Fy enw yw, siaradau copiol a'r hawl iawnnol i'r ffordd ar hyn, oedd Cymru yn oedd lefyd bidai ar y cael ffodol. Fy enw'r ei wneud o'r ffordd ar y siaradau pobl i'r hyffordd ar yr hanfodol fel y vibration, ond mae'r ffordd yn gyfrifio'r hon. I am chairing this meeting. My vice-chair is a councillor Stephen Drew, sitting to my right. I will introduce other attendees when I invite them to speak. Those in the chamber are reminded that the meeting is being live-streamed. By your presence here in the chamber and via video conference, you are deemed to have consented to being filmed and to the use of images and sound recordings for the webcast and archive recording. The normal procedure at scrutiny and overview committee meetings is to review and recommend issues by affirmation. Only those members of the committee present in the chamber will be able to move and second motions or affirm. However, members present virtually may speak in the debate. May I ask those who are joining us remotely to ensure that their camera and microphone remain off unless they are addressing the committee? For those of us present in the room, please ensure that your microphone is close to you when you speak so that we can clearly understand what has been said when you are addressing the room. The first item on the agenda is Apologies for Absence. Ian, do we have any apologies? Apologies, councillor Martin Carn and councillor John Williams. Thanks very much, Ian. We then move on to Decorations of Interest. Do any members have interest to declare in relation to any item of business on the agenda? If an interest subsequently becomes apparent later in the meeting, please would you raise it at that point? Yes, councillor Stobart. Thank you, chair. I'd like to remind the committee that I'm a director, a board director of both SCIP, South Cambridgeshire Investment Partnership and South Cambridgeshire Project. Thanks very much, councillor Hobart. Thank you, chair. Through this council, I'm a non-executive director of urban street housing, so I plan to leave just ahead of item eight. Thank you. Any other decorations of interest? We'll move on. Item three, Minutes of the Previous Meeting. Do members have any suggested amendments relating to the accuracy of the minutes for the meeting held on 16 November 2023? Councillor Judith Griffith. Just on page five on the Milton Country Park initiative or the Wild Minds initiative more generally. It describes it as an event, whereas actually it's like a project to a course. A event gives the idea that it's just a one-off occasion. I also made a suggestion, which isn't quite reflected here, that contacting up with primary schools, yes, primary schools in the upper years, but also contacting schools in the process initially because if you contact the GP, the mental health has usually got beyond the point of how that scheme can help, if that can be in somehow incorporated, because I think that's what I said. OK. Ian, can we have a look at that and incorporate that into the minutes from the last? Thank you. Anything else on the minutes that anyone wants to raise? Councillor Ellington. I just wondered whether there was any progress on the community transport, which is under six on page five, and whether there's any progress on the red button emergency call system, which is on page six at the bottom, new digital phone lines. Both of those are important to me at the moment in my page. Councillor Ellington, is that information that you had requested at the last meeting that we were going to get a written update on? Yes. OK. Ian, can I leave it with you to chase up that information for us for the next meeting? Is that OK, Councillor Ellington? Anybody else on the minutes? If there's no other amendments to the minutes, can I take it from the committee that we agree that there's a true reflection of what happened at the meeting? Agreed. Can you take that by affirmation? So we then move on to public questions of which we haven't had any. So we will move on to the agenda. So item five is the draft 24 to 25 business plan, pages 11 to 34. So can I ask the committee if anyone wants to bring forward questions on this agenda item? Chair, if you allow me, I have a number of questions, but I could take them in the sections of the business plan if that would be OK. So if I could start with the growing local businesses part of the plan and then perhaps you could come back to me later as we move on. So the growing local businesses, the plan, the action set out and the progress to date looks very solid. The team has recorded a number of excellent points of performance. But I wondered if underlying this, there is a kind of pattern that either we should be following or that we're perhaps recognising and working towards, which is what kinds of business do we support in South Cambridge here? And should we be placing emphasis on certain types? I know there's been discussion, for example, of support for green businesses, those that are in the, as it were, sustainability industry. And there are, we often talk about life sciences, but there are lots of little business clusters and they have different needs. Is there a structure to our approach to business, which is potentially reflected in this plan or could be in a sense added as an overlay to the plan? So that our resources are directed well. So perhaps if I could sum up, do we have target businesses or do we have a structure of business that we are addressing through this plan? Thank you, Councillor Stobart. I'll go to the leader. Thank you very much. So I met everybody this evening, Councillor McDonald, who normally would have taken that question, isn't able to be here. Councillor Williams sends apologies, his house is flooding as we speak. And Councillor Batchelor also is tied up elsewhere. So I'm sorry, you've got me. We've got various other cabinet members online as well available. So the focus of our work has always been on SMEs. And I think that's right and proper. You know, the big businesses have a split the choice for membership organisations looking after their best interests. And because they are big businesses, they're actually quite capable of looking after themselves. And so though we have involvement with the AstraZeneca's of this world, I think we've always felt our responsibility was for the SMEs. Interestingly, I've had a meeting today with Cambridge CleanTech, who have just been recruited by the Combined Authority to do some work on what we as a council are going to be, how we see that there's a high tech, knowledge intensive industries future within south-south Cambridge. So a lot of this stuff we aren't doing alone. So obviously, you know, the Combined Authority have the overall responsibility for the economic development plan for Cambridge as a whole. So some of the work we do, we do through them. I feel that our own service, it's important that it's responsive to need and demand. And I wouldn't want to see us restrict ourselves to those nice glossy squeaky businesses because we need all sorts of business in South Cams. We are very concerned about the future of pubs. We've lost an awful lot of pubs. Not only are they the source of employment and an economy, they're absolutely critical to the social structure and social wellbeing of our communities. My own village, which is well removed from Cambridge City, has a lot of manufacturing industry. We've got to make sure that we are supporting businesses that provide a wide variety of jobs and that's not just the high value jobs. There are people who are never going to work in these high tech laboratories but have every right to good jobs. So I think we have to be very mindful of the different microeconomies that we have in South Cambridge. We aren't one economy, we have microeconomies. At my neck of the woods, it's quite different from what it is closer to Cambridge. So our responsibility is to make sure that all of them survive well and potentially grow. One of our remits was to stop businesses relocating outside South Cambridgeshire. So back in 2018 we were hemorrhaging businesses elsewhere and that was one of the reasons for setting up this team and creating cabinet position to make sure that businesses that needed to expand, needed new premises, had someone within the council to talk to so that we could help them find premises preferably in South Cams and we didn't keep losing them to Bedfordshire as was the case then. So I think there's a lot of work we do there. So as I say, I just think we need to make sure that we're meeting the needs of all the businesses within the SME sector. Thank you, Councillor Stobart. Thank you leader. So attention to supply chains and what we sometimes refer to as ecosystems. I'm taking it that that's a focus. But may I just ask this question, how do we keep up with that? You know an emerging ecosystem for example around, I mean people talk about the software ecosystem in Cambridge which is quite dispersed and difficult to pin down. How do we identify supply chains and ecosystems that we should be helping engaging with? Thank you very much. So thinking back again to 2018 and what the barriers were to economic growth that we identified then one of those was a lack of awareness of local supply chains. So people could be in a building next door to a web designer but be going down to Sussex for a web designer. So I think we're establishing a business network. I can't give you detail of that. I'm just having a look to see if there's somebody who can give a more detailed answer online. I'm not sure there is. So I might have to come back to you with a detail on that but it was certainly one of our priorities about fostering local supply chains. The team have run quite a lot of webinars and so on. They've run some in-person events and certainly the little business breakfast events that I've run in my own village are a great space for people to suddenly realise that there's somebody in the village doing web design. So I think whether there's more we should be doing on that, we'll have to ask but I'll get some more detail from somebody with more knowledge than me. Thanks very much for that leader. Happy with that, Councillor Stover. I am sure. Thank you. Okay, so Councillor Hobre. Thank you, Chair. So I actually have two questions on business support section. Is it okay if I tackle them one at a time? Of course. Thank you. My first question is about the overall package of business support. I just wanted to comment that I feel this is a really impressive and comprehensive package, the support for SMEs. In particular, I'm quite excited to see how the plans are developing for refurbishment of space in the building here. So my question really is on medium term feedback on this package of support that we are supplying to SMEs. And whether or not we have data back from the businesses that we're supporting on the impact of these different types of support that we're providing and which of these are really helping businesses say one or two years down the line. And I'm not talking about, say the feedback you get at the end of a seminar that says yes, that was a great seminar. That's good, but that doesn't tell us about the medium term impact of what we're doing. So I wondered what kind of data we have on that, whether we're gathering it, whether, and any comments on that really. Thank you. If we take that first, I believe that the council. Yeah, thank you. I'm just going to ask Ann Innesworth if she has that information to hand, because I don't. I'll talk to Peter MacDonald, we'll be able to talk for hours about it. I don't have it to hand, but we do have it. We've got quite a lot of information, both from conversations with businesses anecdotally, but also some of the data that supports it as well. So if you would be happy to receive that after the meeting, we'd be more than happy to provide that to you. Yes, I'd be very happy with that. Thank you. Move on to your second. Yes, so through you chair again, the second question. So the second question was about markets and the section on markets. So we have targets about bringing new markets into the district, which is great. And I'd comment that local markets are a really important way of allowing traders to get to customers, keeping the chain of produce local, but also their wonderful way to allow communities to meet in a particular, it provides a context for meeting and for perhaps having stalls for other things alongside the market. And we're in my ward, we're in the unfortunate position of having lost a monthly farmers market recently. So really my question was, do we know about markets that are closing down, as well as the markets we're trying to open? And do we have a target for a net increase in the number of markets? And is there anything that perhaps we might be able to do to support markets that are in danger of closing, perhaps if they're viable in the long term but are running to short term difficulties? Thank you very much chair. I'm just looking around. Okay, Chesley, all the answers. Thank you. Thank you. We're quite lucky to have Catherine with us this evening, who is our lead on markets. So, as you're aware, you might be aware of the shared prosperity fund, and one strand of that, we do have a project which we were going to be carrying out a market assessment, so that we're looking at the social and economic value that markets bring to South Cams, and it's a joint project with Citi. So, hopefully once we have that, we're just about to finalise the procurement, but once we have that in place over the next six months or so, we should have a report which I think would answer a lot of your questions. Okay, thank you. So, just to come back for a moment, do we have any data on markets closing, and do we have a target for a net increase? So, at the moment, we know that we have around about 20 regular markets. We are working really hard to make sure you don't have any closing dances, none on our radar at the moment, which are being closed down, especially working with North Stray to ensure that markets that are new to the scene are actually going to survive and flourish. Okay, I think that mostly answers my question. I'd be very happy to follow up on the details with the officers afterwards. Thank you. Councillor Bradlin. Thank you, Chair. I've got two questions on different parts. So, the first one is under appendix A on businesses on page 15 on the paper agenda. I think it's the same on the electronic agenda. And we'll work with partners to support the economically inactive back into work. And on the right-hand side, I wondered whether we could add 3A6 and think about encouraging people to think about childminding because part of the thing that enables professional adults to get back into work is because this implies economically inactive. It implies people who have not worked. But actually, it could be encouraging people who want to work to enable them to get back into work because we're offering childminding. So, I wondered if we could work with the combined authority skills support people to work towards providing courses to encourage younger people probably into skills supporting childminding. So, that's the first one. It's a bit of a vague ask, I grant you. But it links also to housing, which is on page 18 of our agenda. Again, it's additional requests. So, like 2C2 and 2C3. So, this is, can we work with new young tenants in new communities to encourage them to think in terms of foster caring? And I'm asking this because in my other capacity as county councillor I chair the Corporate Parenting Subcommittee and we would dearly love to have more foster carers available to us within the county network in local communities. For example, we've been looking towards releasing the covenants on tenancies to enable young people to take on foster caring at, well, childcare businesses in our new towns like Northstow and that has been a motion to county council which was carried. But it's also just to encourage young tenants to actually think in terms of childcare in new communities. We've got, I think, one child carer in Northstow. So, it's to encourage new tenants to think in terms of would they like to do childcare, but also would they have they thought about foster caring? And the third thing is in housing is can we bear in mind that in our stock of council homes, we've worked very much in terms of what the demographic is necessary and what size of houses we need. But one of the things that we find is that we sometimes have existing foster carers who are caring for one child who would be very happy to care for another child if they had a bigger house. And so, I'm just wondering if we can be a bit creative with people who might be existing foster carers in council homes who might be prepared to take on another child but can't do so because they're in house with X number of bedrooms. Can we think about working with those tenants to enable them to take on a bigger home so that they could provide a home for another child? Thank you very much, Councillor Bradman. Those are both very important points and maybe we can have a think about how we might put that into a recommendation into the section of the document on page 18 to see that at the end of this section we can have that as a specific recommendation. In the first instance, I'll come to the leader of the council and I know Anne Ainsworth wants to come in on this as well. So, Councillor Bridget Smith. Thank you very much. So, yes, so all important points, but none of which can we do alone. So this is about working with partners. And I think your chair of the young people's corporate parenting committee, which is why you're so knowledgeable about this. So I know we do use the South Cams magazine to lobby hard for foster carers. I know the combined authority is involved in, through its skills work, in increasing the market of people available for early years. And I'm aware that preschools, particularly village preschools, are closing down because they haven't got, they can't get the staff to work there. So this isn't something for us to do alone. I think they are all things that we are currently involved through our partnerships already. Whether you want, whether it's appropriate to articulate that more clearly, I'm not quite happy to take away and have a conversation about. On the issue of tenants having bigger houses, that's a bit of a can of worms, I'm afraid, because bigger houses cost more and housing benefit doesn't cover it. And again, I think that's a tricky one. I think certainly there are some serious conversations to be had about when the downstairs of this building up about childcare provision there, and I'm pretty sure Councillor MacDonald is involved in those conversations, because what we want is equality of access to people running businesses, be they people with caring responsibilities or not. So all important points, but if our name's worth could come in and just fill in the gaps, please. Anne? Thank you very much. I would just echo all of those points. But just because North Sto was specifically mentioned as well and obviously you referenced some of the challenges in North Sto, I just wanted to mention that one of the issues we had with North Sto was that in the contracts for the houses that people were purchasing, it said that they couldn't operate businesses from home. Now we have been working with Homes England and our planning colleagues have been involved in that as well to see how that could be changed moving forward so that that will offer that opportunity to people who are interested in that. And as the leaders mentioned, one of the things that the combined authority has been looking at with their adult education budget and skills is what are the areas where we could continue to offer training and support for those who might want to retrain or might want to be into the job market. So we can definitely take this one back as a specific one that's been mentioned this evening as well. And just one final point as well. Peter Campbell. One of the things we can do is put into our magazine around promoting foster caring and give that as a reminder to tenants. Councillor Bratton. Thank you very much for picking up. I appreciate it. It's a rather vague, well, specific request but often these are things that we are not as a district council specifically responsible for. So inevitably it's a call for partnership working and suffice it to say, I'm also, I sit on the combined authorities overview and scrutiny committee for county council and I'm asking the same questions there in terms of skills and development and moneys but as chair of corporate parenting I'm also asking how can we work with our district councils to encourage and foster, new foster carers because they're so important to us in the county. If all members can think in terms of, if anybody says they're remotely interested in foster care please point them in my direction and indeed the direction of the county council because we really need foster carers in this county. Thank you. Thank you chair. Thank you Councillor Bratton. So I think it is a really good recommendation to be working alongside other authorities to best suit the needs of not just the county council but people within South Cams for fostering and it sounds like the leader of the council is happy to discuss that with you offline and come to an agreement on that recommendation. Okay. So we'll move over to Councillor Ellington. Thank you. My point was very similar to Councillor Bratton in that I was interested in carers as well as childcare because there's an enormous shortage and what I wanted, wondered whether it was worth including is some linkage with further education and I'm sure that the combined authority on that to an extent but it would be interesting to know how that happens because if they're not running a course you can't employ somebody to go on that course and so it's chicken and egg. The other issue because I think we've probably covered that quite nicely under page 15, number 4 we're working to promote I do wonder whether it's worth including working with the Federation of Small Businesses as they are definitely focusing on SMEs and are very useful if you are a small business see she who knows from experience and if I could just go on to one other point moving on to page 18 because we have had one question around housing on page 18 I'm interested to know whether there is a definition of high quality because we see it, the words put in a number of different places and we talk about producing high quality housing in planning, we talk about producing high quality council housing is there a definition or is it just a throw away phrase please? Councillor Enton I'll come to Councillor Bridget Smith in the first instance Thank you very much I'm a carer and I'm here I have other carers looking after the person I care for when I'm not doing it The problem with caring is that it doesn't pay enough and that's why there's a national shortage of carers and of course we've lost an awful lot of people who came from Europe who fulfilled that role here and now they're not here doing it so I absolutely agree there needs to be a national focus on this we need to be paying fair wages to people who care because it's not a very lovely job sometimes there are elements that are lovely but there are bits of it that aren't a model you might be interested in Councillor Ellington is I'm an unremunirated trustee for a little village charity in my own village which helps self-employed carers link up with people to be cared for but people who are paid a good wage for doing a good job so there's a little model there that certainly the county council know all about because they provided some start-up funding for this but it's something we can go back I have to declare an interest in this albeit I'm not paid but it's something that we can look at further and see if it's a model that works for other communities it takes a lot of volunteer I don't do the voluntary on just a name but there is a lady who spends considerable time doing all the work on this helping self-employed carers learn what insurance they need to have what training they need to get how they do their tax returns and all that sort of thing so we'll take that forward I think we already do work for the Federation of Small Businesses frequently I think we have good relations with them we've certainly run events with them I think those links continue and on the definition of high quality housing I think it's too many Hawkins online I think too many might I don't know whether it's best placed at or Stephen Kelly because I imagine we're not just talking about affordable housing here you're talking about all housing because may council Hawkins come in council Hawkins is online perhaps she's just popped out from it could I ask Stephen Kelly please yes Stephen thank you sorry I'll be brief well there's technical standards for high quality homes so we've got the national space standards in terms of interior room space there used to be the eco homes standard in terms of categorisations but of course we're working on measures to reduce the carbon footprint of housing and quantifying that through your sustainability officer there's also lifetime homes standards in M42 about accessibility on top of that I would say there's probably an element to which separate validations number of awards and so on the council wins for the quality of development are in some way impart recognition of definitions around quality but I think between the tangible standards technical standards and the intangibles about quality of place and so forth I think it's possible to triangulate and create some view about quality of new housing being created okay thank you very much councillor Sue Ellington do you want to come back on that? only just to say that community warden service in a number of villages do what you're suggesting and keep a collection of people who will provide additional care and I think that is another big yes for community warden service put in a plug thank you can I just come back on that as well and I think the leader of the council has addressed the things on care very well there are any further points on that you can address that outside of the meeting but the point on small business federation were you saying that there should be reference to that within the business plan as a recommendation or are you happy that it's being done and not cited? I think reference to it would be useful because it publicises the organisation that will help small businesses and I also note and as councillor Brannam said that I've received information about the council supporting any carer who wants to set up in business on their own to help them go through the process of doing that so officers nodding and seemily happy to take that forward lovely so if you're happy we'll move on councillor Helen Leamon please thank you chair I'd like to make a suggestion for something additional to be added to the business plan please it's in the modern and caring council section page 29.5 the heading is we will work with communities and individuals to tackle issues that are affecting them locally this is a fairly recent thing but there's a new project group being set up in Camborn called Camborn 25 the purpose of this is to deliver a series of projects which will improve the quality of life for residents tackle some historical issues that have arisen as the towns being built and expanded and the sorts of things that it would include would be things like active travel can use development, wellbeing, infrastructure it's going to be involved county, districts and town councillors I just thought it would be helpful if it could be included in this section as a KPI that we can monitor against and scrutinise progress on deliverables okay councillor Bridget Smith so I don't see any reason why it can't be included in the business plan whether it can translate into a KPI they have to be measurable things but I don't see any reason I'm looking at the chief executive why that can't be in the business plan because what it means then is it's an established model that could well work in other communities but it's being trialled in Camborn chief executive thank you and for you chair so although the business plan doesn't there aren't always KPI's attached to all parts of it we do bring the business plan regularly to scrutiny and cabinet and it is monitored so I'm absolutely happy to include Camborn 25 as you suggest councillor Leaming thank you any follow-up on that councillor Leaming no that's great I just think it would help to publicise our work and keep an eye on what we're doing sounds like that's a recommendation it'll be taken forward lovely so if we come to councillor Heather Williams thank you chair I'll start off with something that I think the leader will be pleased about in that I had a resident contact to me who had read the business plan I know it's a frustration of it sometimes of us as councillers that we sit these scrutinised documents that people then don't go on to see but one of the things we're slightly confused about in the style and made me think about accessibility we'll take you to page 13 it starts with the output achievements and then latest outcome information and then some of the figures obviously there's objective one which is we understand it's the objectives that then follow but it might be helpful to have the titles in there with it because it then goes on to speak about 22 data or 2005 and they were a bit confused as to what that represented which when we went through you can match it up but we're very used to looking and accessing these documents so that might be something that you might want to look at to see if there's some explanatory or notes or something that can go with that to make it more accessible but good news that people are actually reading the documents that we're going through the other question I just had was from page 14 1di about space rented out to start-ups and small businesses now this is something obviously lots of people want to support and it's a really great aim but there are some sort of we need some safeguards in place so to do with security but also reputational risks how do we stop for example a company that's benefiting from potentially in this current climate money and investment from a Russian company perhaps or how do we ensure that our policies are robust to make sure that if somebody wanted to set up something that we would deem inappropriate to be functioning from the council those sorts of things and I'm thinking particularly from attacks and fraud point of view we know that some people think people have actually registered council building as their registered address at company's house wrongly which is very easy at the moment to identify but how do we have those safeguards in place going forward Councillor Bridget Smith Thank you very much so on your first point very happy to review the accessibility of the information presented here delighted that members of the public are taking the trouble to read this it is a really good document I think we've made massive improvements in how accessible the information in it is but happy to take that forward so I know we've thought long and hard about the risk of unscrupulous or undesirable bodies using our facilities and I'm going to come to Ann Amesworth who I think might have a bit more detail on that thank you very much and thank you for this point because it is something quite pertinent and something that we've been keeping in mind as well with regards to this so at the moment we've got a couple of thoughts on how we would try to prevent anything of the nature of which you've described so we're going to have a booking in system we're going to be asking for ID and information from individuals and we're also going to be looking at business details as well we're expecting that quite a lot of businesses who would initially at least want to use that space would be one man ban and a very small type of businesses and that's certainly the businesses we've been looking to target but you're quite right we need to make sure obviously that this reputation issue etc for the council and do everything that we can to ensure that no one is using the business address of these offices in a way that would be inappropriate very happy for any members if you have any further suggestions about what potentially we should be looking at very happy to receive those suggestions thank you very much thank you for that did you want to come back on that at all Councillor Williams? No I'll just take Anne up on her offer particularly obviously from the HMS in the fourth side there's quite a few safeguards that we could probably help with Thanks very much, Councillor Stobart Chair thank you I had a number of questions comments throughout the rest of the business plan but can I just take three of them and I'll go through each one in turn rather than reading the whole list so page 18 and that's item 3B and then it's consequent 3B1 so this is talking about the works to improve energy efficiency of our council housing properties and then the associated action is improve all council properties below a CEPC rating et cetera I'm wondering how this gets done perhaps it's a detail below which we're not going to go down to but I wonder if wrapped up in this action are things like could we do this kind of work or build the capability at the council to do work of this nature and could it be connected whether it's done at council or not with apprenticeships and skills programs in this area because these are needed vital skills around insulating properties dropping in heat pumps adapting to older housing stock which also need to be modelled in order to identify the right approach and are we seizing this opportunity that's my first question second if I could just go to we might take them in turn if that's okay council stove up and just so we can keep okay so before I bring in Peter Campbell for the detail of this my understanding is that we do condition surveys on all our houses and then we don't care it internally but Peter will be able to give you the detail of that you may be interested that I spent yesterday at Westminster giving evidence to the energy audit committee where there was a long debate about this upskilling of the workforce and on the session before I was on there was a chat quite senior within the heat pump industry talking about taking all these gas engineers and upskilling them to begin to install heat pumps and so on so again I'm pretty sure that all the companies we work with we check them out for their own environmental credentials and for their use of apprentices and so on so I think that's happening even though it's not under our direct control but I'm sure if I may bring in Peter please for the detail sorry Mark as the council says exactly right so we're just approaching the end of a project to carry out stock condition surveys in all our properties so we'll have very good information on the anti-performance rating of each property the condition and that will give us a strong indication of what needs to be done to bring everything up to a DPC or above which is largely going to be with respect about insulation with some heating upgrades but mainly focusing on insulation so what we will do is we'll use the information from the stock condition survey to produce a cost with business fund and that will report to members of course on the progress so this will be very visible with regards to the skills we are aware that is a very live issue and it's something which Board has been dealing with quite recently so can I pass on to the Board to make some more comments? Thank you Peter apart from the issue with our estates we also have a large demand in terms of the wider public and we see the same challenges in terms of not having enough of supply to meet the demand for retrofitting and we are working with our colleagues in Cambridge City Council to see how we can address that gap but there's not much else we can say for now but yeah we identify we've identified the need and we are going to look at a few options to see how we can plug that gap on the markets. Thank you for that, I think that addresses the points as you want to move on to your next one. My next one, yeah so page 20 item 5CV so East West Rail and I just want to reflect on a recent meeting of the East West mainline partnership which is a cluster of local authorities on the route from in fact beyond Oxford all the way into, well into East Anglia and of course we have the particular focus in South Cambridge because the line runs through South Cambridge so I won't go beyond that because that's been debated elsewhere but the emphasis in the action is on mitigation whereas I think an understanding the discussion there are opportunities to be had now some of the communities in South Cambridge are quite affected by the choice of the route but on the other hand the tenor of the discussion and particularly as it was facilitated by the East West mainline partnership of which were members was more on the opportunity so for example we were talking about through ticketing and that led to the possible advantages of ticketing with for example a franchise bus operation so I don't want to go down into any of those details but to say actually there are opportunities and working alongside colleagues from other local authorities represented in the East West mainline partnership would be very advantageous to us so it's really to say in this process we should be working alongside others you know who have dealt with some of these issues of a new railway line or a greater railway line and look for the opportunities and connect them with other things some of the other transport initiatives so I know this is a delicate area but I think the emphasis ought to be on the opportunity as much as the mitigation and that would imply a change in the kind of tenor of that paragraph OK Councillor Bridget Smith So I think 5CV does actually say to ensure the district benefits from improved accessibility I think what we're not making clear here is that we are very actively engaged with any number of partners directly with East West Rail also through the very much of the county council and Brian Milnes can probably add some some beef to that but also very much through the combined authority as well and their powers for franchising so you know we are a part of an important partnership we're obviously also members of the Oxford-Cambridge pan regional partnership which has England's economic heartland which is the strategic transport body for most of these West Rail line heavily involved in it so I think we are in there with them and I think if I could take away the take away what you're saying about that not being clear here so I don't think we are just talking about the mitigation is much more about the line but there are clear benefits which is why the Liberal Democrat administration has been strongly supportive of the principle of an East West Rail link because we absolutely know that it comes with a huge load of benefits though for some people you know there are negatives but I don't know Brian I think that probably addresses the points of engagement and so forth so I think we'll leave it at that and if you come on to your next point Councillor Stover very much my third and final and this was page 20 sorry chair I lost my place that's okay under a modern caring council can I look at the paper on page 29 sorry page 29 and 5b1 develop and implement a plan to increase support for arts and culture projects where does this sit with our arts and culture strategy we did have a go at this I just wonder if this point is maybe even a little bit out of context given that we had the discussion about arts and culture we didn't quite bottom that one out there are such a lot of potential crossover for example into sustainability and environment and youth engagement to an arts and culture strategy so could we just kind of give this a home and see perhaps working backwards there is an arts and culture strategy we can pin down okay Councillor Bridget Smith so we don't have a strategy and it's because this has been very much on hold because we've been dealing with pandemics cost of living crisis there's been a lot of other stuff which has non-statutory stuff that we've had to be focusing on delivering so this is non-statutory and it's about having capacity within our system to do it and whilst it's undoubtedly a nice to have thus far we haven't moved it forward however this is progress that it's featuring here so we're the only district that wraps all the way around another district and of course Cambridge itself is very much a focus for arts and culture so a lot of people living in South Cambridge will get their arts and culture from Cambridge City that's a reality and Cambridge City will do it better than we can ever do it we do have community chest grants which can be allocated to local village based projects and we're always happy to do that you might be interested that the mayor has set aside some funding for arts and culture as well so it's something that he's very involved in so where I think we need to go with this is to start liaising with the combined authority to see if there's a role for us in delivering on the mayor's ambitions on this rather than us who aren't going to we're not going to be able to resource this well enough to do big song and dance about it which is rather appropriate for arts and culture but we can do a little well we probably can't do a lot well which is why I think we need to be talking to the mayor about his ambitions okay, thanks very much Councillor Stover through you chair to the leader there is grant you mentioned the community chest grant and so a community might step forward and say well we want to do some development of a sustainability story with our young people that would be quite legitimately supported by community chest grants and that might be something we could create is some of those solid for examples so that people will be encouraged to apply okay, Councillor Bridget Smith thank you and also S106s for new developments also include arts arts elements to them and again I think we possibly need to make people more aware of that when I arrived at this council 16 years ago there was a dedicated arts officer there was considerable budget it was lovely because I was running a little charity he had a whole load of it and I used to run annual battle of the bands largely funded by South Cambridge District Council which were great but I think we need to be we're living in a slightly different world now so the fact this is in here means that we're probably looking for some willing souls to identify what our role is and what we could do well thanks very much thank you I've got a few more speakers and then we'll try and draw to a close so if I come to Councillor Hobro thank you chair I had two questions on housing and one on green to the core if that's acceptable so the first question on housing was about the rate of council house building so this is page 18 section 1 and we have a top level objective for the number of new council houses that we're building in the five year period so really my question was and I didn't see this in the report of course presumably some council houses are also being sold in that period so do we have or should we have a net objective for the net increase I couldn't see the net increase anywhere in this report so I wanted to check that this does represent a net increase which I'm pretty sure it does and if so what is the net increase and perhaps suggest that it should be included Councillor Bridget Smith Thank you very much I'll bring in Peter Campbell for the detail there but it is an increase we don't sell that many houses a year and of course it varies how many houses we sell but if I may refer to Peter thank you Peter Yes, councils may recall that the numbers we have reported on the numbers of properties sold in that increase that was in the asset management strategy which members agreed last year I'm very happy to give up today the figures on that I'll try them outside the meeting the difficulty is providing net increase as a target is that it's not a specifically smart target the number of sales of course is something which is outside our control and can be affected by things like government policy, interest rates etc so I would rather not have that as a target Councillor Howgrey So thank you Jay I understand the difficulty and I think my main request really is to make sure the numbers are clearly in the report for the net given the given the difficulties in having it as a target because perhaps I didn't look quite enough but I couldn't see the net in there Sorry certainly we can provide that information Yeah Do you come on to your other two points So my second question was about empty homes in which is I've forgotten place 20 bottom place 20 So it says that there's a target for 40 empty homes to be brought back into use and then at the top of the section it mentions that there are a thousand 300 empty homes including 300 second homes so presumably that means a thousand empty homes that are not second homes that truly empty homes buildings that are not being used So where does the 40 come from in the context of the 1,000 and how does that sort of fit in with our longer term objective to move towards reducing that number Councillor Bridget Smith May I bring in Peter there for the detail of that figure Peter Campbell So Bode Sorry empty homes called Bode Of course Thank you chair The figure of force is an initial target This is a new post and the officer has only just been in post in fact it was a temporary post We are now seeking to make it permanent So this is an initial target and it reflects the amount of effort that we need to go through to bring one single home back into practical use in terms of setting a target of 20 So once that's done we'll have a better idea of how this target can be Thanks very much So thank you, that was a very comprehensive answer Thank you very much So my third question was about the green to the core section So it's about page 22 and really my question is about it did strike me that there's not much here about transport which is one of our big areas of carbon emission in here, there are one or two areas where it does feature in particular there's a section on electric vehicles although I think the electric vehicle section refers to electric cars and my understanding is that electric bicycles are rather more effective at reducing our carbon emissions So I suppose my question is whether or not and this is a rather of a question I'm not necessarily expecting a comprehensive answer now but a suggestion really are there any other ways that we could fit the changes in related to our transport emissions into this section because it seems to me that it doesn't feature very much other than indirectly through the zero carbon grants which are often used for transport type projects Councillor Bridget Smith I assume that's a sort of recommendation to bolster that essentially So you're probably going to get a rather woolly answer to this and the problem is that there's very little that's within our control You know, this is all being done well through GCP obviously which is probably where we have the greatest influence but also through with the combined authority and through the county council So for those people who were at the nice environmental event that was run recently we heard from a very small parish council how they had used their zero carbon grant to put in two EV charging points within a village on a little bit of parking space because they were aware that there was a lot of houses without off-road parking themselves So that's where our direct influence is is it responding to communities with an ambition to help themselves and I think that's where our strength lies The rest of the decarbonising the transport system we have to be working with our partners in order to deliver on that But then again, we've had a conversation at East West Rail, that's part of it Whether we can do more on electric bikes and supporting electric bikes can I take that away please and we'll have a think about that Thank you So thank you I appreciate that it's a very difficult question to answer specifically I really wanted to make sure that we're keeping focus on looking for ways in which we might be able to help indirectly Thank you Councillor Tom Bygott Thank you So my question is on green to the core page 11 in the section 4 we will decarbonise the council's estate so in the centre column under 4a procure low emissions vehicles or alternative fuels eg biofuil as replacements for existing fleet and then under that we have 4b where we talk about the electric vehicle charging the water beach depot In the third column under 4a1 it says deployment of at least 20% alternative fuels a proportion of total fuel usage by refuse fleet So we talk about low emissions vehicles or alternative fuels in the middle we only talk about alternative fuels on the right So my question is where do electric vehicles fit into that given the commitment we've got so with the recharging Do we have any plans to procure any further electric vehicles and is that something that we're still committed to Thank you Councillor Bridget Smith Thank you very much this is something I was talking about in Westminster yesterday so I'll go day in for details so my understanding is that we're about to take delivery of our fourth electric bin vehicle and that will max us out and it will take 10 years if we are to rely on UKPN to give us the increase in the grid supply which is why we have acquired a substantial grant from the combined authority to put in our own solar array and battery storage in order to allow us to acquire more electric bin lorries So currently we are curtailed by the capacity of the grid to support more Is there anything else I should say please I think that was 100% complete I think just to say we already have the capital allocated for the purchase of electric vehicles I think up to about 18 vehicles between also and Cambridge City Council but once we get the fourth vehicle next this year we can't take delivery of any more until we've completed the water bid solar project but we have capital allocated so it will be good to buy them once we have supply established Thanks very much Did you want to follow off at all? Yes, so it's 4B3, Ren commissioned an operational Q2 So does that mean that we're assuming that any further electric vehicles will come not in this coming budget year but in the budget year after I think that's probably correct Yes Thanks very much I think it's our last speaker on this Thank you We're going back to page 29 on the paper copy and back to the arts and culture project plan and I'm really pleased to see this in here I understand that obviously with a number of villages it's harder and the community chest grants are often appropriate but I'd like to recommend and ask if this could be included to help with sort of make strategising it and perhaps reintroducing an officer because I think this is an important thing to invest in is to focus it around our new towns because arts and culture is actually essential for helping to boost the community basis where you are starting with a brand new community like in Water Beach the fingers of both hands at the minute but soon those numbers will increase and the building like a theatre I think that could really be a long term sort of selling point of the council and I think I would like to suggest that as a focus for the plan to be on those new towns because that is the future as well of this area just on the new towns mainly on the new towns as a way of getting it going because I think that's so important to as councillor Leaming has some reference about avoiding difficulties as well and trying to ensure that your new communities flourish and there will be lots of people there Thank you for that councillor Bridget Smith I'd like to bring in councillor Handley but actually I think it's an excellent idea actually of how to focus a new work stream and I think it might be a very good way of levering in some money from the combined authority so I think it's an excellent idea because the arts are what bring people together in new communities where we are heavily invested in community development you're quite right councillor Handley might well have thought about this councillor Handley did you briefly want to come in on councillor Ippiff's recommendation I just noted sorry yes noted I will speak again with the community's team it does as councillor Bridget Smith says and the leader says it is an excellent idea and we will see how we might get towards that that goal so can I assume from that that your work with councillor Ippiff after the meeting to work towards that recommendation yes I think which can get that full rolling and do that would be really really good and like the other recommendations that Ian's taken notes of those as part of the report and there's section 106 money if that could in some way help okay thank you so I think if no one's got anything else to add we better go to page 33 of the agenda papers and just look at the recommendations on there at point 4 given that we've made a number of recommendations that will be minuted and noted and the leader of the council has taken those forward I think can we approve those recommendations by affirmation has that agreed? we've noted a number of things lovely to take forward okay so we'll move on to the next agenda item page so we're going to move on to agenda item 6 which is the draft budget pages 35 to 102 I think it might be best to work through the appendix in turn so there's 7 of those so if we start with appendix 1 which is on page 37 who would like to speak first? Councillor Leaming thank you chair I actually have a question about paragraph 13 on page 34 which is in the introduction of the appendices I think this is to do with methods of cross-charging support services but I wasn't quite clear what it actually meant and what the scale of this different treatments of various service allocations actually would cost it's just not a very clear paragraph and I thought it could be helpful if it could be expanded on in some way thank you for that did we want to bring in I think we'd better bring in Peter Peter? so there was in the past a requirement to charge all of those services that were regarded as a support service to the services that they support as the name suggests so an example of the support service would be our accountancy function our HR function and there was a requirement to fully recharge all of those costs right down to the lowest service level so for example accountancy would make a charge to all of the codes within planning homelessness within housing environmental health taxi licensing within environmental health that requirement was removed a number of years ago and although we haven't changed the way we do it so we've still been following that this year we took the decision to simplify things and not charge down to the lowest level so we need to charge our support services to our housing revenue account because that's obviously a separate account to our general fund so we are still charging accountancy and those sort of services to the housing revenue account and we still need to charge an amount to our general fund but not down to the individual service level so it's a simplification of the allocation of the support charges but there is still a requirement to charge it to particular areas such as the housing revenue account our companies such as Irmin Street shared services and things like that I think it's fair to say the process that we've carried out this year was perhaps not quite as easy as we thought it was going to be so we will review the way we've done the budgets this year but essentially it's a because we don't have to do it it seems more appropriate to do it in a way that is perhaps a little bit more transparent I think so you get your total HRA cost with support Councillor Neiman Thank you I understand that the bottom line will remain the same it's the analysis at a particular level within these figures when we're looking at these budget figures in all the appendices are we comparing like with like have these cross charges being taken out of both years So we haven't so we haven't gone back and stripped the cost out of the actual figures and the original budget When we look at the actuals for the prior years they will include this internal cost charging but the project going forward will not So yeah in the originalised and the previous year we've still got figures in based on the previous So you're not comparing exactly line with like but it's quite a lot of work When I read that paragraph I was trying to understand the scale of what it would be in each budget line But you're right the bottom line The bottom line in terms of what is the cost of the council will look exactly the same Thank you for highlighting that You've got four speakers on appendix one Councillor Stover Not strictly appendix one chair But I did want to take this opportunity maybe we'll come back to it later but I was thinking about how we take slices through all of these if you will the departmental budgets to come up with for example What is the council spending on professional and staff development because it's distributed through all of these budgets but it's a question that you might want to ask in relation to a I don't know just how do we compare with other similar councils in our staff training budget and I would say you wouldn't need to do this for everything but for example youth engagement so it still pops up in a number of the different kind of budget departments if you will but is this feasible is it necessary I think it would be very helpful to have some of these figures but perhaps it would take some work but I just want to ask the question could we take a slice to certain key things that we might want to discuss openly and compare I'll go to Peter for that one So on page 44 depending on when you'll see something called our subjective analysis and that's provided even that's a summary but that's the sort of type of expenditure so within employee expenses for example there is staff development and training type cost within there now we have the ability to drill down and get to those costs for each individual cost centre for that type of expenditure we do have that information I think you referred to professional sorry remind me what the two topics that I thought of as good examples through you chair the first was professional staff training and the second was youth engagement just two examples with something like staff training it would take some work to actually drill down and get what you would class as professional training as opposed to other training whereas obviously our budgets just pick on training generally so we probably wouldn't have that detail although it could probably be obtained with a little with youth engagement you're right there's a number of issues that have been carried on across each of the budgets so for example there's work going on within the planning department that's fully funded by external developers and I know there's a programme and Stephen May wants to talk a bit more about that but I know that they operate a programme there with youth engagement and obviously they have a number of services across the council and they're slightly different and I think there's a lot of other things planned in various other areas in relation to youth engagement I guess that's in response to the task finish group that's finished last coming of the year I think thank you for that so it sounds like we can source the information it would be some work but it could be sourced or broken down further on the summary on page 44 to include things like you suggest I think I was interested in the accessibility of that data it's important the answer is more or less yes we can do it any other points on appendix sorry councillor Smith did you want to come in on that all I want to say was we've worked Peter and his team have worked really hard to give the presentation of these accounts it wasn't that many years ago they were impenetrable to people like me I know the accountants in the room will have battled their way through them but we've already heard today that members of the public do look at the stuff that we publish and I think it's really important that we make we obviously fulfil our statutory obligations to present our accounts in the way that is required while not over complicating them but the important thing is picking up on councillor Stobart's point that this detail is available should people want it but for me less is more and I'm really pleased with the way these have been presented because I understand them and if I understand them then I imagine most other people understand them as well in this format thank you for that did you want to come in on this point councillor Bratton on that point councillor Stobart often makes really valid points I actually don't agree with his request for detail on this I think if he wants to ask for this that's one thing but our officers work very hard as the leader has said to produce this data and I just think that what we're receiving for the purposes of this committee is fine and I don't think we need the extra detail thank you for those comments and I think that would leave me to say the data is available we could source it if we needed it for projects and things like that on request from what's been said so I think that answers the question and that it's there and we can access it if required yes councillor Drew thank you very much I can go to page 48 um just looking at the information provided in relation to the food safety and water quality and the health and safety at work lines I'm not doubting the efficacy of the data in the grey box for instance or the blue or the yellow box or whatever I just wondered looking through the table what perhaps explanation we can have in relation to the fact that there is a very significant difference in the original estimate in both cases for the food safety and water quality and health and safety at work now it's a positive that obviously not as much expenditure was required but I'm always conscious of the fact that when a budget is being presented to ourselves a screen and overview or any other body who are responsible for things that obviously we are taking the information that we receive as the original estimate to be a very clear and professional assessment of where things are and if I look at the food safety and water quality we are clearly saying here that there is 150,000 pounds less expenditure and for the health and safety at work we have 80,000 pounds less expenditure now fortunately in both cases that goes onwards so I suppose what I'm getting at is in these two cases we have a significant difference in the public out turn can I have some explanation as to why that has happened and whether or not we can expect to see a similar situation when the 2425 box moves into the current location 2324 and if we can expect to see that is that a problem should we be concerned about the validity of the financial planning that is going on councillor Bridget Smith in the first instance it will be in the first instance so I suspect because this is in part a demand led service but I don't know whether so is it Bode or Peter Bode Bode and then Peter perhaps thank you thank you leader I think exactly that it's the demand led I'm trying to see David Healy here as well to give an example a few years ago we had an incident near Doxford, P4s, PFAS we had water pollution in the aquifer so that would have influenced our budgeting for the following year so it seems that that incident hasn't had as much of a demand as we predicted it's not been taken over by the environment agency also when it comes to food safety it's very difficult to predict incidents that happened so what we tend to do is based on what's happened in previous year and we try and stay with them budget so that's what's in our favour in these two cases but it's pretty much demand led and it's almost impossible to predict what's going to happen in these two areas Peter Manis so there's probably two factors of work here exactly the factor that Bode mentioned but also the factor that we referred to earlier or the councillor leaning way so the allocation of support charges are not showing on these budgets any more than whereas they previously were so there'll be a number of budgets in here where the figures have gone down because the support charges are not now charged to that low level so taking from Peter what Bode has said in terms of the demand led of it but come back to what he said there so if the change in the way in which the accounting is done for these things is part of the cause of the lowering of the outerm that as far as I understand it from your answer councillor leaning and what you said there is a specific thing in the 23-24 section and we wouldn't expect to see that being relevant to the 24-25 section because there will have been no change in the way it's been calculated from the start of the year to the end so just to come back within the 23-24 probable figure and the 24-25 figure so those two when I've had the support charges removed whereas the original and the actual support charges are still in there which will be why the higher figures are reported in the first two columns and then the lower figures later on because the later revised and next year's don't include the support charges charged to that level OK, thank you Thank you Are there any other speakers on Appendix 1 or 2 councillor Bradnham first and then I'll come to councillor Stover Thank you It's a sort of similar question to the one raised by councillor Drew It's on page 49 under licensing and I'm exactly up as tier of licensing I'm sort of possibly aware of what's going on here but I'm asking about the original estimate for costs for licensing in 2023-24 and then the probable of 127,000 and then the probable out turn of 6,000 which is a bigger change and I'm not quite sure why that's dropped, I mean there's narrative but I'm not quite sure I understand it I was wondering if somebody could explain that Shall I come to Peter? Well I don't either so I'm going to have to go to Peter Peter made it That's OK I'm quite happy to take an answer outside the meeting It looks as if we've moved some of the staffing allocations away from there into other budgets but should we do a detail Happy with that councillor Bradman councillor Stover Chair thank you so I'm looking at page 47 and zero carbon communities scheme but my question is more general so in this whole area of climate environment and waste and in fact it could be applied to other areas of the council's activity we often talked about the importance of data data collection looking at the opportunities and also designing in as opportunity permits or as budget permits the collection of data from new schemes and new procedures so I just wanted to hear what across perhaps this domain and it's a very general question what are we allocating and what's perhaps the budget implication of gathering more data and then managing it and presenting it because in this area evidence and very hard evidence is actually crucial and important for propelling technologies and designs forward so that's my question what are we allowing for data collection across this piece in the budget thank you very much councillor Stover I'll come to councillor Bridget Smith in the first instance I know councillor Bachelor also wants to come in here thank you and I'm going to speak for a second and then refer it back to the chief executive so it's a really good question and you might recall that one of the recommendations within the corporate peer review was about using data better and in fact we asked for that you know we're very aware that as a local authority we like all others produce vast quantities of data but the question is do we then use it well so I know Liz has established a specialist data team within the organisation whether they're going to be doing specifically what you're asking about might well be interested in how that team is going to improve our analysis and our use and our collection of data if I come to councillor Bachelor first online and then I'll come to the chief executive yeah thanks chair I was actually going to answer the previous question about the licensing budget so if Liz wants to go first I can have a quick stab at that one afterwards if that's okay no problems on this question thank you so on the data team we haven't established them yet they're in the budget so we've got some money in the budget to start on the first of April so we'll need to recruit and you know I think there's a huge amount of data in this organisation and so we're going to need to focus where we sort of put our resources initially but I think we'd be happy to be led by members if you think there are specific areas where data analysis could add value would be more than happy to have those conversations with you okay yeah lovely councillor Stobart should I come back on thank you to you chair both chief executive and leader for that general comment could I just pick up and I'm just going to make it related page 54 the under the budget item noise nuisance control so historically this has been you know associated with big noises machinery parties you know things that you know noisy neighbours things that cause real nuisance but I'm wondering you know and have we seen and perhaps it's even allowed for in the budget the kind of noise that grating noise that you know is said by health professionals to be affecting people's mental health so if they live in a noisy corner of a village or a city and this is probably the kind of thing that if you start to cluster complaints and the data that's resulting you know from the analysis following those complaints you can be in to look at you know are there particular hotspots so I suppose I'm combining two things but you know do we have we seen have we allowed for this kind of more serious kind of effect of noise and perhaps I could add the right of question how are you know how would our proposed data approach perhaps it's too early to ask the question but I'll put it would support drawing down key conclusions from that kind of data Thank you, I council Bridget Smith Thank you, I think councillor Batchelor would probably like to pick that one up as well but I'll just say that I'm not aware I mean I'm aware that this is an issue in some places and there was an item on radio for quite recently about it I'm not aware there's an issue here we have had in the past issues over noise from wind farms which have taken some of our resources again this is another of these demand led services but I refer to councillor Batchelor Okay so councillor Batchelor did you want to touch on the noise thing first and then we'll come back to the licensing thing after that Sure yes so as mentioned noise usage control is a demand led service so we it's investigated once a complaint comes in and there are a variety of different things or different noise sources that are being complained about everything from neighbours up to the new flight path from Luton Airport for example so it's a wide reaching service and one that we try and do our best to address but the larger problems like for example the Luton flight path isn't something we have any power to do anything about we can lobby those that are making the noise but we don't have any power to enforce whereas smaller residential issues we do so very briefly jumping back to the question about the difference in numbers of licensing so the licensing column and the taxi licence column they're part of essentially the same department what we had part way through last year was a huge influx of applications for taxi licences so we essentially had to reallocate staff from the licensing team who were all multi-skilled to predominantly process taxi licence applications hence why there's actually a profit in the taxi licence budget and a bit of an underspend in the licensing column so yeah I hope that answered the second question and part answered the first I'm happy to have a conversation with cancer bachelor thank you so if we move on to sorry the cancer story but do you want to come back at all is he could I just ask one small question also in this section on flood defences page 55 and this more general question about the longer term are we beginning to see already and are we anticipating the longer term a higher budget for flood defence given the effects of climate change more peaky rainfall conditions and for example increased costs of pumping and a somewhat naive question about how we interact with internal drainage boards as there are financial implications around that too so shall I bring councillor Henry bachelor in again for this one Henry could you have a go at that one yep sure so you'll probably see from this year the expenditure is we're predicting to be less than the current financial year the budget predominantly revolves around the management of our awarded water courses as that in terms of flooding that is the main source of the main sort of thrust of where the majority of the budget goes obviously the large portion of flooding in Cambridgeshire is the responsibility of the lead local flood authority we sit within the county council's remit but in terms of the broader point about costs and predicting the future yeah absolutely I think in the future we will need to budget a lot more for flood defences in the district especially you know with climate change and increased rainfall that we've been seeing so I think yes we absolutely will and yeah I'm sure in next years budget meeting we'll see an increased number in this column thank you for that so we'll move on to appendix 3 and did anyone have anything on appendix 3 if not sorry no no no I thought somebody had it counts yeah okay so we've gone on to appendix 4 appendix 5 sorry cats it was that indication at the speed appendix 5 appendix 6 yeah yeah on page 77 yep on page 81 and then we've got appendix 7 on page 91 and at the end I will say there's anything on any of the agenda items that you've want to bring back in briefly Councillor Bradman thank you chair but I just want on page 93 transformation I just wanted to say that I'm very glad to see and I'm sure Councillor Ewing said this too but I wouldn't speak for her but to see that at the bottom of the page there is a recognition that we need to carry on supporting mobile warden schemes if we can. I appreciate that the narrative looks at it's covering grants for the future for the mobile warden schemes across the district and the increase in budget is to continue the existing service whilst exploring options for the future and I just wanted to say I'm very glad to see that we're continuing to recognise that that would be a good thing to support if we possibly can so thank you very much for that thank you thank you for that did you want to come back on that at all Councillor Bridget Smith it's more of a comment than on that to say we know we recognise we recognise the value of it hasn't necessarily been easy it's been difficult in some areas to keep up to keep up demand but I'm aware that our colleagues have been doing an awful lot to stimulate, stimulate demand because this is what keeps people happy and healthy in their in their own homes and the knock on effect for that of relieving pressure on health services and social services is traumatic so yeah thank you for recognising the importance of it Councillor Judith Griffith I cite these of adding to what Councillor Bradman said I think it's important, often schemes or money comes from elsewhere for startups for new things but so essential to recognise the importance of sustaining properly those that already are in existence because they're working, they're helping they're reducing costs elsewhere as has been mentioned in the NHS for example and I think that's something we are really proud of and I feel that we should definitely continue that and support those which are there and hopefully others will come about but we've got some excellent ones already thank you for that did you want to comment on that at all Councillor Smith thank you so have we got any other speakers on this item Councillor Jerry thank you you said a moment ago chair regarding the overview I just want to read to ask the leader if looking at the budget as a whole and all the different appendix of the department and everything that we've gone through there obviously we've then focused on specific areas and we've gone through appendixes and appendix that and I just wanted to if there's anything you want to say in relation to how you feel as leader of the council about the overall position in relation to these budgets and the overall sense of income and expenditure because obviously we've focused in on bits and that's absolutely great but I'd be interested to hear if that's sort of a minute or so on where you generally feel the council is at this point in terms of reserves and expenditure and income and the work that's been done over the last few years give us a rounding off really Councillor Smith thank you very much indeed so this is a budget for growth there's lots of evidence there of success and delivery I really like the fact that we include all the things that have been ticked off we've taken very sensible decisions over the past six years and we've made very sound investments and that's why we're now in a position where we can invest in growth and push forward our services and continue to improve we've heard through the corporate peer review that we have enviable finances I sit in meetings at the LGA where we constantly talk about cliff edges for councils which are well managed councils which are now buckling under the pressure of demand led services particularly homelessness for a lot of district councils we shouldn't in this day and age be seeing district councils issuing section 114 notices but the sad fact is that we are despite the damage that's been inflicted by government and strangling the finances of local authorities for the past ten years we're in a position to put forward a budget where we're making real progress against our priorities especially when it comes to tackling climate change we are an exemplar and as I mentioned earlier it's one of the reasons why I was able to go and give evidence to a select committee using lots and lots of examples of the stuff that's going on in South Cambridge to a large number of MPs in the room so as you've seen we're investing in our waste service we're tackling fly tipping head on difficult enough to crap employing new people to do it we're giving communities the resources they need to grow sustainably and to bring residents along with them so I think I'm very proud of this budget I thank all our staff for contributing to it for making it accessible in this way I thank members for their contributions so that's my sum up and just just one supplementary relation to that because it's just something that I think you perhaps haven't mentioned in that bit there one of the things that I've heard yourself, leader and kind of officer to refer to is the whole transformation program I'm just wondering if there was anything you could reference in terms of the transformation program because building on the point that you've made there about the difficult financial situation that many local authorities find themselves in it is incredibly pleasing for us in South Cairns we know that we are in a position that many other councils perhaps don't find themselves in in relation to economic growth but we also know that you've talked a lot about transformation programs on to anything as my final bit that you wanted to reference of the successes of the transformation program and how that has enabled the council to save expenditure which can only benefit residents as a whole Thank you very much indeed so transformation isn't a quick win it's a long term process that takes years and you can't transform a whole organisation in one go so the strategy has been to take service area by service area so I think we've already I think you probably know quite a lot about the transformation that's been happening within the planning department which means that we will if Michael Gove accepted that we had an outstanding planning department in a recent meeting within revenue and benefits there's been core of a million pounds worth of savings from transformation you know this comes from work streamlined in the processes simple things like automating forms and it's allowed staff to be reallocated in order to work more efficiently there's been no redundancies associated with this for most councils you know transformation is a scary word because it means significant job losses but actually what we've done is we've created fewer roles because actually we've streamlined the work and it's much more efficient and I hope it's more rewarding for staff you know we don't want people just pushing paper around we want people feeling that they're really contributing to the success of this council thank you very much thank you so if there's no other speakers on this we will just refer back to the recommendations we've considered the draft budget and made some recommendations and questioned it is everybody happy that we've done that agreed thank you so we will now move on to the next agenda item which is agenda item 7 the medium term financial strategy which is pages 103 to 134 who would like to start on this councillor bygot thank you so my question is about so appendix B there's the table of medium term financial strategy and the second line down retained business rates sorry councillor bygot what page you want it's my fault I'm looking online and there are no page numbers online so it's appendix B 115 thank you carry on sorry in the blue table financial forecast the second line down retained business rates in the year 26 27 the our income from that and that really is the I suppose the main feature really in the accounts because it means we go from a surplus of about 5 million to a deficit of about 5 million in one go now I asked a question last year so I apologise for asking the same question two years in a row but it just seems to me that there's a disconnect between what's in this table and how it's described in the text so if you have a look at appendix C and maybe somebody can give a page name for this but appendix C paragraph 41 business rates reset 1 2 3 yep so it talks about the business rates reset and in paragraph 44 the end of paragraph 44 it's assuming that the fair funding review may not be implemented until 26 27 so I'm assuming that that major change the halving in revenue in 26 27 is actually related to this statement about the fair funding review in 26 27 but the text itself talks about an increase in local business share to 75% from 50% but not a reduction from 50 to 25 so if our income is halving but yet in the text we're talking about an increase from 50 to 75 I'm just wondering so Councillor John Williams answered my question on this a year ago I'm just wondering if we could describe this more clearly in the text so that the two things seem to go in the same direction so we're talking about a reduction in the table but we talk about an increase in the text thank you Councillor Bridget Smith thank you, I will bring in Peter so it's a good question and actually you've answered yourself really about the reason for this with the fair funding review it keeps getting kicked down the road and we are factoring it in and we are working to come worst case scenario aren't we on this Peter and so we're having to guess and that is what's so frustrating about local government finance and these single year settlements that we are having to make best guesses to the future and that's why the LGA constantly lobbies for multi-year settlements so that we can budget properly the way business is budget so it's a constant frustration and regrettably we're not seeing any progress there I haven't got appendix C in front of me immediately but Peter I'm sure can help you with clarification over the text thanks very much, so bring Peter Maddox in so I'm happy to clarify the text but there are two things in operation here so the fair funding review has been something that's been in the offing for 20 years now the planning assumption and everybody thinks at this moment in time that the fair funding review is going to come in in 26, 27 and one of the stated aims of that fair funding review was to move funding to increase funding in social care so that was when the fair funding review was announced way back in 2018 one of the fundamental aims of it was to improve the funding for social care which of course is a higher tier authority than we do however in order to achieve that they are going to bring it they are going to move from 50% locally retained business rates to 75% but that is for the whole local government sector so there will be more business rates in the local government sector but what it doesn't mean is that we are going to get more the idea is that additional money will be going to upper tier authorities on social care as well as part of the money that we are receiving now will also go into that part if you see what I mean so although locally within the whole of the local government sector there is more money available a lot of it will be going that is the intention a lot of it will be going to things like adult social care as will some of our current retained business rates quite how it works out in the end is still unknown but that was certainly one of the stated intentions when this was first moved to us but I'm certainly happy to try and make that a little bit clearer because quite clearly it isn't as clear as it should be Councillor Biker I guess if you could add that to point into the text there because I've picked it up two years in a row and I'm just worried that members of the public may read this and just because the 75 so 50 to 75 or 50 to 25 and the fact that we're halving it the two numbers are really the same size if we could have an extra the note there to just say why we've assumed that we're halving it then I think that would make it a lot clearer for the general public so I think that recommendation has been taken on board by Peter Maddox and I saw Councillor Bridget Smith nodding to sort of bolster that text there so thank you we'll move on Councillor Heather Williams thank you so it was just a couple of things that are being removed and looking first at paragraph 13 on page 107 that a full regard will be given to is being removed and then also on page 108 on paragraph 22 when it refers to the performance data will be developed over time reported and they just seemed like odd things to be removed so I'm just wondering if we could understand why those particular points were being removed from the MTFS please thank you for that Councillor Bridget Smith sorry what was it on page 107 that had been removed I can see a full regard will be given it just seemed a bit of an odd thing to remove I think it's tidying that personally I think it's tidying up language on item 13 can Peter clarify when I was going through this I did try and tidy the language up a few might be slightly different than yours I'm happy to discuss the points in detail if you feel that the changes perhaps detract from what was originally there I think it's tidying up the language and I think 21 is actually strengthening what it says so rather than saying there's need to affect a budget monitoring it says we operate the budget monitoring so I think that's strengthening it I think it's point 22 you referring to was it sorry let's make an observation and that was I think the reason that the words were taken out in paragraph 13 is because they conflict or are surplus to what is said in the rest of the sentence the rest of the sentence says if you imagine it without it revenue budget forecasts and any increase in the ongoing annual revenue budget will be subject to the wording at the beginning conflicted grammatically with the wording at the end so I think it's because Peter Maddock has just tidied up the wording so in the sense so if I bring back in Councillor Heather Williams yes for me it was on the paragraph 13 about having full regard it showed intention of what you were going to do which is why I found it a bit of an odd thing to be removed but that's those things that looked to me as peculiar to be changing so I've had an answer thank you and so we have got Councillor Stobar chair thank you so we've talked about this shortfall coming up, the budget shortfall and we've already talked about some actions and I think implicitly one is yet increasing the lobbying effort for multi-year settlements fairer settlements we haven't spoken much about the investment strategy but to keep up the investment strategy which has been so successful savings I think through you know through the transformation programme and council tax isn't that the list of things that we should be working on the levers that we can pull if you will and what should we be doing about it now in order for us to achieve be able to achieve a balanced budget as the business right recovery or the fair funding review cuts in okay in the first instance come to council Bridget Smith and then come to this what's the chief executive thank you so you've identified what we should be doing and actually what we are doing the proposal is that we like probably most other councils this coming year our increasing council tax by the maximum if we don't we just play catch up and we never catch up and there's plenty of councils who are now reaching that cliff edge because they haven't taken the opportunities to maximise their income and still even with that even by levering the maximum council tax increase we still have less money in real terms to spend because of inflation exceeding it and some costs are going through the roof still the cost of steel I think is up 30% and so on I think we're seeing all sorts of increases in our costs our investment strategy has been very successful to date and again we were complimented in the corporate peer review on our investment strategy be it the premises that we've bought or our continued investment in urban street housing so I think we have a very good track record and we now have independently verified report in the corporate peer review that that's the case so I think what we've been doing has worked and the plan is to keep on doing more of what we have been doing well Thank you councillor Smith councillor Stoke sorry, Chief Executive Thank you I think the only thing I'd add to what councillor Smith said is that it would be and I think the peer review report noted this it would be easy to you know I suppose delay any decisions because they don't affect us until 26-27 to effect we were running a surplus for the next two years which is unheard of for most councils but we absolutely need to keep pressure on here particularly on the transformation programme and on other areas of our work so certainly savings but also I suppose cost reduction so looking at where we can change demand reduce demand and being I suppose more creative with our colleagues about how we look at things completely differently so normally in the budget process you might start in July for the following year we're already starting that for 26-27 because the challenge is so enormous and it doesn't matter what happens in terms of you know I think some colleagues well you know things might be different if there was a different government things are not going to be different and the public sector is going to be in a state of crisis financially and you know might be rightly any extra funds will go to social care because that's where the huge pressures are so we do need to work really hard and you know soon to address these issues Thank you for that Councillor Stobart through you chair thanks to the chief executive and the leader thank you okay so we'll go to Councillor Leaming next Thank you chair I have a question in relation to paragraphs 31 well 30 31 32 is on page 109 so this is a text section about reserves and I wondered whether it would be possible to include a table which showed the earmark reserves and movements within the reserves as part of this document because it's part of an understanding of what's going on in the full picture and as a sort of a sight to that I also wondered whether we'd have to create any provisions for anything Thank you Councillor Bridget Smith Thank you sorry could you repeat which page that was on please Yes of course it's 109 so it was a text here describing that we do have reserves and that there are things that are moving in earmark reserves but I think it would be really helpful to actually see the breakdown of those earmark reserves and what those movements were in a numerical format okay and in addition to that I wondered whether we'd have to create any provisions fine so I think we do have that May I defer to Peter please for where that information sits Thank you so there is a separate budget report that looks at our reserves and it will have some detail around the reserves that we hold we could probably put a summary table in here as well that might assist Thank you So yeah this medium term financial strategy was the first draft when we started the budget process we'll be doing a second draft that's an update to this because obviously we've had the provision on the settlement now so there's numbers changed because of that we set our council tax baser so there's a number of there will be a number of changes to the strategy as it is now as a result of the budget process so we'll be updating that if we can include the table say there's another report with a bit more detail on our reserves as well that will be coming forward Councillor Leamon So this budget paper is this the one which is going to the council that this financial MTFS statement So this So the process of bringing together the overall general fund budget so we haven't got all the numbers I think it's going forward as well and that'll be part of the budget papers that come to Cabinet on the 6th of February and the council on the 27th of February Thank you for that Did you want to come back on that at all Councillor Leamon Just trying to understand that the papers that go to Cabinet will be the most up to date That's right, that's my understanding And on your point about the summary and having the table I think that's been taken on board as a recommendation It's just part of the overall picture I think it's a sort of like the boat that sails under the ship will be really helpful to see Thank you Sorry Councillor, I don't think I answered the second part There's not any new provisions to propose and we have sort of the biggest provision we have is in relation to business rates appeals so that's by far the most substantial provision we have but there's no new provisions to propose at this stage Thank you Okay, thank you for that Councillor Drew Thank you, that's okay I'm referencing really to point 12 which is on page 107 of the report which one starts the clear messages that the budget setting in medium-term planning will be tough over duration of the MTFS and then a list of series of bullet points which clearly will inform the overall practice that's going on There's been a number of points made starting with Councillor Vicott's point and then other people's points as well in relation to the forthcoming fair funding review and I know that we talk about nothing Councillor Smith preferting the kick in the can down the road and is it 26-27 or is it later or whatever but I think as the Chief Executive referred to that you know it is coming and we can only expect it to be the case that the funding situation for us as District Councillor becomes more and more complicated as time goes on so what I really want to do is explore a bit more in relation to that for the medium-term financial strategy so my first question really and I know it kind of comes out within the papers and in the budget and such but I'd like to hear the leader in particular's view on this How would you summarise the position of the council financially in terms of surplus or deficit at this point in time and over the next couple of years in terms of the income we have, the expenditure we're making would it be fair to say that the council at this point in time is in a surplus position and that as we move towards the possible 26-27 fair funding review coming in if it wasn't the case if it wasn't the fair funding review we would be able to say that the council was in a healthy financial position is that a fair summation of where we are? Councillor Smith Thank you, so this council is in a healthy financial position made quite clear in the corporate peer review we are enviable was the word so we've already heard from the Chief Executive that we continue to be in surplus for the next two years and what we want to do is through the transformation work we're doing through continuing to invest to save the hope is that we never get to the point where we're running a deficit and we're having to do what so many other councils are having to do now which is eat into their reserves and the problem with eating into your reserves is once they're gone, they're gone and we hear the government saying reserves are for a rainy day but there might be a tornado to come and it might be raining a whole lot worse in five years time so good financial management involves maintaining your reserves or even adding to your reserves so by not being complacent about the task in hand to identify a couple of million pounds worth of additional savings we anticipate avoiding that cliff edge but as the Chief Executive said it ain't going to be easy this is hard and hard decisions have to be made but through transformation as I've already given the example that can be a positive that leads to better working more effective jobs slicker management but it's not that many years ago when there was multiple excel data sheets floating around this organisation with stuff not being digitised that should have been digitised so it's been a rapid improvement programme over the last few years but our aim is to maintain the financial health and robustness in the longer term follow up on that then so if we take it it's your view as a leader of the council that we are in a robust healthy position at this point in time that we are running surfaces I believe that the intended surface for 24-25 is over 4 million pounds so therefore we are looking at a really positive picture but we do as you prefer to do in terms of cliff edge we do have the fair funding view coming along so although you referred earlier to kicking the can down the road if you can humanely in the sense of let's assume that 26-27 regardless of government regardless of general election does become the point in which the fair funding will be takes place what position do you think the district council will be in at that point to deal with the fact that we will be losing somewhere in the region of 5-6 million pounds of our income and from what you just said there you would hope that it doesn't lead to any reduction in service but I know we are moving perhaps ahead of our meeting so financial strategy but I still think that is predicting what we are doing what is your expectation of the position the council will be in at that point when the cliff edge does appear and is it your hope that we will continue to be able to offer the services that we do currently offer even with that dramatic reduction in income so in a word yes so a lot of councils are in the position now where they are only delivering their statutory services some are having to reduce their statutory services and that is a problem because you have got to do that stuff and they are not so we are in the enviable state of doing ever such a lot of discretionary stuff some of it little diddy stuff like 6 free trees the nice to have some of it much more expensive like the mobile warden schemes we don't have to do these things we choose to do them because we know that is what makes south Cambridge a really good place to live so to me having to start cutting that stuff is sign of failure and I don't like failing so we are working towards being able to as a minimum maintain the offer we currently make to our residents and if we keep on if we do really well on the transformation work and we have got outstanding we have the best officers in the UK delivering this stuff for us so it won't be it won't be for lack of trying it won't be for lack of ability or lack of commitment to this hopefully nobody falls over from exhaustion in the process so my anticipation is that we will cope with it but it's going to be difficult thank you I suppose in a sense I almost referenced what councillor Bygo did at the start of his point where he said this is a question I asked last year and councillor Williams answered it I look forward in 12 months time to in a sense coming back to the question I've asked tonight because obviously we will then be 12 months closer we will have had perhaps a whatever political landscape we may will be in at that point we may will have more sense so really I suppose councillor Smith I look forward to coming back in 12 months when we will have moved 12 months further forward and perhaps councillor Bygo will be answering his question again but we hope not thank you thanks very much do we have any other speakers on this right see any in which case we will move to page 101 where the recommendation is I think we have asked questions provided scrutiny and made some recommendations throughout that discussion and so when the report comes we can those recommendations can be taken into account is everybody agreed on that agreed lovely okay so we will now move on to the next agenda item ah so does anyone wish to have a break at this point five minutes to go to the toilet five minute break we will have a five minute adjournment thank you thank you very much so we will start from agenda item 8 Herman Street housing pages 135 to 142 have I got any speakers on this item councillor Leaming thank you chair so I've started to expand please on the paragraph 3a so that talks about only street housing borrowing additional money from the council of up to 20 million but I wanted to know where the council would get that money from so is it public work loans board where does the 20 million come from as far as the council is concerned please thank you very much did you want to come to you in the first instance Bridget so the best of understanding it is predominantly public work loan board though there is some homelessness grant I think as part of that if I could ask Peter for confirmation when we borrow we look at how long we need to borrow the money for we will obviously assess that when it gets there at the time but we will councillor Leaming thank you and what proportion of this 20 million will be funded by grants and what proportion will be funded by loans Peter Maddock does it make it clear on the report what the split is so it's we had a certain amount of homelessness grant didn't we I'm just trying to find out where that was it wasn't an insignificant amount Peter Canberra might have that information at his fingertips sorry the information is not in the report but we were looking at about half a million pounds of homelessness grants so to make it clear this year's homelessness grant this is stuff that we accumulated over previous years councillor Leaming thank you so there's half a million pounds of homelessness grants and 90 and a half million of loan that's great thank you councillor Leaming is it my understanding that you think it should be in the report this information can you make a recommendation it should be and on your point around the loan would you like that to be stated in the report yes I think it would be helpful to say who the loan is with or who it's likely to be with as well I think that would be helpful councillor Bridget Smith so just to clarify what Peter had said a final decision will be taken on the source of the loan at the time it is taken because I think it's often the case that public works loan board is the most desirable but not necessarily so obviously we will be looking at all options agreed would it be better to document that in the report is what I'm saying yes so I think that recommendation has been taken on board thank you everybody for your replies councillor Drew something specific in relation to that would it be correct to say that obviously sorry can we start there again obviously I know that this is coming to us a screen overview to go through us and then a final decision is at full councillor that's correct would it be correct then to say that the administration and the officers will be asking both that's a screen overview and then the full council to give them the authority to decide where the loan comes from without it coming back again to full council councillor Bridget Smith so I think that's normally a delegated decision to the responsible cabinet member ok nothing to add on that just to be clear I'm going to have a quite significant number of questions in relation to this and I'm going to have a number of questions in relation to this because I think this is about more than simply urban street housing I consider this to be about the wider issue of council loans council borrowing but I will come back to some of those more questions in a minute but I just want to pursue this one first of all in the past there has been issues in relation to council borrowing and where the borrowing has come from and obviously the public works loan board is something that can feel a complete sense of safety and security in that regard I wonder if it is possible at this point to share where the other possible sources of finance may well come from because I would be interested to know that before we simply move on from the item if the statement was that it was just going to be a public works loan board then from that regard I would feel quite comfortable with that but I wonder if it is possible at this point in time to share with the committee what other alternative sources of finance the council may well consider council Bridget Smith I think the answer is probably no not because I don't want to share the information because I think it's probably because we don't know not Iceland okay but I don't know whether Peter Maddox can be more specific Peter so the treasury management strategy which is part of the budget process is the overarching document that deals with our borrowings and investments and within there we potentially could as we said borrow from the public works loan board we do borrow from other local authorities banks, building societies the rates tend to vary and in the past the public works loan board hasn't been the cheapest as it happens it's very competitive at the moment and again I think we will revisit that at the point in time when we need to borrow I think it's likely to be the public works loan board if I'm honest at the moment okay I suppose the reason I'm kind of throwing this up is because and I should be clear that I'm not in any way suggesting whatsoever that south chemistry district council is in any way in the same position as other local authorities are just furrowing and woking have ended up in however if you read if you read reports and you read papers and you investigate the issues that councils have ended up in the issue of borrowing from other councils and the issue of borrowing from private banks does come up much more often in relation to issues of where councils have ended up in problems than borrowing from the public works loans board and I accept completely that it is not possible to explain in detail exactly where the other alternative sources of finances are but I am very keen to perhaps make the point that it does concern me that in an environment in which councils have ended up in significant problems related to loans that they have taken out in order to then lend money or provide whatever to other entities such as urban street housing that you then also read about the fact that council scrutiny committees or whole council meetings were left in a position where at a later date it was clear that they had not examined in every single possible detail in a way that might actually be quite irritating to those involved in doing it and asking endless questions that that becomes part of the issue so I am immensely keen in relation to this extremely large amount of money that every possible detail is given so I wonder whether or not it is possible for either chief executive or the leader to make a commitment that considering the very large amount of money involved that further information will be provided before that loan is taken out even if within the constitution is a delegated decision of the cabinet member I will come to councillor Bridget Smith first then this what is the chief executive so councillor Drew this council is run extremely well we had a very robust treasury management strategy as Mr Maddox has just articulated we have considerable oversight the councils you are referencing are councils where there were rogue individuals in senior senior positions without the level of transparency or oversight that this council runs I will bring Mr Maddox at this point I will bring in the chief executive first and then Peter Maddox Thank you I just wanted to jump in here I think there are two issues one is the paper you haven't come to be tonight which is about lending 20 million to Ministry Housing and the other is how do we borrow that's a really important point councillor Drew and the treasury management strategy will go to Cabinet on 6 February and then it will come to full council and we would welcome the treasury management strategy because this is a document that us finance people often feel doesn't get a fair fair amount of scrutiny for example it's not coming here tonight because you had lots of other things that I think were really substantive that you wanted to scrutinise but you will get an opportunity at full council there's a full list of counter parties the people that we borrow from and it's an extensive document that sets out how we borrow so welcome the point and welcome your scrutiny when we come to council Okay, thank you Shall I just come over Did you want to add to that Thank you councillor Drew Yeah, thank you Okay Sorry, Peter Campbell Did you want to bring the add something there? Another point in response to that is that if members agree this loan to Eamon Street it doesn't mean that that will be a draw down of £20 million as one loan it may be a series of loans that are drawn over a period of time and following the process that Peter Maddox explained earlier it may well but if we're thinking the best offer at that time it may well that we end it with a portfolio of loans from different sources rather than just one from one individual's place Okay, thank you but the paper we have in front of us doesn't say that the paper we have in front of us refers to a £20 million loan I totally accept what you've just said there it's a very good explanation of where we are there's a £20 million loan and I think it's entirely reasonable for councillers to therefore assume it is a single loan but I thank you for your correction perhaps the paper should be rewritten to reflect the fact that it is a £20 million overall loan which we made up a series of loans I'm just going to bring counciller leaning in on this point as well Thank you chair and thank you Mr Campbell it's actually a really helpful point because if it's broken up into increments that automatically reduces the risk we can make decisions for smaller amounts as each bit comes along if that makes sense presumably it would give the opportunity to review the entirety of the process it's not £20 million in one go in one big project if we're breaking it up and doing it phased over time that gives us chance to make decisions at various points along the way am I correct in assuming that thank you it reduces the risk and it would be really helpful to have that documented in here thank you I will now bring in counciller Stovart chair thank you this is partly about financial strategy but it's also touching on please advise me chair on our homelessness policy doesn't it make the council more responsive to trends in homelessness and actually make it in a sense easier and more financially viable to accommodate homeless people so that is the essential background but as I understand from the previous discussion the risk level appears to be relatively low so as it's described I think in the page 139 the list of risks which are actually internal risks there are risks about how the process is managed we acquire properties in a sensible way and so on and Peter Campbell has described the series of loans that might be covering clusters of properties but it would be done property by property but I was just wondering if there are bigger outside risks and one might be for example changing the housing market which changes the valuation of the portfolio of accumulating a number of single person properties which then create a bit of a maintenance headache which was maybe more than anticipated just wondering what those external risks might be and whether the plan is successfully mitigate Councillor Bridget Smith Thank you, so I'll have to stab at this and then I'll ask Duncan to fill in any bits that I've missed out so the current portfolio was bought at a value of 96 million is currently valued at 116 million so I mean it would have to be a heck of a housing crash to make much impact on that we've commissioned an independent report on the levels and it predicts that the urban street will be debt free in 50 years time so then it's just a massive capital asset at that point so you know the one of the reasons for increasing the silent portfolio is that some opportunities have come about to purchase housing that's kind of too good to miss there's some very attractive opportunities out there at the moment additionally this is moving urban street when we took over control of the council in 2018 urban street was solely about revenue generation and it was buying homes in Nottingham as far as I can remember quite far afield so we changed the business case for it in order to make it focus on the travel to work area around South Cambridge because we felt investing South Cambridge money needed to deliver benefits to South Cambridge so since 2018 we've seen ever increasing problems in the private rental market in lack of supply and we know it's critical and places like London it's absolutely critical so all the evidence is that as house prices go down so rents go up and that's what we're seeing currently certainly the case in Cambridge definitely the case in London because as more people move into the rental market so the demand goes up and prices go up so it's a pretty robust business case so that business case is presented annually from Herman Street company accounts are submitted to the council and to company's house annually there's an external and an internal audit annually and as you know we have councillors on the board of directors so there's a tremendous amount of oversight here should there be catastrophe which we do not anticipate the debt, the responsibility for the debt rests solely with Herman Street it does not rest with this council so the liability is on the company it's not on South Cambridge so I think moving into provision of homelessness accommodation and we're talking here about single occupancy units I think it's a really positive step because the most difficult people for us to help tend to be single men and often single middle aged men where there's been multiple breakdowns in employment domestic arrangements and so on and I've had people turn up on my doorstep and they're in floods of tears and I have to tell them they're not our priority so this gives us an opportunity to start addressing problems that are getting worse on a daily basis here so I think it's a real positive and the fact that we're able to pull in some unspent homelessness grant to help us do that it must be good news for everyone in this council if there's anything I've missed can I ask Duncan to fill in the gaps I think that was a pretty full answer but just very briefly Duncan thank you thank you chair I think the only thing possibly a question you talked about the long term maintenance and the possibilities of issues with that well we don't buy properties unless we have a full property survey done on them so when we buy them they are in good condition I don't know whether you were talking about specifically the homeless type properties but they will be managed by Shire Homes on the half of her ministry so there will be intensive management and some of the smaller scale repairs will be borne by Shire Homes and they'll be visited looking after the properties I don't think the long term maintenance will be a problem thank you very much councillor Stobart did you want to come back on that at all yeah just councillor Stobart first and then I'll come back chair the answers are great thank you is there anything very briefly you want to add to that very briefly and to address your concern but make sure that the issues on the rates are rented on the corporate register so they are monitored thank you thank you for that I'll move on yeah if we come to councillor Van Der Wire next if we come to councillor Heather Williams and then councillor Drew yes I can't say I've kept track of the public works loan board criteria over the last couple of years but they certainly were tightened up in relation to commercial investments and I was wondering whether a borrowing of the nature being discussed sort of how that fits, how confident we are that with that fits the criteria for the public works loan board and mentioned briefly the Treasury strategy coming to Cabernet and Council I mean from my point of view the main the important factor for making decision about this investment that is demonstrated which sounds attractive it is how it fits in more with the investment strategy that we have and the balance of that I realise this paper is from the point of view of Ermine Street but from the point of view of Council it's how it fits in with the investment strategy I think usually we have it at the same time as everything else in the budget cycle but we sort of think about it when that comes next to us if I come to councillor Bridget Smith in the first instance and then maybe Peter Maddock will pick up, yep Peter Maddock so as regards the rules around the public works loan board so they were changed back in now it's a I forgot when it was what we do know about that is that we're not allowed to borrow from the public and when we've explored that we've got a bit more detail behind that so something like housing for example is something there. Do you want to come back on that at all councillor? Thank you councillor Heather Williams Thank you, I think that was one of the questions I had because my concern when I read through the documents and that's not sort of discussing the merits of the idea of loan and water industry would determine that council was that there is definitely a yield part of it and then we've got the homelessness and whether sort of tagging that together demonstrated more than just a yield return I appreciate it as housing although the industry may decided to alter their rents what have you but it is essentially a commercial practice so I think the report could do with a bit more reference to that. Obviously it sounds like you're confident it complies but I think the document itself would benefit from that Going on something that councillor Drew raised around the wording right, it does say up to 20 million and that might be a phasing but as councillors we have to accept the principle of 20 million pounds going to Erman Street. Normally we have the strategies in place because quite often these are like commercially sensitive things and we have to make quick decisions because you might lose the opportunity however here Erman Street is something that is solely within control of the council and I just wanted to have clarified that because the leader said about the debts and what have you been responsible of Erman Street but of course it would impact given the councillors sole owner of Erman Street if they can't repay us the loan so just think we ought to be clear of the risk that in response councillor Stobart that there is still risk attached we might make decisions council that we accept the risk but it's not just the liabilities on them because obviously we would lose out in the repayments. I think that in the report the interest of the leader of the committee are just showing the decision making process almost like a flow chart I'm wrapping up because I think that would help be really clear as to how this decision is going to be made council onwards cabinets it just refers to cabinets and given that it's within solely within the control of the council surely there would be an opportunity before the money was borrowed to come back to scrutiny scrutiny isn't a decision making body so cabinet could then or the lead member could then still make the decision under the delegation but as councillor drew rightly reference other issues where it's gone wrong I don't think it's unreasonable for scrutiny to want to see that again thank you for that, I'll come to councillor Bridget Smith in the first instance I will think about it but as things stand for a moment I don't see the value of scrutiny looking again at the detail of where a loan is coming from these are commercial decisions we have we have a strategy to manage it but I'm happy to discuss that further with officers councillor Heather Williams thank you that was part of it it was about whether there could be some inclusion about the PWLB and how it complies just to strengthen and robust the report and a clear decision making process just for members of the public as well to see where it's going to flow from yes to detail about the compliance of the Public Works Loan Board I thought it was clear in the paper what the decision making was but we'll review that and see if we can improve on it thank you okay councillor Drew thank you assuming there was a total of £20m and obviously as councillor Leeming established with her questions earlier it's £19.5m loan and £1.5m housing grant should something happen to her in street housing and should something go wrong because unfortunately we do end up in a situation despite the general healthiness of the property market and the success that people make there are occasions when unfortunately property developers or buyers or vendors or whatever do go wrong should that happen in this regard the £0.5m homelessness grant that has then been transferred to Irmin Street housing what is the status of that grant in terms of has it been handed over to Irmin Street and been given to the Irmin Street company for them to do something with it or should it be the case that Irmin Street was to go bankrupt would that half a million pound homelessness grant be something that the council could call in as a debt councillor Bridget Smith I'm going to I know I didn't know the answer to that I'm going to have to come back to Duncan because I can't recall what the answer that was Duncan I'll pick it up so what what will happen is that there will be an equity share of the of the properties that are bought with the assistance of the grant so the council will maintain a share of each individual property so we're satisfied that the payments of the grant to Irmin Street in this way meets the requirements of the homelessness prevention funding but the other thing to bear in mind is that each property that we look at through Irmin Street and will continue with this scheme is done with an individual viability is carried out using a net present value calculation that takes no account of the increase of value of that property all the time so even if the values of the properties were to fall as long as a rental income continues to to be the same the Irmin Street will earn enough money in order to pay the debt so as Duncan pointed out earlier to date there's been about a £20 million increase in the value of Irmin Street properties so they have got if they were obviously the only way to realise that money is to sell all the properties but there is a significant amount of equity that remains that remains within Irmin Street I think I understand if I can just then add further to that obviously the council is taking out the loan value at some point up to £19.5 million and is then loaning that onto Irmin Street so again I'm going to ask the negative question in that regard because for these things I'm always interested in what the worst case scenario could be and I think that's the right thing to do in terms of protecting what is taxpayers and residents money if Irmin Street was to go bankrupt how would the council get its £19.5 million loan back? I thought I'd explained that the responsibility for the debt rested totally with the company but yes the council has taken the £19.5 million loan out therefore I know we've talked about different things let's assume we take all the public work loan board are going to expect us to repay the £19.5 million plus interest we are relying upon Irmin Street continuing to make sufficient income to be paying us the loan back so therefore as I always think you should do in any business situation worst case scenario should Irmin Street go bankrupt we are still responsible for a £19.5 million loan that we have taken out of the council how do we go about getting our £19.5 million back for my bank property company I'm sure there's an answer to this the same way that anybody does by selling off the capital assets I'm making a claim on the capital assets but I'm going outside my comfort zone here so I'm going to go to people who do this in detail so that's right the value of the assets from Irmin Street has increased since the point of purchase so that there is an equity left in Irmin Street so if the word is selfless stock it's worth more than the value the overall value of all the loan going to the council and the value of the equity it's greater than the so greater than the value of this investment fund so if we set up the investment fund and we lent all of it to Irmin Street at the same time there is still currently enough equity within Irmin Street to repay everything and they continually monitored and that reported back regularly to members and of course the council the counciller represented this on Irmin Street Board as part of