Rwy'n gyr�, rwy'n gweithio'n gweithio'r cymrydau, a'r gweithio'r gweithio ar y cwrdd yn yr oedd yn ffyrwyr, ac mae'r gweithio'n gweithio'r cymrydau. Rwy'n gweithio'r gweithio'n gweithio'r Cymrydiaeth Cysriadol Cymru. Mae cymryd y rhodd yn cael ei gwybodaeth i ddod i ddod o'r gweithio, ac mae'n gweithio'r cymrydiau gyda ddod ymlaen, am yr ymddangos cymrydau i ddod. But only members who are present in the chamber today will be able to move and second motions or to vote and members present virtually will be able to speak in the debate. So if members who are attending virtually would indicate or wish to speak by using the chat in the teams meeting please and then I'll bring them into the debate as quickly as I can and those present yn tyfn y ddweud beth rydych chi'n chyfnodd y byddai gleisio chi gweithio'r ddweud? Johnathan. Rhaid i'n rhewn yn dda, rhaid i'n rheidio'r ddweud ar gyfer mylineg. Rhaid i gael am i'n dda. Rhyw harness можноbengirol.  Ond os yna, rydym yn cael ei hoffi yng Nghymru Cymru, ac ar draws i ni am oes beth neid diddiodd diolch yn y dweud. Mae'r ddim yn cael ei hoffi yng nghymru gyda'r cyfnod i'r cyfrwyr combineid. Place 10. 2. Apologies for absence. Jonathan, what apologies for absence? Do we have please. So we've received apologies for absence from diameter John Williams, the lead cabinet member for finance and Gwenville Chamberlain, the chair of the Scrutiny and Overview committee. Do we have councillor Judith Riffer? Vice-chair of Scrutiny and Overview presently. Thank you. Rhaith i ho. Item 3, declarations of interest. Do any Members have interest to declare in relation to any item of business on this agenda? If any interest subsequently becomes apparent, just raise them at that point please. So moving on to the minutes of the previous meeting, Members are asked to approve the minutes of the meeting held on the 7th of February 2022, and I move the approval of those minutes as a correct record. yw eu gallethaf i gydened i ddweud o'r ddin o'r pwysig? Nid oed yn cwrt hynny'n gwneud? Felly, dwi'n meddwl i'r cyfrif o'r ddin o'r ddin o'r ddin o'r rin o'r ddin o'r pwysig, digwydd nhw'n credu'n cael ei sŵs, ac efallai nhw'n credu'n cael ei sŵs i'r ddynnig. Mae'n cyfan yw i'ch gweithio'r ffordd o'r ffordd yn poblygu'r rhai och chi. Mae'n bwysigon gweithio'r ffordd. Mae'n bwysigon gweithio'r bwysigon gweithio'n bwysigon gweithio'r bwysigon gweithio'r bwysigon. So wych yn ei ffordd am y cyfan o'r bwysigon gweithio'r bwysigon. Yn ymgyrch ar dr Douglas De Lacey, oedd yn ymraeth i'n ddod o'i gweithio? Mae'n gweithio am y cwestiynau, ac mae'r cyfliesgrant efo datblygu'r cyflymion. Mae'n gweithio, ac rydyn ni'n ddod Ile Gwff yn gwybod i'r cwestiynau. Rydyn ni, mae'n gweithio. Mae'r cyflymion i'r cyflymion, rydyn ni'n gweithio'r cyflymion. I'm going to give you what hopefully will be a fairly full response to your question, but feel free to follow up with a supplementary as you are well aware, is your right to do so afterwards. Having spent 24 minutes on the phone to a certain ferry company on Friday before giving up and hanging up, and then a further 33 minutes on Saturday before finally reaching a customer service person, I really understand very much the frustration of the long wait on the call centre, which I think is the focus of your question. However, the experience I had last week was not just about the wait time, it was exacerbated by several other things. The terrible music, the repetitive instruction could go to the website to solve my problem when the reason I was calling was that the website told me that I had to call to solve my problem, the lack of any information on where I was in the queue, and any other information which was provided about how long I was going to be able to have to wait. So, it is very difficult to capture the experience of frustration in a KPI. What we have reported as you have highlighted your question is the basic average call wait time, and I'm sure you've noticed that progress is being made in that in the sense that in December 2021 that was down just to 32 seconds. And I agree with you, it is a very crude measure because it doesn't give you any indication as to what the potential range of outcomes are, but I assure you we've been thinking about the problem since you've left the council. The new telephony system does give us the ability to monitor wait times with additional granularity to annual analyse the situation and understand the nature of the problem. For example, we've looked at the simple relationship between the number of calls received per day and average wait times. And unsurprisingly, this indicates that the call centre can cope with calls in the range of 600 to 700 calls per day very effectively. But then as soon as those call times, call rates increase beyond 600 to 700, call wait times increase dramatically as the number of calls being added to the system exceeds what can be actually dealt with. And it's those sort of insights which have been really helpful in trying to address the objective which is to improve the level of service. We've also been introducing new features to address the frustration of the long wait directly. The most significant of these is the call back service which has been operating since November. The call kickback kicks in at five minutes and gives the call of the opportunity to receive a callback from the council. And it stops the long tail of waits that you are very concerned about. And it's quite interesting to note that even in December when that call wait time had been reduced to 32 seconds, there were still 118 callback requests which we received. So even when there's 32 seconds, that's at least 118 people who were waiting more than five minutes who actually get a callback. So with this complexity in our new features, we certainly need to try and improve the KPIs but I'm not sure that the standard deviation itself would really offer much greater insight. Particularly when those would obscure very different experiences on very different days when call rates are very different and they would be expressed over a monthly average. So after a lot of consideration and discussion with Mr. Member, what we will do from April is that we will start to publish as part of our KPIs. The percentage of calls that we receive that wait for more than five minutes to be answered. And we will also publish what percentage of those calls, which last longer than five minutes, request a callback. That will highlight both the number of people who are exposed to the long wait issue and the effectiveness of our callback service in serving those residents. Thank you very much for your question. Thank you. Dr Delacy, would you like to ask a supplementary question? If I may, leader, please, yes. I'm very aware of much more frustration than the call centre provides. My parish council banks with the cooperative bank, which normally leaves you for between 45 and 90 minutes before it answers the phone. So I think we're doing pretty well. The reason why I asked my question was I did look at the statistics that Mr. Member gave me shortly before I left. I was very surprised to discover that there is a very large number of calls which are terminated within five seconds. And that, of course, affects the average very significantly. So I'm delighted to hear that there will be figures about calls of more than five minutes and also the fact that callback is allowed. One other datum that I think could be usefully provided is the actual numbers, or not rather than, as well as the percentages. So we have some idea of just how many of our residents are not actually receiving the care we'd like to give them. And I wonder if that would be a possible addition. Thank you. Councillor Gough, do you want to pick up on that? Yes, I think that's a good idea. As I mentioned, a large part of the experience is simply a function of the number of calls which we receive, which is why the average wait times tend to go up. For example, around the time people receive their council tax bills, because we get a lot of calls. So actually, at the very least, in the remarks section relating the experience of the call wait time and the waits of more than five minutes to the volume of calls would also be a good idea. So we will take that on board as well. So thank you for that suggestion. Thank you very much. And perhaps, Dr Lacey, you might like to come back in six months' time and tell us whether we're being successful. I wish you and Penny good health and be lovely to see you soon. Thank you very much. Thank you. Right, so moving on, issues arising from the Scrutiny and Overview Committee, have we got that? Okay, so we've got a problem getting the vice chair of Scrutiny and Overview in. So when we've got her in, we will pick up that item with her then. So moving on to item seven, which is the quarter three performance report. Sorry, let me just get it up, starting on page 19. So this is a pretty self-explanatory document. And I'm very pleased with the way that these reports are presented these days. It makes the information very, very accessible. I think we continue to perform very well, bearing in mind, we are still in the middle of a pandemic. I think it's quite extraordinary that actually we've managed to keep so very much stuff in the green quite honestly at a time. I think lots of other councils have really caved in. Obviously things like bed and breakfast, we have had a government directive to be housing people in bed and breakfast when they've been affected by homelessness. So obviously the bill for that continues to accelerate. But I think other than that, it's pretty self-explanatory. Is there any questions on any on it, please? Yes, Councillor Brian Milne's. Thank you. I just wanted to make reference to the efforts of the bin service. As you know, we've had significant staff absences still. Some of these have been because they've put off taking annual leave until now. And obviously COVID is still part and parcel of that equation. But I'd just like to report back from some of the feedback we've had online over recent weeks, which has been very supportive of the bin crews. They know they've been going the extra mile, literally. And they've been working Saturdays to try and make sure that the green bin collections were picked up if they hadn't managed on their regular day. So I'd just like to publicly thank the service for the work that they've done and hope that it's going to be restored to a normal service as soon as possible. Thank you very much. Councillor Neil Goff. Thank you, leader. So there were a number of comments at scrutiny, which were made about the report which we've picked up on in this document, which I just wanted to highlight. So in terms of the format, the introduction basically now signposts the colour coding which has been applied to Appendix B in terms of the delivery of the business plan objectives. Also as requested in scrutiny, all the line charts now have labels. Unfortunately, these are fairly small, which is the reason they weren't provided previously, but hopefully they're helpful in providing some context. In terms of the KPIs in Appendix A, AH 21 now contains a short sentence to reflect the works being done to improve the publicity of properties to ensure that those bidding on properties are well informed. CC 305, which was the issue around the complaints, now contains a commentary on the number of open cases at the end of the period, which was requested I think by Councillor Heather Williams. And that shows the very significant progress that's been made in clearing that backlog. The measure itself will now become more useful now that we're no longer mixing current and past complaints. And then in terms of Appendix B, both B52 and B53, the ratings will remain unchanged, but the items now contain updated comments in the light of the discussion at scrutiny, providing a clearer picture of the consultation that has taken place and the status of the civic hub plans, based on further information provided by officers. So thank you to Mr Memory and to Mr Ledger for updating the report in that way. Thank you, and I believe you're going to second this. My thanks also to Kevin Ledger, who has really taken responsibility for consistently improving the way that we present this data. The narrative now is very self-explanatory, so it has massively improved on what it was. And thank you to Jeff as well for his oversight of this. Okay, so in the absence of anything from scrutiny, is this a problem we're going to be able to resolve? No, no dear. Okay, all right, thank you. So are there any questions from anybody other than Cabinet members on this? No, okay, thank you very much indeed. So the recommendation is set out in paragraph three of the report. To A, note the KPI results and comments at Appendix A and progress against the business plan actions at Appendix B, and B note the reduction in target in relation to land charges search response days as part of a phased return to pre-COVID target levels by the new financial year, as detailed within the comments section at SX025 at Appendix A. So do members agree with the proposal? Great. Anyone want to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? Thank you, Cabinet therefore agrees that the proposal is by affirmation. So moving on now to item eight, the annual equality scheme update and progress report, and Councillor Tumey Hawkins is going to present this, and I believe Councillor Bill Handley you're going to second it. Thank you very much indeed. So Councillor Hawkins. Thank you, leader. Thank you. The report before you this morning is so update on how the equality scheme that we adopted at the end of 2020 is progressing. And just to remind us as a public authority we must have due regard to the aims of the General Equality Duty within the Equality Act which came to force in 2011. So you remember that this council voted to adopt an equality motion after the George Floyd incidents back in 14th of July 2020. And that also has had an impact on how we're dealing with equality issues. So to meet the equality aims we did set up three objectives which was to understand the level of diversity in the district, come up with actions and processes that will help us level up, which is the phrase that we are using these days, and the outcomes of those in identified disadvantaged groups. To be an employer that appreciates the strength that we can get from a diverse workforce and to widen that opportunity for diverse groups. And thirdly to make sure that protected groups are included and have their voices heard when we discuss issues to do with the future of the district. And actually we did do a lot of that when we did our first conversation and our first proposals in creating the emerging local plan, which is, as you know, close to my heart. I just want to find the race equality task and finish group for all the work that they have done on getting us this far and on whose recommendation I am now the Cabinet champion for race equality. I can say that we as a council have gone quite a way in embedding equality and diversity in our usual council activities. We also are an equality opportunities employer. We have an apprentice scheme and we are offering hybrid working for our staff. And some of the other ways that we have embedded equality and diversity includes creating a calendar of notable dates which we mark. Mark with events which are lined up by the team. We also carry out equality impact assessments when we are developing policies. Can I just mention perhaps a couple of these when it comes to reviewing access to housing and homelessness support? As you might remember in recent, in view of recent events, we are doing a lot to help refugees who come to the UK who are homeless and have helped to house eight Afghan families. And also one of the things we are doing is identifying the fact that in the race equality motion that we adopted, the black and minority ethnic access to housing and homelessness had not been good but we are doing something about that. We obtained initial data which was given to the task and finish group back in 2021. And we are hoping to have a review of the numbers this year at some point just to see how well we are working on that particular strategy. So there's a lot more in the report as you will see. But I just want to say thank you to Kevin and the entire qualities team for their hard work in getting us this far. And actually those who have attended some of the events that we've had like Black History Month, the LGBT Plus History Month, the Gypsies and Travellers and the Disabilities History Month will know just how hard the team have been working to make sure that we are up there and doing the best that we can. I will therefore like to propose a recommendation as it is in paragraph three. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Hawkins. That was really helpful. Councillor Handley, do you want to speak on this? I don't think I want to add very much more from what Councillor Hawkins has said except to say I endorse it and thank the officers for a clear and well presented report. It's very good. Any questions from Members of Cabinet? Anybody else like to ask any questions? Thank you very much indeed. So the recommendations set out in paragraph three of the report. A, approve adoption of the revised Equality Scheme at Appendix A and B, review the equality scheme action plan progress report at Appendix B, detailing progress against actions set in the 2020-21 iteration of the equality scheme. So do Members agree with the proposal? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? Cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation and moving on to item nine which is parental leave policy. I am going to present this. So thank you. This was as cross-party support. We all agree it was a really important thing to do in order to ensure that we have a membership of councillors representing all age groups. That being a parent doesn't preclude you from being a councillor because in fact it's really important that we have councillors who represent people with young children and with families and our job is to make it as easy as we possibly can for people. So I'm very grateful for this report which again Jonathan Corbett has led on this from HR. So thank you very much Jonathan and I think Geoff Memory again has had oversight of it. So we've obviously kept you very busy Geoff recently since most of these reports seem to be attributed to you. So the recommendations are that we adopt this policy and this has to go to council because it's a permanent change to the six month rule which is in our constitution. So it's not something that Cabinet can just approve. It has to go on to council and in fact I think it's going to council tomorrow. So that's about the speediest turnaround we get. Council Hawkins I think you're seconding this. Do you want to add anything? Yes I'm seconding just to say very quickly that from an equality impact assessment viewpoint I'm glad that we are actually doing this because it just means that we are opening the door to more families or parents to be involved in the work of the council. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. So I've got any questions from Cabinet members? No I'm going to invite Councillor Claire Daunton who I also need to thank. She's taken a very important lead role in delivering this and in liaising with members. So Councillor Daunton can you come off mute please Claire? Yep sorry. Can I pop on it? It's seems it's being very touchy today. Is that clear now? That's good, that's good. Yes thank you. I want to echo your thanks to Jonathan Corbett for his sterling work on this document and for the trouble that he's taken to consult LGA documentation and the documentation of other councils and to recommend it for adoption I think it's really good that we're able to do this. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. I think Jonathan was very supported by Democratic Services so thanks to them also. Okay so if there are, oh sorry Councillor Anna Bradman. Thank you leader. I just wanted to endorse this report and I think it's a very good idea and is going to enable a wider variety of people to take part in council life and I think that's so important but one of the things I just wanted to check is that given that we need to be able to pay the person who is on maternity leave or paternity leave while we might need to also provide infill staff for that role I just wanted to make sure we're making the financial provision necessary for that. Councillor Bradman, well this is specifically about member parental leave so I think that's already, I think your question is already dealt with in the parental leave policy for our staff so we're talking here specifically about member parental leave so my understanding is that members continue to receive their allowance even when they are on parental leave. I'm sure even members on parental leave will still get lots of their residents ringing them up asking them for advice and help so thank you very much. Okay so we are going to move on to the recommendation and the recommendation is to recommend to council the adoption of this policy so are members agree with the proposal? Anyone wish to vote against and anyone wish to abstain? Cabinet therefore agrees the proposals by affirmation and now item 10 which is the 2021-22 Revenue and Capital Budget monitoring quarter three and Councillor Neil Goff is going to recommend this and I will second it. Great, thank you. Thank you Mr Maddox and his team for putting this together. I don't really have much to say on this report and the variance is quite modest as you'll see through the report. I do just want to draw attention to paragraph 17 which is quite interesting which looks at the potential impact of higher field prices associated with the current situation in terms of our budgets, not so much an issue for today, well isn't an issue for today but certainly when you look at 22-23 the potential impact of that could be quite significant. Obviously it's not within the scope of this report which is 21-22 but I thought members would be of interest to it, thank you. Thank you very much, so we are doing some other work looking at the impact of the Ukraine crisis on the organisation operationally but also the impact on our residents and in particular our tenants of course. So do any Cabinet members have any questions? Are there any questions from anyone else? Cabinet's recommended to note the forecast 21-22 revenue position against the approved revenue budget shown in Appendix B projected major variances with the reasons for these variances at Appendix C1 and C2 and the action being taken to address the underlying issues and be note the latest capital programme for 21-22 position and variances as shown at Appendix D. So I'm happy to second that. And do you members agree with proposals? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wishing to abstain? Cabinet therefore agrees with the proposals by affirmation. Thank you very much. We now come to item 11 which is small land sales and councillor John Batchelor is going to introduce the report and I think councillor Tumi Hawkins is seconding it. So over to you councillor Batchelor. Thank you leader. Small land sales. This is precisely what it is. It's a tidying up policy to make sure that we actually have something in writing that ensures that there's a fair and equitable way that we deal with tenants who want to purchase smaller elements of land. I should make this clear that this is only about very small patches of land and the extensions of gardens and so on and the land has no commercial value. We have different policies for larger pieces of land where our preference will always be where it's possible to actually build our own social housing. So I commend it to you. The presentation is a paragraph 4. I don't think it's a very... There's no other issues involved here. Thank you. Thank you councillor Hawkins. Thank you leader. I'm pleased to support this policy as someone who has someone in my ward who's looking for something like this. We can get on with it and get it resolved. Thank you. The important thing is that it's a slick operation for something that's fairly simple. Thank you. Any questions? The cabinet's recommended to approve the draft policy on small land transactions, HRA, Attapt and Appendix A to be considered by the Housing Engagement Board and authorised delegated authority to the lead member for housing to approve the final policies subject to minor amendments if any arising from the Housing Engagement Board. So do members agree with the proposal? Thank you. Anyone vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? Cabinet therefore agrees with the proposals by affirmation. And item 12, renewal of home improvement agency service level agreement. That is councillor John Bachelor again, this time seconded by councillor Bill Handley. Thank you so John Bachelor. Home improvement agency is a shared service. The contract is coming up for renewal. It works with the disabled and vulnerable in our communities to improve life for them. So it's a valuable service. We have had some concerns about the performance in recent times. With very long waiting times. This is being addressed now. We are making regular monitoring exercises. But basically it's a good service that we want to continue. Recommendation is at paragraph 4. I commend it to cabinet. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm happy to second. This is a really important service. My understanding is that there had been huge improvements prior to the pandemic in performance. Really, really good improvements. Of course the pandemic set everything back. But not as badly as it might have done. Hopefully they will get back to where they were as quickly as possible because it has a vital service which makes a difference to people's lives. Any questions for anyone? Nope. So cabinet is recommended to approve the renewal of the Cambridge Home Improvement Agency shared service level agreement for a further three years up to the 31st of March 2025 at Appendix A and the continuation of the current funding arrangements with the county council. Members agree with the proposal? Anyone wishing to vote against? Anyone want to abstain? So cabinet therefore agrees with the proposal by affirmation. Gosh, we're getting through the rate of knots here. So maybe things last words. Item 13, the interim position statement on first homes. So councillor Batchelor introducing this and councillor Hawkins seconding it. Councillor Batchelor. Thank you very much, leader. First homes, can I just remind members this is one of the government's latest idea about getting people on the housing ladder. It's a discount market housing scheme which means that the developers provide housing at a discount of between 30% and 50% of the market rates. So it's actually the developer who does all the initial work in getting the clients and so on where we came in and come into it is that it has to be administered in the long term. Members will also recall that we were rather dismayed at this particular policy because there was a requirement by government that 25% of all housing delivered by S106 or in other words affordable housing had to be as first homes. So this clearly would mean that we would have to reduce the amount of rented accommodation that we could provide and the shared ownership arrangements. What this paper does is set out our proposals about what should happen in the event that the 25% of housing is taken for first homes and how we deal with the rented side and the shared ownership. What our proposal is an option too which suggests that we maintain the rental element at the same level as we are delivering now but shared homes would fall back to take account of the 25% of the first homes. So it's a regrettable thing. The good news is that like many things recently the government has actually changed its mind and it has now said that this is no longer a requirement so thank goodness for that. It's no longer a requirement but it's a choice on the part of the developer so we still have to have in place a policy to deal with it should the developers to take this course. So what is before you is the policy at option two. I would particularly say thanks very much to Julie Fletcher who has actually produced a very clear and concise report and I hope we can take this forward. Thank you. Thank you, yes. My thanks to Julie as well. It's been complicated I think to battle the way through this ever-changing minefield of this. Councillor Hawkins, do you want to comment on it? Thank you, leader. I think the points made about the effect on shared homes really was what was of concern to me as well and of course from an equality point of view families who are looking to purchase a home would be affected because of that but at the same time we have young people all first time by them so we are looking for first homes. At the end of the day, now that the change has been made and it's done to the developer we'll see how it goes, we'll have to monitor it of course and see just how this affects us in delivering homes for people who really need it in the way that they need it to be affordable for them. Thank you very much. In reality there's no affordable homes in South Cambridge are they all extremely expensive? Thank you very much indeed. So the cabinet's recommended to approve the greater Cambridge first homes interim position statement and be delegated authority to the lead member for housing to prove any subsequent minor amendments and edited changes that do not materially affect the content of the interim position statement. So do members agree with the proposal? Anyone voting against? Anyone wish to abstain? Cabinet therefore agrees proposals by affirmation and sticking with Councillor John Batchelor we now have fixed term tenancies which actually is a good news item and I'm very happy to second this. So John Batchelor again. Thank you very much leader. So fixed term tenancies were introduced about nine years ago by the government and it is just what it says all the tenancies were given new tenancies were given out on a fixed ten year term. These are coming to an end or they've been come up for renewal next year. This is no longer government policy. Proposal here is that we revert to lifetime secure tenancies which we've been using previously and we are using currently so it's only fair for all those concerns. I think it's good news. It's simply the right thing to do that people have secure tenancies. So I recommend the proposal to you. Thank you very much. This is another of those good ideas that turned out not to be quite such a good idea because we all know one thing people want is security in their homes and knowing that they're not going to be turfed out at any moment. So I'm very happy. I'm very pleased that we've got this position. So any questions? Nope. So cabinet's recommended to approve the proposal to end the use of fixed term ten... Sorry. Councillor Bradman. Sorry. I'd ask a question after cabinet. I'm moving quite fast. My apologies. That's okay. I just wanted to understand the situation and it's just a matter of explanation really. What happens in the case of a lifetime tenancy at the end if younger members of the family are also resident in the house? I just... Sorry. What I mean is at the end of the lifetime. Does that then transfer to younger members of the family? I just wanted to understand that. Right. Thank you. Perhaps Julie. I think you've been Julie. Thank you. Thank you. Hello everyone. Thank you. I'm afraid it isn't a simple answer. Unfortunately, it will depend on the tenancy type that that person has in terms of whether they had a secure tenancy before, I think it was the 1st of April 2012. It's not a... The succession rule has changed and it's not a statutory requirement that it will go down to a family member if they're not a joint tenant. So each case will be looked at individually as it arises. And it may well be that actually that person doesn't need maybe a three bedroom house and we will look to help to housing somewhere smaller. So we will look at each case sensitively and individually as well. But they don't have the given right to just take on that tenancy in most cases. Before I may say, leader, I'm much reassured by that because actually what I'm thinking about is us protecting the usefulness and the capacity of our council housing. So actually I'm glad to hear it's looked at on an individual basis so that we can make sure that we are providing housing for the people who need it. But we're not tying up the housing stock that we've got with tenants who might no longer need such a big house, say for example. That's really reassuring. Thank you. Councillor Richard Williams. Thank you very much, leader. It's just a question really that follows on from that last point. When we do have these cases and somebody doesn't have automatic succession rights, I presume it is our policy that we try and re-house that's what we need to do in the same area. Because I think it can be very disruptive sometimes if people are, they might understand the need not to have a three bedroom house, but if it involves moving a long way away that's quite a big lifestyle change and impact. I like you, I hope it's a case. Julie, do you want to come in? Thank you. Yes, as I say, we would look at each case individually. It really depends on their circumstances. Obviously, we wouldn't move them out of their support networks, etc. But we'd also take into account things like forward ability. Obviously, if we felt that they could afford to purchase on the open market or privately, then we would have to look at all options. But as I say, it really depends on their situation in terms of the current tendency of the person who's deceased and what succession rights they have. But we would certainly not put somebody out on the streets without helping them to do an alternative accommodation. Do you want to come back to Williams? I might actually take it up with Julie offline if that's okay. That's fine, that's fine. I mean, I have every confidence in the housing team. They are immeasurably caring of people and I've seen numerous examples of that. So, moving on then, the recommendation is to approve the proposal to end the use of fixed-term tenancies for its own housing tenants and replace these with lifetime tenancies for both existing and new tenants. The council's approach to introductory tenancies will remain unchanged. Introductory tenancies are for a period of 12 months but can be extended for further 18 months if the tenancy is not being conducted in a satisfactory manner. So, do members agree with the proposal? Okay, so I'm just checking that. Yep. Did anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wish to abstain? Cabinet therefore agrees the proposal is by affirmation. Now, we're moving on to item 15, which is the Urban Street Housing Review of the Business Plan. Please note, Appendix A of this item is restricted as it's commercially sensitive. It's not anticipated that decisions will need to take place on the Appendix. However, if requested, a move to confidential session will be required. This includes the exempt, scrutiny and overview report at agenda item 18. So, does anybody wish to discuss any of the exempt commercially sensitive parts of this report? Okay, well, we can always move into closed session if anything changes, but we'll stay in public session for now. So, Councillor John Batchelor is going to present this, and I think Councillor Neil Doff is going to second it. Thank you very much, leader. So, what we've got before us is the latest iteration of the Urban Street Business Plan, subject to annual review. So, Urban Street, as we know, was set up several years ago with the object of getting to 500 houses. That is just about to be met in the next few weeks. But Urban Street is not just an investment vehicle. A point I'd like to make at least initially is that Urban Street is actually a close partner for the housing department. For example, they've provided three houses in Campbell, which are houses of multiple occupancy. These have been used by Shire Homes as temporary accommodation, which helps to service our bed and breakfast accommodation requirements. Equally, they have provided four properties of Afghan refugees, and are standing by should the need arise to do the same to support Ukrainian refugees. As well as renting properties on the open market through their own ownership, they also have a significant business in taking Ministry of Defence homes on five-year leases. They improve the properties and rent them out. They currently have three lease arrangements in place with the Defence Infrastructure Organization. That's at Water Beach, Basingbourne and Brampton. All leases have been reviewed and extended for another five years. A number of units increased by six in Water Beach five in Basingbourne and 36 in Brampton bring the total number of lease properties to 190. The current acquisition position today is that the company has acquired 484 properties. There are three more in the pipeline. One is a block with 14 flats, and they have 14 separate titles, so they count as individual properties. So this will make a total of 500 the target which was set back in 2015. Any future expansion in the form of additional housing beyond the 500 properties will be subject to further agreement from the council with an agreement about future loan terms and rates. The company's work will benefit the council by £3.43 million in interest payments this year. The head of housing, Head of Urban Street, Councillor John Williams and myself meet on a regular basis to review strategy and possible future development with the council. Duncan Bersie and his small team has done a brilliant job here. They should really be congratulated on delivering very real benefits for South County District Council and creating a solid business that is valuable and an appreciating asset for the future. A good business will be done to all those concerned. I recommend the business plan to the cabinet. Thank you, leader. Thank you very much indeed. That was a very good summary. Sorry, I lost my place at the moment. Councillor Neil Gough, you are second in this. Do you want to add anything to that, please? That's lovely, thank you. Any questions from cabinet? Any questions from anybody else on Urban Street? Councillor Bradman. Thank you, leader. I just wanted to... Sorry, it was really after this item, but I just wanted to... I have just spoken to Councillor Rippeth to see if she wanted to join me here to take part in the meeting, but she said the internet has been so problematic she's going to give her apologies for the meeting. Yes, she did message me. I think she's very frustrated that the team seems to have let her down at her end rather than ours, so that's a shame. But we've had their reports. Okay, so moving on if there's no more questions. The recommendation set out in paragraph three of the report to approve in their capacity as shareholder of the Urban Street business plan for the period 2021-22 and to 2030-2031. Members agree with the proposal? Thank you. Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone wishing to abstain? Thank you, cabinet. Therefore, agrees with proposals by affirmation and my thanks to officers who've worked very hard on this. Okay, so we're now going to come to item 16 which is the exclusion of the press and public. Point in our agenda where we need to consider whether to exclude the press and public from the meeting. This is because the next items contain information which is commercially sensitive. Members of the public are advised that if cabinet agrees to exclude the press and public, the video stream will end. I therefore propose that the press and public be excluded from the meeting during consideration of the following items of business in accordance with section 100a brackets 4 of the Local Government Act 1972. On the grounds that, if present, there would be a disclosure to them of exempt information as defined in paragraph three of paragraph one of schedule 12a of the Act brackets as amended is that seconded. I can't look off, yes, you are doing that. Do members agree with proposal? Anyone wish to vote against? Anyone abstaining? Cabinet therefore agrees with proposal by affirmation. Members of the public who are watching the webcast, this means the video stream will now end. Thank you very much for joining us to view today's cabinet meeting and I note the next meeting cabinet is scheduled to take place on Monday the 13th of June 2022 at 10 o'clock. Right, thanks very much.


Hello everyone. Very good afternoon. I am Sarjan from Intuit who work as an engineer in the operations team. I lead the operations initiatives for Mint and I have Linu with me. He is another engineer. He leads the development initiatives for Mint. Today we are talking about moving Mint to AWS, some of the important memories that we had while we moved Mint to AWS. For people who don't know about Mint, Mint is actually the largest personal finance SaaS which serves customers in the US and Canada. We are almost on all the major platforms like mobile devices, web and desktop. We have around 22 million users, 70 terabit of financial data and around 20k FI support as of now. While talking about Mint, I would like to walk you through a high level view of Mint. We have a typical 3 tier architecture which is the web, app and data. The communication between each component happens through the central messaging system. That's about it. That's one difference that we see from a typical 3 tier architecture and Mint. We call the entire architecture as a pod or a swim line. We have several swim lines which constitute the complete Mint and which is under a load balancer. While talking about moving to AWS, what really motivated us is nothing really different from what everyone had while they moved to AWS. A couple of things that made more sense to us were the high availability and disaster recovery which we wanted to have, which we didn't have in our physical data center and the second thing is scale as much as you want. Within minutes and the other thing that we thought about is the automation possibilities that we can have when we move to a virtual infrastructure like AWS. I would like to talk about some of the experiences that we had when we moved Mint to AWS. Some of the failures that we had, some of the surprises that we had and some of the learnings again. Mint Intuit as a company over the 30 years gained a lot of press from the customers which is something which we cannot compromise. That's what we thought about when we were about to move Mint to AWS. We decided that security is a prime concern for us while we move financial data to a public cloud platform. We have done a couple of things apart from what AWS gives as a standard to every other customer and a couple of them are a network encryption that we have done like any data or communication travels the network is encrypted. Between instances, the communication whatever is happening is actually encrypted and which prevents network snooping. The other thing that we have done is application encryption. What does that mean is the data what we have in database is stored after encryption from the application layer before storing into databases. All the sensitive fields in database is encrypted which means even a database engineer cannot get sensitive data in plain text from database. The other thing that we have done is storage encryption. So whatever storage that it is, maybe an ephemeral storage or an EBS volume, we encrypt them before we use it for a storage. So the ephemeral storage that we have or the EBS volume that we have are encrypted before we store it and we are using DM for encrypting that. Which means it's at the block level. All this three means the plain text data that we have in our instance are only kept in the memory. And then what we have done is to make sure that we are not compromised there. We wipe out the memory before we give the instances back to the AWS pool. Which means there is nothing in the memory while we give the memory back to the AWS pool. All these encryptions made another big problem for us which is nothing but managing the secrets. So we use a lot of secrets which are really independent from system to system with changes. So we had a lot of secrets and we wanted to store it in a secure way. That was another concern and then we came up with another service called Intude Secret Service which is actually a combination of the key management system that AWS offers and some of the Intude specific services which make sure that the secrets are securely stored. They allow us to retrieve the secrets in plain text in a secure way. After verification of the instances which asked for secrets and all that. So the other thing during the journey what we found is like all these encryption overheads and all that when we moved Mint to AWS introduced a lot of latency. The one reason why we had a high latency in AWS was the latency due to the encryption that we have. And the second thing was because of the cross availability zone communication. Which means our instances for the HA purpose are span across multiple availability zones. Which means the web, if you have 10 webs, the 10 webs are span across three availability zones equally. Which means 3, 3, 4 or something like that. So when the communication happened from component to component what will happen is the communication is going across the availability zones which are like maybe 40 miles apart from each other. So that added up some latency in there. So what we have done for this is we worked out on the caching mechanism that we have in our application and the friend and latency. We have done a lot of work over there and then reduced the latency significantly to make sure that even after moving to AWS with a lot of encryption we are not compromised on the OPEX metrics that we have on SLAs. The other thing that made a high latency was the wrong selection of instance types and application configuration. So when we moved Mint from a physical conventional data center which has a huge amount of RAM, the beasts where Mint was on. We moved from there to a horizontally scalable smaller instances in AWS which made a lot of latency because the applications didn't work the way we wanted because it had a different configuration. So we had to trial and error with the configuration and the Mint and the instance types to make sure that Mint is hosted on AWS properly. Let's talk about some of the other challenges that we had which may be a challenge for everyone who has a big amount of data. We had then around 60 terabit of data while we planned to move Mint to AWS. And it was a question how we moved this much amount of financial data to AWS. And then what we desired, we have tried multiple things but a lot of them did not work well and then we tried to use the AWS import-export job to move data physically from our data center in Sunnyvale to AWS data centers. We moved 60 terabit of data in different sets to make sure that our databases comes up and replicate with the masters in the physical data center before the data gets stale because you have to have the bin logs. Again, we are using MySQL. We wanted to make sure that the data does not get stale before the databases in AWS comes up. The other problem that we had then was we still failed in getting the data properly on AWS with AWS import-export job because a couple of charts that we had became stale and then what we did is we had to use a different mechanism to move over the wire. We tried different things like NetCAD, R-Sync and all that and then Tsunami worked well for us which is working over a UDP protocol. Can I take the questions after that? Then the cost surprises that we had. We also took away where we don't care about the cost and then we moved Mint and made it on AWS. After that, we decided we should optimize on cost because our director was falling down from the seat all the time because of the cost that he could have. What we have done initially was to try out with our instance types and all that but it didn't work really well for us because we had already done a lot of optimization there by the time we moved to AWS. The most chunk of a bill that came to us was from ABS and the IOPS that we were using which mostly we didn't care about. We were really over allocating our databases while we moved to AWS and we were using around 1 terabyte of EBS volumes for every other shard and then we optimized there to make sure that our databases storage allocation is just about the actual utilization. Then we automated that to make sure that it dynamically allocated the storage space when it is required. The other thing was the IOPS optimization that we have done because the IOPS optimization was also another factor because we were over allocating there. Then we dynamically allocated or adjusted the IOPS looking at the historical utilization of IOPS per EBS volumes. We have done one more thing there which was separating the read write to IOPS to EBS volumes. What we have done is we identified what read and write should be there on an EBS volume which are required and all other things have been moved to the ephemeral storage that we have. For example, the log files and all that have been moved to an ephemeral storage which does not use the IOPS of the EBS volume. The other thing that everyone does is clean up the infrastructure aggressively so make sure that nothing is lying around which are not in use and things like that. So EBS snapshots, EBS volumes, instances, test stacks, everything gets deleted upon our retention policy and things like that. And plan for reserved instances. So look at the usage that you have and then make sure that you use the reserved instances wherever you can. But for the security reasons are not using reserved instances but we are using dedicated reserved instances which means on any availability zone you have a set of hypervisor which are dedicated to you but that's a risk as well because your instances can go into the same hypervisor. Multiple instances can go into the same hypervisor and if that hypervisor has a hardware issue then all of the instances that you have on that instance is getting affected. So you'll have to take care of that when you decide to go for dedicated reserved instances. Let's talk about some of the implementation that we have done maybe differently while we moved to AWS. So one of them is actually the AWS services that we are using. So what happened? So we are also using a lot of AWS services as what everyone does but couple of things that we have done, as I said, maybe differently is usage of API of AWS. So what we were doing initially was whenever the instance comes up we wanted some of the metadata from the AWS API which is given by, which required to make sure that our instances are coming up and then talking to each other properly. But we were using directly, we were calling AWS APIs directly and then what ended up in happening is we got throttled big time because whenever the instances comes up in a huge number AWS started throttling us and then the other problem happened is like AWS API calls are really expensive in terms of time and if the instances started calling the AWS APIs when it comes up the bootstrap time for each instance significantly was really high and then we couldn't get our infrastructure up in the way we wanted. And then what we decided is we created an internal API which exposes the data from that to all the instances under that.  And our instances when it comes up calls that API and get the data and then start booting up which means all the data is there in one call and then which is really not expensive because it's an internal API that we have and then our instances got a lesser bootstrap time. That's one thing that we have done. The other thing that we have used is AWS tagging. In a different way what we have done is we started tagging other instances in a way that we have a different completely independent minstack in a single... a multiple number of independent minstack in the same VPC which we call it as endpoints. Endpoints are nothing but completely independent minstacks from data to the presentation tail which talks to each other but communication from one endpoint to other endpoint is not possible. So for example as an engineer I want a test stack. I can create a test stack as Sergeant and then another person can create another test stack A or something minus independent of the A stack whatever he has created. So that's one thing we have done differently. Let me talk something about the bootstrap and stack creation that we follow into it especially for Mint. We use cloud formation template to describe our instances and we have infrastructure code creation mechanism which is completely a config driven one which means we can create any type of stack with different configuration and input to create our stacks, to create the cloud formation templates which means we are not hard coding or keeping the cloud formation templates as such in our infrastructure to create our stacks and which made the infrastructure code scalable and reusable for any other platform with a couple of changes that we have. The other thing is we use AWS meta data AWS is tagging as a meta data as well as I said in the last slide. So that is also used in cloud formation template while we create the cloud formation template and then thanks to Mike who came and talked we use salt stack extensively to create our infrastructure. One thing that we found there is everything in cloud is dynamic and then especially for security reasons Intude has a very dynamic secret strategy as well. So there is no hard coding in cloud formation or in any bootstrap script or configuration file. For example, if you want to talk to your databases you don't have the password right away. When it comes up it calls Intude secret service and gets the passwords and which is if you have 100 databases, 100 passwords so you have to create all the configuration files on the go which is what I meant by everything dynamic. The other dynamic secrets is other thing so we have 100 shards, 100 passwords so for example how we set passwords for our databases when the databases comes up it calls Intude secret service all the secrets that it needs and then we expose it as salt pillar data and we use it to create all the bootstrap scripts and then bootstrap scripts dynamically go and set the passwords for each database and which is the same thing we do for our application as well to talk to the databases which means there is no password which we know nobody knows the password. Something that we have done with infrastructure code is how we managed to get testing for infrastructure code which may be a little different from people does or maybe how we do a salt in our infrastructure is not a master and minion method. We check out the code to the instances and call a salt local which means the configuration is locally available and we call salt and then we bootstrap our instance which means as an engineer I want to test my branch I create the infrastructure from my branch and the infrastructure creation code will tell the bootstrap script that you have to check out the branch which I am using to create the stack and the same gitsha that you have to use and then it checks out that and start creating which means everybody can create their own stacks and then test their own infrastructure code whatever they have written before they check into master and then for the deployment what we do is we identify the deployment cabinet after we deploy it to the end to end environment which is a testing environment that we have and if we say that everything is fine with the infrastructure code we branch it and we tag it, we use a git tag and then we use a git tag to create the deployment and then for any hotfix within that deployment we create another tag actually the hotfix for the infrastructure is going in there that branch itself and then merge back to master so we can move back and forth in the deployment as well now the last one is the high availability strategy that we have we are using multi-availability zone instead of multi-region the reason why we went for multi-availability zone instead of region is nothing but the operational hassles that we have when we go for multi-region the main reason is to make your data available in different regions which is really difficult and operationally that has a lot of problems so what we tried during this journey was to basically balance operability, high availability and reliability so that's what we have tried so that's one reason why we didn't go for multi-region and of course it's in a lesser cost while you're compared with multi-availability zone and the other reason why we went for multi-availability zone is because some times multi-availability zone within the same region is more reliable than multi-region for different reasons and then Amazon is hosted on AWS the same way multi-availability zone instead of multi-region so there are a couple of reasons why it is high available than multi-region hosting whereas multi-availability zone is lesser cost, easy to handle and then it is highly available so that's the end of the talk and I am opening for QA and if you have any dev-specific questions or something I have Linu here who can give you a better details okay, so now means actually UDP protocol it's an over-the-wire transfer protocol UDP protocol is used and then it has an aggregator at the one end and then it emits the data in different formats and doesn't wait for a response back like TCP so what happens is like the data gets there and then the aggregator makes sure that the data is complete so it is faster than that well, we didn't find any laws actually so that worked well for us hello, hi you mentioned that for testing your infrastructure there's any brands that anyone can check out and then can bootstrap the whole infrastructure and test it so for testing that bit did you have any automation around it or was that testing manual? well, so there are two things right one is actually the build testing and the infrastructure code testing so there is one automation which we have for testing infrastructure code automatically and the build automatically so the build one is completely automated infrastructure code change is completely devop-specific and so for example, I am an engineer I want to test my infrastructure code which is on my branch I create the stack and then test it so testing is completely automated but what you want to test is a question so what are the changes that you do on infrastructure code I don't have a unit test for that so you have to do it in a way you want so we do two types of testing one thing is the infrastructure code level testing which is ops-desk and we are still improving on it to see where we can fill the gaps but for protection release it's similar to what the traditional one so ops creates the stack with the infrastructure code and we execute all our regression and functional tests to make sure that it is worthy for the customer to serve the customer and in that way indirectly we do test right now but we also have the like infrastructure level testing like security groups are open that is still in progress for functional testing it's a web, it's a Selenium or STAP8 infrastructure code infrastructure code doesn't have I mean what are you changing in infrastructure code maybe you have some security group change maybe you are changing something in the AZ level changes instance types you are changing something some bootstrap a lot of things like that are changed so what do you want to test is a question so if I want to test my change for example I have completely changed the secrets management system recently so my test is like I have to create a stack with the new secrets management system everything should come up properly I do a REST API call or whatever that automation that we have done which makes sure that the infrastructure code has brought up our entire stack completely without any failure so that's what we tested one more thing that we are experimenting is something called server spec it's a Ruby based cucumber based stuff which we are experimenting to test the infrastructure hey you spoke about increasing and decreasing the size of your EBS volumes and you spoke about some automation that was done to do it could you speak a little more about that any specific libraries you used and why and also how often do you need to do something like this okay so first coming to the cost optimization that we have done so we came down to around one by fourth of the cost that we were spending in AWS and then what we have done is very simple we are not using anything big there so every night we create a snapshot of our database EBS volume and then which is also encrypted so what we do is like we create another tag which is the utilization of the disk how much disk is utilized and then whenever we recreate stacks because everything is dynamic every deployment is actually a recreation of stack for us so whenever we recreate a stack when you create a database the infrastructure code looks at the utilization tag and then expands the volume if it has reached the threshold so same thing happening with IOPS also IOPS we look at the IOPS IOPS from the cloud watch and then when we create the snapshot we say what is the IOPS that is required and then looking at the history of historical data we actually do a 95th percentile of the historical data and then we give the IOPS according to that yeah hi so the question is when you choose stall stack did you evaluate Amazon service called Opswork we as Intute as a standard they were saying Opsware and then Chef and all that but Mint is a Python shop and that's the reason why we went for a salt stack because it's really easy to hook up your Python scripts and all that and then it's a really good framework you can do anything with it but frankly speaking we haven't tried Opsware but we are so happy with salt stack and the second question is about RDS so you mentioned multi-AZ so does that mean like it will scale we are not using RDS by the way multi-AZ you were mentioning you had the slide where you said you should not do multi-AZ I didn't say don't do multi-region but I said we are using multi-AZ because so I'll tell you what happens so if you are spread across multi-region the Amazon deployment model is pick one availability zone from each region and then deploy so there is a higher chance that you get to a buggy code if you are on multi-region and then whereas in multi-availability zone there is only 33% of chance that you are getting to a buggy code and if you are got into a buggy code 33% of the users are impacted and which can be so for our SLAs within 5 minutes we get that that database come up and then all the application take up the traffic in the other availability zone and last question is about spot instances have you played around with them what is your experience for cost saving we didn't try hello I had a same question with respect to the here this one I had the same question with respect to that multi-zone and multi-region so since we have only in a single zone suppose that that particular region goes we have in multi-zones suppose that region goes down so then we don't have an HE rate I'll come to that so if we are in US West too so if California goes under the water we are down and the SLA that we have is 8 days to get mint up in the other region if California goes down they have more bigger problems to solve so by the time we will get our stack in the other region so but on a serious note, mint is using multi-z but Intute as a company is focusing for their high availability and disaster recovery on multi-region but it is the operational hassles that you have is really high because we are using whether it is RDS or the RDS the problem is we don't have we don't right now have an option to replicate encrypted data between regions and the other problem with snapshot you have a snapshot which is in one region which is not accessible in the other region so you have to ship your snapshot from one region which is a region-wise copy that you have to do which takes a long time so cost-wise and operational-wise it is really difficult as of now but a practical scenario one region completely going down is really really remote and our SLA for that is 8 days so on the time front I think right now they have launched something called on an S3 if you store the snapshot they have this crossed S3 replication so that actually happens really fast well we have databases of like 800 gigabyte and all that which is which takes quite good time actually like last time when I tried 3 months back it was around 6 hours for me which is not accessible for a high availability alright thank you yeah sticking to the AZ and region question again I work with SAP labs where in a similar boat when it comes to handling data encrypted data is a must but then there are also legal requirements that come into picture for especially financial data a customer who is from the EU for example will say no I don't want my data to go and sit in the US so this is more a product issue than a technical issue I got it but where are you in that stage so we are not global yet but we have that in our pipeline but what we have decided to go is serve from the region where they are from so that's one reason if you look at my if you have seen my motivation slide we wanted to go global and then to span our data centers there you have to have AWS kind of thing because it's really difficult to set up physical data center if you want I think I am almost thank you thank you


Thank you very much, very good to see you all, thanks for coming. So the board has already started and of course at the heart of it we will have a discussion on the situation in Ukraine, but also on other important issues like Iran and naval nuclear propulsion, which is of course of great interest for our countries. Let me perhaps before we start and since I believe it's important to have a clear understanding of the technical situation at Saporizhia to give you an overview of where we are and what are the next steps that we will be having. So maybe we can have the first slide, I should be the one putting them. Okay, so well as you know the agency has been working on this very serious issue. Number of days now I was there a few days ago on a visit that we considered very important because of the findings and the recommendations that we were able to come up with, but also because as a result of it we were able to establish a permanent presence by the agency at the plant and we have experts there which has resulted in and we have seen it already and in the context of what I'm going to say now maybe, we have seen that how useful that was in getting very timely information, very precise information in particular on the situation on the external power supply which I'm going to try to explain now. You also know that I have proposed my briefing to the United Nations Security Council a few days ago the urgent establishment of nuclear safety and security protection zone around the plant and I have started consultations on this issue with both sides, with Ukraine of course my natural partner since it's a Ukrainian plant, but also with Russia which is an indispensable part of the discussion since they are in control of the facility. So what you can see here is a general overview of the situation. You have here the nuclear power plant with the reactors here in sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 here. Then a Negrodar which is the village, the city, the satellite city where most if not all the staff lives and then one thermal power plant here in the middle which is important in the context of what I'm going to explain to you now because there are two things that we are looking at as matters of great urgency. The first is of course the shelling because the shelling continues and the direct impact on the reactors, on associated facilities in particular the spent fuel areas where the spent fuel is located could have very serious consequences. That is one but the other that could cripple the normal operation of the plant of course is the supply of external power. So if this works well I hope I would have no. Can you change it please but I don't know how this works. Okay so thank you very much. So this is, this describes the problems that the plant has been having. You may have seen that in the updates that we've been having we were describing the fact that the external supply was gradually being lost and when we referred to that we were mainly referring to the lines that you see in green here with the red crosses. This is South Donbasska, Zaporizhka, Kachowska and Dipnowskaya which were in sequence being crippled or damaged or disconnected from the plant thus depriving it from its normal source of external power. Of course as you know in nuclear and nuclear safety has what is called several layers of protection and defense which means that you have always alternative sources, alternative solutions for when a problem like this may happen. One of those in this case is this this thermal power plant which is here. I could see it when I was driving in is quite a big one that feeds electricity here. What we had the other day and you may remember that I issued a statement was a situation when the switch yard that you see there described was hit and when that happened that thermal power plant stopped feeding power to the plant and to an Ergodar leading to quite a dramatic situation because the village was the city of an Ergodar was in complete blackout no water no electricity nothing no sewage so this you can imagine that has also a very serious impact on the safety of the plant because most of the employees live there and many could not come to the plant you have to man this this huge nuclear power plant so I don't say it as a as an add-on just to add more you know atmospherics to my description but rather as a very important element that was affecting the normal operation but the problem there the main problem we had there was of course the fact that the the plant had lost external power. As a result of that the the plant moved into when they were with the last unit which was working which was unit number six went into island mode which is to say it was providing at a low level of power output was providing power to the plant but this is not a sustainable situation you cannot do this you cannot stay without any external source of power only with the one of the reactors providing this at a lower level without damaging a number of parts notably the turbine blades and other parts I don't want to get into too much of a technical detail but simply to emphasize the fact that that was not a sustainable way forward I can tell you that thanks to the to the work of the operators there the the line the purple line here could could be could be repaired and there is another line on reserve or reserve that is now operational and in this or thanks to this the the unit number six began the process to what we call what we call a cold shutdown now more safely I suppose I don't know if this point if we have reached this point I don't know Lili I see you there has isn't already in cold shutdown I suppose okay so at the moment is thank you very much I suppose the plant is in this situation and we have been able to stabilize it in this in this regard next one no this was the last okay can you yeah thank you very much so the last slide to give you an idea as you can see the six reactors and each reactor has three emergency diesel generators plus two more in in reserve they all work in combination in different configurations they can work and this is the last line that we would have in case again this situation of absolute lack absence of external power would occur as you can see in general the situation we have I have been describing as unsustainable as you can see one day we have an emergency the technical operators can more or less patch it up repair it and then we are good God willing not until the next heat takes it down but we don't know we cannot know so this I wanted to give you at the beginning to give you a more clear impression of where we are in terms of the operation of the plant and in terms of what we can expect in the next few hours our team is working there we are getting timely information from from them so I would stop here this is facts and then as per your you know particular individual questions I am at your disposal thank you very much Hi DG Francois Murphy from Royce just to stay on that subject then so you said reactor six now all the reactors now are in cold shutdown what does Ukraine plan to keep things that way or are they planning on firing up one or more of the reactors soon and is that something that you would recommend or would or do you have a difference of opinion on what should happen well that is really their decision to make what we advise them if they ask us of course is always on the safety aspect and how the the safe operation of the plant can can can be better ensured in the circumstances surely the safest thing to do is to just keep it in cold shutdown right so it's up to them it's up to them that is of course there are those of course those who think that this would be the safest the safest thing but as I said independently of the fact that you have them in shutdown or not they still require external power supply so if you were in a situation where the external power was interrupted then you will still be facing a nuclear accident even if the reactors are not providing energy or power to the Ukrainian grid so I understand that it's up to them but what what is the plan though I mean you must be in conversation with them about what's what what's happening next so what is what is the plan and to simply kind of keep things keep things shut down until the security situation improves or is there a need to fire things up as quickly as possible and there is an external power line even if it's a backup one available now so that could be envisaged right according to the information we have they are trying to consolidate the external power supply issue including by if possible the restoration of some what some of the main the old the green but as you know this green in some cases go into russian controlled territory so this might be a bit tricky but the effort that as we see it is to try to keep the the plant operational I can say that in my even my conversation with president Zelensky this was one of his points they they they see this plant as very important as part of their national electrical grid and they want to keep it in that way so am I understanding you correctly and the idea is to consolidate the power lines before firing up one of the reactors it is a logical conclusion I have one Ukraine question and one Iran question I'll just stick with Ukraine right now DG grocery overnight there were attacks on transmission infrastructure generating infrastructure leaving much or parts of northern Ukraine in a blackout obviously Ukraine has nine other reactors outside of Zaporizhia how concerned are you right now about the redundancy of outside electricity electricity sources to other nuclear power plants and how are you monitoring that situation thank you for the question is a very relevant thing we are of course since this thing became such a potentially serious and grave situation we are monitoring for each one of the other nuclear power plants what is the situation for the moment we do not see or have not been informed about a critical situation in in in those but we are following following that very closely and when you look at the geography there are some plants that are not especially south Ukraine it's not so far from from military operations so we are following that very closely yes do you want do you want me to go into your honor do you want to okay sure DG grocery in the event that the JCPOA return is agreed and the additional protocol is reapplied what would be preventing your investigation from being concluded within the broader conclusion well let's say as part of the broad sorry go ahead broader you're talking about broad conclusion well you currently the safeguards investigation is treated as a separate agenda on each board of governors meeting what is to prevent this investigation from transitioning into an into the broader conclusion that's handled regularly by your safeguards department well you know here there are many parts to that question because the current investigation or or let's call it the the clarification process that we are trying to to conduct with Iran has not been through so so far we are still expecting this to happen then you have the the entire JCPOA associated verification and monitoring activities which have a number of parts which if implemented could facilitate us getting to to broader conclusion which as you know have respond to a number of criteria which are independent of JCPOA or or any other agreement reached or entered into between Iran and and and other countries is not five or six countries that will decide whether Iran has a broad conclusion it's the IAEA through its normal process but as you rightly say everything is interconnected and if anything what we can see one point that I can see is that we are we keep adding segments or or I don't want to call them obstacles but but challenges to that in that in that road I have been referring to how we get back the knowledge of what is happening now without our cameras been rolling and the and the other monitoring systems online enrichment monitoring and flow flow systems that we used to have and that we lost so frankly the information gap is is bigger and bigger and bigger again we don't want to sound dramatic but the reality is that it's going to be extremely difficult and we will have to work very very hard and Iran will have to be very transparent in giving us information accesses on a number of things so we can put back together a picture which will be approximate and never exact because we don't have the images to to the reality so I think there's a lot of homework to do before we get to broad conclusion which is of course what we always aspire for countries that have an additional protocol hi this is Stephanie Liechtenstein freelance journalist digi um I have a question on Ukraine and your suggestion for this safety and security zone yes um and you've also said in your introductory remark today that you are already consulting with Ukraine and Russia on this I'm wondering what kind of support you are expecting from the board of governors on this suggestion um and also maybe from the from the broader UN since I I suppose it's not the IAEA that is going to establish such a security zone is it someone else do you need support from the Security Council what's the plan so to say well I think we must keep things simple and this is why we came up with a proposal which we believe is realistic what we need is the agreement of course of Ukraine and Russia because they are in a military conflict which is um at the center of the safety and security concerns that we have for the plant and I am working within my mandate I cannot get and this is something I have been very clear there's no hiding here of the fact that I cannot get into areas that have to do with larger demilitarization or movements of troops none of that is part of my mandate I am not and I'm not evading the issue on the contrary I think you know whoever knows me knows that I don't elude responsibility on the contrary I'm getting into that but I'm getting in a way that we believe is practical other institutional involvement does not depend on us I guess that given the political configurations it might be perhaps difficult to have larger agreements what we need here really is Ukraine and and and Russia to agree on a very simple principle of non not attacking or not shelling at the plant and we can do that in a very simple way we have our monitors there our inspectors there that can inform whether this is being observed or or not and for that frankly we don't need the support which would always be welcome from either the border governors or or or whoever it may be it's something that a country can by the virtue of its relationship with the agency and the statute of the agency can request our support in terms of protecting the safety and security of one of their nuclear installations so we try to keep it simple we try to keep it practical because we need it as soon as possible naturally we have to consult and there are political aspects here you may have seen and heard that many world leaders are talking about this with both presidents and I'm following that of course as you can imagine but that is part of the political or diplomatic consultation that we that we are having but we want something which is linear which is direct which is straightforward Ukraine Russian Federation and the agency helping Albert OTDHM and the agency director general just so I I understand what you just said so basically your proposal for this zone does not include demilitarization but the kind of a silence of arms is that correct it includes that it may include other things there are some issues relating to the radius relating to the to the on-site equipment in presence at the moment but basically yes basically it's a commitment that no military action will include or will imply aiming of course at the plant or a radius that could be affecting its normal operation this is what we what we expect Bethany Bell BBC you say you have begun consultations with Ukraine and Russia have you seen any signs that either side is willing to commit to this agreement I have seen signs that they are interested in this agreement what kind yeah can you give us a couple more details on that well we are looking into the specific technical characteristics that we would like to see as I was implying in my in my previous answer there are issues related to the radius there are issues related to how our our experts would be working in this regard so there are a few things that should be agreed upon and what I see and of course diplomatic caution and and professionalism requires prudence but what I see is two sides that are engaging with us that are asking questions lots of questions hello Jordi from FN you were we were talking at the beginning about this secure shutdown and you were saying you were talking to the Ukrainian operator how autonomous can they make any decision right now I mean isn't it Russia at the end of the day who will decide what is done there on it on a pure technical level who is doing something who can decide it's an excellent question I have to do with a with an incredibly paradoxical nature of the situation because the regulator still is the Ukrainian regulator the plant is operated by an ergo atom and when it comes to so far when it comes to the operation of the plant it the decisions have been taken have been taken in Kiev by the Ukrainians so this is what the this is the situation that we have for now we haven't seen to be very more explicit we haven't situation where an external authority has ordered that one of the units should be working or should be stopping when when when the owner of the plant says the contrary but that could happen and mind you I have addressed this in my report and my recommendations because of the staffing and the hierarchical lines that should be should be clear it's a it's a very unique situation BBC Persian cancer energy hello I just wondered whether we can turn to Iran for a moment the Iranian statements are quite bellicose in a sense that they're saying that you're biased against them and they're not going to cooperate and this whole safeguard thing has to be implemented in an unbiased way I'm just wondering given the fact that Iran hasn't cooperated with you according to you in the last three months what you are expecting given these statements and given what has happened in the last three months what do you expect to see coming down the line and and this very specific charge that you are biased against Iran can you address that too well I would say I regret this this is not new of course it's not new to see that that when the agency is demanding certain things and Iran doesn't want to or does not engage in the way one would expect that they accuse us of being politicizing this issue is very straightforward we found traces of uranium in places that were never declared that were never supposed to have any nuclear activity and we are asking questions explain to me why this is a political use of my authorities this is what the IAA is supposed to do I hope I really hope that Iran will start cooperating with us as soon as possible we are ready we want this to happen we do we do we are not in the business of aggravating or creating situations we just want this issue to be to be clarified so I really hope that they will start looking into this issue in a different way I think that is needed and can I come back on that how sure are you that you are not going to come under political pressure from various parties I live under political I live under political pressure be it Iran Ukraine whatever your political pressure is always there the thing is what I do with that pressure and that is the most important thing I you know for me I'm not even offended by that I think they are pushing their national interest in the way they see it I think they should cooperate with the agenda with with the agency I'm sorry with the agency and that is the case in for other international crises that we are dealing with they should be respectful of the agency this is an agency that is the creation of member states and I have an international mandate I'm not here doing what I what I want but what I must so I hope that that you know political pressure whatever they they call it would would recede but we are running out of line so please if you have something urgent hello did you say yes hello I'm Samadhi from Iran international TV hello I have a question yes yesterday an Israeli official told the Israeli U.S. and EU intelligence agencies think an Iranian break out toward the nuclear weapon is unlikely at the moment I would like ask you what is the IAEA's assessment about Iran break out time and second question is have you contacted with Iranian official about the IAEA's safeguards concerns during the past weeks on breakout times I have said many times we do not get into that kind of speculation there are many people including those you you cited many NGOs and think tanks all over the world that like to do that to do all these calculations we are inspectors we are monitors and what we do is we assess the amounts and we give the information we are not getting into speculations about the motivations or how a country would do this or that this is something that we are not are not doing in terms of engagement with Iran it's not at the point I would really like it to see of course there is a permanent mission here and we keep reaching out to them I think normally we will be we should be having a different higher quality level of course the permanent mission is the natural channel is the representative here but on this we were used to having a very intense dialogue including with with Tehran I hope that dialogue will resume in fact without it being resumed in that way it's going to be very difficult and we have to see I2I and work together so I hope they they do that very soon yes hello good afternoon my name is Mehru and I'm from Radio Free Europe I have a question if the JCPOA is not revived and everything falls apart are you not worried that Iran moves towards leaving the MPT and will you be trying to find a political middle ground before that happens well I hope and I don't have any indication that Iran would leave the the the MPT we've seen you know in in recent history that countries doing that do it to proliferate and Iran has been very clear on their desire to keep their commitments under the under the MPT so I hope this will continue to be the case as far as the second part of your question is concerned I think people may have seen may have noted that over the past year year and a half the agency and myself we have done nothing but that we have been always kept doors open we have even created doors where none existed to keep the the processes in a collaborative way to give time time for diplomacy to imagine ways in which Iran could in an easier way for them comply with their obligations so we will always be ready for more and for good diplomacy if you excuse me I have to go back to the office for a few minutes before the the board restarts thank you thank you very much bye bye