôl eu cyfnodau arno i gwaith, ac i fy modd alsid ymweithio i bwysig y cael yma o nodd termfyn Cymru. Mae yna Brydget Smyth yn yng Nghymru. I'r honno yn Llywodraeth Cymru, a hynny i'r cael ei bod yn y Gymraeg. byddwn ni'n gofynu gwrdd o gyrswys ynglyn â bwrddol, rwyf yn rhan o'r ddod am ymhell i ni, a ddwy'r busbol argyrchafol i bach o'r drefnidol. A wef adnoddach nhw'n gwrdd ar y cyfrciad ar y gyfer hynny, a'r gyrwch ar eich gwrdd o'r dod yn ffwrddol, ac mae'r ddod o'r goeg yn ffwrddol ynglyn am fyall yn cael cwrdd. Fy rydyn ni'n meddwl gweithio'r bydd, rydych chi'n caen bwyng ymweld ac rydych chi'n meddwl microphone's muted unless you're actually speaking, and if you'd like to speak, could you notify us in the chat, but the chat is just for notifying that you wish to speak, please. So normal procedure at cabinet is that votes are taken by affirmation, and we'll continue to do that, but when we move to a vote on any item, I'll ask if members agree with a proposal, and if any member wants to either vote against a proposal or to abstain, then we'll actually take a role call of all the members, and I'll ask each cabinet member to speak into their microphone so that the vote is clear to everybody, to the rest of cabinet and to the members watching the webcast, the members should respond for, against or abstain when their name is called. So I won't go through asking cabinet members to introduce themselves, their name should all appear on the screen, and I think it also says which ward members represent as well. So as well as the cabinet, we have scrutiny here, so we have Councillor Grenville Chamberlain, who is the chair of the scrutiny and overview committee present in the meeting. And I think we have a number of non cabinet members as well, who may well choose choose to speak. On top of that, we have our key officers, Liz Watts, our chief executive, Stephen Kelly, director of shared planning service, Jeff memory head of transformation, Rory McKenna, our monitoring officer, plus various other support staff. So moving on, so we're trying today to do a paperless meeting. So if it's a bit clunky, please bear with us. I have screens all over the place and split screens, and it's all a bit complicated, but we're trying very hard to move to be a paperless council, and this is members demonstrating that we can do our bit as well as our officers doing their bit on that. So starting on the agenda, as leader, I've got no announcements this time round, so we're going to move on to apologies for absence. So Jonathan, as our responsible democratic services officer, are there any apologies for absence please? Thank you, leader. We've received one apologies for absence from Councillor Judith Riffith. Thank you. And Councillor Riffith is the vice chair of the scrutiny and over the committee. Are there any other apologies? Anyone would like to notify us of? Nope. Okay. So moving on to item three is declarations of interest. So do members have any interest to declare in relation to any item of business on the agenda? And if an interest subsequently becomes apparent later in the meeting, could you just raise it at that point? Nope. So no declarations of interest. So moving on to the minutes of the previous meeting. This is where I find my papers are at the very end instead of the very beginning. So, the minutes start at page one. And I will go through page by page. So page one, page two, page three, page four, page five, page six and finally on page seven. So, righty ho. So do we all, sorry, do we all accept that those meetings are a correct record of the last meeting? Agreed. Does anybody district want to vote against? I will abstain. Leader, I will abstain since I wasn't present at the meeting. Thank you very much. So that was Councillor Neil Goff is going to abstain as he wasn't present at the meeting. So cabinet therefore agrees they approve of the minutes as a correct record by affirmation. So moving on to item five are public questions. And I believe that we have one public question ahead of us from Mr Daniel Fulton. And have we got Mr Daniel Fulton in the meeting? Yes, I'm here. Hello, Mr Fulton. So welcome. I hope you're keeping well in these difficult times. Nice to see you. Would you like to place your question? Sure. The Fuse Land Consortium is in the process of conducting an audit of the council's PS2 planning performance returns submitted to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government between Q3 2018 and Q3 2020. To date, our volunteers have completed the audit for Q2 2020. Although the council reported to the Ministry that 85% of decisions on non-major applications were taken within the statutory determination period, or within the period of a planning performance agreement, or an extension of time meeting the requirements set before Parliament by the Secretary of State, the actual performance statistic was only 9%. Councilors have been provided with a document detailing our results on a decision-by-decision basis. In light of the serious nature of the irregularities discovered in the Q2 2020 return, will the portfolio holder for planning ask the council's internal auditing to audit the PS2 planning performance returns for non-major applications from Q3 2018 to Q3 2020. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm going to ask Councillor Tumri Hawkins as the lead member for planning to answer your question, Mr Fulton. Thank you, leader. Mr Fulton, thank you for your question. Firstly, I wish to reiterate that we do take our legal obligations extremely seriously and we do take care to report accurate data as we are required to do. Secondly, the submission from Fuse Lane consortium has no supporting explanation as to how those figures have been arrived at, and the council does not agree with the performance figures arrived at by Fuse Lane consortium. And we remain of the view that the Q2 2020 piece indeed correct. But while on that basis, I do not consider it necessary to undertake an audit of what will be thousands of decisions made since 2018, but given the continued time being spent by our officers on responding to this matter and the work of Fuse Lane consortium volunteers and my desire to provide reassurance on this issue, I am happy to ask that the internal audit team review and report on the council's Q2 2020 submission. This will, I hope, allow any wider concerns you might have on the matter. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Hawkins. Mr Fulton, do you have a secondary question, a follow-up question you'd like to ask? I don't, but I would just like to thank Councillor Hawkins for her very reasonable response, and I look forward to seeing the report in due course. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr Fulton. All right. So we're moving on now to item six, and that's issues arising from the scrutiny and overview committee, and I'd like to invite Councillor Grenville Chamberlain to present this report. Good morning all, thank you, leader. I'd really just like to focus on the update to policing matters, so you will be aware that we had a very successful hour of time with the Chief Constable who attended our meeting, and he provided some extremely detailed answers to our questions. I think the thing that I would like to focus on is to encourage all members to please arrange that any members of the public who see something which they think is out of the ordinary, and perhaps incorrect, they want to report it to the police, whereas so much of the police activity nowadays is focused around intelligence. As a result of that intelligence they've had a great deal of success in closing down a number of drug producing plants, including one here in Hardwick, I'm horrified to say, and the Chief Constable is keen that we should continue to do so, and they will follow up and investigate as the intelligence quickly is developed. Other than that, the report I think stands as it is. It was an excellent meeting once again, but I'm happy to take any questions, leader. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Councillor Chamberlain, and my thanks to the members of your committee, and for the lovely brevity of this report as well, which is always, at least matters, I'm very aware in my neck of the woods of a very alarming rise in catalytic converter thefts as well. Next time you speak to the police it would be interesting to know how they're targeting that, which does appear to be seriously organised crime, and very aggressive actually, quite very intimidating. So do any cabinet members have any questions for Councillor Chamberlain? Do any other members have any questions for Councillor Chamberlain? No, move on. Excellent report. Thank you very much indeed, Councillor Chamberlain. Thank you to your committee and the members, you're asked to note the report. Thank you, leader. Thank you. So moving on now to the actions taken under the chief executives delegated powers, which have been, you know, have been enhanced because of the pandemic situation, and these pertain mainly to allocation of grants and monies coming from the government. Are there any questions from any members in relation to this report? Any questions from anybody else? Okay, so this report is similarly just for noting. So moving on to the item eight, which is on page 15, it's a large report from 15 to 256, and this is the authority monitoring report for Greater Cambridge 2019-50 2020. Councillor Tumwee Hawkins is going to move the recommendation, and I believe Councillor Aiden Van Der Wai is going to be seconding it. So if I could ask Councillor Hawkins to introduce this, please. Thank you, leader. Yes, as you've said, it's quite a large report, but a lot of work has gone into it. So firstly, I would like to thank all our officers for the massive work that has gone into preparing this report, especially during the period of lockdown that we've had and working from home with all its challenges. The annual monitoring report is a document that we are required by government to produce, and I'm pleased to say we are such have taken great care to ensure that we produce an accurate picture of the impact of our planning policies on the district and of the progress that we're making against the local development scheme. This report is produced jointly with Cambridge City and covers the period from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020, and just to remind us that the adopted policies for this period are the local plans for both city and south camps adopted in 2018, and the four area action plans which are the Cambridge East, Cambridge South Fringes, Northwest Cambridge and Nostal AAPs. I don't want to take too much time, but just to highlight some key findings here. We are making very good progress with our greater Cambridge local plan, which we are developing together with the city, and in my recall we had a very successful first conversation, issues and options consultation in January and February 2020. Its reach was way beyond what we've had in the past, and the responses we received have been very helpful indeed in helping us towards preparing the joint local plan, and we are working well with our Cambridge City partners, glad to say, and with other organisations that we're required to work with under the duty to cooperate, especially to address cross boundary issues. We didn't make new neighbourhood plans in that period, but since then we now have some villages progressing well with the neighbourhood plans, and we continue to encourage villages who want to to create neighbourhood plans. In terms of the number of dwellings that we were able to deliver in that period, we had 1,567 dwellings built, of which 1,107 were in South Cambridgeshire, and also 37% of four houses built in South Cairns were affordable housing, and for those who are quite interested in renewable energy, I'm happy to say that we had 2.4169 megawatts of renewable energy installed in Greater Cambridge, of which 2.4 of that was in South Cairns. The actual tables that show the housing delivery numbers in detail is in Appendix 2 on page 170 of the report, and it's a series of charts which give the full details, but I'm happy to take questions after which I would recommend that we notes the report as required on page 15 of our cabinet papers. Thank you, Llywydd. Thank you very much, Councillor Hawkins. Councillor Van Der Wire, do you want to speak on this at this point? No, I'll think at the end if I'm sorry. Okay, right. Have we any questions from cabinet members? No, okay. Any questions from any other members who are present in the meeting? Councillor Anna, can you put it in the chat, please, if you want to speak? I've got Councillor Anna Bradman first. Thank you very much, Llyda. I just wanted to ask, and it may be a matter of misunderstanding, but I just wanted to ask if I could have some clarity looking at its page 180, 182 of our agendas, and probably, I can't actually see what number it is in the report because the numbers overwrite each other, but it's about gypsy and traveller pitches, so 182 in our agenda. I just wanted some clarity about whether it was, I think I read in the report that we realised we had sufficient traveller pitches, and that's why we didn't have any new ones since 2016. I just wondered if I could have some clarity there, some explanation. Thank you. Councillor Hawkins, do you want to answer this, or do you want to defer to an officer? I think my recollection is that we had allocated some in the current local plan, so we do have enough as it stands, but we will be reviewing that obviously within the new local plan work as we are going along. It was my understanding that we had sufficient allocation as things stand at the moment. Would Mr Kelly like to add anything to that? Thank you, Leader. Just to confirm that, at the local plan examination, the council's evidence that was submitted suggested that we had sufficient numbers of pitches for the need identified at that time. You'll be aware that the government's definition of gypsies and travellers actually changed during the plan period, but we are undertaking jointly with neighbouring authorities a new need assessment to help inform the new local plan, given that the inspector at the time did have some questions about the approach. So our policies at the moment are to support effectively applications subject to specific criteria rather than to include particular allocations in the adopted local plan. Thank you very much, Mr Kelly. Okay, moving on. Councillor Claire Daunton, we'd like to ask your question. Thank you, Leader. Yes, my question relates to 3.79 on pages 62 over onto 63 of the agenda papers, and this is the section on listed buildings. I just wanted some reassurance that we are working on updating our guidance to owners of listed buildings on energy efficiency, because I know that Historic England are working on that, so I just wanted reassurance that we are up to speed and up to date on the latest energy technology that's suitable for listed buildings. Thank you very much. Yes, an issue that's close to my heart as I sit wrapped in wool in my freezing cold-listed building here. So, Councillor Hawkins, do you want to take that, or do you want to ask the other? I thank you, Councillor Daunton. I can definitely assure you that we are working on that. I know that the built natural environment team currently have a project on going looking at updating advice to owners of heritage buildings on what they can do to improve energy efficiency of their homes. Once I have some more information on how far we are with that, I think probably you'll be the first to know, because I know you are quite keen on that. Can I be number two in the list, please? Thank you. Mr Kelly, do you want to add anything to that? Not significantly, no. We are very live to the objective of trying to support owners in listed buildings and in conservation areas in appropriate alternative technologies. We are also working to see how colleagues in building control, who have particular expertise in obviously energy management in buildings, might be able to assist in that. But as Councillor Hawkins said, perhaps we can provide an update to you on timelines and actions. Thank you. Lovely. So, I am seriously very interested in this bearing in mind in South Cambridgeshire. We have so many conservation areas and so many listed buildings. There is a sense that it is not a level playing field for those of us who have cold, leaky old buildings that we are looking after for future generations, but facing very, very high fuel bills and very cold homes as a consequence. It would be really nice if we as a local authority could be leading the way in this and doing some really innovative stuff that could be picked up with other areas as well. So, that is very exciting work. Sorry, Lleedon, might I ask another question? I am really sorry. I marked this out and I can't find it now where I have marked it. So, I will try to be as brief as possible. Somewhere in the report, it mentions whole life housing. Also, it mentions making sure that any extensions etc are fit for purpose for the whole life of the resident, as well as the whole life of the house. And I just wondered what effect latest legislation on permitted development had had on that. That is a really good question. Councillor Hawkins, do you want to? I am not sure I can answer that question in the level of detail that Councillor Dunton might require. Perhaps, Mr Kelly might have a point or two. I will see if I can offer some comment. Certainly, the government's recent changes to permitted development, which introduced a prior approval requirement, have started to focus on minimum room standards, but clearly that is some way short of our objectives around lifetime homes. In terms of obviously this report relates to your current adopted local plan and its provisions, but as we go forward with the new joint local plan, it is really important for officers and I know for members to see how far we can put a policy framework in place that will both help us with those prior approvals, but also which, of course, we only have limited control over, but also how we can support and encourage lifetime homes in every house that we start to see coming forward through the next plan. Thank you very much. Of course, this is very critical now, particularly we've seen with COVID the importance of people having homes which are conducive to their health and well-being as well. We need to be doing, as a country, we need to be doing more to be able to keep people safely in their own homes even in times of crisis. So, thank you very much indeed, and Councillor Daunton. Councillor Heather Williams. Thank you, leader. I just wanted to ask questions. Apologies, my page numbers, because I'm being very brave and I've gone paper free on my council agendas, which sometimes means that the online documents don't quite tally up the paper ones. I have a1.12 as my page reference on here, which is in the appendix 1, and it's just about the West Cambridge master plan, and later on, I think on a1.16, some other places, master plans are in the amber. So, I just wanted to say, is that, you know, because of perhaps I know the COVID impact was early on, is there some explanation why we're not quite on target of our master plans, and what sort of impact could that, if indeed it does, have on the five-year housing land supply, sort of how reliant are we on sites such as the West Cambridge? Thank you, leader. Thank you very much indeed, Councillor Williams. Councillor Hawkins, do you want to take that, or do you want to go straight to Mr Kerley? I think I will go straight to Mr Kerley on this one. Thank you. Thank you, leader. The West Cambridge site is obviously in Cambridge City Council's area, but the master plan that is being referred to, the Cambridge University submitted an outline planning application shortly after I arrived at the council in 2016, and that application has taken some considerable time because of the transport issues associated with it, but also in terms of some of the scale massing and studies that were done to support responses from local communities, but also concerns that officers had had about the layout. So that particular application is being revised, as the text says, and clearly we can't, until we've granted the outline application, we can't conclude the position on master planning, but that's why that site is marked as AMBA. The site is in fact allocated and already benefits from an outline planning permission for very substantial additional floor space, so officers are not at this stage concerned about the implications for either economic growth or delivery against the plan. Okay, so there was a specific question about the five-year housing land supply, so you're saying there's no, there's no impact. The West Cambridge master plan has no residential development upon it and therefore has no residential development. That's super. Councillor Williams, does that answer your question, or do you want any other points of clarification? I use that as one of the master plans that aren't placed as an example, but there are some others through the report, but I'm, yes, a bit more on stage, how that affects the five-year land supply potentially, but I'm happy to have an answer to that outside of this meeting if required leader, and I was just going to say on the list is buildings. It's also, we've seen a big impact on that with the solar together, which I know I've been helping residents with here and some of my family have buildings listed or conservation areas, and I think it is really important that we get something sorted on that because that way we don't want them to be able to, they're missing out on potentially schemes such as the solar together, which has been a really great initiative with them for the district council and the county together, so it'd be great if we could see something before that deadline. Thank you, leader. Okay, so okay, so I think it might be helpful actually if you and I had a conversation about what problems you think people are facing who want to put an application to the solar together, I think if we take that offline so we can just get a bit more detail about that if there's some specific issues. Thank you very much indeed. Councillor Jeff Harvey. Yes, thank you, leader. I want to refer back to Councillor Dawkins' interest in historic buildings and particularly how we can encourage better fuel efficiency and energy efficiency in historic buildings, and also very pleased to hear from Councillor Hawkins that sort of work is underway on that front, and I think probably as part of that work I noticed that some of our very helpful advice to residents has been updated on the historic fabric part of our website, but in fact we did have the historic buildings experts within South Cams come to present their plans quite early on in 2020 in January I think, and I think probably speaking also for Councillor Pippa Haleyings who chairs the Climate and Environment Committee, I think our hope was that obviously what we can do in terms of allowing people to make their listed buildings more energy efficient is to some extent constrained by a national policy, but as in all these things I suppose there's some wriggle room, and I think our hope was that we would be in terms of how those regulations are applied by officers on the ground, that there would be a sort of gradual cultural shift from a sort of permissive system to a proactive system if you like, in terms of actually encouraging people to do these things, and I think that's a very important shift of balance considering what a sort of perilous situation we are now in terms of climate change and the disastrous impact that that could have, and I am concerned because I mean these are not particularly current cases, but a few cases have come to my notice where it does seem that the balance is still too much in favour of an absolute kind of protection of the appearance and structure of historic buildings where it seemed a more progressive interpretation should allow us to go a bit further, and I just wonder what Councillor Toomey Hawkins would say on that, can we sort of encourage a sort of cultural shift towards a more progressive interpretation of the regulations? Thank you, you've excellently made points Councillor Hawkins. I mean we definitely want to be progressive, but we'd like to be progressive within the guidelines that that government has set us. What we wouldn't want to do is find that owners interpret in legislation in a way that enables them to do work which perhaps should not be done without proper guidelines, so I would say we will try and make sure that our guidelines are as clear as possible, but we would always obviously ask that building owners talk to us before they start to think about what they want to do, and I'm sure there are ways in which we will be able to discuss with them and advise them on how they can do this in a way that is progressive. I would always encourage you to those of you who have that expertise and experience please come and talk to me, come and talk to our officers, we are always willing to listen and to incorporate new knowledge into the guidance that we give to our residents. Thank you, I think there is some work to be done as part of the Oxford Cambridge Archon this as well, which hopefully I can feed into and then that can feed into our own Climate and Environment Committee, so I think we need to be possibly looking at the committee, Councillor Harvey, to be giving more of a steer and some good case studies and some good examples actually, so I agree we can do more on this, so thank you very much for raising that. So, Councillor Daunton would like to come back to another question. Yes, not to labour this point, just to come back very quickly, just to ask for some reassurance that our officers are maintaining close contact with Historic England on their latest thinking on this. Definitely, definitely. I mean a lot of what we do, we need to make sure that we are in close contact with the other authorities who organisations that are relevant to the work that we do. Okay, right, so in the absence of any more questions, so the recommendations set out in paragraph 4 of the report and it says... Something up for you, so sorry, so keen to get on. I'll pass the recommendation Van der Wijn and I'll come back to Councillor Hawkins. Very, very briefly, I think this discussion has demonstrated the usefulness of the report in making us think about what we're doing and feeding into the local plan and so just to thank officers for all of the effort to pull all of this detail together into this report, which is clearly an awful lot of work and it is useful and appreciative. Thank you very much indeed. Now my thanks to members for raising important issues as well. Councillor Hawkins, do you want to summarise? Just to thank everyone who's actually done some reading and asked questions, certainly jobs degree sales as Poirot would say. And to say that, as I said before, please, ideas are obviously always welcome. Those are open to listen and to talk and to chat because at the end of the day we are serving our residents. So if I can ask members to have a look at the recommendations on page 15 for A and B. Thank you very much, leader. Thank you. So just to reiterate, cabinet's recommended to A, agree the Cambridge City and Council and South Cambridge and District Council Authority monitoring report for Greater Cambridge 2019-20, included as Appendix 1 for publication on the council's website, and B, delegate any further minor editing changes to the Cambridge City Council and South Cambridge and District Council, AMR for Greater Cambridge 2019-2020 to the joint director for Greater Cambridge chaired planning. Do members agree with the proposal? Agree. Agree. Okay, does anyone wish to vote against the proposal? And does anyone wish to abstain? Okay, so cabinet therefore agrees the proposal by affirmation. And moving on to the last agenda item, which is the update on the Health and Wellbeing Strategy and Councillor Bill Handley is going to introduce this and I'm very happy to second it. So Councillor Handley. Thank you, leader. The original Health and Wellbeing Strategy was agreed by cabinet back in June 2020. It was actually written mostly before the coronavirus pandemic effects were seen. This paper gives an update and details the progress of activities to date. Progress was inevitable, I think, that progress was slowed by the pandemic and given the circumstances, I think you agree that it's commendable that officers have actually done as much, made as much progress as they have and there are more red boxes in the table. And I really like to thank officers and congratulate them on perseverance and dedication to this work. So it's a snapshot. It's where we are. It's a work in progress. We will issue another update later in the year, which will no doubt include more on the COVID response. But the recommendation is that cabinet are asked to note the contents of the report and consider the impacts of COVID. I think I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. So does anyone from cabinet wish to ask any questions about this? No, so I have a question in the box from Councillor Sue Ellington, who I know has a long-standing interest in this. Thank you very much. And a happy new year to all I haven't spoken to this year so far. I really would like to congratulate the officers on the COVID community groups and the patchwork that they have done. They really have been excellent and I'm sure the residents are very grateful for that. And obviously the mobile warden scheme, which I'm just involved in setting up in my patch is great. But there's one area where I happen to have been receiving exercise from the referral scheme when the pandemic started. And I do feel I had one session via Zoom and that was quite successful. But then everything died. And those people who had really been benefiting from having mobility training were suddenly fine. They didn't have it anymore. I do feel some further efforts to put stuff online like mobility exercises would be beneficial. And I have a personal trainer and I do all mine online and it's great. So can we think about that please? Thanks, thank you very much indeed Councillor Ellington. Yes, I do two online Pilates classes to keep me moving when I spend most of the rest of the time sat in front of a screen. And thank you for your kind words about the patchwork and what's going on. And thank you also for your assistance in getting the mobile warden scheme up and running on your patch, which is something we both of us think is marvellous. So Councillor Handley, do you want to comment on the lack of the transition of the GP referral scheme into remote delivery? It's something that I think I will take away. I know that there's a lot farther than the officer responsible is on the call. So no doubt she's scribbling away notes as we speak. And I'll talk to you offline as well Councillor Ellington. Okay, would Leslie like to add anything there because actually I'm sure this is something she's looked into. Yes, attempts were made originally to provide kind of Zoom type classes. My understanding was that because of the demographic that they weren't proving popular and they didn't have enough uptake. So that's why they were for all intents and purposes shelved. But I can certainly go back to them with your comments Sue and get some feedback, which I can get back to you. Thank you. So I think we might find Leslie that people who weren't online at the beginning of this pandemic have been bought iPads and things by their families in order to keep in contact with them. So the situation might have changed now actually. So I think this absolutely is worth looking at, particularly as the gyms have all had to close and some of them are including my own are potentially not can't be made COVID compliant even when the restrictions start lifting. So I would appreciate that being looked at again because I think things probably have changed there. Thank you. Is that anything else Councillor Ellington? No, thank you very much. Super, thank you. Councillor Delacy. Thank you very much Llyda. And I'd like to add my thanks to Leslie and her team for all that they've done. It's a tremendous amount of work. And particularly page 258 of the agenda, it's great to see a large number of successes that we have been able to chalk up. But perhaps thinking about improvement, it's sometimes helpful to look at one's failures as well. And I wonder without any criticism that these failures have happened, whether Leslie or the or Councillor Handling would be able to comment on areas where for various reasons we haven't done what we were hoping to do. I've seen the red red lines obviously in the table. That's not quite what I'm thinking of, but failures that might instruct us going forward. And a second question, if I may, on the next page page 259 under 23 food vouchers, I'd be interested to know how that scheme has worked. I'm not quite sure what the last line of that, opening the high street officers means, I presume it's possibly a typo. And whether we've actually provided food parcels as well, in which case I hope they have been well above government standard. Thank you very much. Yeah, it's not a typo actually. Councillor Handling, do you want to take that or do you want to defer to Leslie? I think actually Leslie would be a better place to comment on this, yeah. Thank you. Sorry, just had to find the microphone and the video there. In terms of what we've not been able to achieve, I think part of that is, I'll very much have been focused on the kind of front line supporting the volunteer groups. So a lot of the business as usual has been postponed until we're through the worst of it. So I think we had that lull in September where things started to return to some normality, but then October hit. And again, we're very much focused on supporting our volunteer groups and delivering sort of front line support to residents. In terms of the food vouchers, so this was something that came out of the county COVID hub, support hub, looking at how we can address some of the inequalities that we're seeing which have been exposed as a result of COVID. And one of those was just helping younger families access sort of cheap and healthy food. We know that a lot of the larger supermarkets accept food vouchers, but if you're a young parent and you're living in a rural village and you may not have access or you cannot afford a bus or a taxi, then how do you access these sort of cheap sources of food? So we decided that we'd harness those opportunities of working with the high street officers. We knew that they were going into every store across the district. So it was about having a conversation with those stores to offer these vouchers to young families and then working with the younger children's centres through county, ensuring that young mothers knew about them so that we had a kind of two-pronged approach to ensuring that uptake was maximised as much as possible. Unfortunately, due to COVID, or through COVID, our third lockdown, we're not getting the food parcels that the government were providing in the initial lockdown, but what we are doing is we're working very closely again with the hub and we are ensuring that any parent that comes through to us that is in need of food, we are providing them with the food bank vouchers, which has now been extended to as an ongoing source of provision rather than it was originally a three week source, you know, you could have three lots of food bank vouchers and then that was it. Now it's, you know, until the pandemic is through the worst. Thank you, Leslie. Do those vouchers also allow people to get things like nappies and toilet trees and so on? Yes, so what happens is you would apply for, you would name or state how many people in your household and the ages, and you can state that you need nappies, milk, and specific provisions for the ages of your children. And they will also then determine how much to provide in a food parcel. So if you've got four, sort of a 16 and a 14 year old and two adults, you would get a much different food parcel if you've got two young children. Charlie Good. So I have every confidence that this sort of service being delivered locally means that it will be of high quality, unlike some of essentially allocated schemes. So thank you very much. Does that answer your question, Councillor Delaney? I'm enormously encouraged by that. Thank you very much indeed. The only comment I'd make is I hope we're encouraging parents to think about terribly nappies rather than just disposables if we have any influence on them in how they're bringing up their families. But thank you very much, Llywydd. Thank you very much indeed. So I've now got Councillor Claire Daunton. Thank you, leader. I've got three questions, so I'll be very quick. The first question is page 265, one of the items in Amber there. And it takes me back to my earlier point on the planning audit report. And it's sharing expertise on healthy living and independent living. And I just wondered why it's still Amber, it's still to be delivered. That's my first question. Okay, Leslie, would you like to respond to that? Sorry, I'm just looking up 265.  So you've got quite a few questions coming up. Yeah, just a second. So this is a health impact assessment. And this is the creation of the top 10 tips to future proof your home. Again, I'm just waiting to hear back from planning as to the best person to liaise with on that project. So it's really, yeah, then I can take it forward. So that's something that's very easily resolved. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, leader. Might I go on to my next two questions? So I'm back to page 258. I'm really just sort of reiterating what other people have said. Thanks to Leslie for all the work on the mobile warden scheme, which is already making a difference in this ward. And also to acknowledge the work of councillor John Williams on that as well, very important in terms of the funding. And then on the volunteers, what's come out of the COVID council members and officers response to the COVID crisis is how fantastic our volunteers are, and particularly the coordinators, and whether there is any plans to sort of harness that for the future, particularly the expertise, the growing expertise of the coordinators. Can I answer the last, the second point, leader first? Yes, please do. We were looking at ways of harnessing the COVID volunteer response last summer, but of course, events overtook us. The depth of the pandemic was such that we thought we had to leave it, but certainly it is something that we will attempt, we will look to do as soon as we think it's the right time. Thank you very much. Leslie, is there anything you want to add to any of that? Yes, this was a point that was actually raised at a leadership team back in December when we took this report to them. A briefing paper going to a leadership team tomorrow. Just as we recognise this as an opportunity to harness that energy and enthusiasm that's coming out of the community groups, but on an ongoing basis. So what we don't want to do is to see this dissipate. This is a real opportunity for us to work with community groups to encourage health and well-being right at the grassroots level. It's for walking groups, as an example, but actually broadening it. So working with community groups perhaps on a kind of self, they self-select what issues are important to them and we support them. So it could be through green issues, it could be emergency planning or it could be health and well-being. So this is something, as I say, that we're going to take to leadership team tomorrow to discuss further and no doubt it will be coming back to Cabinet fairly soon. Excellent, good, good, and I hope when we're all allowed to get together we can do something lovely for all those leaders in all the communities. Perhaps have a jolly, which would be nice. Sorry, just to comment on that. I think it's also really important for ward members as well. It's been very helpful for us to have the input into the COVID volunteer groups, so thank you. Did you have another question, Councillor Daunton? No, that's my three. Thank you, leader. I'm finished. Thank you very much indeed. Councillor Anna Bradnham. Thank you, leader. My question is page 267, and I suspect this might perhaps end up being again directed to Linda McFarlane, but it's relating to this creation of a mental health officer post. And certainly in my own village, being on the COVID support group, we have encountered this, that we find that there are some individuals who have required the expertise and cleverness of our support network to understand how best to handle individual people who have very specific mental needs. And I absolutely understand how much time that can take up. And I just wondered what other solutions are being considered, and whether there is any cross council working with the county council, or if it's only through the Camture and Peterborough Foundation Trust, or whether there's any support that's available through the county council that could be harnessed to help on this. So my understanding is that that post, and I stand to be corrected, was to have somebody in the house who could work as part of our multidisciplinary teams. I also am aware that we are offering mental health training to officers and the community groups, which has had a poor uptake, and I think we've been doing a further push in the last week or so. So I think there's lots on offer. Councillor Handley, do you want to add anything for that, and then I'll come to Leslie? Only as much as we mustn't lose sight of the fact that officers have been working very, very hard on the COVID response, and inevitably have had to go by the wayside, and unfortunately this is one of them. I mean, obviously they've been redeployed from business as usual to the COVID response, so I think the answer that's given in the red box is anchored, actually. Leslie, do you want to add anything? Yeah, just it's been a source of frustration for us. We've progressed really well up until August of last year in working with CPFT to second a member of their staff, but then, of course, when they have difficulties with their own staffing and they're also working flat out in the NHS at the moment. We had discussed recruiting somebody who was a private mental health worker and not connected to CPFT, but one of the reasons why we wanted to work with CPFT is because there would be an open door if we needed to refer for more support, and we think that if we go down that private worker route or private professional route, we'll still be working against a closed door, and that's one of the frustrations of working with CPFT and the NHS is when you're trying to get that additional support. It's very, very difficult to get hold of. I'm encouraged that we've got, now we've got the vaccination program underway, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and I think that this would be a good, I think spring would be a really good opportunity to take up those conversations again with CPFT. They were very keen at the time, they could really see the value of having someone working in housing, so I don't think that it's not that they're interested, they're just working flat out, so I think the best option still is to go with CPFT if we can. I completely agree. I think that's a very sound decision. Okay, and thank you very much indeed, Councillor Bradman. Councillor Hasall-Smith. Yes, thank you Chairman, a leader. I also was going to raise the mental health officer, because I'm very keen that we should get somebody to work with housing, certainly going to be quite useful to us. The other thing which I picked up was on page 266, air quality monitoring. I just wondered where we've got to now with buying and positioning monitors and just not to forget about the other things which are in here. Important as the COVID response is and working with people because traffic is building up again. Also, I wanted to ask about the recommendation, which in paragraph 10 it talks about this review is a six month review. I think we should probably be looking at reviewing again as we're coming out of COVID and whether we make that six months from now or leave it open. I suspect a timescale would be useful, but I'll take people's views on that, but six or nine months or something. Thank you. If I take your second point first, my gut feeling is straight after the summer is possibly the right time, but I'm interested to know what Councillor Handley and Leslie feel about that. I'm going to ask Brian if he's got any update on the air quality monitoring feeling that will come to Trevor, because we used to talk about this a lot and we'll talk about COVID now. Yes, so we've certainly got new air quality monitors, doctor around the district. There's not too many of them. Trevor might give some more accurate quantitative data and I haven't seen any up-to-date data from those monitors, but it's in the monitoring report as well as the health and well-being report. So we're clearly very active in this space and we want to make sure that actually the A14 was an example, wasn't it, where the contractors weren't taking any active measures and we persuaded them to do so. Yes, there was some tremendous action from local members there. So on to Councillor Handley, as far as when this is reviewed, we obviously need a plan that is a health and well-being COVID recovery plan, really, because we're going to have people in our communities still suffering from long COVID even after everybody's been vaccinated.  And bereavement support, and there's going to be a heck of a lot of long-term health and well-being consequences, even once the virus has stopped running rampant around the world. So I just wonder what your views are on the best timing to do this. I agree entirely and something that we have been talking about. I suspect that from the spring we might be in a much better position to know how we can roll this forward, and that will be my plan, and I'll be talking with Leslie and Gareth and others to see how we push it on. Okay, so you'd rather we didn't commit your time from now, we let that evolve. I think under the circumstances of the moment we are still very much engaged in the COVID pandemic response. I think a week might be a long time actually in this, so can we leave this one on ice just for the moment, and probably come back to you in a week or two with a firma set of proposals? That's fine, there's no hurry on this, as I say, things change daily. Leslie, did you want to add anything to that? No, I'll go with Bill and Will Lee Ace and figure out a good time. That's lovely, okay, and then I've got a briefly speak from Councillor Bradman. Sorry, I just wanted to apologise for accidentally calling Leslie, Linda earlier on. Sorry about that. No problem, I'm sure. Okay, so if there are no more questions, cabinets recommended to note the contents of the report. Actually, I was meant, I'm seconding it, aren't I? I just wanted to say that I think it's absolutely phenomenal that we've actually stayed on track with so much of this. I would not have been at all surprised if 80% of this plan had been flagged red, quite honestly, with all the pressures we've been put under. So huge congratulations to Leslie and all her team, that they've managed to keep Michelle on the road really, and that they produced a plan that has been able to flex to deal with the terrible situation we're in at the moment so very, very effectively. So I think you've done brilliantly, and yes, and long may continue. So my thanks to you all, I'm sure you're all absolutely exhausted, but I know myself and my own residents are extremely grateful for everything that you've achieved and the fact that you've really kept business as usual, as well as all the awful stuff that's been laid at our door as well online is marvellous. So Councillor Handley, is there anything else you want to say and summing up? No, I think you've put, what I was going to sum up was the thanks and you've done it eloquently. I just say I 100% support everything you just said. Thank you very much indeed. So Cabinet's recommended to note the contents of the report and consider the impacts of COVID on the delivery of activities and services which promote physical and mental health and well-being. So do you members agree with the proposal? Great, agreed. Thank you. Does anyone wish to vote against? I note that Councillor Peter McDonald has had to leave the meeting, by the way, at 10.51 to attend a health appointment, which is appropriate. I hope he's fine. Anybody wish to vote against? And anybody wish to abstain? Okay, so Cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation. So that takes us to the end and just over an hour, the next meeting of Cabinet's scheduled to take place on Wednesday the 3rd of February 2021 at 10 o'clock. And thank you very much, everyone, for attending. Please can we end the live stream?


Well, if you ever need the help of law enforcement, you would want them to be in shape, right? Well, Haiti Clotter tells us how Clearwater County is putting officers to the test. An officer may be driving around in his squad car for a few hours, and the next minute, he's on foot in a pursuit. Anything can happen. The Clearwater County Sheriff decided to do something about it since being elected in 2015. We're hoping that this will, you know, get the deputies exercising a little bit more and make them healthier. And also it's a responsibility, I feel, that we have to the people that we protect and serve, that when we show up on a call, we should be able to physically do the job. According to Sheriff Darren Halverson, the physical fitness standard is another way to improve operations at the Sheriff's office. The yearly standard will be based on age and gender, and will begin this fall. The tests will include activities such as push-ups, sit-ups, and a mile run. We'll see how this goes this fall. We're kind of thinking maybe, you know, we'd like to look at an obstacle course type thing to down the road, you know, try to do things that are more practical to our job, things that we might run into. Any officer struggling in a certain area can look forward to next year to make improvements. The mile run is based on time, you know, how you do it, and we have it based on a scale from 50% to 100% and the different time brackets that you can make. After his or her initial hire, most officers are required to undergo fitness testing, but this standard will benefit the department and community. Let's say there's a medical and someone needs help with something, I want to make sure that our people are up to the task of being able to physically do that. Research began last year and the Sheriff's office spoke to other agencies to get their feedback. Chief Deputy Ryan Soli also gave input to set the standard. He's already preparing for the test. We have gym memberships that we offer out there in the community, and then a lot of us have already started partaking in 5K and 10K runs for fundraisers. The plan for now is to use the high school to conduct the fitness test. In Bagley, Haiti-Claude, Lakeland News. 10 officers, including Sheriff Halverson, will participate in the physical fitness standard. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Welcome everyone, it's just gone 11 o'clock here in the UK so we're going to make a start while a few more participants join us. So welcome to today's special event productive uses of energy what does it take to stimulate demand. This is both a side event for the United Nations high level dialogue on energy and part of the IED debates series. We are delighted to have you with us and I hope many of you have had an opportunity to engage in the other activities happening this week as part of the ministerial level thematic forums. A huge thanks to our co host today we've joined forces with some fantastic organizations who we will be hearing from shortly including class Ministry of Water Irrigation and energy for Ethiopia to leave a solar United purpose and Ethiopian women in energy. My name is Juliet I'm the events officer at IED, and I will be providing some technical support in this event today. With that, I am really delighted to hand over to our co chairs for today McKenna Erie who is the manager of the East Africa at class and Kevin Johnstone who is a researcher here at IED over to you both. Thanks very much to it. Very happy to be hosting a side event for the high level dialogue on energy ministerial thematic forums. The high level dialogue on energy is the first global gathering on energy under the UN General Assembly since the UN conference on new and renewable sources of energy in 1981. So we're quite excited to see what comes out. I'd like to first set the stage for our audience or a great lineup of panelists can get straight into sharing their own experiences. I'll start by highlighting the energy access need, which for clean cooking solutions is around 2.6 billion people. But today we're focusing on electricity and productive uses and globally the electricity gap stands at about 759 million people. We'll be looking at productive uses of energy experiences from Ethiopia Malawi and Uganda. And overall Sub-Saharan Africa remains the world region with the largest access gap, accounting for about 75% of the global deficit and 570 million people. Energy is not an end goal it's rather an enabler of other development sectors. It's difficult to achieve any sustainable development goals without achieving SDG seven universal energy access. Energy enables tools and opportunities for teachers and school management for better educational outcomes. It supports clinics and hospitals with life saving machinery and equipment, especially important during these times. It provides sustainable irrigation solutions as we'll hear more about today for smallholder farmers and enable small businesses to offer better services and capture more value within communities and their countless other examples across sectors. The bad news is that between 2017 and 19 progress in energy access outstripped population growth, resulting in a drop in the total numbers of un-electrified people. But this progress is threatened by negative impacts of COVID-19. Some additional bad news is that investments into the energy sector continue to fall short of what is needed to achieve SDG seven by 2030, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Energy access investments financially viable and more importantly to enable more opportunities for remote and poor households, productive uses of energy is critical to enabling energy access. So what is productive uses of energy or PUE as we call it in the industry. Evidence from IID's research and many others in the sector such as CLASP shows that investing in installing energy infrastructure does not necessarily generate demand from communities organically. Additional efforts are needed to establish initial demand, and this is where productive uses of energy or PUE comes into play. PUE can be defined as using energy to increase income or productivity. And this could simply be a light bulb that allows a business to open longer hours in a small village, a more efficient and accessible institutional stove, or it could be powering large equipment and machinery in a remote location. PUE is also relevant for grid extension areas in some contexts where communities face similar challenges in energy access as off grid areas. In recent years there's been greater focus on activities that promote productive uses of energy. So what does it take to stimulate demand? Well today I've baked a small PUE pie in an electric oven for today's event to highlight to our audience some of the crucial supporting services needed to enable PUE. And here you can see each piece representing just some of these supporting services that are needed to be in place to ensure that demand can be generated through productive uses of energy to enable livelihoods and local community economies. There are many other supporting services or pieces of the PUE pie that you can read more about at the IID website and also CLASP's website. We'll be looking at three different perspectives of energy access and PUE and the critical cross cutting theme of gender. So we'll start with the government, according to analysis from SMAP, policy frameworks to support minigrid and off grid systems developed more rapidly after 2010, then did those for on grid electrification. So that's some good news, but much more needs to be done to support an enabling environment specifically for PUE. And we'll get more information on this from the government of Ethiopia today and their efforts in supporting PUE. Energy systems that can electrify entire communities so-called minigrids are expected to be crucial in reaching universal energy access and importantly, an enabling remote and poor communities economies. And today we'll hear about smaller generation solar minigrids in Malawi and what PUE challenges United Purpose has faced and how they've overcome them. Moving down a level, most sub-saharan economies rely significantly on agriculture. There are millions of small holder farmers that could be supported with solar irrigation solutions. We'll hear more on the experience of Tulima solar in Uganda and their efforts in reaching more small holder farmers. And finally, we'll touch on the crucial cross cutting theme of gender. So energy access doesn't necessarily bring equal benefits for everyone, especially between men and women. Women often face additional challenges and barriers to benefit from energy access. We'll hear more on some of these today from Ethiopian women in energy. And now I'd like to hand off to my co-chair host, Makenna, to start the panel. Thank you so much, Kevin, and thank you so much for giving us a kind of big picture view of PUE and energy access. So I don't want to check out too much time. Let's just jump straight to it. We're so excited to have Yodit, representing the Ethiopian government from the Ministry of Water Irrigation and Energy on the panel today. Yodit, Ethiopia seems to recently have really embraced productive use of energy. Could you please share with us how the Ethiopian government is, what activities you're doing to kind of support productive use of energy? Thank you. Yeah, so we recently have accepted this productive energy based on our new 10-year strategy document that we are following. And this national electrification effort that we have been doing for the past few years has helped us to recognize that productive use of energy needs to be interlinked with households, which are the rural households where we don't have grid electricity or grid connection. So in doing that, we actually have commissioned six agricultural production and processing studies. It mainly focuses in horticultural irrigation, grain mining, injera baking, milk cooling, and grade baking, so that we would integrate the agriculture and the electrification project. So this has helped us to assess the benefit both in cost-wise, whether the grid and the utility from our electricity generation. We could recover cost and also how the community will be able to sustain their own self. So that's been the main objective of the government using this productive use energy. So it's so great to hear that you're thinking about it all the way from the national electricity planning, your commissioning studies to gather data, because we know data is so hard to come by in this sector and especially for productive use, and that you're using that data to inform decisions. So it sounds like all taking all the right boxes, but what advice would you give to other governments in terms of, for example, collaborating between different government streams? Because sometimes where we recognize even with doing everything perfectly, sometimes there are silos that exist that don't allow us to work together effectively to deliver productive use. So would you have any advice for other governments looking to integrate productive use? Yeah, so one of the main issues that we faced is financing when we start to do with this productive use energy. So what we use is we followed those areas that are not grid connected, which means it requires quite a lot of investment in off-grid solutions, which means either importing or producing solar panels, and also we need to train and educate the community that having light or having energy would actually help their livelihood. So if they are a farming household, then they usually don't see the benefit of having electricity right on point. So we'll just automatically say that, well, I only have one light bulb to light, so why am I investing in electricity? But through training, through mobilizing a lot of resources, we were able to convince community that having a communal off-grid energy solution will actually benefit them. So that's why we had to attach our electrification scheme with agriculture, so that if we provide milk cooling opportunities, then the community will see the benefit of collecting milk as a communal and then they will be able to sell it, not only around their area but to different towns nearby. So that helped them to generate more income. So that's how it started for the community to accept that having off-grid solution like solar panel as a productive energy use was slowly and slowly being accepted by the country. So for other governments, what I would suggest is that they need to invest more time, more infrastructure and condition, and they also have to follow what the local community needs so that the acceptance will be high. Thank you so much, Yodit. I love the way you've talked about how you focus on the off-grid spaces and you've started with understanding the needs of the community, right, and then integrating planning based on those needs. So I want to maybe now focus in a different area. We're hearing that off-grid communities that that's going to be one of the places that productive use can have the most impact, but also maybe some of the challenges. So moving over now to Malawi, we know that Malawi has one of the lowest rates of electrification, but there's been a lot of effort recently to ramp up decentralized energy such as many grids, especially for rural communities. And recently United for Purpose has been supporting rural electrification efforts as well. So coming to you, Elizabeth, what opportunities do you see for many grids, especially in your context in Malawi? Thank you so much, Makina, for having me on the panel. Well, there's a lot of opportunity for many grid development in Malawi. First of all, Malawi has a very low national electrification rate, estimated at 12%, and only 3% for the rural population. And expansion of the national grid to the rural areas is slow due to the limited government budgets on utilities. That's why the current Malawi national energy policy is promoting mini grids as one way of accelerating electrification in locations where grid extension cannot be an economically viable electrification approach. The advantage that we have as a nation is that we have a lot of renewable energy resources like solar and perennial rivers, which can be used for electricity generation. And most of the rural villages, they have a cluster setup. So this type of setup makes power distribution easy and cost effective. And we have also seen that demand for clean and reliable energy services from people in the rural areas is very high and that the majority of rural communities are engaged in agricultural income generation. So there is a big opportunity for mini grids offering productive use of energy in the agricultural value chain. It's great to hear that you're seeing that demand and you're trying to meet it with renewable energies, especially in the form of mini grids, even though there are some challenges of course with financing. And as you're trying to deliver PUE attached to mini grids, what are some of the lessons you're learning as you engage in with the community. Well, through our experience in developing a small solar mini grid in Malawi, we have learned that small scale village businesses are not very reliable and stable in terms of energy consumption and income generation. Without linkage to large productive use, to large productive energy users, the mini grid is likely to struggle to reach the critical revenue needed for financial sustainability. And in addition to that, we have seen that it is important to engage the community on productive use of energy before developing the mini grid. So that we can actually deliver an impactful solution to the community. The people in the community have very brilliant ideas on productive use of energy, but it is not enough just to provide electricity and expect that community incomes will automatically increase. The communities need support to set up the businesses. They need financial support to buy appliances or machinery for production and processing. They need technical capacity building, and they also need support with finding markets for their final products. But for all of these to be successful, a sustained collaboration between stakeholders is required. The main challenge that we have faced as a mini grid developer is that the ability and willingness to pay is lower than anticipated. And this has been a challenge in terms of making decisions in tariff adjustments to balance a cost reflective tariff in order to support operations and maintenance. That's why we are looking into adding some large productive users to increase daytime demand. And in such a way increase income and allow for lower tariffs. This is so great. You're already touching on the pieces of the pie that Kevin was talking about, you know, the consumer financing, the technical assessment or technical sort of assistance that consumers need. Again, very, very crucial pieces of the pie that you're speaking of. And it's so great to hear how you are trying to kind of augment demand by attracting larger and larger kind of users of productive energy. So that's super, super interesting. Kevin, now as we're talking about the pie, I'm going to hand over to you to kind of dig a little bit deeper into some of the examples from Uganda and then also into the gender aspects. Thanks very much, beginner. So I'd like to move to Uganda now. We know that agriculture is a significant portion of Uganda's economy. So we're quite excited to have to Lima solar offering solar water pumps to support horticulture and livestock activities here today. Listen, what are some of the general challenges that you've seen in reaching some customers with solar water pumps in Uganda. Thank you for having me, Kevin, and the team. So the biggest challenges that we're experiencing with the experience in our market in Uganda is that smallholder farmers are sparsely sort of located or populated in different districts across Uganda. So the distances become a challenge, especially for us, you know, service providers that are providing them solar water pumps. But luckily for us, we entered the market in 2019 backed up by Simu solar that was established in Tanzania in 2014. So when we came into the market, we felt that the way we would address the challenge of the distances is to partner up with organizations that have an aggregation of farmers. So in the market, we have about 27 lead generation partners. And this lead generation partners are organizations that have that are cooperatives, some are circles, and then others are basically what we call aggregators sort of that by produce and sell it abroad. So this has greatly, greatly, greatly helped us in lowering our customer position costs. And what we do, like on a monthly basis, we hold trainings and we hold demo days for solar water pumps amongst their farm members, their farmer members. So in terms of, in terms of membership, they have about some range between 500 all the way to 500,000 farmers per lead generation partner. So that's a very good, you know, cashment area for us as a private company. So when we hold these trainings, we normally get leads or people that are interested in solar water pumps. And those people that are interested, we go out. So we have sales officers that are located in many of the districts in Uganda. So we go out, we do an onsite evaluation for the need of the farmer. So we look at, you know, the farmer's water needs, look at the water sources, we look at the distances that the farmer has to pump the water to where that's actually needed. Then we have a very robust tool, a design tool that selects out a different pump or a customized pump for that particular farmer. And this is very, very important because getting an asset that's customized to them enables them to be more productive than actually getting a ready made solution that's off the shelf. So that's a very, very key component on our business model. So once we feed in that information in our design tools, we usually come up with about two, basically two options. Either the farmer pays cash or we choose to finance them. And for the financing option, we do underwriting where we do an evaluation of their cash flows. And preferably we finance people that or we finance farmers that have been in the business for about two to three years and have proven cash flows that can be backed up by the lead generation partners that we basically have in the market. So once that decision is made between cash and financing, we deploy our engineering teams to do an onsite installation where we educate the farmer on how the pump works so that the concentration is removed from irrigation and it's really focused on being productive in the farm and making as much income as possible so that they can actually grow. One other aspect that we, one of the sort of component that we do offer in the market that's not really available is we offer a two year warranty or a two year service warranty where if there's anything that's wrong with the system in case the farmer wants servicing repair costs. We deploy our teams within 24 hours to make sure that that's resolved. And so that's really interesting. So it sounds like you guys are using existing structures to reach more people, more farmers in this case, which is quite, I think, a unique solution. You also touched on some other important issues in terms of the crucial aspect of customizing the pump for the solution for each farmer. The after sales service issues around the warranties that you offer and so forth. Thanks so much. Looking at the time, I think we've got a lot of interesting questions to get to so I'm going to have to move on to linda in Ethiopia. But like most places, and greater energy access in Ethiopia is a challenge can be a challenge when talking about gender equality access. So, Lina, I'm interested to hear what are some of the challenges related to gender and productive uses in Ethiopia. What, what have you seen. So, when we look at the gender and electricity and productive use of energy, the main issue we're looking at is on starting from project design when we need to look at the winners. Most projects are not asking that question on how can we affect a woman's life, how can we impact women's life. So the project is most of the reports and literatures talk about the in the goal of the energy access which is changing woman life, health care education but then we're not looking at a deliberate interventions which will affect women's life. So when we look at the woman in the picture in the slide, we're not, we can see that the woman trying to provide for energy but we're not looking at how we can change their life. So the main things we need to look at is first, providing a project design, project design should be culturally sensitive. For example, when we look at a woman's the main dominated households, main headed households, if we're providing finance just for productive use of energy, we need to keep in mind that prioritization would be made by the decision maker. So instead of buying a refrigerator, a decision could be made to buy a TV. Again, when we look at the access to finance, so the most important issue is access to finance. So looking at energy access and different comparing between female headed households and male headed households. We have seen an evidence that most male headed households are more able and willing to invest on electrification and thus increasing their income, the household income. And finally, when we look at the other, how do you implement finance so providing access to finance is not enough by itself. We need to design commercially viable businesses to women. So when we design businesses, we need to start moving away from the traditional gender roles. So we need to make sure that we need to keep in mind that there are women, even in the most remote rural areas to our entrepreneur, so we need to try to reach this woman through different training programs, and so on. Thanks so much, Linda. Can you give us some specific examples of what that might look like beyond the project design. Have you seen any success stories that you could tell us about. Okay, so maybe not a direct example but for example, looking at energy access and how women and male are being able to finance energy access. So a very good example I was able to find was from the World Bank reports, where they looked at World Bank energy access diagnostic reports for Ethiopia when they compared between male dominated households and women dominated households. So in an connected areas, they give them, there was an option to pay upfront for electrification and it was seen that twice the percentage of male headed households were willing and able to pay pay compared to women house or headed households, which only around 1% of such households were able to pay, but then when they give them an option of 12 months payment option, then the percentage of women headed households increased substantially, and it gets up to the point of 85 around 85 percentage. So this shows us that if we provide targeted financing and training to women, we can increase actually willingness and ability to pay. That's great. Thanks so much, Lena. I think I hand over to McKenna now we can start looking at some of these great questions that we're receiving from the audience. Thanks Kevin. Yeah, so many amazing questions and please keep them coming. So I guess we'll start first with our government representative and surprisingly some good questions there. What you did is P is subsidized by the Ethiopian government and actually will hand over again to Elizabeth afterwards to respond to the same for Malawi. And if it is, can you give us some examples. Thank you. Yes, most of our electrification projects are financed and subsidized by the government and the since the productive energy use is any new concept for us. So most of the studies we're doing and also the pilot project that we're doing are subsidized by the government. We're working along with some international companies as well as funders, donor funders to to establish some communal in mini grid and upgrade solution. So, in most cases, and almost in all cases it's been subsidized. So I'm guessing those are grants for the pilots and not specific grants for the actual products. So for for for both the pilot and as well as for the project so the community will say will contribute through their own labor and also by providing you know some some areas where the project will be commissioned but in providing the solar or in in building the infrastructure it will be for the government with the donor funders of the international community. Really interesting model that Elizabeth to you what is happening in Malawi do we have the subsidies and as you're answering that maybe you could pick up this other question about how you choose to locate your mini grid. Thank you so much Makina and United purpose is in a governmental organization, and it implements projects using donor funding so for this particular mini grid project, we are implementing it with funding from the Scottish Government, and we're implementing it in collaboration with University of Strathclyde so in the case of United purpose is basically using donor funding. So the subsidies for Malawi for mini grid development, theoretically, they are on paper but then its implementation is yet to begin. So moving on to the question about how we choose the areas to invest the mini grids. We do conduct site assessments for all the sites that have been earmarked for mini grid development so we work hand in hand with the the Department of Energy through the Malawi mitigation section. So they already have a number of sites that have been earmarked for for such type of development. So we do conduct site assessments using a number of parameters like distance from from the nation agreed. Number of households ability and willingness to willingness to pay and more other parameters that we look at before we do the final selection. But I'm sorry I had a glitch there with my internet. So, thank you for answering that question. And I hope you also I don't know if you answered the one on the large productive loads and some of the examples of that. If you did we can move on. Okay, so so far, we only have small businesses that have been connected to the mini grid as I said, people have brilliant ideas but then they don't have the finance that they can use to actually buy machinery or appliances for for such type of businesses and unfortunately our funding does not provide financing for for for productive use of energy so we are trying to look for parallel funding to actually support that component. So just to give an example, in the community that we are working in it's a community where there's a lot of rice cultivation and they don't have a rice milling facility in the community. They actually travel for a distance of about 10 kilometers to access the nearest rice milling facility. So the community has been asking us if it is possible to power a rice milling in the community because they feel it will help them a lot. But as I said, they, there's no one in the community who can come in front to say, I, I'm going to take up this business I'm going to buy a solar milling machine and install it in the community so we're trying to look at ways of how we can. We can get parallel funding and develop some business models that can be able to actually implement such type of productive use. Thank you. Over to you, Kevin. What questions are kind of rising to the top for you. Thanks, McKenna. So here we have another one with regards to women empowerment in a male dominated society, most African cases. Don't you think mindset change is a project that should be looked at in its own on its own, since it involves cultural change include funds for training capacity building and invest in the mindset change for a significant period of time. I think this is a really interesting question so I'd like to kind of leave it open I could default to Lina but if anyone else has any thoughts it'd be great to hear a bit more on on that. Hello. Oh, thanks Vincent I just asked a question so we'll get to you after this one. So any thoughts on gender equality and kind of it being an entire gender transformation so to speak an entire project on its own. Any thoughts on on that and energy access. So, yes energy gender equality is an issue on its own but we cannot separate it from the other aspects energy, it could should be looked at side by side to energy and that's why we were saying that we need, we need a targeted and deliberate interventions. So, we need to look at how energy is affecting women, specifically instead of looking at the society in general and we need to design project is specific to women so that they look at the culture sensitive cultural difference in designing projects. I think that makes sense so it's kind of gender is indeed very important and is a project on its own to transform really societies, but also as you say Lina it's it's important to keep that gender lens within the energy access and perhaps that can contribute to this gender equality issue. Thanks very much. I think this next question that I'm seeing source of financing for initial investments I believe that was answered that Scottish government grant funding. So that one is answered. So here's an interesting one. Do you think it is worthwhile to provide grants subsidies to establish enterprises and or productive uses of energy in remote settings. So this issue around subsidizing P itself. Oh, Vincent you're back. I want to get you in while we while we have you so let me hold that question. So Vincent, can you tell us a bit about financing the solar water pumps and how quickly kind of farmer cover their investments through your pay go financing. So that question. So once we are selected out a system for a farmer and the farmers been approved for financing of credit. So we normally we, what we usually do is we have them pay 25% of the cash value of the system, we pay, they pay 25% down. And then they pay installments with a little bit of interest rate for for about 22 months. And then we have incentives where they can pay three months, that will last within three months and then they get the deposit back. The initial deposit back, and then if they pay that full full financed amount within six months. They can pay half the, they can actually get half the deposit back. So basically that's those are the three plans that we have for farmers here. Great. Thanks, Vincent. And Vincent, do you collaborate with the local authorities in the course of providing irrigation pumps. What is the impact of the intervention to the rural livelihoods. And do you have this a lot of questions to the households afford the pumps. So maybe you can talk a bit about any interactions with local authorities. Yes, there's definitely a big push.  So government is very involved. Local authorities are very involved. But sometimes the involvement could be either either in training, or sometimes it's within actually the local authorities themselves by buying so a lot of pumps from us. There's a little bit of there's a bit of interaction between the local authority but it's it's more open, you know, to different private companies. Sometimes you do get the beads.  So we do quite a bit of interaction with them. And there's a lot of initiatives that actually driven by the government. With regards to agriculture and small orders. So we do participate in those a lot. And can you give us kind of a clear picture of what the impact of the intervention is on rural livelihoods what what have you seen on on farmer incomes for example. So we've been in this market for about like roughly right now about two years, we have installed about 150 systems. Just a few examples that I'll pull out is so so 60% of our customers actually horticulture farmers and then about 25% livestock farmers for horticulture farmers just to give just one example. There was a farmer that was supplying a local restaurant within within Kampala, they're based in the outskirts of Kampala. So before we we sold we sold him a solar water pump he was producing about 6000 heads of lettuce in a month. But he was spending a lot in terms of maintenance and fuel on the generator pump that he was using it was basically diesel generator pump that he was using. Once he switched was able to save that money. And he expanded his farm right now is producing about 10,000 heads of lettuce a month. So he has been able to expand he has been able to save and even when we talk about the labor that he actually uses at the farm it has. It was reduced because you know solar water pumps are more or less automated. If you compare them to fuel pumps. So that's one example that I would give another example was a poultry farmer that we found in the same scenario using a fuel pump. Spending about the same about $1000 a month on maintenance fuel and repairs, he switched over. So right now he had about when we when we when we found we had about 20,000 birds. So right now he has expanded to about 30,000 so there's a lot of a lot of examples that I could go through, but we definitely see the change with different see the difference in terms of productivity in terms of incomes in terms of farm expansion issue. Thanks Vincent that was really clear. It sounds like there's a clear business case for switching out gents that's there. That's, that's great. Maybe I can hand back to McKenna so she can have a go at some of these questions. Thanks Kevin. I'm really curious about this one about subsidies. Because we I think there's been an ongoing discussion in productive use and even in energy access really generally about the role of subsidies and asset financing. So we've got a question there here about are there any examples of asset financing and subsidies to customers and relatedly there's also questions about is that worthwhile is that a worthwhile thing to do to push productive use now I have my own thoughts but I'm super interested in what the panel has to say. I don't know who wants to start. Perhaps Elizabeth, do you think there's, you know, it's worthwhile to push the subsidies and are there any examples of what this is worthwhile. Well, I would say subsidies are good, but then there has to be a clear model on how that is going to work. So, for example, in our case, we are talking about buying the PE assets, and then deploying them in the community but then we, we have to come up with the model of how that is going to work, because we cannot just give the community the assets to the community for free. Obviously, it's not going to be sustainable. So there has to be aware of the community paying back, even if it means maybe 50% of the of that grant of a period of time, but then to give it to give productive use of energy like the larger productive use of energy, a push, there is need for that type of subsidy. Yeah, perhaps another perspective, I don't know, Lilna or you did, what do you think about the idea of subsidies, how what they are and about where they have worked. Okay, maybe I can add some. Well, I think from, from our side, the subsidy part is much more profitable, in a sense, most of the communities that doesn't have the grid connection are, you know, very far away, either topographically or there are certain ways why we didn't have the grid connection for them. So it is best to subsidize it so that, you know, the economic and social activity in that area will be motivated once there is a subsidized mini grid or off grid solution. And once you associate those initiatives with productive using of the energy than the community will be able to generate new income and also through time they will also be able to be motivated to invest in this themselves. So, subsidy in our opinion is a little bit more acceptable so that you know through time things will change. And maybe while I'm still here, I can answer one of the questions where a participant has asked about example, where the project is, is that okay. Absolutely, go for it. So, earlier I said that we have commissioned some studies about, you know, the benefit of this productive use energy and we've identified it in a context and what kind of productive use interventions we need. So the context is that we large rural village, you know, where there is large and dense villages and where the grid connection is 20 kilometers away from that area. There's also another context that we've used where there is a small rural village where they are small partially populated village and the grid is five kilometer away. So in those two contexts, we have this projects, one it's in, in the town of Kenting, it is a large rural village around Lake Tana, east of Lake Tana. The nearest distribution line is 20 kilometer away and the residents is around 15,000 residents in the surrounding area. So, usually, what what this productive use energy that we have commissioned is for meals for grain meals. So, there is around three grain meals in that area, they have been using diesel to provide the meal service so it costs us around, you know, $1 per liter because they had to travel to the nearest town to also buy the diesel so that was a little bit costy for the community. So once the solution we used is the hybrid mini grid system where we installed 160 kilowatts of solar along with 160 kilowatts of diesel generator and 240 kilowatts per hour lead acid battery. So with this hybrid mini grid system we were able to power the existing meals and also to add two more meals in that area, which actually saved money for the for the millers for the milling. So the cost has just reduced to 16 cents kilowatt per hour. So this is one of the projects we have. And then the second one is for the small specially populated rural village. It is in the town of Aoramba in South Gondar. So this is also the same, their income is mainly from maize, tapes, sorghum, chickpea and also cattle. So they have, they usually have only three meals that serve the surrounding area. So they also irrigate their agriculture through traditional methods. So what we used in this project is we also, we use the standalone renewable meaning system. We installed a six kilowatt of solar with a 16 kilowatt hour of lead acid battery, which helped them to have this system. So these are the two very effective examples that I can say. Thank you. Thank you so much for those wonderful examples and I'm sure people can follow up on the ministry website to find out more information. I just want to go back to Lilna a little bit here and talk a little bit more about women. So how can women use the encourage especially in male dominated households. You told us about how the decision maker influences the type of productive use and it's typically men. So how do we encourage sort of more women to take up productive uses in the households. Thank you Matana. So here we need to actually implement different kind of training programs that will actually change the mindset of the society and overall because if we say the decision maker is the husband or a male in the household then it will be up to that person to make a decision on prioritization. So until we get to a financial empowerment where we will need to also have programs. For example, calling on community meetings when we're implementing energy programs, mini-grids or standalone systems so that to educate the community on the use of these appliances and how it will actually change the lives of the entire households. So it's about education and not so much about focusing as suggested here on typical household uses of energy but it's about like a wider education piece about how it's beneficial to the entire household regardless of I guess which gender uses their plans and sort of enabling women to take to take up this productive uses. Exactly because providing finances just for example if we provide finance for cookstuffs or refrigerators then the woman may not have the capacity to take on the loan. By itself she may not have the decision making power or also a capacity financial capacity but if we educate the entire society then it will be actually because people before making the decisions if we go into household and say it will benefit one person in your households then they may say okay television actually would entertain the entire family. We need to tell them that even Charlie when you buy a cookstuff this person your wife or your girl child could actually save time to go to school which would eventually change the lives of all the households. She could buy you a day's TV in the same action TV so we need to have work more on education when we're implementing energy programs. Thanks that's such a great and powerful kind of tool to kind of start this journey of transforming not only a family but I think a community. I'm going to pass it over to Kevin for the last couple of questions here as we get to at the end. Thanks beginner. We have a very interesting question at the top here around tariffs and this issue around daytime versus nighttime energy and the costs of producing that energy and different tariffs that can be designed and can get into a very technical discussion. But I'm wondering if Elizabeth you could talk a bit about how United Purpose looked at tariffs. Are they are there different levels of tariffs on your mini grids to households versus productive users. For example, which one is more expensive. Is there a daytime nighttime tariff and so forth. Thank you so much Kevin. Yes, we have different tariff categories for our customers. So we have other customers who are only like a service, they only pay a service fee for the man. So they have a limited amount of electricity that they get paid day. Once it is finished, they get cut off and then it resets the next day that one that provision was made for poor households who can who cannot afford the pay as you go tariff. So, other than that we have the pay as you go tariff, which has also been. It's different depending on the time of use with the daytime use being lower than the night, the night time use, and also it gets cheaper the more the more a customer uses through the month, the more it gets cheaper. So we also have a tariff for institutions. So yeah, we have different tariff segments. The reason why the daytime tariff is cheaper than the rates is because we have excess power being generated during the day during the daylight hours and yet the load during the day is lower than the night time. So we are trying to encourage people to use more electricity during the day. That's why we have lowered the daytime tariff. So once we get more productive users doing their production or businesses during the day, it means they will be able to utilize that as per capacity and increase income. So if we have that type of increase in income, we should be able to subsidize even the other tariffs, including the night time tariff. And just a quick follow up in terms of the daytime, nighttime. Have you actually seen a shift in demand more towards the daytime because of the lower tariffs? Not really because we don't have a lot of productive use of energy customers. So the businesses that are there, they're just small scale village businesses. Like someone is selling cold drinks, they're powering up a fridge, a barbershop, a video show. So because the number of businesses, the larger number of customers are households. So for the households, they are busy during the day doing other income generating activities, but then at night when everyone is back home, that's when they actually switch on their appliances. They have their lights on. But for the businesses, we haven't really seen a large increase in the number of people using the electricity during the day because of the because of lowering the tariff. Thanks Elizabeth. Interesting. Just looking at the time I just want to ask one last question, talking about demand stimulation from cooperatives so using existing structures to build up demand more quickly. I'm just wondering if I just want to place it out there and see if anyone wants to take this on. It's related to Vincent's solution in terms of targeting cooperatives for aggregate demand for solar water pumps so it seems to be working there. I'm a bit curious. Is this an option in context in Ethiopia and Malawi for example, using a cooperative model to maybe be an anchor client for example, could that be successful or have you seen success with that. We have not tried the cooperative model yet, but it's something that we're trying to look into moving forward to our next mini grid site. So it's a community where there's a lot of soil being grown as well as ground nuts. So they are already cooperatives around that type of agricultural production. So I cannot say we've already had an experience working with that model, but it's something that we are trying to explore. Thanks Elizabeth it sounds like there might be some potential there to for United Purpose that's that's great. We have two minutes left and I have to hand back to McKenna to give us her final thoughts. Thank you so much Kevin. I think this has been a really excellent conversations we've had from all sort of stratifications of kind of people and stakeholders engaged in productive use we've seen the example of the European how they're integrating productive use into the national electrification and those great examples from you did about the work that that is being done on the ground. And then we've seen these challenges that smaller mini grids can really encounter the examples from allowing from United Purpose have been so powerful to show what is the potential but also kind of some of these challenges that we are yet to meet and the fact that more investment is needed more technical support is needed. I'm especially for productive use and exploring those questions around some of the levers we can pull like tariffs like subsidies was also been really interesting to discuss. And then we talked about solar water pumps as one example of a productive use in Uganda and how Vincent and team are really working hard to give bespoke solutions to small holders coupled with this market linkages and all the other ecosystem solutions that really help to push a productive use. And then of course the challenge of integrating gender and, you know, Lilna's remarks were so exciting to see how it's really possible if we think more holistically to integrate gender. And so our panelists have been great at showing us the challenges and lessons and all this productive use of energy debate has been so exciting and want to thank them so much. There's so many barriers to be tackled yet on productive use, especially if you want to scale and we want to achieve SDG seven to get that universal energy for access class ID and all the folks you see on the call today will continue working partnering with each other to kind of spar and promote the benefits and impacts of productive use and hopefully SDG seven will just be around the corner for all of us. So with that, I just want to say thank you so much for joining us online and also for our panelists. Thank you so much. And yeah, we're, that's it. We can close out. Thank you.