Overview & Scrutiny Committee - Monday 15 September 2025, 6:30pm

Overview & Scrutiny Committee
Monday, 15th September 2025 at 6:30pm

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Good evening, everybody.

Welcome to the overview and scrutiny committee meeting.

A couple of things before we start.

This meeting is being live streamed on the council website.

Also, I am not aware of any fire drills.

So if the fire alarm does go

Make sure we find the fire. Yes fire exit or follow officers direction

Number one of the item agenda any apologies for absence

Apologies from Councillor Lee

I think we got apologies from Abdu Khan.

Was it Abdu Khan?

Yeah, Abdu Khan.

Thank you.

Number two, declaration of disclosable peculiar interests and any other interests.

Thank you.

Number three, unrestricted minutes of overview and scrutiny committee meeting, 21st July 2025.

Do you agree or instead...

Yes, Councillor Lecon, we have taken that into consideration.

Just to note, the minutes on the agenda was not posted.

Apologies for that, Chair and the committee.

I had a few technical problems when putting the agenda out.

So when the time had gone out, time was a bit of an essence.

So the minutes I had to cheque over the weekend, so that's why they were published.

I'm slightly late.

Thank you for that explanation.

Okay, we just heard from a young person a few minutes ago, and I think it's appropriate,

and I think it would be good to jump the agenda and go into item number eight,

which is the Youth Justice Strategic Plan 2025 -2028.

So if I may ask Susanna, Kelly and the other corporate directors,

can we take the presentation as read

So if you can try and keep it brief so that it's a very important item and we're going

to give as much time for members to ask any questions and comments. So the floor is over

to you.

So every year as part of our grant agreement the Youth Justice Service have to provide

to the Youth Justice Board our annual plan.

And this provides us with the opportunity to show some areas of good practise, as well

as where the service continues to drive improvements.

This year we've been additionally fortunate to speak with children that have received

support from the Youth Justice Service and how they fed into our annual report, and about

the impact that the Youth Justice Service has in unlocking their potential and start

transforming their lives. And it's something that we really want to strive for going forward

is to even more hear their voice. Our main priorities of the Youth Justice Service are

going forward are about continually providing a good service to children, families, but

also victims, to support these members of our community, ensuring that they meet their

academic potential and to recognise the strengths in our community through our different cultures

and experiences to drive successes for all involved.

And I'll hand over to Head of Service Kelly Duggan.

So what we've provided here for you, obviously you do have the main plan in your papers,

what we've done is a bit of an overview slide for you because it is quite an in -depth document.

So just go to the next slide, Jack, please. So as Susanna said, our four key priorities,

so we've got the previous plan's priorities, but our next four priorities for the next

three years are child first, so remembering that children are children as seen as children

in the first instance, consistently good practise, culture, identity and community, and strength

and partnerships.

They are the four.

Those four priorities were agreed on, not only by myself

and the Youth Justice Executive Board, but fed in by staff.

So staff are very much committed to them, and the children

and families that we work with.

The next two slides show you our,

because we do like to start all of our work

with the voice of the child.

And as has already been mentioned,

we've already had a young person here

speak about their experience.

But we start with all our board reports

with the voice of the child at the forefront.

So the next two slides will give you a bit of an overview

about the act of young people for them

and what they've achieved.

I think what is clear from here is that they've used

their experiences to make the changes.

So actually what they've spoken about during this time

is the experiences they've had through the service

and what they've done then to make it better.

So for example, they've supported and gave feedback

to shape the youth participation strategy

that's across children's.

They've created a video using their experience when they first started to actually how for

those new children and families that will come into the service, how can we start building

that relationship with them even more so.

On the slide with the strategic arrangement, in relation to our strategic achievements,

we've achieved a huge amount over the last 12 months.

But what I want to focus on is just a couple of little things.

So in relation to our health, we have an increased speech and language resource, so that got

doubled and that was a part of, with the board, finding the appropriate funding for us to

be able to achieve this.

We've managed to use our funding to pay for tuition for our children.

We know a lot of our children are either managed, removed or excluded from school, the children

that we work with, and failed to get those basic qualifications that they need.

So we're trying to make sure that we've got a resource within the service to get children

that and we've done a huge piece of work, lots of piece of work with our police force

to making sure that not only can we unblock victim consent so we can start liaising and

reaching out to victims as early as possible, but also we've been able to become a pilot

for Outcom 22 which gives us another tool to divert children away from the formal criminal

justice system and we were the first pilot in London along with Hackney and Brumley and

And even on a local level with the new police, with the police officers within the Youth

Justice Service, have been able to reach out to their colleagues in Canary Wharf to search

and find appropriate amounts of work experience for our children, which they, the young people

themselves said that that's what they wanted, that's what children were missing.

Next slide please.

In relation to our operational achievements, again we've achieved a huge amount.

We are dedicated to our enabling fund which allows us to unblock things that mean that our children are stuck,

whether that be they're reluctant to go to college because they don't have a new pair of shoes,

or whether that be because their mental health is impacted because they can't afford to get a haircut.

These are things that we keep a part of our budget, we have a line to be able to unlock those opportunities,

things like buying school books and things like that to support children to achieve their full potential.

We have also introduced our regular Neat Meets, which is led by our virtual schools team,

looking at every individual child to work out where are they academically and what needs to happen to get them involved in education fully.

We've built really strong relationships with community safety navigators over in rural London,

and we even trained our Theos in Child First, so helping them develop their skills to go out when they're working,

when they're on the streets, meeting with children to remember that they're children

first, so we try and deal with the child, not the behaviour. And we've adopted and rolled

out MetaBase, which is our own version of Power BI that links into our database. And

we've developed, our senior data analyst has developed and utilised this tool to a great

extent that now youth justice services all over the country are being recommended to

to come speak to him to see what we've done with it.

So we're doing great things with that.

Next slide please Jack.

Our workforce, as we always say,

our workforce is our greatest resource

and our greatest strength.

We do an annual review, an annual survey with our team

every April and this is some of the feedback.

Our staff continue to feel empowered in 2025

with their ability to challenge managers

and no staff responded as to never,

that they were never able to have their ideas

and challenge listened to, which is really positive.

They're motivated, they continue to be motivated to deliver high quality services and they

feel that their views are acted upon.

So they're the ones delivering that key frontline work and actually if they think there is something

we need to amend or need to adapt to, new challenges, new things coming through, then

they know that if they freeze it with management we're going to try and listen to them and

deal with that as appropriate.

Next slide please, Jack.

We continue to demonstrate or we continue to develop our quality assurance.

As you can see from our recent rounds of quality assurance, our assessments are stable at 82 %

which we're really proud of but we know we've still got work to do in planning, delivery

and in relation to our victims.

This is a key part of our focus going forward.

Our output often reigns strong and in our post court area, planning and delivery needs

a greater focus to consistently be good and we've already commissioned training for September

and I work with victims, we're developing that further as part of a partnership,

because what we want to do is actually those children that are a victim on the street, for example,

that actually they get that intervention, because what we know is that for some of our victims,

some children who are victims when they're 12, 13, 14, they are likely to become the children we work with

in Youth Justice Service in three, four years after that.

We've introduced a multi -agency case audit discussion, which has been really, really insightful.

So actually once every six months now we've got in the calendar, we will all come together

with a selection of children that we've chosen to see actually the impact that each of those

individual services do, recognising that although I lead a wonderful team of Youth Justice Officers,

it is the partnership that makes the greatest impact for children moving forward in service

development.

And we continue to do thematic audits.

So over the last quarter we've looked at our collaboration, how we work with children to

create their intervention plan, so that list of work they're going to be doing whilst they're

with the Youth Justice Service.

We've looked at improving our outcomes

for black children at court,

because we noticed there was an area of disproportionality

in relation to that.

And again, our partnership working in relation

to multi -agency audits.

Next slide, please.

In relation to our workforce development,

we've trained staff across a whole range

of risk -based trainings, making sure that they're able

to manage the risks that children pose themselves

in relation to safety and wellbeing,

or risk of harm or risk of reoffending, but we've also balanced that with child first,

so still recognising the impact of adultification and structural and institutional racism.

And staff have really responded properly, really responded positively to that.

And then just as an overview really, so our children from our 2024 Annual Profile, if

you were a child allocating Youth Justice Service, you are most likely to be, sorry

Jack, next slide please.

You're most likely to be 15 to 17 years of age, you're most likely to be male, and the

most likely offences or most likely behaviours you're likely to have committed are violence

against the person, which also includes knife crime in that category, and drugs.

And our most common interventions that we offer children are referral orders and triage,

which is really interesting because it's that lower level intervention that we capture most

children on.

We still have disproportionality in relation to our children from mixed heritage and black

backgrounds. And if you look at the next slide you can see that our first time entrants,

so those children that previously didn't have a criminal record but now do, we still remain

the second lowest in the statistical family. We did have an increase this year that we're

not massively happy about. We were on track for most of the year and then we had a bit

of an influx in the last quarter. But we've reviewed and tightened up again our Joint

decision -making panel. We've had training with our joint decision -making panel members

and we now have Outcome 22 which is starting to become much more widely available. The

police on the street understand it and we're able to capture children that way. So we're

hoping and we're quite hopeful that those FTEs will remain, will come back down. In

relation to KPIs, children in custody, it's a different measure, sorry, next slide please,

it is a different measurement so that graph does look like there's been a huge spike.

I would like to just put into context that it's one extra child than we had last year,

but because the rate is so small, because it's a per thousand rate, whereas the other

rates are per hundred thousand, it's a per thousand rate, it does look like a big jump.

To put it into context, we currently have no children that are sentenced to custody

at the minute, and what we are doing, so I have additional oversight through the Youth

justice board, particularly in our numbers of children in custody, and the processes

and the means that we have to maintain children out of custody, they are very happy with,

and so the children that are in custody are unfortunately those ones that have committed

behaviours that we don't feel safe to be able to keep them on a bowel package in the community.

Next slide will show you our reoffending rates. Our reoffending rates have come down. As I've

said to the committee before, the reoffending rates look at children from two years ago

and see if they've reoffended.

And actually the good work that we've put in the last couple

of years and the real drive that the service has done

for service improvement is starting

to demonstrate that fruition.

So the reoffending rate is now down to around 25%,

down from 36%.

So we're really proud of that and proud of the children

that we work with.

And then there's a bit of a plan for the next six months

and the next slides.

We want to work closely with Young Tower Hamlet,

solidify our prevention offer.

We know prevention is key to make sure

that we can stop the tide of children coming in.

We want to make sure that we have greater work

and community safety to support our victims

and further strengthen our public protection

as well as in line with the fact

there's a new criminal justice bill coming in

in the next 12 months.

We want to develop and embed a cohesive victim offer

and develop our new delivery plan

to ensure the key deliverables

against our four priorities.

So actually we've put on these beautiful priorities

that everyone's fed into.

So what's the outcome gonna be?

And we need to make sure that our risk procedures

road buster maintained. And we do expect that we are likely to be inspected in the next

12 months, so we are busy HMIP preparing so we can make sure that all the good work that

the team have done we can show off to our best ability. So we've completed our self -evaluation

framework. This document that you've seen now that you've experienced is actually the

basis of our opening day presentation to HMIP. Our evidence in advance is being collated,

So actually when we do get the phone call, we can start where we're ready and willing

to go.

And we've had preparation sessions for our board staff, volunteers and our active young

people.

So please, any questions?

Thank you very much, Kelly, for that presentation.

We would go into any questions or comments from the members.

Before we do, I want to start it off with a question.

Before we started this, we had a young person come in a court session,

in terms of their experience.

So in light of that and some of the things that were mentioned there,

In light of that, I just want to understand in terms of the service, how confident are we that it's inclusive in terms of the service that we're providing to the young people.

So how inclusive is that and how we're looking at it to the benchmarking with other boroughs

and see are we doing everything that we can to deal with the issues.

So if we start with that and then we'll go around.

In relation to other boroughs there is something that the YJB have prepared and created for us called Basecamp.

So all the other boroughs competing things and there's evidence good practise.

So we look and I'm really involved with the Head Service Forum in London and we make sure that any other pan -London arenas for youth justice specialisms,

especially in all the different pockets that we have, the staff are well involved in that.

We don't silo work.

So we try and take the best practise,

and we take any problems or any kind of questions,

conversations we have to those areas,

so we can hear about other people.

So we are heavily involved.

In relation to inclusivity, to make sure

that everyone has access to everything,

we treat everyone as an individual.

So we look at what that child as an individual needs.

And I know other boroughs, I have heard other boroughs

What we don't do is we don't say, until you have this level of criminal justice intervention,

you can't access, for example, speech and language, or you can't access CAM.

So a child, whether they have come in because they've been found with a piece of cannabis

by a police officer and come in on a triage, which is very low level, compared all the

way up to someone who's very, very concerning, will have the access to resources because

we want to do is make sure that as soon as children come with us they work with us for

as small a time as possible. We work with all professionals around the child so we are

obviously where we're in supporting families directorate which is really key because it

means we are in the same office in the same space as exploitation, as their social worker,

as the virtual schools so we can liaise with each other. We bring families in which is

really important if we see children once, twice, three times a week.

Some of our children come in every day.

It's still only an hour a day, whereas families are the key moment.

We make sure that our virtual schools officers have really good,

they've been building incredible links with local colleges and schools

to make sure that we can keep those children in school.

And the staff are also encouraged and do regularly,

if a child is at school, they will go to the school to do their appointment, for example.

And then also it's really key with the exit planning.

So actually making sure that children are supported because they might only be working

with us for 12 weeks, say, and we don't want them to come back.

So how can we maintain that if they don't meet, say, children's social care threshold,

actually exit planning down to Targeted Youth or Osmani or Streets for Growth or one of

our partners in the community.

So that support is ongoing.

And just thinking, so when we saw an increase in our numbers of girls, we have very low,

you'll see numbers of girls.

We set up a girls group and our active youth forum has girls there as well.

So although they're a very small minority, their voice is very, very important too, so they feel included.

Thank you very much. The reason I started with this is that for me, and I'm sure members will echo,

So we hear about terms that's been inclusive, terms that's been diverse, etc.

And for me, this is one of the services that we really need to basically when we say we're inclusive,

this is something that we really need to mean what we say,

because these are some of the most vulnerable people within the borough.

And the service that we are providing has to reflect,

that has to be in terms of inclusive and the best that we can provide.

So I'm going to move you to the floor.

I'm going to go to Councillor Abdi, then I'm going to go to Councillor Manan.

Just a comment and a question, so thank you for that.

My comment is it would be fantastic to understand more about why the reoffending rate is fantastic.

that it's going down and doing a community safety lead on O &S.

It would be fantastic to engage your service

and understand more about what you've

done to bring it down.

My question is, the children look after O &CARE,

the 18 to 25 bracket, when the kids potentially age out of it.

So can you talk more about how you have a joined up service

with adult services to make sure that people don't fall

through the cracks?

So in relation to why the reoffending rate has gone down, I think is a testament to the partnership of everyone.

How much everyone has committed to the Youth Justice Service and the partnership over the last two, three years.

And I genuinely do. So having the additional resource, having the Youth Justice, I don't think there's one key thing.

I think it's everything that's been put in that's brought that down.

As well as making sure that our staff have reasonable caseloads.

Yes, sometimes they go up and sometimes they're slightly higher than what I'd like to see.

So for example, every week my team managers provide me with a live caseload of which case manager is holding which children.

That I then send that to Susanna and it then goes to Steve.

So everyone is getting oversight for example because if you have a caseload of ten and

you're seeing each of them at least twice a week you cannot do the valid work, you cannot

do the meaningful work that we put in.

Staff having low and reasonable caseloads, having access to things like the enabling

fund which other services don't do and you know being able to say actually you know if

I fill out the same to a child what do you need to get me to get you into school and

the child to say I need new shoes. For them to be able to quickly send me a form asking

for a pair of shoes means that we can access that to get that kid into school. It's those

simple things that actually make a huge difference. Even the gym memberships, you heard about

the impact having the gym memberships. We've had to find the funding for that but it makes

such a big impact to the children because they're not out on the street and it is only

for a short period of time. So it's about actually, everything we do is about developing

good life skills that take that child further forward because they could be with us for

only 12 weeks, they could be with us for 4 or 5 years, but actually developing and building

on those life skills because we're a short term fix. In relation to the 18 to 25, I would

love it if law changed and I could work with children or children and young people up to

21 or 25, the science shows that the brain isn't fully developed until 25, so we're asking

14 year olds to feel remorse for their behaviour that they cannot biochemically do until they're

25 so there's a whole argument around that. We have incredible strong links with our probation

service. As well as being a present member on our Youth Justice Executive Board, we also

have a probation officer, a secondary probation officer which, to put it into context, every

youth justice service in England and Wales should have one. In London, less than half

have one because probation is obviously in a quite difficult position. Our probation

partnership has prioritised our second -year probation officer, so we've had one for two

and a half years which is pretty much unheard of in London, which means not only do we get

their expertise as being that adult expert, but also our children that become 18 can then

work if they're still, instead of having to be transferred to probation, they transfer

to someone who still maintains in that team, who's our kind of foot in both door.

We're also doing a wider piece of work with transitions, looking just not at transitioning

from use justice to probation, but also SEND, for example, is up to 25, so make sure probation

have links in with SEND.

Those children that move from primary to secondary, that's a huge transition that actually if

it goes wrong, children could end up with us.

There's a wider piece of the transition work that we're heavily involved in.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Mano.

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks.

Thank you for your presentation.

It was a lovely presentation.

My question is to you is how use justice systems involving young person taking their view of

the example the young chap who came here give his own experience.

Do we interact with them, get their view and imply into it?

And also, my second question is, youth justice system, how they interact with our youth systems,

and what interaction do you have with our organisation, Tahemelets?

Do you mean in relation to young Tahemelets specifically or youths on a wider...

Youth, both basically.

Okay, so in relation, so we have our forum, so we have lots of different ways we interact with young people,

and gather their views.

So on an individual basis, every assessment,

all assessments reviewed every three months.

Part of that assessment, which the Youth Justice Board's

statutory assessment, is a self -assessment which changes

over time, and that's one for children as well as one

for their parents and carers.

So, and part of those questions are, what can we do differently?

What else do you need?

So that's for every child in the service.

We then have part of our audits, so every month we audit,

We phone up children, we phone up parents, we have, so the management team will phone

them up and have that conversation with them directly, actually what is going well, what's

not going well, what else do you need.

We also have our annual survey that we send out to children as well, so at the same time

the staff one goes out, we send one out to children, what's going well, what do you like,

what do we need to do better.

And then we have our, at the peak of the top is our active young people, so we've got a

of six, seven children that meet every fortnight and they have their own priorities. They have

their own priorities, what they want to achieve in the next, we kind of keep it to six months.

So they've challenged us and I tell them, put the challenge to me, don't make it easy for me,

you know, make it so I have to go out and find support from other people. They've asked for more

work experience, they've asked for certain partners to come and speak to them, so like we

we don't understand why this happens, we don't understand why this happens.

One of them, as part of his reparation, and this child who's got a physical disability,

so can't go out and do things like our projects on the farm for example,

said to a member of staff, I think you should get a 3D printer.

And the member of staff, who's probably a bit like me, went I don't know what 3D,

he said well write me a business plan and I'll send it to the head of service, which this child did.

So this 15 year old has come up with this idea, has written two or three paragraphs

as to why we should get a 3D printer.

It came to me, we purchased one and then he starts making all these things and showing

how teaching the staff as well as other children how to make it.

Then what this child said was, I'm really grateful that the service had done this, that

they listened to me.

I want to come to the board.

I want to come to the Youth Justice Executive Board where the Deputy Mayor sits and the

who made Susanna and Steve a gift each to say thank you.

That was completely off his own back.

That was nothing to do with us, we didn't ask,

but that was what he felt he wanted to do,

to say thank you for us listening to him,

which I think is really key.

And the fact that they will come to moments like this,

and they will come to the board,

and they will come to the House of Commons

when we have these opportunities,

because they know if they didn't feel we listened to them,

they wouldn't come here,

because they'd be, why am I wasting my time?

You dragged me out for these things, and nothing changes.

but actually it's a testament to us listening to them.

We always need to do a bit better.

So we're at the minute we're developing a,

you said we did, pro forma,

so actually their bullet points can go there

and then there's evidence because a lot of these things

we just do because that's our relationship building,

but we want to be able to track it so we can show them,

you know, two years ago this is what you asked for

and look at, you know, these are all the things over the last two years

and this is what we've done and it helps them to hold us,

hold me to account.

And in relation to the youth service, so we have really good relationships with the adventure team in Urban Adventure.

So we do reparation projects there with the bike project. We're trying to bring in the Duke of Edinburgh into the Youth Justice system because for those of you that have done the Duke of Edinburgh, especially the bronze, the bronze is only three months.

The shortest amount of time you get a workforce is 12 weeks, we should be able to get some of the Duke of Edinburgh which is a nationally recognised qualification which is absolutely brilliant.

We do have strong exit planning with the targeted service and we have links through exploitation

and community service, obviously with the detached team we link with them information

shared at the daily risk briefing that we have.

We always want to do better and we want to really look at the prevention offer from all

partners because it's not under me.

So mine is once a child gets in trouble with the police, what do we do moving on from there?

Actually making sure that we work together as a partnership and it's not just youth,

it's police, it's community safety, it's all of the partnership to make sure that our

children, we can get those first time entrance figures even lower.

Just thinking about the work that they're doing with victims and with the community

navigators as well, so working with the targeted team and the safe spaces as well, just trying

to encourage the young people to get into our safe spaces.

Thank you very much.

Any other questions or comments?

Councillor Galabkiria.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for your presentation.

This report notes the significant overrepresentation

of children from mixed ethnic background in the service.

But besides mentoring this, what exactly are we doing to understand and address this serious

disproportion issue?

Thank you.

So we've done quite a lot.

It's not, yeah, it might read that it's just mentoring, it's actually a much bigger piece

than that.

We work really closely with WIPERS, which are a really well respected organisation.

So they provide us with an intervention that's specifically targeted to boys from the global

majority.

So actually speaking to them about stereotypes and what it is to be a boy and a man from

the global majority and developing their confidence and helping them to understand themselves.

Also which WIPERS, excuse me, the additionality that WIPERS also offer that we commission

is mentoring for that because they are the experts.

And then they've also developed recently an education,

employment and training programme that we're piloting

with them which is really quite exciting.

What we've done a lot in addition and alongside that

is we actually challenge where we see this portionality

through our research and through our thematic audits.

So recently we've done an audit in relation

to black children's experience at court

because what we noticed was that black children

were not being afforded the opportunity,

in the same as their counterparts,

to have out of court disposals,

and they were going straight to court.

And actually, so now we've built up an action plan,

and we're challenging the court,

we're challenging the CPS,

we're challenging the police,

say look, we found this, what are you going to do with it?

Because again, by the time they come to us,

it's a bit late for us to be able to challenge,

we can only challenge when it's appropriate.

And we're looking, again, as part of the prevention,

at managed moves, at things like exclusions,

because they are protective factors.

education is the biggest protective factor that a child has, and if we're regularly moving children, then that is going to impact

their understanding of themselves and their identity. On a wider thing, in relation to supporting families,

we're looking at cultural identity and understanding cultures and humility and

voluntary sectors as well, so developing that with staff so they've got that skill set.

Okay, Councillor

in youth service system and have a say in how the service one can their parents or carer be involved.

Just for clarity, when you say youth service, you mean youth justice service. Yep, lovely.

I just wanted to cheque. So, relations inclusivity, as I said before, we make sure that all children are assessed,

first of all. So every child's assessment is completed and then what they need comes

out of that. What comes out of that assessment is their plan, which is co -produced with children,

so actually children get a say in how, what intervention and what delivery they're going

to receive. Inclusivity looks at all the needs of children. We make sure that we bring in

their key partners and the key people in their lives to support them. We don't, as I've said

It's a 12 year old on a triage or a 17 and a half year old on a prison sentence.

They all have the same access.

We argue and we highlight areas that aren't inclusive at all different formats.

So our virtual schools are really involved on the national scene about making sure that children in prisons have the same rights and access to EHCPs.

We involve our girls, so we've got dedicated girls programme that's been highlighted as national best practise by the Youth Justice Board

And we listen to children so for example. We had a knife crime programme about 18 months ago that

involved

the children going to the Benkinsella project and seeing the impact of knife crime and

The children when they went were asked for feedback, were asked for a bit of valuation, and they said look

this is a really great project but he doesn't look like us.

And the people that were charged with murder

don't look like us.

It didn't feel, it didn't land with them.

They didn't appreciate it, they did not appreciate it.

They didn't, it didn't resonate with them.

So then we've developed the programme further

to make sure that actually it is completely inclusive.

Our speech and language is probably the key thing.

So all children are assessed by a nurse

and if there is a belief that there are some speech and language needs there,

they're assessed and receive intervention from our speech and language officers.

And then we change the way we write to them.

We change the tools that we use to make sure that actually it's not just another grown -up

telling them what not to do.

They're involved in it and they understand it and they can learn,

they learn about themselves and why they might have got into that situation before.

And in relation to co -production, that is one of our key things.

So we try and co -produce as much as possible.

We don't include parents as much as we want to,

and that is parents and victims,

and that's what we want to do.

So as much as we might speak to parents,

and we do speak to them regularly every three months

and during audits, as well as, you know,

on a formal, for formal feedback,

case managers speak to parents weekly in the main.

We wanna try and make,

we wanna try and use what we already have,

but offering parents a long -term support.

So we're looking at linking in with the parenting offer

through exploitation and children's social care,

because what we don't want is for parents

to come with us for 12 weeks,

have a really great experience,

and then lose that in three months.

So actually finding a more appropriate space

for them to be supported and helped

is what we're developing with exploitation

and using the exploitation parenting offer.

Thank you very much, Kelly.

Sorry, I'm gonna take a lot, very conscious of time.

Thank you. By all means, if there's any questions or any clarifications, you can email the officers and they're happy to get back.

I'm going to take one last question, a short one. I'm hoping it's a short one, Councillor. So one last question.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

It's about reoffending data.

The report notes a reoffending rate of 47 % in 2023,

compared to 39 % nationally.

It explains this away by saying the first time entrance pool is smaller.

But the absolute number shows 36 young people reoffended locally.

That has failed to bring down reoffending even among the highest risk groups.

Okay, so the most upstate reoffending rate is 25%, so it has reduced even further.

In relation to the dates that you're speaking to, and please correct me because I will get it wrong,

that's 30 -something children reoffending in a cohort of 90.

The year before it was a cohort of 150 with I think 35 children.

So the cohort was bigger which made the reoffending rate look less.

So as the cohort was reducing.

But the reoffending data is from children two years ago.

So what happens is children are randomly selected and then tracked for a period of two years.

The YJB also do not provide me with those children and I asked even as of today,

Is there any chance I could have the list?

Because I would like to see if my reoffending rates drop by 10 points, I want to know what

we've done.

So, because when I'm asked and challenged quite appropriately, I want to be able to

answer, well, these are the things we've noticed.

I can't get hold of that.

So, what we're trying to develop now is our own reoffending tracker of our children.

So, actually, we can see what's worked and what's not worked.

But it is the number of children reoffending has come down.

Our cohort has reduced even further because it goes in line with the first time entrance.

But I hope that makes sense.

Because it is a really complicated piece of maths and I'm a people person, not a numbers person.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Kelly.

We're going to move on to the next item.

Just before we do, I just want to say, when you mentioned that you were challenged, we should be challenged.

As everyone sitting in this room, we have a certain amount of authority, a certain amount of power that we can make a real difference in the lives of these young people.

some of the most vulnerable young people, just because a bit of bad luck here and there.

We want to provide a service that's going to be inclusive, we're going to work with

different partners, etc., to make this service the best that it can be.

Thank you very much for your presentation, and we're going to move on to the next item,

which is the budget policy and frameworks, strategy framework for the Council's gambling policy.

Can I welcome Simon's already there, thank you.

Dal Babu, who is the interim public protection and enforcement.

Tom Lewis, who is the head of regulatory services.

services and George is already there as well.

So again, we want to take this paper as read so that we get more time in terms of any questions

and comments from the members.

So the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

As members are aware, this is a legal requirement for us to review our camping policy.

And this sets out what we're doing how we're doing it and why we're doing it and so I hand over to doubt and Tom

Who?

The officers report. Thank you

Sorry

Thank you, sorry

Counsellor this is a legal requirement as you'll be aware and what we've done is consulted with our communities and

and taken on back the feedback we received and I'll ask Tom to give you the details of the consultation and the key changes that we made.

Thank you Dale. The consultation got a number of visits to our survey but no one actually answered the survey itself.

There was about 57 visits from people within the borough or outside the borough.

We did get one response from Public Health and where we can we've tried to incorporate those changes

or we will work with them in regards to other matters and that is actually included within the PAC as well.

As Simon and Dal have said, it's a legal requirement to review this policy which we do every three years.

There is limited scope within the Gambling Act itself 2005 to make changes.

It's very restricted in terms of how the gambling commission lays out what local authority can and can't do

And it only relates to the premises not online gambling

so all premises

that do gambling have to have an operator's licence from the gambling Commission and then if it's in a premises a licence from ourselves as

A local authority to have gambling operations within that premises itself

This one needs to go through to full council and we'll go through to full council

and then it will come into place on the 15th of December, subject to being approved by

full council.

The only thing we have changed apart from just policy updates is align it more with

our statement of licencing policy, which has a Challenge 25 age verification process in

there.

We've gone with what the gambling commission says, which is I think 25, it's just a different

terminology, so it aligns more with our licencing policy.

So that's what we would expect applicants and licence holders to adopt in their age

verification systems.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I'm going to open the floor to members now if you've got comments or questions.

Councillor James Skibb please.

Thank you.

The 2005 Gambling Act has something called Aim to Permit, which as you rightly say means

that there are limits to the constraints councils can put on proliferation of gambling premises.

Now some councils in London, I think Brent particularly are leading on this, are talking

about curbing aim to permit to stop the proliferation of gambling premises in areas of like social

and economic deprivation.

How might you consider this obviously within the legal framework and is there more the

council can do to like be part of this call and part of this campaign and how might you

is within regards to our planning policy.

They have put in requirements into that, which have been in place for a while now actually,

on reducing betting shops, planning permission to change use in certain areas of the borough,

which is linked to deprivation.

Interestingly, very recently, there have been calls on the Prime Minister

to look at whether or not things like a community impact policy, which is similar to what the

licencing act, prior to that the licencing act guidance had within it, as to whether

or not that could be introduced within the gambling policy.

If that is introduced, and very recently, but the Prime Minister seems to have warmed

to this idea and seems to be saying that this is something that they are willing to look

at, if that is introduced, then there's nothing to stop us from reviewing our policy mid -term,

as in before the three years are up, to include such things within it.

There's nothing to stop us doing that.

That's up to us as boroughs, we can do that.

Thank you.

Councillor Cabirussi.

Thank you, Chair.

Appendix A shows there are currently 87 licenced gambling premises in Tyhamlir's,

with the highest concentration in Bethnal Green and Whitechapel, our most deprived wards.

Why has the council not taken the opportunity in this statutory review to propose stronger restrictions in precisely the areas where Harms is worst?

Thank you, Councillor. I think it's kind of answered with Councillor King's question to me as well.

We have an aim to permit within the Act itself, so there's very little scope, unlike with the Licencing Act, where we can restrict them.

What we rely on, very similar to all licence processes, is objections coming in.

So where, and it's not just us, where anybody can object to a gambling application,

where an objection comes in, it's got to be on the three,

it's got to be saying that they're not going to promote the three gambling objectives,

and if it doesn't relate to those, there's very little scope to what we can do.

If and when objections do come in, they go to the licencing subcommittee for a hearing

and they would hear it and they would make the decision on it.

In terms of what conditions we can place on it, it's the same thing.

We would have to make an objection and either the applicant agrees with our additions of

the conditions or we go to a licencing committee and they would add them themselves.

The other side of it is that the gambling commission also has a set number of conditions that are on all licences and they are quite stringent to be fair.

We also go out and we do test purchases of all our adult gaming centres with regards to making sure that they are not selling to minors.

We can't do that with betting shops because they've all got primary authority and only

the police can do that.

But what we do do is we do compliance cheques and the gambling commission requires all gambling

premises to do their own age verification processes and they actually keep a copy of

it and we can see that when we go out.

Thank you.

Just on that point, it's sort of related, can you just tell us a bit more about the

consultation that was done and in terms of the response and how was, how were the equalities

consideration taken into that?

So there is a qualities screening tool attached to the documents you've got there.

The consultation itself we went out to all of our statutory partners, which is all our responsible authorities.

We went out to our SNTs, we went out to all of our residents associations, we went out to all of our pub watchers.

Basically we went out to as many people as we could, we also reached out to the Council of Mosques as well.

and I think the reason for the fact that no one filled in the survey is because of the fact that there is not much scope that you can change in the gambling policy.

And we had, within the confines of what we can change, done quite a lot of changes now and prior to that when we took it through in 2022 as well.

So I think that's probably why.

In terms of the equalities, this is a statutory policy.

As I said again, there's very little scope that we can do with it.

So it's really set by government and the gambling commission on what we can and can't put on

that legislation.

And it demonstrates how we determine those applications when they come in and how we

process them.

Thank you.

Any member

Councillor do you apologise?

Hi, I believe you don't have any control over what I'm going to ask but

It's similar to what James have asked is to do with addiction gaming is an addiction and also cause love

Heartache and painful or families and and

and children and budgeting and so what's out there if you, how do you advertise that there's help out there

if you are addicted or a family member if they want to seek help from public health or something else,

what's available from your understanding? I understand you can't do anything about this in this policy, so I'm asking.

Well, yes it's restrictive, but the government themselves and the gambling commission have

actually in the changes they've done recently too, their guidance to licence holders and

I'm sure you've seen it in the adverts themselves as well.

They are quite stringent on the fact that you are supposed to promote if there's any

gambling harms.

It is actually one of the licence and objectives is to promote, is to make sure that the gambling

is not a source of harm. They are big on gambling related harms and there is actually a paper

on the gambling commissions site on gambling harms and they require the licence holders

to have policies and procedures in place to promote that and to have, I think it is a

self -referral system so that you can self -refer and put yourself stops on it as well. In terms

Because of what we can do, we have our local area profiles.

I've kept them outside of the gambling policy itself so that we can update them when we

need to.

And one of the things I want to do with Public Health, which I've reached out to Public Health

already, is to use some of their deprivation areas to produce a GIS mapping with our licenced

premises on it.

We could also add any kind of leaflets or attached leaflets or anything like that to

our local area profiles pages which would also alert not so much people in

the borough but those licence holders that are wanting to put licences in

those areas so they know the type of forms that we've got available that they

can use if they wanted to but they are required to do it anyway they're

required to have forms leaflets in the premises about it.

Sorry Councillor, just add that you raise a very important point about addiction and the

Mental health trusts across London are working at the moment to look at coordinated services

to help and support people who are falling victims of addiction.

So it is something that we are aware of and we are aware of the trusts as they develop

that programme and we can certainly add those details as and when those are added and those

services are developed.

Thank you.

We're going to take one more question, if that's okay, and then we'll move on.

Councillor Kabir -Zin.

Thank you, Chair.

It's slightly political, but it's not a political question.

It's about enforcement.

The administration claims strong enforcement power, yet the licencing team only recorded

three compliance visits last year, with zero sanctions.

Why?

Last year we didn't do as many compliance visits due to still coming out of COVID and

we've got low, well we lost two offices during COVID due to funding. This year the licencing

team have been around all our gambling premises. We've got 38 betting shops in total and seven

adult gaming centres. I think there is a disparity in some of the report there with public health

because I think the stuff that they work on is last year's. But that's how many we've

got and we went round every single one of them and all of the adult gaming centres had

age verification visits done, so mystery shopper visits done and they passed. We have in the

all the way through to court and won.

That was some years ago.

But there's not a lot of premises

that do do illegal gambling prosecutions.

And I think we're one of the forefronts that did that.

That's the kind of thing that we focus on more,

is making sure that any illegal gambling within the borough

is identified, investigated, and where we can prosecute it.

And that's where I think we should,

that's where we focus on.

Thank you very much.

If there's no more questions or comments, I want to thank the officers.

Thank you very much for the presentation.

And we're going to move on to the next agenda item, which is the budget monitoring 2024 -25,

quarter one.

Can I welcome Abdulazak, Head of Resources, cabinet member Saeed Ahmed, Chris Leslie,

Head of Corporate Finance Management and Ehsan Khan, Corporate Head of Financial and Technical.

Okay. We already have Simon and Georgia and...

Can we just take the paper as read?

If you want to make any points, can we be brief so that we get enough time for members

to ask questions and any comments.

The floor is open to you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Chair, and good evening to the Committee.

So I'll do a quick intro for our Quarter 1 budget.

Just to recap the General Fund, the Quarter 4 outturn for 2024 -25 previously reported

a net overspend of £16 .5 million, driven primarily by exceptional pressures in temporary

accommodation and adult social care, reflecting both local demand and wider national challenges.

These pressures had been anticipated in financial planning, with provisions made through in -year

contingency budget, but the scale of the demand now materialising across London and nationally

is greater than originally forecasted.

This 2025 -26 Quarter 1 report sets out the current forecast position for the year.

The key drivers of budget risk and mitigations already underway.

It also outlines the Council's ongoing response, including the strengthened programme of transformation

designed to secure long -term resilience and sustainability.

The forecast position is a 14 .7 million pounds net general fund overspend after agreed management

actions and the planned appropriate allocations of 17 .7 million pounds through funding substitution

aligned with regulatory requirements and qualifying applications from the NCL, CIL 106 and public

health budgets, subject to relevant governance processes.

and 16 million pounds of earmarked reserves are applied for directorates.

The DSG is reporting a 5 .8 million pounds overspent as well.

The General Fund budget monitoring position is supported by a number of forecast underspends

and in -year mitigations achieved through management actions and the strategic planned use of funding

substitutions which are helping to offset wider pressures as detailed within the report.

These actions demonstrate the grip already and consistently being applied to manage the council's finances in -year.

Some of the management actions taken to address these pressures carry some risks.

However, these will be monitored regularly to ensure deliverability with any changes.

Some of the management actions taken to address these pressures carry some risks, however

they are monitored regularly to make sure the deliverability and with any changes addressed

promptly through alternative mitigations.

Despite this, the budget position continues to be affected by nationally recognised demand -driven pressures,

particularly acute across London, with the most material forecasts overspent in homelessness, resulting to £23 .4 million,

adult social care £22 .3 million and SEND comes to £2 .8 million.

To strengthen control and drive down these costs, three dedicated spending control panels have been established,

covering temporary accommodation, adult social care and SEND, ensuring closer scrutiny and

tighter oversight of expenditure in these high pressure areas.

Corporate directors have implemented in -year management actions through the spending review

panels, including vacancy management, reducing and slowing of non -essential spend and tighter

controls on agency usage. Corporate directors are accountable for delivery of their agreed

management actions and progress will be reviewed and managed corporately each month in the

spending review panels.

Moving on to savings, we had a £33 .5 million in -year savings target, £27 .3 million are

either achieved or on track to be achieved, while £6 .1 million have been phased but are

still considered deliverable within the year.

And only 100K, which is 0 .3 % of the target, has been assessed as undeliverable.

Savings are monitored regularly and alternative proposal will be sought to mitigate any eliminated,

any element assessed as undeliverable, which is the 100K.

Within the HRA, a forecast is, the HRA is forecasted to break even, supported by forecast

under spends which are helping to offset pressures and these include an 8 .4 million pounds favourable

variance from the reduced revenue contributions to fund the HRA capital programme due to the profile

of spending programme being lower in the financial year as plans developed to significantly increase

capital spending in the subsequent years. Moving on to capital, the general fund capital forecast

cost is £70 .2 million which represents a 53 % of the revised budget of £133 .4 million

resulting in a variance of £63 .2 million. The key driver to this variance is related

to the re -profiling of St George's Leisure Centre which comes to £33 million, largely

attributed to the achieving planning consent and a review of the procurement process in

in order to ensure great opportunities for SME involvement in the delivery of the project

and an increased focus on social value outcomes.

That's an overview from me, Chair.

I will ask Adler Azadeh to come in.

Thank you, Councillor Said and good evening, members.

I just wanted to add some context in terms of where we are in London.

First of all, apologies for publishing the paper late.

we were waiting for benchmarking data from London councils.

That was delayed, but I've got some of the indicative numbers now that I could share.

So, in terms of 24 boroughs that have submitted their data,

they're all forecasting 343 million overspend in Q1.

Majority of that is 200 million on TA.

Adult social care is 110 million,

and 20 out of the 24 boroughs are expected to overspend this year.

So just for context, there's an average pressure across the board of 4 .3 % of their net budget.

We are, if we do like for like, we are forecasting 3 % on a net basis, so that's after the planned

substitutions.

If you look on a gross basis, then you're looking at about 7 % of our approved budget.

On DSG 21 out of the 24 boroughs who submitted their data are all forecasting a deficit.

The reason I'm sharing this is it's really important as we are in Q1 to respond.

So as senior management we've responded really strongly by enhancing our governance.

And just to give you context we took a strategic review of our resources and hence why today you see transparently in the paper we are showing the substitutions of income in terms of section 6 seal and N seal subject to the proper governance process.

We've also introduced, so we're not relying on substitutions to mitigate our pressures,

we've introduced spending review panels which look at our cost pressures across the board.

We've also introduced three dedicated panels for TA, Hello Social Care and SEND, and that

is supported by the Mayor, the Chief Exec, myself as the acting section on 5 .1, and corporate

directors across the board.

We've got expenditure control panels, again that's to help us mitigate those costs, not

just funding substitutions and as of today we kicked that off and I'll let Councillor

Said comment on that. We've managed to save about 25k. So as senior management, as officers,

we are really committed to really act really quickly and really fast to enable us to be

really prudent on how we spend. Thank you.

Thank you, Dr Ozak. Just being brought to my attention in terms of the benchmarking

It's not actually on there. It's not actually on the website.

It was only shared yesterday, Counsellor. Hence why we published it. I didn't want to wait too late so you wouldn't have the chance to review the papers.

It's been sent to us by London Councils so I couldn't include it. We published the paper on Thursday and this was only shared yesterday.

Abjure, can I stop you please?

This is to all members please.

If you want to ask any question, it has to go through the chair.

I've already asked it.

I'll just give an explanation.

If it's not good enough, then we can get a clarification.

But I do not want anyone to disrupt the meeting by talking over each other.

We want to have...

We're passionate about certain things.

We're here to ask questions to the directors, but we have to do it in the proper way.

So please, I'm reminding every member, please follow the rules and procedures of the meeting.

So can you just for clarification, just explain to us what you just said so we understand.

Thank you, Chair.

So we were waiting to receive London Council's data, but that was delayed, hence why we were

published the paper on Thursday. We've got the data as of yesterday and hence

why I was sharing it verbally and I'm happy to circulate an email with that

data. Okay thank you. If we are now going to open it to members for any questions

and comments.

Councillor James, can we stick, if you were here in the briefing, if you can stick to

one question and then we'll come back round again.

If you could stick to one question and then there's enough time we'll come back.

Funniest question then, in case I don't get to ask it.

Why has the budget for the mayor's office gone up by £300 ,000 in the first quarter

above what was already budgeted for?

That's in 9 .37.

I'm going to ask Chris to comment on that.

So it's forecasting a 300 ,000 pound overspend at the moment.

As you know, there was savings targets for the reduction in spend.

As it goes through the restructure, I think they're looking at currently some of the agency

staff and I believe there's some costs in there from the current, we've had to get replacement

in as well to cover existing duties.

Thank you.

Councillor Laveton.

the

integrated commissioning, there is an

overspend in tech saving initiatives

of 1 .3 million.

Obviously we have come

previously to O &S and spoken at great

length about the importance of tech

and how that is going to save a lot of

money but also make efficiency.

So it

is concerning to see 1 .3 million.

wonder if you want to speak a bit more

about that.

Thank you,

Councillor.

Yes, absolutely.

care tech is really, really important.

The reason we've not been able to make as much progress

on care tech is purely and simply for capacity.

My previous director of commissioning was off sick

from January all the way up until July.

We now have an interim director of commissioning

who has just started a week and a half ago.

And that gives us the level of leadership

and capacity to be able to start to work on our care tech.

There was a plan initially when I first arrived, but the plan was not as ambitious as we would

like it to be because what we want for our care tech is something that supports not just

the residents in their own homes or wherever they're living, but also supports staff and

care providers as well.

So that's what we're looking for, to be able to actually have something, because I think

from my perspective, the difficulty we had is

if we'd gone ahead with possibly the initial plan

that we had, it would not have given us what we needed to.

So I felt we needed to go back to the drawing board.

Unfortunately, it has meant that we've slipped

in terms of our savings.

So we still do have some care tech.

We have our telecare team.

There is still work that's going on.

But when I'm talking about bigger, better things

that are going to make a real impact,

that's something we're starting to work on,

certainly now as I said, now that we've got

and well spent time in that process.

We alsoPandemic

in terms of scrutinising that spend as well.

I mean it is linked to demand with the increase of EHCPs

and longer travel distances as well

due to our limited specialist provision.

But some of the things that we're doing

is promoting personal travel budgets

and about independent travel training.

And we've had some successes with that

and how we expand that as well.

But as I say, we're looking at working together

with the newly established transport order that we can really look at all the different

cost reduction strategies and how that can be done safely to ensure that our children

do get where they need to for their services.

Thank you. Councillor Gudang, could you please?

Thank you chair, thank you Georgie. We know in adult social care demand is high. How is demand

being managed to prevent further overspent? Thank you Councillor Chaudry. So in adult social care,

I suppose the way I would describe it is we have two main problems. We have the number of people

who require care is increasing and that level of care is becoming more and more complex

which costs us a lot more money. So in terms of the number of people, the way I would describe

it is what you have in the paper today are things that we are doing in here but actually

I need to do something that's a bit more radical and I think that's where some of the work

when we talk about prevention, you can't prevent somebody from getting older or prevent somebody

from having a disability, but what you can do is delay how quickly they require social

care intervention. So there are some initiatives that we are doing in terms of prevention,

in terms of trying to keep people as well as they can be in the community for as long

as they can. So it may be things for instance that Showmen, here's our Director of Public

Health, when we are encouraging people to have health cheques, to exercise, to not smoke,

all of that has an impact in terms of keeping people healthy and possibly delaying their

need for social care. And then when people do come in and they require social care, we

are working with our providers in terms of the way in which we purchase care because

sometimes, yes, we know everything has become more expensive in the way in which we buy

care. The delivery of care is more expensive, but there are things that we can do in terms

of, for instance, Councillor Abdi, as I've just described, trying to use care technology

to support us instead of just always having a carer turn up. Sometimes you may have gadgets

that can support people rather than somebody turning up, which still meets their needs

but is not as expensive.

And we can also try to work with our providers

to make sure that the level of care that people are getting

still meets their needs, but not in the most expensive way.

So those are some of the things that we

are doing, Councillor Childress.

Just before I go to Councillor Asmat,

I just want to know, personal travel plans,

Are they really going to have an impact on the budget?

I think they would to some extent. It's quite difficult because some initiatives work for some residents, some don't.

But for some reason, it's similar to what Suzanne is describing.

When somebody has a personal travel plan, what that does is instead of, for instance,

having a taxi that turns up and people getting in taxi and they're taken to wherever they're

going, there may be some people who, with some intensive support, can actually use,

for instance, public transport using either an app or being able to read a bus timetable,

because we've given them some intensive support.

It might be support for a couple of weeks or a couple of months.

So it might seem expensive when you're providing the support, but in the long run it gives

people independence.

So it means that people are actually able to travel on their own without necessarily

requiring the use of a taxi.

Thank you.

Councillor Aspin.

So we're in a bit of a time lapse for this committee because cabinet member Mea and officers

have been working on the new budget months ago.

So we're on track for, hopefully on track for savings by the end of the year for the new budget,

but now that we've got the overspends in service areas that only the pressure is going to build and intensify,

so in the next year's budget are we expected to see more flexibility in reserve movements,

funding substitution like the NCL, which is actually meant for a purpose,

And also, I want to go back to the question I asked the first year of this administration

is the initiatives that have been brought up by this administration, where is the sustainability

for it?

Are we still confident that we can still do this?

Thanks for your question, Councillor.

I think first of all, to look at the substitution, because I think you're right, if there is

funding available which should be used, it's best that we put it into action where it's

permitted to spend.

And in terms of the sustainability of where we are at the moment, I think if you see our

pressure we have is forecasted, again it's forecasted, hopefully there's still mitigations

in place.

We've got spending review panels we've put in place today, we've managed to look at our

spending with a very fine comb and we looked at some of the spending, we said 25k after

spend doesn't need to go ahead and this stuff is robust on every weekly basis

because some stuff is essential and some stuffs are desirable. From a lot of

departmental side we want to do the desirable stuff as well but when you

look at it you know with a financial hat we'll be like you know what maybe we can

face some stuff out and not really do everything that we want to do so just

being a bit prudent in that in that sort of lens. In terms of our resilience I

mean you could see we've got a 23 .9 million pounds risk reserve already

been built into our reserves and the forecasted overspend is 14 .7.

Should we do nothing and land at 14 .7 million pound, we have enough risk reserve to cover

that but again we want to do stuff, we want to be upfront, we want to be robust and make

sure we land on budget but again pressure is the pressure and we will make sure that

we in -build any sort of resilience that we need to do going forward.

Thank you.

I just wanted to add in terms of MTFS, we have started the process and we are including

all these pressures, for example, TA pressures, other social care pressures and on top of

that it all depends on the funding reform outcome which is expected in December.

So fingers crossed, if that is favourable for us and the government listen in terms

of the TA pressures and other social care, that will help our budget going forward.

I will get David to comment on homelessness.

Yeah, just one point of reassurance to make is that the mitigations that we're carrying

out now, for instance, in temporary accommodation around things like greater use of longer term

private rent, etcetera, properties rather than nightly paid or acquisitions, we're seeing

a part year impact this year that's contributing to the mitigations that are in the report,

but we expect to see the full year impact of that next year.

So although we are seeing increasing demand and complexity in homelessness, we will see

a bigger impact of the mitigations next year because we will get the full year impact of

them.

So I think that is one way that will give me confidence that the work that we are doing

will help the sustainability of our position moving forward.

Can I just add one more point?

So some of the stuff that there is priority, which is the council's strategic plan to deliver,

for example, free swimming for male over 55 and women over 16, these stuff contribute

towards health.

So where we see adult social care pressures are coming, if we can sort of, these little

perks that were provided from the council would help the wider picture when it comes

to larger financial pressure.

Thank you.

Councillor Cabu is saying.

Thank you, Chair.

Just to echo with Sister Halima about the overspend, page 112 of the Quarter 1 monitoring

report shows that a projected overspend, 2 .1 million in children services.

Why there is no credible plan to control this pressure?

We do have a plan in terms of children's services.

There is overspend of 2 .1 million in children's services.

So my question is why there is no credible plan to control this pressure?

We are working, we do have a plan which is being scrutinised by the mayor and the funding panels that are happening

in terms of the different areas where there is overspend.

So it touched upon where some of the pressures are

in terms of SEND and in particular around transport

and in terms of what we're doing around that.

But also looking in terms of supporting families,

we've got some pressures in terms of

rising numbers of families and the cost around

supporting families with no recourse to public funds

as well as residential placements as well.

And so we have, for example, looking at commissioning

legal advice to help our families get quicker

immigration status so that actually they're not

as reliant on us and so we're doing that there.

We're also scrutinising in terms of our residential costs

although we have low numbers, we have children

with some very complex needs.

So what I want to assure you is that we do have a detailed plan setting out what we're doing on all the different areas and some mitigations which is being scrutinised,

bought nightly really by politicians and finance as well.

Thank you.

I just want to ask you about operational risk from drawdowns, for example, IT.

So invest, like there's going to be only £4 million left, and you're saying you want to

invest in technologies to ensure that residents are healthy and taking advantage of technology.

technology, then we draw down on that reserve and then we realise the savings

going forward. So in terms of the tech -enabled savings that is funded by

flexible use of capital receipts, so that's what drawing down on ICT reserve,

we need to manage about 4 million in terms of business risk, so if there's any

issues with cybersecurity, ETC, we've got sufficient funds to cover that. But going

forward, every specific project that comes forward will have to have a return

on investment and that will be managed through the budget board.

Thanks chair, my question is in the communities directorate for Simon. We've invested a huge

amount in the waste team this year and I'd like to see, I'd like to just kind of ask

you how you think it's going, whether you think it's going well, and particularly the

commercial waste service, that's somewhere where the waste service can actually bring

back its own, start generating its own income. How are we generating our own income? And

what more are we doing, particularly on the residential side, to keep driving that improvement

in resident services.

Thank you Councillor.

So in terms of general performance on waste it's still very, very good.

I think I'm proud of where we've got to in terms of the cleanliness of the borough.

I think you've been, O &S have been involved heavily with the scrutiny of the service over

the last probably year and a bit and that continues to improve.

On the commercial waste services, that's hitting its targets.

It's exactly where I want it to be.

I think it's still lots of opportunities for us to grow. We are winning customers and we're reducing the debt. So I'm proud of that

That forecast works and most waste is involved

Council up to my name

I want to ask you questions to the I don't know whoever is appropriate the

transport service

We are spending quite a lot of money overspending using private taxi and so on.

So are we doing anything to reduce it, any ramifications?

Because I know the paper came out very late.

I just want to hear from whoever is in charge of this.

Thank you for your question, Councillor. One of the challenges that we had in relation

to transport was, I suppose, we all use transport in our own ways in our different directories.

And sometime last year, I can't recall, we actually commissioned a piece of work where

we actually had somebody who came in and undertook a review of the use of transport across all

the directorates. There's now a programme of work that's been led, if my memory serves

me correctly, I think it might be Steve Reddy who's leading a piece of work, which is actually

looking at how we can actually be more cost effective in terms of transport. So for instance,

as Susanne has described, they use transport services in children's services, I use transport

services in adult social care and to some extent we all do. So it's about bringing that

together. There will be some similarities, there will be some things that are slightly

different. So for instance from a social care perspective, adult and children, one of the

things that we're looking at is trying to increase people's independence so that they

can actually travel without requiring transport. As I said, it doesn't work for everybody,

but there are definitely people who with the right level of support would be able to travel independently, which is the right thing to do.

So those are some of the things that we are also looking at.

But as I said, there is a programme of work that's bringing this all together corporately, rather than looking at the different directories.

Thank you. Any other comments, questions?

Thank you. If I can come back to my answer, if that's the answer that was given to me.

I completely understand where you came from about some of the services that are important

because it's about prevention.

You gave the example of swimming and health, but those paybacks are a few years down the

line.

My question was more about how are you prioritising the priorities of what's needed right now

to balance the box, the sustainability?

There's probably going to be some tough decisions because all the services that are under pressure,

We're not going to see an overnight solution even with the funding review with great news. You've had unexpected

Government funding intervention that's helped and support even in this year and we still in this position

My question is around, you know

How are you going to balance that off in the next budget?

What are we expecting to see we didn't get to see the performance report this month, but hopefully we'll do that next month

Is there any service areas that you worry about with the fundings in there or there's overspending that service

but we still not getting the service that we need for the residents.

Thank you, Councillor. So, you are right.

In terms of, if you look at the corporate pressures TA, adult social care,

and you will see in the paper the approach we took this year

is to say, you know, corporately we need to support each other to mitigate that.

The first thing we looked at is, you know, qualifying funding substitutions,

so we need to use our resources strategically.

Second thing we did was maximise external grants. Again, we're looking at everything we can claim across to enable us to substitute.

Now if you go through the papers, you'll see that other social care, TA, with their cost mitigations, they're still high.

And if you look at other services, you'll see we're under spending. And that is one to do the funding substitutions.

I know this is we're not relying on the on a sustainable front

You will see you know

We'll be undertaking transformation programmes enable us to be more sustainable going forward and as I mentioned in our MTFS this year

We are looking to provide more budgets to enable us to be a bit more

Sustainable compared to other councils. So for example, if you look at the nearest neighbours, they put 50 million in

They're still overspending by 10 million. So I think we took a two prong approach one was to find more income

The other option now is to really slow down any non -essential spend, hence why the expenditure control panels.

And anything that we don't need to spend this year, hopefully we can give that up as a savings,

because our initiative and obviously the administration is valued for money.

So every penny needs to have an outcome that is sufficient.

So we are doing that and as we go through Q1, Q2, we will be reporting the outcomes of that.

We are not going to be judged on processes or outcomes.

That will be reported every quarter.

Councillor Abdu.

Thank you. I just wanted to clarify two points.

The undeliverable saving of 100 ,000, I think you said,

was it 0 .3 % or 3 %? I wasn't sure.

It's the communication and marketing, so income generations,

so using accounts and assets for advertising and sponsorship.

Can you talk me through how, so even Abdu, as I call you,

I can't remember how decisions are made about what is acceptable in terms of undeliverable.

So I get the point, it's not tonnes of money in the grand scheme of things, but I think

it's helpful to understand the structure behind it so that we feel there's a robust

pool of kind of to and fro to understand that.

And what is the CEAS winter fuel scheme?

It's under resources.

So I wonder if Abdo, you can clarify, because it's a saving of, substantial saving, and

a spend of 1 .9 million.

So can you clarify that as well?

Thank you.

On the first point, the 100k, that was a duplicate saving because communities on the sites already

had a saving and communities had the same saving.

That's why this community saving is not deliverable.

The comms saving in chief exec is not deliverable but the community saving is.

That was a duplicate saving, hence why it's not deliverable.

In terms of the winter fuel, there was a support pension when the government stopped the support

for pension winter fuel, but has been reintroduced, so as part of budget setting we did put money

aside to enable us to continue with that.

Hence why we don't need it this time and we are offering up as a saving.

So, which is section 10.

So, Baltimore and Brewster houses, which is a structural repair to do with fire safety,

which has been going on in my ward for over eight years now.

All the residents who have had their flats signed off has done, have got another letter

from the council, which is the

the contractor to say they need to be decanted and go in again.

So it doesn't surprise me to read about how repair works and implementing grain fill inquiry

recommendations are driving overspend in housing.

That's not my question.

My question is about how that's mitigated.

And indeed, so 8 .4 million pounds is being mitigated from the capital programme.

So the question is will the acquisitions and house building programme considering it's

now getting a third of its budget re -forecast and reduced, will that have to come back?

How will that be impacted?

Is there more detail that has to be looked at in terms of the RCCO?

Thank you, Councillor, for the question.

So I think just to be clear, what has been reduced is the revenue contribution to capital,

and that's particularly around the profile of capital borrowing for housing schemes,

just because we are going on site with a number of large schemes such as Albert Jacob

House but in terms of the profile of when we expect that spend to happen a

greater proportion of it because these schemes are sort of cyclical over time

will happen in sort of 26 27 we're very much on course with our acquisitions

including the grant that we received from the GLA.

Abderruzak and I spend most Friday afternoon signing off

somewhere in the region of kind of six to eight acquisitions

a week at the moment in terms of things like former council home buybacks.

So there is no issue with that programme, it is progressing well.

Equally we have a significant amount of spend on site already for the Major Works Programme,

things like, as you observe, Bristol and Maltings.

Clearly there are issues with these schemes as you have highlighted, but they are on site,

but we are also expecting that to step up more in subsequent financial years.

Really what we are seeing here is the cyclical nature of capital programmes and where we

within this particular financial year but it isn't the case that we're

expecting you know not not to progress with those programmes in the way that we

envisage.

Okay thank you for that answer that's clear essentially what I understand is

that the capital programme will be extended over a broader time than was

originally forecast, is that not put at risk by increasing inflation and labour costs and

cost of products and materials and everything, has that been factored in?

So I think the risk you identify of inflation is always a risk for capital programmes but

we've seen a lot of that over recent years and I think we are now at a very high level

and it has stabilised somewhat. We have done a lot of reviews for our capital board and

the new homes governance to really test the cost of our schemes and make sure that we've

got enough resilience built into the programme including what we feel is a good margin of

in terms of contingencies, but it's something we'll continually keep under control.

But anyone who's building anywhere at the moment would recognise the question you're

asking as a risk moving forward.

Any other questions?

Thank you, Chair.

So my question is around, okay, so what progress has been made on securing the additional 500

private rented sector properties?

Thank you.

So very good progress has been made on those actually.

So Abul Kalam and the team who work in the temporary accommodation team have made really

significant progress in kind of securing those properties and in fact have secured them ahead

of schedule which is one of the reasons why we've been able to mitigate the position in

terms of the cost of temporary accommodation.

So we're making good progress but we need to expand that because we need to move away

in so far as we can from overnight, nightly paid accommodation.

That is what is killing us now and we need to move away from that.

So we've made a very good start with the 500 but remember we've got 3000 households

than temporary accommodation and so we still got a lot to do but what I can see is that

is helping our position this year and as I mentioned earlier we'll get the full year

benefit of that next year along with the acquisitions because those properties are now secured so

we've made very good progress in the team we've been working very hard but we can never

We're going to relent on this, especially with rising demand and complexity.

Unfortunately, we are still seeing landlords withdraw from the market

because of things like the renters reform bill coming in,

which I think is a good thing and in the long term will really benefit people.

However, in the short term it's driving landlord behaviour

where they're leaving the market, unfortunately.

Thank you.

I'm going to take the final question and then we can move on.

Councillor Abdu.

Thank you.

I think you quite answered my question about, so regardless of the 100 ,000 undeliverable,

I just want to understand the process of when something is potentially undeliverable, how

does it go through to be decided that it's undeliverable?

And, Georgia, so I appreciate your answer about capacity and do you think that saving

will be made or materialised this year given you've got an interim and what mitigations

that we put in it, given you spoke on so importantly about how tech is going to be crucial to save money. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Abdu. No, to be honest, I have to be honest, no, I will not be able to meet that particular saving.

What I am trying to do is working with the section 151 to see if there's other ways we can meet that, find that 1 .8 in other ways,

but certainly not in terms of care -take, because we have to start again.

We'd reached a point where we had a plan, we'd gone out to tender, we only had one partner.

We need to go out, we need to redesign another plan, go out.

There are a lot of really, really good care tech partners out there who will be really ambitious

and who will really drive us and get us to where we need to, but that's going to need a huge amount of work.

So in the interim, I'm hoping that if I start the work in the next couple of weeks,

that will be up and running for the new financial year.

but for this financial year we have had the conversation with Abdul Razzak to say it's not something I can meet through CareTech,

but I'm trying to find other ways in the existing, in the direct trade.

And in regards to the Comm savings target, I think that target was obviously set at a point in the previous time, right?

So I think when, like Abdul Razzak cleared, that's a bit of a duplication as well.

So what we have done behind the scene, we have set a much higher target in year to find

more income.

We have identified sites, we have asked communities to jump on that as well.

So together with communities and comms working together, they can bring in a lot more income

and that's another task set on to comms team and communities will support that.

So we should surpass that 100 ,000 pound which is a target we set ourselves previously.

in terms of the process, so we have a budget board every month and all savings are monitored

through the budget board. What happens is we call in people to come in and they talk

about their progress and if there is anything that the team can support to enable them to

deliver those savings we do so, so investors save or if we need to do any feasibility studies

to enable them to deliver the savings we do do that. I think what George had mentioned

earlier was if a saving is not deliverable or is slipping, then they need to find alternative

savings to enable us to meet that year.

Sorry, I will close this item now.

David, sorry, I didn't introduce it in the beginning of the item.

Thank you very much for your input.

We'll move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the overview and scrutiny work programme 2025 -2026.

Can I invite Daniel Hurt, Strategy and Policy Lead to provide an overview of the work programme.

We will probably take both of these items together as well.

We have the work programme and we have the improvement plan as well.

If I introduce the work programme and then Matthew will introduce the improvement plan.

So in terms of the work programme, you would have seen it back at our meeting in July.

It covers our four committees and our three scrutiny lead portfolios.

So it's been developed with members.

So you remember back in the summer we had our scrutiny work programme workshop with cabinet members and corporate directors to give members the opportunity to understand key priorities, upcoming decisions, key areas of risk.

And the workshop also gave members an opportunity as well to look at horizon scanning information

and key feedback from residents.

Following the workshop, we as officers, the scrutiny team, we've been working with the

scrutiny leads to understand priorities, speaking with council services as well to understand

the timings, when it's best to take these items, and the draught programmes also have been

circulated through our scrutiny subcommittees as well to make sure that members have had

opportunity to feed in.

I guess the other thing to point out as well in the pack and one of the appendixes, we

have engaged our quality networks as well, so we've been speaking to residents, trying

to understand what items they would like scrutiny to consider, and that's included in the pack

as well, and that's really been included for members to view and consider whether they

want any of them items added to the work programme.

It is a flexible work programme as well, so there will be more items that will come up

as the year goes along that we'll need to respond to as a committee.

We have tried to work with services and with members now to think ahead and plan for the

year ahead, but things will come up, so we will need to change as we go along.

Ideally we want to try and focus on fewer items on the agenda as well, so no more than

three items if possible in an ideal world, but obviously some of these meetings have

got more at the minute and we'll be working with the chair on a monthly basis to continue

to review the work programme. I think what we want tonight is for members to agree to

plan subject to any final comments or suggestions.

Thank you Daniel on that. I'm just going to hand these over. I don't think I have enough copies.

These are some amendments from me on the work programme. More than happy to take any questions.

I'll just read them out.

This hasn't been published, has it?

This hasn't been published.

So these are some of your comments?

Some of my comments and amendments that I'm putting forward for this programme.

On the strategic performance monitoring quarter one, papers have not been circulated.

tracking recommendation.

This is page three.

There's not an actual agenda on there.

On the OSC report, there are the final scrutiny work programme 2025 -26, and scrutiny improvement

plan this to be taken as two items on the pre cabinet review cabinet decision and extra

is recommendation preview. This is my recommendation.

What are your suggestions about what items you want?

This is today's meeting.

So these are like what do we want on the forward plan moving forward?

These are just recommendations from my side.

What we are trying to do here, so what we want is to agree to the forward plan for the year ahead.

and any suggestions for any items that are missing from the work programme

as opposed to comments on the paper today.

So looking ahead at our four plan of meetings, what do we want included there?

OK, so this in terms of this is something that we can recommend

or I as the chair can recommend on a later date?

Yeah, you can recommend any items that are missing.

Obviously we've had a chance as a committee to review this quite a few times now.

So there shouldn't be too many substantial changes.

But obviously if you've got some comments there for us to consider, then we can still

tweak it after today's meeting.

Daniel, I just had a question.

So you mentioned that you've consulted with residents to ask them what they want to see

in the plan.

Is that included now, their response or have you considered what the residents have asked for?

Yes, so that's included in the appendix and the report.

Obviously we have to prioritise what we look at as a committee so we can't look at everything.

But we've included it for information for members so if members want us to sort of incorporate some of that feedback from residents then we can do that.

But we have to weigh it up in terms of what are some of the strategic items that we have

already identified versus what residents want to look at as well.

Yep, Natalie.

Thanks, Chair.

I don't know when the best time to make these comments are, but basically I've got a load

of comments about my portfolio area.

So the first one is to say the waste, what's called the waste plan.

Let me just scroll down to it.

The spotlight or?

Yeah, so they're all put us, well no, most of them are put as spotlights,

but actually I don't think all of them need to be spotlights.

So the electric vehicle programme, the roll out of the charging infrastructure,

what I'd like to suggest and maybe I'd like the committee to kind of feedback

on is that we have a rolling tracker so that the team can let us know how the

rollout of those EV charge points is going so I think that's a key thing that

residents are really interested in knowing like when they're going to get

EV charge points in their area so I'd like the us to work with the service to

get a point on our action plan that just sits on our action plan over the next year.

So every month we get an update from the service, like where we're at, how many we've done,

what wards have we done and what wards are still to come.

So I don't think there needs to be a spotlight at all unless people in the committee are

keen to do a spotlight on it.

My scrutiny review, instead of being on the walking and cycling, it's actually going to

be a scrutiny review on road deaths. So the borough's got a number of very dangerous

junctions. We see a number of deaths and a number of fatalities across the borough every

year and I want to understand what more we can do to prevent road danger. The waste strategy,

so I think we've already got the waste strategy, there's the reduction in recycling plan,

that's already in the work programme as a spotlight.

And the transport strategy again, we did a review,

or the service came and did early engagement

with us last year.

I thought we gave some good feedback.

They were really open and constructive with us.

We can look at it again, but I don't think it's a priority

early on in the year, certainly.

So certainly we could look at it later in the year

and do a spotlight if members of the committee want to do that.

I think it would be really positive to do that,

especially as there's no other place within scrutiny

to do that.

But I think it's not a priority early in the year.

So just in terms of like, there's quite a lot of stuff

that we want to try and get done now.

I don't think it necessarily needs to be done right now.

So yeah, thanks.

Thank you.

Kaysa Lassma.

Thank you. The work plan has been somewhat an ongoing thing for us in the community.

It's a built up and it's got some continuous work that we've been looking at. So that's

why some of your suggestions, chair, comes, it doesn't make sense, it doesn't help scrutiny.

Where we want to spotlight on waste, you've suggested recycling spotlight and that's not

enough, especially with this committee has been looking at the investment in the last

two years.

I just wondered why you've crossed out Look for Rahman on every single page.

I don't understand the spotlight.

Maybe you have a different engagement idea, I don't know, but at the moment it's all crossed

out.

You've also put two items for us to spotlight, looking at transgender assessment and there was another one in there.

And they're both your previous cabinet role, which is asking Council for the authority to come in.

And I don't really understand where it's come from. Usually we know why we're looking at certain things.

So I'm happy to look at those two items if you can explain for what reason, why has it come,

Is it come from community? Is it something that's happening in government that's changing legislation?

Maybe that's the reason why you've asked for it, but it'd be nice to know why you put them two in there

At the moment, I'm leaning more towards the plan that we have because that's more of a joint work

If I could get the answers for for the questions I've raised maybe we can incorporate some of your suggestions, but definitely not all of it

Thank you

In terms of these, like I explained in the beginning, these are my suggestions and my

in terms of my recommendations as the chair. Now, like I said, if there's elements of it

that basically we as a committee do not want to move forward with or we do not agree on,

Because it's not written in stone, it's just for us to have a discussion and say, okay,

maybe certain other things take priority.

And in terms of what you said about the two items, so I didn't really understand that

two items.

Okay, so you've suggested two items as a spotlight, which is looking at your previous role when

you were in cabinet.

So it's both the equality portfolio, asking Councillor Boteach, I'd like to come in.

One is on, let me just find that for you, to consider our groundbreaking transgender

needs assessment and help shape its recommendations to Cabinet, Council and our partners.

When you say our groundbreaking transgender needs assessment, I'm just a bit confused,

is it something you've been working on, hence why you thought of suggesting this?

Or if I could understand why, then that would be helpful.

There's another one you've added as well.

Review council community engagement strategy.

And it's also got, I mean this is more, I can understand it,

but I'm not sure it's such a big scope,

I'd much rather us aim at a certain part of the engagement

instead of the entire engagement strategy.

So I'd just like to understand why.

That's fine, thanks for the clarification.

In terms of whether it was part of my portfolio role before or not, I think that's not for me, I don't think that's an issue per se.

If there's an issue in terms of as a borrower, that's something that we need to be prioritising now.

If that happens to be that I was a lead member before on this particular role and it's come up,

which is the needs of the people of the borough, then I don't see any issues with that.

Like I said, this is put out there so that we can have this discussion and we can in terms of if we as a group,

because we have to move forward as a group.

If we move forward as a group, if we agree on it,

then we move forward with this.

I hope that clarifies the question.

Just two questions, really.

One is, there's a date in there for a mayor spotlight.

We don't have the date in our calendars

unless I've been missed out on the 25th of September.

Is that going ahead?

and second one is do we need to agree this today?

Because it would be quite...

You're looking at this.

The one that was just been given.

Oh that's okay.

All right.

Okay.

In terms of the mayor's participation in the spotlight,

this was...

The mayor has agreed on attending two sessions,

Which basically I don't know if I've shared the dates with about there's two dates

That mayor will be in terms of attending

obviously and

the met

Eva should have been sent out in terms of

We have our sessions on a Monday

mayor has his

surgeries

on a Monday, which is basically

which is the reason he can't and previously there's been different dates explored.

So there should have been an email sent out explaining to members that we are exploring two days away from Monday

where the mayor will be attending.

Okay, we don't have the dates yet.

So what we're looking to do to make sure the mayor can attend is to move the meeting to

the Tuesday in November, which I think is the 25th of November.

Is that right?

You're saying it's the Thursday?

No, it's the 25th.

Okay, oh no, so what we're doing, so it's going to, the mayor's spotlight is in November,

It's in for the 25th of November at the moment, Tuesday.

Not next week.

Not next week, I don't know where that's come from.

So it's in November 25th.

It's in the new paper.

Is this the new paper?

No, no, no.

That's the dead paper.

To mic, Councillor, mic please.

It's okay.

So Councillor, why don't you tell me around in the number.

Daniel, if you can, in terms of what Daniel was saying.

Let me just say this on the mayor's...

Look, please.

Councillor, can Daniel finish what he's going to say?

Let me just say this on the mayor's spotlight one.

It will be the 25th of November.

We're just getting final confirmation from the mayor's office

that he can attend and then we'll send out the invite and change it.

I was still having a meeting on the Monday the 24th.

Nah, if we're going to change the meeting from Monday to Tuesday.

Hopefully that will be, we will send out, Daniel will send out in terms of the date to confirm,

so you have plenty of time in terms of putting in your diary and making arrangements.

Councillor Mandan, did you have?

Yeah, I will go back to this one on the Student Education Committee.

On page 205, it has got right at the bottom, mental health.

So on that mental health, I have spoken to the officers and also spoke to the members

on the committee that mental health is before mental health comes in, we will put in what

you call outreach to find out the mental health coming to effect with the start from school

bullying and that's been raised up.

So I want to put that as a marked reference to put on agenda.

So at least we carry out the outreach,

we'll find out what we can do about it, where we are,

how we can improve it.

Because that is good bullying lead to mental health

of the children and everything else.

So I want to slightly tweak that

and make it into proper agenda.

So at least it's not going to one day

just basically carry on for whatever time it takes

to find the result on this.

So I just want to make that into affirmative please,

chief police chief.

mandated through the

metric Hend Contactness

andomp scars.

Dis Instruments

yourS and ID

awareness

and

amber

So to have the borough commander come in, which I think we all have collectively agreed is really important,

and allows us to hold the police to account in a critical friend kind of way.

So the point of the integrated enforcement being on the same day is because while we've got Dal here,

we've been working on a new approach around the 30 or the 40 highest prevalent offenders,

but that directly links into the borough commander.

So I think to Councillor Dislaum's point, I'd much prefer we stick with what we've agreed here

because this painstaking amount of work that's gone into figuring out and imagine from officer's side

this current draught and I think to change it, it is put in a bit of a wrecking ball through what we've all worked on.

I think your point, Daniel, we need to be live to it changing so there isn't currently a spotlight on the reoffending rates

which is the only review I'm taking as a scrutiny lead

and that will have to go in there.

And in terms of the council communications point,

happy for it to come sooner, but time and time again,

every month has gone by where we haven't spoken

about some element of the council communication

and the failings of the department

and the ability to get better at it.

It's come up time and time again.

So to not talk about it because it's a closely election,

I mean, I'd argue January,

before short campaign starts in March, isn't close.

It's a municipal year, that's how it works.

But happy to discuss about bringing it earlier.

But it's so vital to us engaging with our residents,

especially harder to reach residents,

where I don't think we're doing it very effectively.

So to get rid of it entirely, I think

is in a place that's really important.

And a really aller -just retreat, that was really important.

There's a few others, but I'm pretty sure

our people might want to come in.

Any other comments?

Just, Daniel if you can just clarify in terms of this work programme, in terms of how many

other sessions or how many in terms of input will members have into the final sort of draught?

This is it tonight in terms of agreeing on a draught.

It will now be our work programme for the year ahead because now we need to start letting

services know about what items they need to come on.

So this is it.

If there is any changes that are suggested tonight,

then we can incorporate that.

And then if big issues come up,

then we can start to adjust to that as we go on.

But we wanna try and be as fixed as we possibly can.

So in terms of sort of accommodating the suggestions

that you're circulated,

I don't feel like there's a consensus here

that we wanna take them on.

So I feel like we are more leaning towards

the version we got published.

But what we can do if we as a committee agree to version and got published and then we can

meet and talk about some of your items and how we might look at that in different ways.

Unless there is any other suggestions that you have circulated here, unless members are

sort of banging the table to include them, we might have to look at different ways to

look at that.

But we need to agree a version tonight.

So we need to agree on this. Are we going to vote on it?

Sorry, I know the officer put a lot of effort into this. I agree with Abdi.

We can agree to it, but there is a chance that we can tweet it as well.

So we've got to give us 48 hours for us to read through properly.

And if we need to tweet slightly there and there, it's given all of us the opportunity.

That's one suggestion rather than just make an affirmative decision now.

Today is Monday. Give us 48 hours and we'll give you...

Yes, Daniel said basically that we need to

agree on the

Main stuff and then basically going forward if there's any kind of amendments any kind of addition

Again it comes back to issues or prioritising as well

So if something kills comes up something else might have to drop off and we'll have them discussions as we go along

officers will work with scrutiny leads to establish that.

So thinking about the children's subcommittee as well,

we had a discussion last week on the work programme.

There's still some flex in that as well.

There's still some areas to add to that.

You haven't had a subcommittee meeting yet,

it's the last one to have.

So when we have that, there'll be an opportunity

for members to sort of feed in there.

But we have to agree some plan for us to then start working

once the year goes ahead.

So just to say, yeah, I totally agree.

So in terms of basically, what I've handed out is basically,

this is and I clarified it in the beginning that these are my suggestions

amendments I'm happy to go with in terms of what we've agreed but in terms of

basically there needs to be a scope of basically if I or any other members want

to add or incorporate anything going forward there should be that opportunity

to do that.

That has allowed me to...

I mean I'm happy to go with that if that's kind of the compromise that we stick to the original

with the idea that it's an evolving document, it's a live document, so we can keep adding to it, I think that makes sense.

I was just going to second what Catherine and Anant said. I think if we can at the very least agree what's happening in October

and then we can maybe have this discussion if we need to include it.

But I think your suggestion sounds eminently sensible in the sense of we'll keep the original document

with the idea that we can, if need be, change it.

Keep it as a working document so that basically we can make adjustments

and there will be at points where different things come up

that we'd have to look at and change.

So this is, just to add this, I know I'm repeating myself,

I want that opportunity to basically, not just myself,

everyone have that opportunity to do that going forward.

I completely agree, I think a live document is really important.

It is a shame that we haven't kept the, I think we agreed in June we were going to do a spotlight,

or a focus, an update report on hate crime, and I think the team have worked really hard.

I think we agreed six months we'd come back just to note the updates from the team.

I think we've, potentially an email said a year, but my understanding, and it was agreed universally,

I'm sorry, it's six months and the team have done a lot of work on it, so maybe we can have that as an item

that's just for noting rather than debating or anything, but just to say I completely agree with the chairman, it's a live document.

So I'm happy to agree with all the suggestions, everything that's said so far. We leave it as a live document, but any changes have to be backed with rationale.

It's not just you get to go off and we have a conversation and it's agreed by this committee

for any changes.

So I like the fact that Councillor Manoa and Councillor Muhammad talked about October.

Let's make it a thing that every forthcoming committee meeting we can take any changes

from that point and especially with anything that's going on currently would be helpful

to shape that.

I would hope that every member here when we do suggest and put things forward, we are doing it for rationale, we are doing it for a purpose.

So, yeah, so we will move on.

If no other members have any questions or comments, we will move on to the improvement

plan and Matthew is going to go through that.

I'm happy for us to move on.

Thank you, chair.

I'm aware of time, so I will try not to take too long on the introduction.

Particular to everyone who has seen the plan a few times now, I think.

So this is the latest iteration of the scrutiny improvement plan, which is obviously critical

for us as a committee, and our selection of committees and our role with ensuring we support

the Council's policy development and decision making as much as we can, and of course meaningful

engagement.

As well as it being our plan and something we want to do as a committee, of course we're

We're also trying to respond to the best value inspection

and the continuous improvement plan.

So there's that role for this as well.

There's been loads of feedback from members.

I'd like to thank all the members who've contributed

at discussions and workshops via email.

I've seen various email things going along as well.

I thank you for that.

And thank you obviously to Daniel and the team

for putting it all together.

This is obviously a continuously evolving plan.

We've had it for a few years.

we keep updating it.

We don't want to rest on our laurels at any point.

But one thing we did try and do this year

was streamline the number of actions and priorities

because last year the plan was getting a little bit

too big and a little bit too difficult to track and manage.

So hopefully that works and we haven't dropped anything

that people really feel should still be in there.

There's the particular areas of focus,

strategic value, early engagement etc.

But I won't go into those now on time

unless people want me to.

But we would really like members to agree the plan.

I mean obviously like the work plan,

this is something we will always continue to look at,

we continue to discuss, but subject to any amendments

suggested today that the committee are up for agreeing.

It would be great if we could agree it.

And then if members can also nominate themselves,

take ownership of different work streams as well,

that would be really helpful and we'll look to engage you in discussions and updates on

those work streams and bring you all together to discuss it as well in more detail at the

appropriate time. And Daniel can answer as well any detail on some of the discussions

that have been going on.

Thank you Matthew.

Yeah so I've just got some feedback on the plan I think it's really come along so thank

you to you and to Daniel for the work on it. I would like to refer to point four

which I think is on page six of a the scrutiny executive relationship. I think

there needs to be something added to this and not necessarily about the executive

but us as a committee. The first envoys letter to ministers I think

bigged up and spoke highly about the changes and the improvement that's been

made in O &S and I personally think it's descended slightly and it's gone down

over the past couple of months.

So I think there needs to be some work

looking at the scrutiny relationships.

Because I think for a change of personnel to mean

there's such a massive change in how scrutiny is done,

I think means there's underlying issues

and we've not quite dealt with the systemic problems.

So I think there needs to be something that we look at here

because to change one seat, I mean, we descend, I think is disappointing.

And I don't think we'll get the same shout out

as we did maybe the first letter.

Anyone else?

Any questions?

Councillor Aspart.

Can I ask, when do we preempt the LGA second review to be over?

When do we think we're going to hear back?

How have we started planning for that and how that's going to impact this as well?

So the review is taking place at the beginning of October, 7th and 8th of October, it's only

a day and after review. We've factored it into our work programme in terms of sort of

hearing the initial sort of findings and responses for November. We do need to confirm that in

terms of whether the OGA will be ready to provide us with something at that point. But

I think in terms of any of the key things that come out of that, we will incorporate

If there's anything key for scrutiny, we will include it in this plan.

So like we talked about the work programme as an involvement document, the improvement

plan will be to an extent as well, because if there's big things that come out from either

the next, the envoy letter that Councillor Mohamed was talking about or the OGA, then

we'll need to respond to that and pick that up as well.

So how does or how will the minister, the envoys report to the minister every, is it

three months or six months, how will that inform what we do here with the plan?

Well I guess if they flag up significant issues with scrutiny, we'll need to respond to

as a, it will be part of the wider continuous improvement plan, but I imagine a lot of the

actions were specifically for to our element of the plan. There will be an opportunity

as well for us to view that report at scrutiny before it's submitted as well, so there will

be opportunities for us to understand what the submission's looking like as well. But

yeah, it will be for us to sort of understand what the issue is and how we can then address

it.

Regardless if it's about scrutiny committee itself or the council, we still have a responsibility

of looking at it from some sort of view. Could you please ask those questions about us to

the chief exec and our officer lead who can ask the envoys that, just so we are prepared

for the because this we've always been told this is also another work in progress how that will keep framing

What we do and how we look at this is okay. Yeah. Thank you

Yeah, endorse that I just very quick question comment I suppose as well

that the

obviously for the continuous improvement plan, there's lots of programmes of different areas of work and

scrutiny is part of the governance programme, so

Daniels part of a couple of boards that work

Underneath kind of the big structure we have all of the different sort of the transformation advisory

worship transformation shows border and so on down the line, so that's a good way of keeping that communication going

And so we can use that to report back to us as a committee when we need to

Any other I'm just gonna give it up

Just to save time, in terms of these two points that I really want to highlight.

One is in regards to the strategic vision 2030 development engagement.

The members raised and asked that future documents report be circulated with the agenda so that

members can give and consider response rather than having to respond to their just on the

day.

Committee notes the report and the presentation.

The report said that there would be a presentation.

If you recall back when that presentation was made, there was no papers circulated.

And there was supposed to be a presentation emailed to date.

I don't know if anyone has received those presentations.

And also in terms of the papers being late.

I think it's very important that a lot of us here have or do have second jobs and families etc.

And not receiving papers and I know this is sometimes it's not just rests on one person's shoulder

and this actually has a knock -on effect. But it's really really important that, and I've raised it in my meetings with corporate directors,

that they should be regularly reminding colleagues that papers need to be on time so that members can go through those papers

and make decisions or make comments without having to rush through those papers.

So I just want this to be noted going forward.

Can I just second on that because I did raise it a few times,

and I was raising it before to a previous chair as well,

when I was in charge that we don't get papers in time,

and it's not just suddenly happened, it's been going on for a long time.

So I know you raised it as a chair as well.

I would be happy to see improvement, but I have not seen the improvement of the last three years.

Thank you very much. Any other comments, questions?

Are we happy to move on?

I did raise the point about point four, so is that going to be included?

I didn't get an answer to that, sorry.

Yeah, we'll look at strengthening that a little bit.

The next item is the appointment of the co -opted members to subcommittee.

Thank you.

So we'll move ahead, can I ask Jack to introduce him?

Thank you chair, I'll keep this quite short and sweet.

We've got two co -operative members to be appointed to some subcommittees, that has to be done through the main committee which is obviously why it's here today.

The two appointees is to agree the appointment of Osnara Ali to the position of parent governor

representative on the children education and security subcommittee for the period of the

current administration.

And the second one is to agree the appointment of Leo De Sousa to the position of health

watch representative on the health and adult security subcommittee for the period of the

current administration.

Leo is also, as you can see in the appendix, has provided a bit of information just for

what he's done previously.

So yeah, it's just for the committee to agree on those appointments.

So for us to agree on and not to be noted and taken forward, yeah?

So yes, first...

Just one question, Jack. Jack, can you clarify, if any co -optee decides to put themselves forward as a candidate for any political party,

would that then do to their membership of any ONS or sub -committees?

I'm going to have to ask Matthew because I don't know how to answer that question.

So we have made it clear to both of the new COPTs that they are required to be non -political

and that would include many of the obvious involvements in the campaign. So if anyone

becomes aware of anything then let me know and we can deal with that.

I would also, I suppose it's worth adding that the Health Watch appointment was nominated

and the parent governor

there is an election process

within the parent governors

and that is how that person

is selected.

Sometimes it is officers

who do the interviews

but on these ones

they are given to us

as people for us to put up.

Any other comments,

questions?

Is that noted

and taken forward?

Thank you.

I think we have a question

Moving on, pre -decision for scrutiny and forthcoming decisions.

Any questions?

In the agenda, scrutiny lead updates after the, we're supposed to now look at scrutiny

lead updates but they're not printed in the agenda.

If anyone wants to update what they have been doing, feel free.

If I go first, just an update in terms of community safety.

So now I've decided to focus on a spotlight on reoffending.

We spent the summer engaging with our partners, so probation service, some of our own teams in the council.

Given we all agreed that the work around hate crime would be working with the team in terms of a realistic timetable and plan around that.

So it's been a summer of talking to our partners, both about the hate crime work that ONS has been doing,

We are looking forward to the reoffending rates and the committee making sure our partners

are brought on board with that.

It is a good update.

Thank you, Chair.

We will be undertaking our Scootoony Challenge session on postnatal BME mothers in Tower

because it's 24th of November, not 25th.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor.

That's it, yeah.

Yeah, so I've been meeting with the senior officers.

I've been trying to get a meeting with the lead member

for a number of reasons we've not been able to meet yet,

but hopefully we'll be meeting next week.

And I've been planning my scrutiny review,

so that's going to be, as I said earlier, about road deaths.

So we have not yet set a date for a spotlight session, but it could be outside of the normal meetings.

But I hope it will be pretty interesting. I'm also going to try and get some residents in, trying to focus on just in general how safe does it feel getting around the borough

and how manageable the different types of transport modes feel for different abilities

like considering disabilities and that sort of thing.

I also went to the waste depot down in, I'm not really sure what area it is, sort of back

wall, Docklands, and that was really good.

The atmosphere on the depot was really, really kind of supportive

and especially among street sweeping teams, they were all awarded a staff award this year.

So it was really great to speak to them about how motivating that's been

and how the recent investment in the teams actually made a difference.

So yeah, that was really great.

Any other members?

So if we can move on to the next item.

Which is there's not any out of business.

The next meeting is the 13th of October.

And with that, I want to thank everyone.

and see you at the next meeting. Thank you.

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Overview & Scrutiny Committee - Monday 15 September 2025, 6:30pm - Tower Hamlets Council webcasts

Overview & Scrutiny CommitteeMonday, 15th September 2025 at 6:30pm

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Overview & Scrutiny Committee
Monday, 15th September 2025 at 6:30pm