Overview & Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday 25 November 2025, 6:30pm

Overview & Scrutiny Committee
Tuesday, 25th November 2025 at 6:30pm

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1 APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

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7 a) Mayor's Spotlight

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CS Mayors Spotlight 25.11.2025

7 b) LBTH Women’s Commission

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7 c) Waste Services

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9 SCRUTINY LEADS UPDATES

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1 APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

Thank you very much.

Also, if there's any technical issues, we will resume the meeting on the instructions of the officers.

I would also like to remind all members to, or everyone who's speaking, please speak directly and clearly onto the mic so everyone can hear.

If there is any fire, if the fire lamb goes, we just follow the procedures as per usual.

Moving on, Jack, is there any apologies?

Jack, can you hear us?

Matthew?

Jack possibly is having a technical problem.

So we have Sabina Khan who has joined us online.

We have an apology from Amy Lee and Councillor Mohammed Chowdhury is substituting for her.

I think that's all the apologies that we have today.

Thank you Matthew. Welcome to Councillor Sabina Khan who is online.

Moving on to Declaration of Peculiar Interest, if anyone has any declarations please.

Thank you. We're going to skip minutes to the end.

We'll also skip the action log. We're going to go straight into the Mayor's spotlight.

7 a) Mayor's Spotlight

I want to welcome the Mayor, thank you very much for your time.

I know you have a very busy schedule.

I also want to welcome the corporate directors and Steve Halsey as well.

Steve needs to leave as of mission before 7 o 'clock.

So is the Mayor. He needs to leave at 7.

So we're going to go straight into the Mayor's spotlight.

May I invite the Mayor to say a few words?

We are conscious that you need to leave early, Mr. Mayor, so we'll give you five minutes

to make a presentation, please, and then we'll go into it, if that's okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, colleagues.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to come before you and to say a few words, greetings

of peace to each and every one of you.

Just bear with me with the time, please, if you can.

This is an important moment to reflect on the progress

we've made over the past year to mark key delivery milestones

for service delivery and to set out the next steps

in our improvement journey.

But before then, can I thank you and your committee members

for the excellent work that you do,

not only in holding the exhibitry account,

but more importantly in contributing in the various

areas, the policy developments and the

contributions that you make.

And whether it's you or Councillor Asma Islam before

you, I've always conveyed my regards and gratitude to

members of your committee, and I do so again.

Twelve months ago, Mr. Chairman, the best value

inspection challenged us to change.

It asked difficult questions about governance, culture and leadership.

We accepted that challenge and we acted.

Today I want to share what has been achieved, why it matters for our residents where we

go next.

Part one, I want to talk about outcomes priorities achieved over the last year.

In the terms of governance and leadership, the transformation and assurance board now

brings external challenges, challenge and oversight to our improvement journey.

In fact, we had a transformation board meeting today and spent control panels

and revised delegation frameworks have improved, I believe, accountability

and reduced bottlenecks.

And the Scrutcheon Committee yourselves have put in, put an ambitious phase two improvement

planning place which we very much welcome.

In terms of political culture and membership, member development, we, us, we together co -designed

a new member pledge and behavioural standard framework.

I hope it works for all of us.

All cabinet members now have personal development plans and the council achieved the LGA Council

Development Charter which we very much welcome.

I would also like to assure you that I am firmly against any behaviour that brings this

Council's reputation among residents and key stakeholders alike into disrepute.

As elected members, we all have a duty to represent the field of time in a dignified

and respectful manner and I have made it clear to our group that toxic behaviour will not

be tolerated under any circumstances.

In terms of culture and workforce, over 2 ,700 staff engaged in surveys and 1 ,400 attended

the chief executive roadshows.

We launched the Your Voice Forum, a representative group of over 100 staff to co -produce solutions

for our council.

Council, we became the first council in Britain to reverse the gender pay gap, meaning that

now women are paid more than men, and something I am incredibly proud of, and improved diversity

at senior levels, with 43 % of top earners now from the black, Asian and multi -ethnic

communities.

This shows our workforce to reflect the community strategy is working, but we have more to do.

In terms of partnership and participation, we produced a new voluntary and community

sector strategy and compact, which I believe you have seen, developed a community engagement

toolkit and recognition policy embed participation in everything we do.

Published the latest annual resident survey results showing sustained improvement in resident

perception of the council across most areas.

In the financial and operational resilience area,

we have published a medium -term financial strategy

and resolved historic accounts dating back to 2016,

2017, and 2021, 2022.

We are on track to deliver another balanced MTFS

in due course over the next three years,

making us one of the best performing councils,

I believe, in the country financially.

We have strengthened procurement controls and risk management following external reviews.

In this area of service delivery excellence, children's services were rated outstanding

by Ofsted in January 2025 and we are grateful to our wonderful staff in that service and

to the lead member and the corporate director.

We've introduced, as you know, free school meals for people up to the age of 16, the

first in the UK to do so and saving average of a

three -member family, children, of £1 ,600 a year.

We've openly sentenced every ward and invested

£13 .7 million annually in the EEDS service,

additional money.

We've launched our Millstone Wheel Service,

providing a hot meal seven days a week to over 100

vulnerable and elderly people, and hopefully that

will increase over the weeks and months to come.

We have seen 20 ,000 users of our free swimming sessions

on a regular basis, benefiting women and girls aged 16 plus,

and men over the age of 55.

83 % of these 20 ,000 have been solely female users, something

that we should congratulate our staff for the wonderful work

that they've done to encourage women, more women

to use the facilities.

We have remained on track to exceed our 4 ,000

affordable homes by next year while launching the mayor's

accelerated housing programme, which

will see another 3 ,300 homes in the coming years.

I'm very confident in delivering those homes on some 43 council

sites.

Passed our draught local plan and full council last Wednesday.

You've seen some of the ambitious programmes

that's been embedded, hopefully, in those local plan.

40 % affordable homes, 40 % to 50 % affordable homes,

and reduced the shared ownership element to some 15 %

from the previous plan.

Launched our free school uniform grant to the tune of some

200 pounds from 50 pounds for primary school,

150 pounds for secondary school starting with the children

starting school with those families under an income

threshold of £50 ,350 a year.

We've launched a new tackling drug task force,

a £1 .5 million investment over three years,

which was recently captured in a BBC documentary this week.

We launched our £4 .9 million a year for a new free

home care service for vulnerable adults.

And we have invested some 40 million pounds in the leisure services, including bringing

leisure services under council control, additionally 67 million pounds in the St. Georges Leisure

Centre with family sized homes.

We have provided over 4 ,000 people with £175 winter fill payment last year and we continue

to provide our £1 ,500 university bursary payment to 800 students and £600 a year EMA

payments to 1 ,200 students.

And we have continued our generous council tax freeze for all households earning less

I know you're looking.

You want me to come to an end or can I finish my presentation?

It's up to you, Jay.

If you, how long?

I should be finishing very soon.

Two more minutes.

Sure.

I want to give you, thank you, I want to give you an update on, there's much more I can

go on about.

I don't want to do so.

Two more minutes.

You have seen our peer review update.

Hopefully the report will come out soon, at least by early next year.

and it's been, we've made significant strides, improvement to what was recommended when they

came last year and I'm grateful to our chief executive and the corporate management team

and staff throughout for helping us in that improvement journey.

What's next? Our improvement journey. You know, our continuous improvement plan brings

over 40 projects under four programmes, vision, partnership and participation, governance

and political culture and workforce are one corporate team.

And our upcoming priorities in the weeks and months to come will launch our Tohamless 2035

vision and embed the community engagement toolkit, deliver the people's strategy and

power services review for a resilient, high -performing workforce.

Just to conclude, Chair and members of the committee, the past year has been about recovery

and rebuilding trust the year ahead is about resilience and ambition, making improvement

part, being embedded and making it part of our DNA as a council.

We welcome Scrutin as I said at the outset and challenges that you put to us and hopefully

together we'll make it a better council.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Mayor.

Thank you for that presentation.

Before I go on to members for questions, I just want to say a few words.

In terms of what you highlighted in the beginning, the BVI report, et cetera, there was a lot

of recommendations that's done.

With any organisation and Council being a very large organisation, there's different

that we face and where we're lacking.

I think that goes in a long way in terms of improvement.

So I wanna start off with that,

that the council and you as its head,

as well as the CEO, recognising that.

That's I think the first step in any improvement plan

that we have in place.

I'm gonna open the floor now to members to ask questions.

So if we can just be brief and if I can remind all members that if you can address

on the points that the mayor has

made his presentation on so if I can

so councillor Mannen

Then councillor Natalie if you to start and then I'll go to councillor Islam. So

Thank you, Mayor and this team for coming.

My basic question is two questions into one.

What is the best thing that you have achieved this year?

I know you mentioned a lot of things you have achieved.

And what is the one thing that you most want to achieve before the election?

What is the best thing you have achieved this year?

and what is the one thing that you want to achieve before the election?

That's the highlight that you have done, something for the Council.

Okay, thanks Natalie. There are a number of things that we're proud of.

I mean, last week I went and visited an elderly pensioner in her home who received a hot meal

which was delivered to her home.

I feel very, I feel, and I think all of us do, very proud of that Meals on Wheels.

We feel proud for a number of things, but that for me was very touching.

For that elderly person to receive a hot meal once a day of her choice was something I believe

I believe every one of us, and especially at that age, we deserve.

And I'm very proud that this council is back delivering meals on wheels for our pensioners

the most needed in the community.

The one thing that I very much want to see being delivered over the years, and especially

now or any time, is trying to reduce the overcrowding in the borough.

I do surgeries twice a week, I do door knocking, so do you and you colleagues, to see the number

of families and kids who are living in overcrowding households.

We really want to see three, four bedroom homes being delivered at a rank that is affordable

so that we will reduce the overcrowding and give our kids and our families a better life

chance.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mr Mayor, for coming and giving your presentation.

I'd like to address not necessarily something that was in the speech but was something that

was, I felt, omitted.

So we have Baroness Oeddon here who's going to present to us about the Women's Commission.

And I was surprised that the Women's Commission wasn't listed in your speech as one of your

major achievements or things that you're proud of or things that are at the forefront of

your mind. So could you reaffirm your commitment to the commission in front of the committee

please?

I'm fully committed behind and with the Women's Commission. I'm grateful to the commission

for the work that the Commission have done under the leadership of Baroness Oudin,

a Commission that we set up and we've resourced,

and whatever suggestion that comes, or criticisms that comes out of it,

I will respect it and I will embed it when it comes to change in our delivery of this Council.

So I'm fully embedded to the Women's Commission and the work.

and I'm grateful to the work that Commission has done to date.

Thank you. Can we move to Councillor Islam, please?

Thank you. Good evening. So my question is, there's two fronts of it, but both of them

about the next generation. Firstly, we are raising the next generation in an age of new

technologies, AI revolution. I know we're doing a lot as a Council to try and start

changing the way that our systems work in the council.

I've never heard you talk about what that AI

and that change looks like for our residents,

for that next generation of leaders.

How do you do that?

Are you doing anything to keep yourself informed

so that young people can be part of the future job market?

And with that comes the green agenda

and I don't believe that low traffic neighbourhoods

should be the only thing that we talk about

when we talk about the green agenda,

can you talk about what you've done

and where the investment has gone in

in the last three and a half years

in order to protect our next generation

when it comes to the climate emergency?

Thank you.

I mean, as to the next generation,

I am not an IT savvy person,

but I understand the need for AI and be innovative

and be up to speed

when it comes to the next generation of technology.

I see my children, as I said earlier on today,

my grandchild is only 15 months old.

She's already got a laptop, you know,

and she knows how to, you know, she plays on the keyboard.

She's beginning to understand what it means to have a laptop.

She sees her parents.

She sees us at home with a laptop.

I am fully committed.

This council is fully committed to AI, to new technology,

and we've had discussions in the Mayor's Advisory Board about the next, you know, what is next

in terms of technology and how can we take advantage of the technology to do more for less,

but at the same time not making sure we don't make our workforce redundant.

Steve or Mr Razak can talk to you about that. We're doing a lot of work, I can assure you,

And I believe this council is taking advantage of all the

technologies out there.

As to young people, they are our future.

I fully agree.

I mean, I was talking in a meeting from early on.

I saw how our education service, Steve Reddy,

Lisa Fraser, the youth services, and my lead member,

going to schools, getting a deal with BT and others,

and distributing laptops in schools so that our kids

don't feel deprived, they have the technology in order to take

advantage of technology.

But if you have any suggestions that we can do,

we can impart knowledge of our youngsters, do let us know.

I'll be more than happy to talk to corporate directors and

others and lead members so we instal those technologies,

not only to better and to equip our youngsters or leaders of

tomorrow, but also to make this council a leader in technology

more efficient.

As to the green agenda, I'm fully behind the green agenda.

We were talking today in our budget subcommittee, looking at the carbon fund, looking at the

green fund, how do we take advantage of the sexual and sex money, the other money that

comes our way to make this council eco -friendly.

And if you want more information, I'm sure corporate directors can give you more information.

But thank you for those questions.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Before I go to Halima, I've got a question, Mr. Mayor.

These are very am... the manifesto and some of the... your ambition in terms of delivering for the local community.

These are very ambitious. We as a council have always been financially very prudent in terms of how we finance.

How confident and can you give us a surety that all of these projects which are on the pipeline,

how are we going to be sustaining and maintaining in terms of financing to keep it within our limits?

If you can just say a few words on that.

Thank you. I mean, whatever we do, we need to balance our books.

There are no two ways about that.

We delivered a three -year MTFS last year and the year before.

We introduced a three -year budgeting process.

I'm glad the government has also, this current government is also delivering that.

We're going through a budgeting process now.

I am, and we are confident, obviously I'm at the goodwill

and the wisdom of our excellent Special 1 -5 -1 officer,

chief executive and our corporate directors

and other officers.

I am, we have embedded our manifesto pledges in the base,

in the base in our first year when we did our budget.

And we are very confident that we will deliver another

balanced budget this year and over the next three years.

Obviously, you know, we do receive government grants.

We are a deprived borough.

One of the child poverty is one of the highest in the country,

highest in the country, where we look forward to the settlement

from the government according to the formula tomorrow.

I hope it's a good budget, helps local authorities across the

helps decent working people and people who are on benefits.

I'm confident that we will balance our books, I'm confident that we'll continue to invest the 45 to 50 million pound additional money

that we've invested in our communities for the benefit of the older folks of this borough. Thank you.

Thank you. We're going to take three questions now.

I'm going to go to Halima.

If you can ask your question, let the mayor make a note.

And then I'm going to go to Councillor Abdi.

Then I'm going to go to Councillor Kiberia.

Can you speak online?

Yeah.

We'll come on to that.

So if you could ask your question to three people, yeah?

Thank you, chair.

Thank you, mayor, for your presentation.

My question is around school uniform and free school meals.

Are these supports sustainable and if so, how are they going to be funded long term?

Thank you.

I'm very grateful to you.

We set aside about a million pound for the school uniform grant.

I wish we had the money to give a grant uniform to all our kids, but our money is not finite,

is limited. But a million pound will be spent and money will be available for free school

uniform for those kids starting primary school, those starting secondary school. So 50 pound

primary and £150 secondary, it is in the base and as I answered to

Councillor Oaid before, I am very confident that we will ban the

box. Similarly for the free school meals, we had put that money in the base. We are

grateful to the Mayor of London for seeing sense and making money available for the

primary school. Now the government have also stepped in last year and I think

This takes effect from this year, Mr Vazakir.

There will be some money, not universal,

some money will be available from the government

towards school meals in the secondary school.

So yes, between the mayor of London and the government,

we'll get some support.

So that frees up my money for our general fund.

But whatever surplus we need to find,

banks will need to find, we have found it.

And I'm very confident going forward,

We will find that money and balance our books.

Thank you.

Thank you. Can I get Councillor Apti if you can ask a question?

And then if you can, Councillor Kibbeaki, if you can ask your question as well.

Thank you. Before your cabinet tomorrow you've got the hate crime reporting journey action plan.

So I'm really keen to hear from you, your kind of commitment to how, what more we can do as a borough,

given the current political climate, given how much is going on in the community,

to ensure where you are leading by example, the chief executive leading by example.

In the actual action plan, a lot focuses within the community directorate,

rather than being totally across the council.

So what more can you do as a corporate centre, both you and the chief executive,

to ensure every part of the council is taking the part and doing something around hate crime.

Mr. Mayor, can we just take Councillor Kibbe's questions?

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good evening, Mr Mayor.

Good evening, all, and thank you, Mr Mayor, for your informative presentation.

My question is in relation to the free school meal, whether there are any future plans to

extend this programme to include faith schools or independent private schools.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Cribbera.

Thank you, Councillor Abdi.

Hate crime, I am fully embedded in all my, all our councillors across the board, in something

that we all need to support, share and promote.

There is no room for hate.

Whatever the nature of hate is in this country or in this

borough, we are a diverse multicultural community.

And what makes us strong is our diversity,

is our multiculturalism, who we are as individuals,

what we bring from our respective heritage

that makes us strong.

We are fully committed to that.

I'll ask Steve to comment on the work that we're doing around that area, but if you believe

there's room for improvement, Councillor, please feel free to convey that to me or the

Chief Executive.

Together we've got to take ownership of it, and I do take ownership of that.

In terms of the free school mill, unfortunately, as the law currently stands, Councillor, we

We can't extend that to the independent schools or the

faith schools as far as I know.

That's something that I, my lead member, Councillor

Taluk, the Deputy Mayor and other Councillors have asked

that question of the corporate director and the

director, education director.

At this stage we can't, but we will see and keep review

of the law as it progresses.

But they are our children, they are in education, a lot of them don't come from a wealthy background,

many of them, although they go to a faith school.

And I think they could also do with help those kids and making sure they have a one hot meal

a day, they don't go hungry.

That's the law stance, I'm sorry, we can't extend that provision to the faith schools.

If I could ask Steve to please, if you don't mind, Chair, to come and just talk about the

hate crime paper, please.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Chair.

The only thing I would add, Councillor, is that we're doing quite a lot of work at the

moment in relation to service planning and service transformation for the next 12 months.

So all departmental service plans have a requirement to address the community cohesion agenda and

where relevant to pass comment about how their services can influence this agenda.

It's number one.

Number two, I've recently written to the Home Secretary, particularly in relation to some

far, what is described as far right activity in the borough, and I have in the last week

had a response, and I'm more than happy to share that with members of the scrutiny committee.

In fact, I'll do so as an action from this meeting.

The concern that I've raised is that we take an awful lot of pride as a council and across

all the departments, and I know members do, about the diversity of our population.

With over 150 languages spoken, as everybody knows, we're the most densely populated council

in the country by many times, and that creates challenges.

And there are those who currently, in my estimation, as I've written to the Home Secretary to say,

They're looking to undermine that and they're proactively looking to undermine it.

I wrote to the Home Secretary about the activity that took place in Whitechapel under the banner

of Reclaim Whitechapel from the Islamists.

I had conversations with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and I also raised

concerns about the Britannia Hotel and how that was becoming a focus for those who were

looking to undermine community cohesion in the council.

I could touch upon more what I'd like to do, as you've raised it, is to send members of

the committee, the correspondents with the Home Secretary, and give you a more detailed

briefing to accompany it.

And just, sorry, just on the back of that, Chair, just very quickly, I really much appreciate

this question.

You know, I want to say, and I've said this in public forums, successive leaders of this

council have invested so much in community coition in this borough.

I've seen it for the last 30 years, you know,

when I, since I've been actively involved in politics,

leaders before me, I, and people who come after me,

will, one thing that will run through our veins

is that the community coalition, the togetherness,

and the bond and the respect between the various communities

is vital to us, you know, vital to us.

And in our recent resident survey,

clearly demonstrates that we are a coercive society.

Ninety percent of our residents believe we get on with each other,

despite attempts by others to divide us, we will not be divided.

I'm very confident in that respect. Thank you.

Thank you. We're going to go to Councillor Sabina Khan, who's online,

and then to Councillor James King, and then Councillor Ahmadou Khan.

If you can all place your question,

then the mayor can answer at once.

Thank you.

Councillor Khan.

Can you hear me, Chair?

Yes, loud and clear.

Okay.

Hi, thank you, Chair, for giving me the chance.

Mr. Mayor, can I ask you, in 2022, after the election,

when you talked about EMA, Education Mentor Allowance,

and the youth services, I had my reservation that if this manifesto pledges will be implemented

or not sounded very, you know, a dream in the, in a cloud in the sky. Could you tell me a bit more

about that if, for example, past 2026 in May, if EMA is stopped, what would be the consequences

to the residents?

I mean, how are the residents gaining from the EMA

and what will happen May 2026 if that doesn't carry on?

Thank you.

Can we, okay, if we could,

Councillor James and then Councillor Lauter -Harnick,

if you could just.

Thank you, obviously, we've had protests

from a care provider outside of the town hall recently.

I don't expect you to comment on the legal or technical aspect of what this issue might

be.

Can you speak into the mic?

But with the care worker shortage in the country, how can you guarantee our people who are in

care that they will be receiving the best service and that the contract will be and

the service delivered by the council will be the best that it can be?

I think that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you,

Mr Chair, for your wonderful report.

After that, we're going to have

Women's Commission update, so I

have to ask you, every woman,

7 b) LBTH Women’s Commission

Thank you.

Okay, if we could take our seats, please, and we're going to start with this agenda

item.

Thank you to the officers.

Thank you for attending.

We this is the agenda item for the Women's Commission.

Progress update.

Can I ask Councillor Baudrilli Chowdhury, cabinet member for customer service and social

inclusion to say a few words, please.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Good evening to you all.

Thank you.

As the Cabinet Member for Equality, Social Inclusion,

it's an honour and a privilege to sit with Baroness Anzila Uddin and her team.

As you are all aware, the Women's Commission was set up in 2024.

In year one, the Women's Commission focused on development and team working,

adding and identifying areas of work for the future and the year ahead.

The Women's Commission has started to undertake its work.

As I said earlier, as the Cabinet member of Equalities,

I have been to a lot of the meetings they've had and seminars.

It has been an honour and a great privilege to get the views from the residents and hearing

from the commissioners.

There's only a few here today but there's about six or seven altogether.

Welcome to the work of the commission, obviously.

It's the first time it has been set up in the council so it's a very unique and a very

special thing to have.

We want to highlight the women who are working tirelessly to have a bigger voice anywhere in Tower Hamlet,

whether it's within the Council Chamber or outside and working in the Council itself.

So I would like to welcome the Chair of the Commission, Manzila Uddin, if you could take over. Thank you.

Can I ask, I want to welcome you to this agenda item, if you can say a few words as well.

Thank you very much, distinguished chair, councillors and my fellow commissioners and

the officers.

It's a real privilege to come here and speak to you about the work so far of the commission.

My name is Benzel Aouten and I'm sure you know the Councillor and your offices.

We have ten members altogether.

It's an independent commission appointed by the Tahemed Council.

We've been operating about six, seven months.

Six months, seven months, something like that.

And with a variety of, with the focus of looking at women's services, we have an agenda that

we are following and I have a presentation, Chair, from Musa Mameah and Afezullah and

Claire Daniel has also supported us and I've had the privilege of speaking to members on

two occasions for members' briefing about the Commission, so I hope that some of you

are aware.

Councillor Sabine Attar and Councillor Maisha Begum is part of our Commission and have attended

numerous groups when we met the residents. I'm not giving you the actual details because

I want to enable the officer, Mr. Mamir, to present the work that we're doing. I only

want to say really at this stage that all of us are deeply committed to ensuring that

we come up with what we're listening to women at the moment and I do want to say that this

This is a very fortunate moment for us to also hear your views.

I'm here and we're here not just to hear today,

but if there's any points that you wish to let us have,

you want to share your opinion, you want to make some changes.

We as commissioners would be very pleased to hear your contribution.

I did ask Councillor Bianfort to join us.

I know that she's been particularly busy.

I believe that she and others have been invited.

And we have only, I think, two more meetings to go, public meetings at least.

And I would welcome anybody from the Council or any of the women councillors in particular.

And I am extending my invitation to Council Asma Islam on behalf of our commission

to see some of the work that we're doing.

It is purely at the behest of the residents.

We are there to listen.

I want to say that I understand the services for women in the borough.

I've lived here for most of my adult life with some omission, a very short period elsewhere.

But I just want to say that I know that no council can deliver for women and meet the

needs of women.

There are a number of issues which we will refer to in the presentation, but it is really

important therefore that we've been reaching out to other major organisations and institutions

in the borough.

With good cooperation so far, there is so much more to do and this is just a stepping

stones on the examination of women's services, including political representation.

I hope we are looking at leadership, employment, safety and health and well -being.

So with that, I want to say thank you, express my gratitude for this time.

I'm going to hand over to Mr. Mameer to do her presentation.

Before I do that, please.

Thank you very much.

Before we go to Muslima, I'm going to ask Councillor Sabida to say a few words.

Thank you, Chair.

So like the Chair said of the Women's Commission, there were a few of us commissioners on the Women's Commission,

and we had the opportunity to be part of this programme where we had the opportunity to meet so many local women,

to kind of give their voice. We have a borough full of rich, diverse community talent resilience.

At the same time we do have many of the women still facing many challenges and you know

where a lot of women have expressed, you know, they don't feel safe in the workplace, in

employment, you know, having the same equal opportunities, not being able to feel safe

and just what kind of barriers that they feel, they still feel in today's age that is stopping them to kind of go out there and have the same equal opportunities.

So I've been part of many of the workshops throughout the borough where we actually met the diverse community,

a lot of different women express their kind of struggles, a lot of them in terms of how they would have difficulty in childminding,

they want to have that job, how they don't sometimes feel because of their race or being a woman, they don't have that easy access to health for example.

So we've been part of many workshops that I've been part of and it's good to see some of what the women are saying and it's given us that opportunity

and I really hope that this Commission, at the end of the day, we have good recommendations that we can go out to have real changes,

long -lasting changes in how we kind of give the opportunity to women in this power. Thank you.

Thank you. Sabina, before I go on to Muslema, we're going to take the report as read,

So if I can just ask you just to highlight the important aspects of the report and then

we're going to go into, Jack, are you ready?

We're going to go into a quick -fire round of questions and then we're going to go for

some recommendations.

So if you can just take it as a read and just highlight some of the important aspects of

the presentation.

Yes, thank you, Chair and Councillors, for the introduction.

So, yeah, as mentioned, my name is Muslema.

I'm a strategy and policy officer and I work with Claire, the senior strategy policy officer and Afizul who is here today

And yes, I'll just highlight quickly through the slides

So the Women's Commission was established in 2024 to really investigate and address inequalities affecting women in the borough

So to shape the scope of the Commission a workshop with residents was held in June of 2024 and this helped us identify

Four key priority areas, which you can see here on the screen

These areas were then formalised during a work planning session in March of 2025 and

that was alongside a review of local evidence.

And we can see here how leadership, safety, health and employment, what falls into the

scope of the Women's Commission.

And so to explore the lived experience of women across these four themes, the Commission

conducted extensive consultation with residents across the borough and we started off with

an eight week online survey which was also supported with seven in -person community stores

and also we made available printed, translated and ESOL friendly versions of the survey as

well so it wasn't just on the online platform.

So this was distributed across the borough to help support women with disabilities, language

barriers and also facing digital exclusion and to have their voice represented in those

questions.

So these responses were monitored weekly and we made sure to adjust our outreach strategies

to ensure board representation, which I'll speak to on the next slide here.

And so we did that through our supplementary workshops.

So we can see here just on the screen the number of backgrounds that we targeted this

outreach for, and this is specifically when we did notice low engagement.

So for example, we can see LGBT women, women of black heritage, women from Vietnamese and

Chinese backgrounds, amongst others as well.

Across all themes we had two community workshops and this was delivered in partnership with

local organisations. This is inclusive of the supplementary workshops as well. So we

ran this from July of 2025 up to October 2025 and we can see in terms of numbers, 118 women

we engaged with through the community workshops alone. So for both community and supplementary

workshops, these were held in trusted familiar settings with local

organisations, they were women only spaces and they were made accessible for

example in accessible venues with translators upon request with advanced

participation backs and also all women were remunerated for their participation

as well so with a 20 pound voucher. So looking at our representation the

Women's Commission engaged with 303 women in total so that's 111 from our

survey, that's 118 from our themed community workshops,

and that's 74 for our supplementary workshops.

And when we're looking at this representation in line

with our 2021 census data, we can

see when it comes to ethnic background, this is consistent.

And we have very strong representation

for women who identify as disabled and women of older age

as well.

And so after this wave of engagement,

so from September to December, we're

holding one formal public review per key theme,

so one per month, where we present these key findings

and we also involve key stakeholders and local partners

and residents as well in discussing

what these initial recommendations are

and share the work that they've done as well.

We've also invited members to attend one of two

member seminars that we've held in October and November

where we identified opportunities to collaborate further

and also invite early feedback on the work and findings

that we have so far in advance of the recommendations.

So I'll very quickly go over, very highlights on what these findings are and some of the

very initial draught recommendations.

So, yeah.

Sorry to stop you.

If you can just highlight, because we've received the papers and I'll take it as read, if you

can just highlight anything that maybe is not on here, I'll give you two more minutes

to just highlight that, please.

So it's great that all the committee members have seen through.

So just to very quickly highlight some initial draught recommendations.

So for example from our leadership public review there's an emphasis on more women leadership

spaces.

When we look at, if I fast forward on to health, a number of recommendations that were initially

put forward was about holistic conversations, addressing menopause, addressing menstrual

conditions and also working together with communities. When we look at

employment, which was our most recent public review, there was a very strong

emphasis on childcare support, training opportunities and flexible working. And

our last public review is on safety, which is yet to happen. So that's taking

place on the 9th of December and we've invited the council, the Met

Police as well as the local organisations as well. And in the future

the chair had just mentioned that we're also engaging with young girls as well from Swanley

and Central Foundation Girls so that's another piece of engagement in the future. So I'll just

very quickly summarise with a quick summary. So in 2026 we're looking to launch the Women's

Strategy Report which will include our action focused recommendations. And so I conclude,

so for the committee a few questions on the board here. So we're really keen to hear your

any feedbacks or any gaps or perspectives that you feel like are missing, but also how

can the work of the Commission really be promoted and championed in the work that you do as

well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for the report.

Just before we go into questions, I just want to remind members that we're here to give

feedback on the work of the Commission and then identify any gaps that there may be.

So what we'll do, we're going to go for a quickfire questioning round and then from

that we'll proceed on to any recommendations.

So if I can take three questions at a time, if you can ask your questions, if you can

take note of the questions and then also this one then I'll take another for you.

So I'm going to start with Jahed and then I'm going to go to Councillor Asma,

then I'm going to go to Councillor Kiberia. Thank you chair. So I know you said about

asking questions regarding if there's any gaps identified. My biggest, not

So what do you see as the requirements to use resources and budget funding you would need to implement?

the programmes that you envision to have

Especially in respect to like what the spending controls that we have in place. How would you overcome and overcome that?

necessarily overcome but work with

The council to make sure that you get your resources and funding and what what is it? What is it?

Thank you.

Councillor Lassman.

Thank you.

Can I first see, it must be said, there is no one better to chair this commission than the first British Bangladeshi former Councillor to be elected in this country.

So I think it is our honour that you are happy to chair this and really happy to have you back.

And thank you for the invitation. I think it's the first time someone's actually really open -heartedly opened us up to attend.

And I feel bad now, so next time I'm definitely going to attend the next set of events.

But looking at the report, I think this is a good start. It was a really slow start to this, and we've been requesting this,

and we have to be honest about where we were. But I'm glad we've got a start.

I think there's a lot of work that went behind it and the last year the speed in which a lot of this was done is good.

My sort of suggestion is around making sure there's stronger built -in experiences, lived experiences that is put into this report

before we get to a place where we are creating a strategy.

So we can either delay the strategy until we're really able to engage a lot more residents,

a lot more people internally and stakeholders, or we can introduce a strategy but agree to

keep refreshing it every year or every couple of years, that gives us time.

And my question, I'll be really quick.

My point about this report was some of the big gaps are where it's not up to date about

where we are.

So for instance employment, a lot of women are in business, they work from home, YouTube,

they sell criteria from home and stuff and there's a lot of support and there's a lot

of money that can be made.

It's just if you're able to go out and hear about these living experiences, this strategy

is going to include some of what's really happening on the ground right now.

Can I just remind councillors again, we're going to have recommendations for afterwards,

So if you can keep it to just questions for now, please.

Thank you, Chair.

My first question is women's employment rate here.

When you refer to women's employment rate, are you referring only paid work outside the

home?

And second question is, what are the reasons behind BME women are less employed in UK labour

market?

As a women's commission, what do you think?

And what is your consideration?

Do you have any consideration?

Do you have any plan to mitigate this?

Sorry, I always think my voice is louder, everyone says so, but my apologies.

Interestingly, some of the points that you've raised with the Mayor about safety and services,

particularly swimming and etc., have already come up in our discussions.

We are not going to say what all of the women have said. We're collecting the information.

So this is a good stage for us to consider, even maybe we need to do further work.

On funding, that is for the Council to decide, very importantly.

I just want to say that I think it's important that we don't intervene in that process.

We only come up with the findings like women's voices, that you hear the women's voices.

And it's also about reprioritizing.

I think we're asking, I'm sure we'll be asking that you reprioritise women in every aspect of your work.

You can't just say women there and this is the report. That will be absolutely redundant.

So yeah, absolutely, sorry.

Thank you, Zarkay Chair. Thank you. So I wanted to address a couple of points.

I think one is Jaid's question about resources. We're currently at the stage of looking at what those recommendations might be.

I think our plan is to talk to the council, but like the Baroness said in her introduction,

the kind of intervention that's needed is going to be beyond the council.

So part of our action planning, we will look at what kind of resources will be available,

both the council and partner agencies.

So that will be kind of the next stage once we have some recommendation.

And I think the point you raised is really important.

Without the resources, it's going to be very difficult to take forward some of these recommendations.

I think I wanted to just comment and I think I might come on the class last as my point figure, right?

I think we have really tried to go and engage lots of people and we do want to engage more

I think part of the evidence that the Commission looked at is engagement that we've already undertaken. So for example

This year councils develop a new finance against women and girls strategy, which undertook quite extensive

Engagement so we did look at what else do you already know?

I think it was clear for a lot of the residents that came to some of the commissions meeting

was they found this is the first platform that women can come and talk about in women's

issues.

So it's something I think needs to be an ongoing piece of work that once the commission finishes

it's not the end of it.

I think on Councillor Chaudry's point, I think a lot of the data is from ONS in terms of

of people that are in work.

This is paid work only.

And I think there's been a lot of national studies

in particularly why BME women

and particularly Bangladesh and Pakistani women

employment rate is so low.

And this is something I think again,

for the evidence the commission said

for various community organisation

but also people like Job Centre Plus

in terms of intervention they are putting in place

to kind of address those.

I do want to say something about employment in particular.

Employment amongst minority women, women of minority heritage,

has been a problem in this borough for a long time,

and subsequent authorities and institutions have ignored it.

And it shouldn't.

And I think that you of course have a role,

but so do others to take responsibility.

They're still treating women of Bangladeshi and African -Caribbean,

Chinese and Pakistani and other heritage as though they are first generation women in

this borough and that is not their main problem.

Problem is opportunities, problem is training and I know that you mentioned earlier about

the IT and how do we ensure technology, advanced technology becomes an absolute key theme.

Well, you are about to open the Women's Centre and we really welcome that.

I think there should be many solutions.

What mustn't happen is that the report stands on a shelf and women become redundant once

more for another report.

I hope that none of us in the Commission, and I'm really grateful to Councillor Chaudry

and Councillor Acton and Councillor Begum for their support.

I want to have that on record.

You have an incredibly committed

group of strategy officers

and they really worked hard with us

and we are really grateful.

Do you want to say anything?

Yes.

I think you have covered a lot of what the

commission has covered.

I think I can just add on to your question,

Councillor Chaudry.

When we spoke with the woman,

why is it that employment rate is really low?

A lot of women talked about the barriers to

entering the workforce.

This is maybe a bit of a challenge

It could be a lack of accessibility to understand the job roles on the market, it could be language

barriers, but a really significant portion of the women we talked to have a lot of childcare

responsibilities.

They've left work for many, many years and to look after their children and then coming

back they felt like there's a significant lack of support for women returning to work.

And so we just had our employment review, so we spoke with the council, with local partners

and residents as well about how do we want to mitigate that.

Some of the initial recommendations that came out is such as putting together ways to use volunteering or working with DWP or working with the Council to help support women back into work, amongst many other recommendations as well.

Thank you very much. Before I go to Halima, I've got a question.

In terms of, it says that you have, through the various channels,

you have reached community organisations in terms of the work that you've done

and it says that you've reached 111 women.

Is that a good reach or how can we improve further on that?

If you can make a note of that, if I can go to Halima, then if I can go to Natalie, please.

If you can ask your questions, then we'll go to the next round of questions.

So, Halima and then Natalie.

Thank you, Chair.

I have two kind of recommendations. You've touched on the schools, which is great, because

obviously we need to be speaking to the young people. Have you thought about collaborating

with local businesses, because obviously some of the barriers are to do with the opportunities,

employment opportunities. And also the other one was success storeys, where women have

have benefited from the Commission's programme.

Those are my two recommendations.

In terms of the engagement, I have seen lots of stuff out on social media.

Great stuff. Well done. Thank you.

Thanks, Chair. Thank you, Varunas and I for coming and presenting to us.

We had a conversation a few weeks ago about some of the concerns

that I had about the Women's Commission.

not from the, my concerns are certainly not about how it's been run so far and I

think it may have had a slow start and Councillor Asmery's lamb alluded to that

but I think the research has started off well and it sounds like you've already

had some impact working with businesses but my main concern is part of why I

asked the mayor the question I did earlier and my question is to the

the lead members essentially, I can't see much clarity about the aims for the Women's

Commission and how it integrates into council decision making.

I don't know why it exists other than to cover the fact that the mayor hasn't had, you know,

now he has female councillors but he didn't have female councillors when he was elected

and have faced a huge amount of criticism for that and I can't see that this is not

simply window dressing.

So I want to know how the results from the Women's Commission will be integrated into the large -scale policy programme that the Mayor has.

The Mayor is very ambitious, but this work, like the Baroness said, cannot just be sat on a shelf somewhere.

It has to be, you know...

Councillor, can you come to a question please, there?

We can talk about it.

Can you give us some assurance that that won't happen?

So I'm sure you heard from the mayor earlier.

We are very committed to this.

So whichever views or whatever you have, we will put it on board and take it further.

So it's still an early start, as you know.

It's been six, seven months.

So any views, any comments, anything you have, please bring it to us.

Thank you.

So like the chair said, are we happy with the number of women that have been engaged?

As a commission, no, we would want to have more women engaged and we've got a huge number

of people that we believe maybe we haven't actually come across or have engaged with.

So we want to continue work with that.

But yes, the number wise, we have discussed that, we wanted to have a higher number,

but we have had many different ways and methods to get people involved.

We've advertised, the officers have worked really hard, but again, it's always an issue trying to get the maximum engagement.

But yes, we would have liked to have a higher number.

In terms of this commission not being something, you know, we're just having tick boxes.

Regardless of having a few more council or not, the mayor has invested a lot in terms of supporting women in the borough.

For example, the free swimming, in terms of the first ever, I think after a very long time, women's centre only for women.

where we'll have a family hab, employment service there.

Just giving women in the borough to come and give their voice,

be part of the community and bring changes in the community.

And in terms of where we can actually get decision making,

I mean recently we've had the Be The Councillor event in the council.

So there are things that are happening that we believe how we can engage more women.

But in terms of, you know, this shouldn't be just like an exercise, that's why we're

actually doing something like this and we're going out in the community.

We want to hear people's voices and I hope that we can actually embed into that and have

long lasting changes for the women in this borough because we value them.

Every single woman on the commission are giving up their time, their experience, they live

in the borough and they're very committed to making sure that the Commission work goes

beyond its remit of just coming together and highlighting some of the major issues.

I'm not at all satisfied with the numbers.

I'm always asking that we do more and more and that's one of the reasons we've gone out

to school as pupils so that we have some young people's input and we've had a number of supplementary

And I think if you are saying that is a concern, that we should take that up and we will maybe

consider some supplementary, further supplementary workshops.

I think positive comments that you made about making sure we highlight some of the achievements

of the women of the borough so that they do not, they're not cited like they're a problem.

They're 50 % of the population and it's really important that we recognise that we don't

leave them in the lurch. Bristol has a women's commission with a long history of presence

as partners with the council's work. I think we should see further opportunities which

not only enables us to talk to more women, but also to see how it's actually impactful.

If it is just tick box, then certainly I think we would all be very disappointed and so should

But my final comment would be that particularly women from different minority backgrounds

have never been taken seriously in this place, and not by any council.

And I can tell you, I have personal experience and I'm not here to represent my personal

experience, but politically we have had women in the political system and we've had women

in positions of employment, serving all sorts of,

the problem has been all sorts of different sector,

but the problem has been when we say,

where are the leadership?

What impact?

What support are you giving?

Et cetera, et cetera, to women.

There's a huge gap and those gaps have lasted

for 40, 50 years, including in women -led initiatives

in the NGO sector.

So we do have huge issues.

We have significant aims to try and at least address it.

Please help us.

And if you suggest things to us, we will try and take it up.

And that's the best we can do.

Thank you.

And Afroz wants to come in briefly.

Thank you, Chair.

So just briefly, I think, based on what

the Councillors have said, particularly

around leadership and the governance

within the organisation.

So CMC have appointed the corporate director of health

to adults as a champion for the Women's Commission.

So she has been supporting the commission.

We've also got an infrastructure where we've got heads

of services within the organisation who are part

of our steering group supporting the commission.

So there's a lot of infrastructure behind the commission

that is helping us take this work forward.

And we've had various offices from corporate directors

to heads of services who have been at the commission.

We have really good engagement from the organisation in both supporting the Commission but also in helping undertake its work.

Thank you chair. I just congratulate Manzala Wadhin for taking this position for Women's Commission.

This is the best part of the job according to my opinions.

My question is, with your survey and your workshop and supplementary workshops, you

saw 303 women out of the population, 330 ,000.

That is a very small percentage.

Is this enough to respond to be representative?

Did you learn from this event?

Then we have learned from our annual residence survey.

Thank you.

Do you want to say something?

I think, like the chair did mention before, of course we want to engage with more women

in the barber, like you said, the population.

But from my experience from the workshops, I've been to a few of the many ones, the vast

number of women that did attend in each seminar or workshop, they varied from all different

ages, different backgrounds, some people who were employed, some people who haven't been

employed ever, some people who have had a gap from maternity.

So we did engage with a lot of women despite the quantity was less.

We did have a lot of women from varied to give us that kind of experience and that thinking

process where we took a lot of their feedbacks and we listened to them.

So the variety of different workshops that I did attend, I met many and I didn't really feel that each of the workshops could have had more or less.

But yes, we had an extensive variety of women and they had very good feedback given to us and all with their own lived experiences, success storeys, some of them advice one another.

and we took really good recommendations, but yes, like I agree with everyone else here,

a lot more work needs to be done because we have a borough where we have women still facing deep and persistent inequalities.

So we want to address that and this is a start. We want everyone's contribution and help and we want to go further.

The only point I want to add to

Councillor Acro's commitment and dedication

is the fact that this is a party independent organisation.

It's not affiliated with anyone,

except that we all want Tahamlet to succeed.

It doesn't really matter in some sense

who is head of administration,

although I'm committed to the head of administration

and your council,

It's the women.

And you're right, 330 ,000 women are not reflected in the experience of the numbers of women we've seen.

I invite you to say to us, these are where we want you to go.

We're going to get women together.

And I promise you, if nobody else turns up, at least a few of us will turn up and listen and incorporate that.

So this is really important point at which you have asked us to be here.

Apologies if we have delayed this process.

But the process is not closed.

The process is open for you to influence and we welcome your suggestion.

We've got about two minutes left.

So I'm going to take two more questions.

Can I just come for one second?

Okay, just quickly.

Thirty seconds, yeah?

Thank you, thank you, chair.

I'd like to highlight the commissioners that we have on the board itself

They are very well known in the community. They're doing a lot of work with the ladies in the borough itself

Sherifah she runs account three. She's been doing a lot of work for the ladies for 30 40 years

So this is one of them. I'd like to highlight plus we've got two counsellors on board and obviously the chair has

Asked to ask what to join the team as as well Safia Jama, Sophie Adam

Very well known names in the community. They do a lot of work for the ladies. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much

I'm going to go to

The point maybe lead member or counsellor

Officers can answer the question. So how much the current budget for women Commission now?

If so, how much and how would you make sure that it's available money?

I think most of the work we have done is our existing budget.

There was no budget allocated for the Women's Commission.

As I said to Jaya's question, one of the things we do need to look at once we have the recommendation

is talk to the organisation, talk to our partners to ensure we can take forward the recommendations.

the

Thank you.

Councillor James.

Thank you for

presenting the

encouraging work of the

women's commission.

My question

is to you, Mr Uddin.

Can you reassure the committee about

the role of the chair needs in

partiality and public confidence when

presenting this?

The Guardian newspaper

reported last month about

meetings with Chinese

embassy officials and your

support for the embassy in

Royal Mint Court, which is a

big international issue

you affecting Tohamblet. So with that in mind, can you just reassure us how that might or

might not be affecting your role as the chair in presenting this and reassure us that you're

the appropriate person continuing on in this role. Thank you.

I'm Dr. Lisa Thomas. I'm a person, a public person, on record of my views. This is about

Tohamblet women and if you are going to dissect my attention or you want to divert attention

of the Women's Commission.

I think it's best wise not to do that,

because I think you're conflating

something different to here,

because I come here as a resident,

so I have not had anything to do with the town

or council for the best part of 27 years.

You will know that already.

And my work with women speaks for itself.

I don't need to justify that.

And you will decide whether the report

reflects the voices of women,

and I think that, yeah, so unless you have a very specific question which you can ask me, I'm, yeah.

Not really, just say you've denied the reports publicly, so you can just reiterate that.

Councillor, can I just say that again?

Sorry, say that again, I didn't hear you.

Just say you've denied the reports publicly, I just wanted to get really sure that's not an issue.

Councillor, can I stop everyone, please?

Thank you.

All questions need to go through me, please, you can't interject.

Thank you, Chair, can I just say,

The question was very specific about just asking for reassurance.

I didn't need the motives of the question to be.

Thank you.

And I think, thank you very much.

Women's Commission, any one of us are committed, is the women of the borough.

And I hope you are too.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that.

We're going to quickly take two more questions, because we've still got new recommendations.

So two more questions.

Councillor Abdi, then Councillor Munn.

So Councillor Abdi, if you can come to the question.

Thank you very much.

Quick question, please.

Yes.

To the chair and to the commissioners.

Specifically, I think while we've spoken at great length about the numbers,

I think actually the quality should be commended.

The supplementary workshops is really fantastic to see.

You've identified 12 groups in particular.

What I think is slightly lacking is that then being into the recommendations,

where's the link and the bridge?

So you take health for example, I can't see anything about disabled women as specific recommendations.

So I think you've gone to great lengths to engage low engagement groups, which is fantastic.

How is that now translating into the recommendations and making sure as robust as possible and also as smart as possible.

So in two years time, what does success look like?

If we look back at the recommendations, what are they specific and measurable, the time bound bits?

because you can have very top line ideas, but in 20 years time we can look back and see

it's all been done or it's not been done. What does success look like?

If you can turn the mic on.

Sorry, my apologies. Very quickly I would say that I can't say what success looks like at this point

because we haven't heard from everyone.

I think it's really important that we hear many more voices and then discuss what the

recommendations at each of the priorities would look like. We're not working just with

Tahemelet women themselves, we're also working with the institutions that deal with their

services, whether it's on employment, whether it's health or wellbeing. So I think it

It also depends what presentation they've made to us.

So we will merely highlight what is being said.

I don't know what success looks like at all in six months or two years.

It depends on the findings, the recommendation and then what the council response is.

And I think then you can review something that's tangible.

I hope that answers your question.

Can I just come in briefly?

Councillor Mandan?

Thank you.

Very briefly, Chair.

Just to reassure Councillor Abdulla,

the recommendation will be smart.

I think what we wanted to do today is just give

some of the flavours of some of the issues

that have come up from the meeting so far.

The Commission hasn't actually met to kind of agree

their recommendation, but it will be really important

to ensure the recommendations are smart.

My question is, your initial findings are based on public review which were attended

by a few residents, 20 plus.

Are you going to validate your findings by involving more local women?

So, and the other thing is, is your work directed toward the Council or toward partner organisations

such as NHS, RSL, ETC? Thank you.

Each of the public review at least, we have made sure that we invite the relevant organisations to the priority

on the four different priorities that we have identified that we are addressing.

So we are looking at what not just the Council can do, what the other partners are able to do.

And they are also listening to the voices of women.

We will be very clear, I'm sure, on the report how many women we've been able to speak to.

I think that's really important that the report has integrity in that sense,

that if it's five women we've listened to, or it's 50, these are the voices.

It doesn't mean that it's a comprehensive examination.

Something like that would take much more time

to be able to see many more residents,

women residents in the borough.

But again, I want to finally reiterate the fact

that we are asking your support.

We are asking whether you have some suggestions

for further consideration in terms

of our supplementary workshops or focus or groups, we will try and include that so that

there is a greater representation of the voices of talented women.

I just wanted to add, Chair, that Councillor Manland's question.

So in terms of we're not just going to work with the Council, it's about bringing all

our stakeholders such as, you know, our souls and other organisations that we are already

speaking to.

and when we had the public review, we had for example,

Kenny Wolf, you know, being the biggest kind of,

you know, entrepreneur in the borough.

What are they doing for our women in the borough?

Pablo Harker, what representative that we have,

what women's voices that are being heard, you know,

from their point of view.

So we are engaging a lot with our assets as well.

So it's not just the council,

it's a lot of partnership work as well.

Thank you very much.

So on that note, if members,

do you have any recommendations and any suggestions if they can forward that to me.

I can collect that and I can pass it on to officers and the Commission.

I'm going to give you one minute to wrap up.

If you want to say anything, I was going to give that to you at the end, but if you want

to say anything just to wrap it up, just submit it and then we'll move on to the next agenda.

Thank you, councillors.

We are really grateful for this opportunity.

I think I've said everything that we thought that we would need to say, except I would

plead all of your support and guidance for any further work that we need to develop,

and we're doing it as a team, and whatever the outcome is, is the outcome for your boroughs,

that we are not a barrow's women.

Our barrow's women.

That's our focus.

I hope that whatever the recommendations are,

you will support as much as you can.

Thank you.

Sorry.

There are maybe

a few more people can email you

with the details of the next meeting.

Do you want to just say?

We have a final public review happening

on the 9th of December.

This is on women's safety in public spaces.

So please do come along.

It's happening at the town hall from 5 .30 to 8 .30.

You can join online as well.

But it's a great place to be part of that recommendation

setting with residents and local partners as well.

I'm going to invite Councillor Asma and Councillor Bienfert

and if Miss Islam want to come to not only the next event,

but also maybe to the school discussion that we're having.

So let me know.

Thank you.

On that note, we're going to end it here. Thank you very much for your contribution.

Thank you very much to all the members' contribution.

We look forward to engaging with you, helping and supporting you make this a success and take it forward.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Tim.

Now we will move on to our next agenda item, which is the waste spotlight.

Can I ask officers to take their seats, please?

Can I welcome Councillor Shafiya Ahmed, cabinet member for environment and climate emergency,

also Simon Baxter, Corporate Director for Communities and Astrafali, Director for Public

Realm. I can now also thank Councillor Natalie, the Scrutiny Lead for Waste, for pushing this

green agenda for us. Thank you very much for all the work that you've done. We are going

to take the presentation as read, the report as read, so if you want to highlight anything

that is not on the report or you think that needs to be emphasised, please do that and

then we will move on to some questions and feedback and recommendations. So if I can

ask the member to start the proceedings, please.

Thank you, Chair, and good evening all.

I'd like to echo the same as for my lead,

Councillor, Scrutiny lead, Councillor Natalie Benfay,

who has been a great asset and a critical friend

in ensuring that the Green Agenda, as well as the waste services,

are really scrutinised in a good way, and I really appreciate her input,

and I'm sure our officers together also work together to ensure that some of the things that we highlighted or your team or the scrutiny team has highlighted previously in the spotlight that we had was

this is some of the things that we took on board and this report also represents some of that and we have officers here to ensure that we are going ahead to ensure that some of the recommendations are taken aboard

and how we can ensure that going forward this council can deliver on those concerns as well as the residents.

As you can see, the annual resident survey has really painted a picture of where we are today to where we were previously.

As you can see, the 83 % agree that my council is making a local area a better place for people to live,

as that's a 22 % increase from last year.

76 % of residents are satisfied with the waste collection

and improvement of 7 % from last year.

71 % of residents are satisfied with street cleaning

and improvement of 8 points percentage from last year.

78 % of residents are satisfied with their recycling service

and improvement of 5 % since last year.

These are just some of the highlights that we want to think.

One of the things that, previously, Scrutiny has mentioned about the mis -collection

and how we justify the mis -collection, I'm going to ask our officers to comment on that.

Some of the highlights that we want to talk about is the street ban collection that we commenced back in August of 2024.

7 c) Waste Services

The service is now operating seven days a week, clearing all the major high streets down the town centres of waste.

Collected includes commercial waste on account with tower hamlets and unregulated waste from businesses.

Time banding is helping to grow the council's commercial portfolio with revenue rising and it's looking really good.

The introduction of time bands has significantly improved the efficiency and performance of the services delivered to the businesses and residents of high streets and in town centres.

So I'd now like to hand over to Ashraf or Simon for any comments that they would like to make.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor. It's been some time since I've been here. I've rejoined the organisation back in 2023.

I was an interim and then became corporate director in January 24.

Coming to ONS is always a joy because I get constructive help from members across all parties and I'm grateful for that.

I think the help of ONS has helped shape the services over the last two years.

I think the Mayor has given a lot of money to support us.

I've got a strong management team in now.

There was a lot of instability in the service and I've always said that I wanted to do that

from the beginning, was to stabilise the service and I think that has shone through probably

in the annual resident survey but also in our performance in non -collections, increasing

in commercial waste portfolio and this is something we should be proud of as a council.

So I will ask Ashraf and John because I think they have done a really good presentation.

Again, that should be recognised, the work that is happening in the depot. This is not

an easy place to be. There are a lot of culture issues that we inherited from Veolia, not

not from any authority or any administration, but from Fyodia.

They were difficult times and we've come a long way.

We now have regular meetings with the unions across the GMB,

Unite and Unison.

Levels of sickness are finally going down.

So I think it's a service that we should be proud of,

but I'm happy to take questions along with my team.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm not repeating what Simon and the Councillor said.

Just to echo, I'm happy to take more questions from the team.

Just to thank some of the Councillors, Councillor Beane, Councillor Abdi and many other Councillors

who actually have been learning, as Simon said, where we were to where we are, with

your input, feedback and really taking those on board, we have actually made significant

in terms of where we are.

Your input has been really helpful,

especially, Councillor, you know,

when you did the walkabout in your area,

as likewise, Councillor Mark Francis,

Councillor Kobeo -Hussein, your previous lead member.

With all your input into this,

we've actually come far, far, much better positioned

to where we are now.

I'm not saying we're quite there yet,

but still room for improvement,

but with your contribution and input,

we have actually made the stride to be here.

So we're happy to take a question on the presentation we're providing.

Thank you very much for that.

I'm going to start off with a question for myself.

As a critical, this committee is a critical friend.

We keep on hearing in terms of about collections.

And on your report, on page 9 on the table, we again hear that there has been a decrease

in missed collections.

But and I'm sure my colleagues here will back me on this.

That's not what we hear on the ground.

Again and again we're having to, and me, I'm giving an example of my ward,

again and again, every other week, we're having to make calls for beans to be collected.

So if you're saying on the data or on the table we're decreasing the miss -collections,

it's not reflecting on what we're hearing from residents.

So can you please tell us, is your data wrong?

Or what the residents are saying to us is not correct?

So please, if you can, I will start with that.

And then if you want to show of hands.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Just to be clear on non -collections, I think.

You can't use perception as a KPI.

We use the national data every other authority does across the country and that's the industry standard.

We do, you can't underplay the complexity of this borough, it's the most densely populated borough in the country.

How was it, seven square miles, eight square miles?

We're doing tens of thousands of collections a month and there's lots of different reasons that sometimes we might not be able to get into some of our narrow roads or estates for whatever reason.

And I think that needs to be considered.

But to say our data is open to scrutiny, we've got, you know, you can come look at our systems.

I think Councillor Francis may have looked at that, I think, came down to the depot and

visited how we collate this data.

So perception, you can't measure perception.

And if you can, then I'll refer to the annual resident survey.

But our collection rate is very, very good.

If there are specific issues around specific rounds or boards, we're happy to take that

and look at it. Thank you.

Councillor Natalie.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, team, for coming.

I'm really pleased to hear that you're coming to the committee

with the feeling like, oh, actually the committee is helping you.

Because I think the team has got from a place of being, as you say,

being in an unstable place and we're now in a very different place.

But what we're interested in this committee is how do we get to the next step?

Where are we looking forward to?

So I'd like to share a bit of feedback from residents specifically on the missed collection

Reporting and assurance framework that you've provided which is really helpful

The resident says predominantly the managers in town Hamlet's totally ignore my emails

It's only if you she's talking about me get involved and email them that they have the courtesy to respond

This is exactly what they've written

Please bear in mind that we've been chasing them for over 10 years to collect our bins and it's now for only after hundreds

Of emails that they've decided to do something about it

So this resident is not confident that there is a proper process for identifying long -term problems and resolving them

So we had a good system of area managers

I think in 2023 it was a pilot scheme and that was scat scrapped the process for

identifying long -term like recurring missed collections

falls to managers and councillors and that isn't sustainable because managers

are overworked and this resident has had to get me involved and finally when I'm

involved something happens. So that's a key area of concern and I think there is

another area of concern and then I have some specific questions. The second area

of concern is actually related to that. There is a bewildering array of pilot

schemes. So there's a pilot scheme of food waste, there's a pilot scheme I found out

about small green bags, daily recycling bags. I don't know how much

follow -up there is to residents about the pilot schemes, what the results were,

whether it's going to go ahead. We need to communicate better with residents

because people don't know what's going on and how to recycle better. And finally

on time banding, again it's a pilot scheme, it was introduced as a pilot

and how much enforcement is happening,

is it working, is the team happy with it

and are we going to be rolling it out

to other areas?

Thank you.

So annually we're looking at 0 .4 % of the missed collections, just for the context in terms

of the number of collections that we do.

And that 4 ,000 in one of the slides, it shows us the data of what are the top 10 reasons

and explaining some of those reasons behind those.

What we have done over the month of that, the assurance process map, ensuring that there

there is a clearance in terms of our system and how the reporting is done by residents

or reported by members to ensure the systems picks up the actual inquiries for it and there

is a smooth process of dealing and actioning the issues that arises.

I'll hand over to John to go a bit more specific of some of those inquiries and what actions

we're doing in addressing some of those details queries.

I think there were three questions there. One was about repeat missed collections.

There was an issue on time -banding and an issue on the payload scheme.

Just in terms of repeat missed collections, I think the corporate director, Simon, mentioned earlier

that we inherited a workforce essentially between employed and agency staff, over 400

people from Viola and we're working through changing the culture. To be fair, I arrived

about 18 months ago and I found the culture within the service, it wasn't a great culture.

So we've all worked hard as a team and that includes all the managers in the depot to turn that culture around.

So we've been working really hard with the workforce and we've had some really difficult conversations as well.

So if you don't do your job then you're held accountable like anybody would be.

But we support staff, we're changing the culture through training, so giving opportunities to the workforce.

We put our own staff through, our Hamlet staff through,

LGV courses, operators courses, we've ensured they've renewed their licences

and we've ensured that we're giving them opportunities for the future.

So the culture is changing, performance is improving and people are being held accountable.

Can I say one thing about repeat missed collections?

I understand your frustration and there's nothing worse than getting a repeat missed collection

and I have conversations every day with crews to make them aware that it's a performance issue

and they will be held accountable.

So we are tackling the issues of poor performance within the service.

Sorry, can I just, I need to come back on this.

I 100 % agree with what Councillor Natalie said.

But we keep on hearing this again and again,

it's a cultural thing, a change, et cetera.

There's so much money that's been pumped in.

And we don't see, the stats that we hear again and again,

it doesn't reflect what we're hearing.

How long does it take?

How long does it take to...

We heard there was a vehicle issues, etc. and things like that.

But when I see those stats, it really doesn't tally up to what we're hearing from residents.

And again, repeat, you know, miscallections.

This is one of the major things that we face with our residents.

When we're out there, a lot of us live on our wards and we're continuously hearing that even where the bins are put,

I get regular calls from residents saying that, Councillor, I'm ashamed to invite guests to my house or my flat

because where the bins are located, you know, it's overflowing.

I think this is a frustration and it would be really good to hear from other councillors

in terms of all the missed collections, etc.

And how, you know, we want something concrete, we want to hear something concrete

because I've been hearing these, you know, I don't want to say excuses,

but I'm hearing this again and again and I don't see anything changing.

Again, Councillor, I think we need to be proportionate here.

We've got a residence of 325 ,000 and if members are telling me on a daily basis that their

bins are not being collected or the service is that bad, then I need to listen.

But I don't want to sound defensive because that's not what it's supposed to be.

I want to learn.

My services want to learn.

I think it's important for members to realise where we've come from, the baseline that we've

from to where we are and it feels sort of counterproductive to listen to members'

frustrations.

I'm not saying they're not valid but in terms of helping us improve the services.

I think I'd like to hear more from members and you've all got my email address, if it's

a constant problem then please email me but I don't get that.

I don't get our level of complaints, our corporate complaints, our members' inquiries.

We have a higher level but that is not proportionate to the service that we give, to the numbers

that we give and in terms of your perception is based on that.

So I'll be grateful for questions but I'm not going to respond to perceptions in this meeting.

As a last one, did you want to comment on this specific point?

It was around the mis -collection and culture.

I travel around the borough, I walk, I use my car sometimes,

I represent Wefors Ward which is not where I live.

so even where I live, I'm just getting, like there are places where it has really picked

up and it's great, you know, the service is good.

But where it's poor, it's really poor.

And it starts off with, okay, one miscollection, two miscollections, and then during that time

when we were doing the root optimisation, I can understand the teething issues that

needed to be patient, and I spoke to you about this last time around.

But we're still in a position where the property I live in is a dream for the waste services.

Ground floor, no access problems, it's missed so regularly.

I would like you to draw out how many times that I can give you my address afterwards,

how many times we've reported missed collections.

There's absolutely no answers as to why that is still happening.

I get that in my ward.

And there are hot spots that are usually hot spots, like it's been like that for a while,

that's a problem, but then you've got new places that turn up and I'm like,

these streets haven't been a problem in the past, why are they coming up as a problem?

On culture, the other thing about getting around the borough is I get to speak to the waste service team

and I get to speak to the staff, the frontline staff, and I know they're not happy.

I know they're not happy about, and I know culture changes take time,

but they talk about some of the imbalance in the service around where the money's been spent,

I don't have the facts about this

and you might be able to

enlighten me.

They talk about the expenditure

on contractors

and where we spend

more money

outside of the staff

and not investing

in the staff.

I don't really understand

how we have

reconfigured this.

It would be really good

to hear from you what is

actually happening inside

the service.

Just to start off

with the last question first.

We have now

I'm currently doing a staff survey.

I have opened all down the depot.

I go down there once a month.

It's not what I'm hearing from staff.

So I'd be interested to see what staff they are

and which areas they work in.

Because if I've got an unhappy workforce, that's not good.

When we speak about where the money is being spent,

the mayor has invested lots of money, a lot of that

is in capital.

and I don't want to go over the programme of the budget gaps in previous years, because

we've been there and when you were chair of this committee we had that discussion on a

regular basis, so I think it's important to recognise the pace of change, how much work

it's taken to get to where we've got and it's still a long way to go. I think the staff

survey will tell us a storey, we've tried to get our frontline staff to engage with our

write QR codes and paper base, it wasn't just all computer based.

So trying to get that to change as well.

I think I'll leave it at that for now.

You should probably touch on distribution of the capital within the service.

If staff feel like it's not distributed fairly, and staff distribution is another thing, so

can you please talk about that, because that's a big change that you've made that hasn't

So just on the staffing, we took on an extra 120 people post the strike in 2023.

There are constant changes, there's a services change, the needs change and our budgets reflect

that.

Sometimes we have to reduce staff down, I know we've done that in the last couple of

months because we're now running into winter, so we don't need as many agency staff as required.

And I think because of the strong management style that we now and that's what's pushed up performance

Producing sickness there may be some pushback from staff

But we work with our trade union colleagues across the piece John has probably daily meetings with the with the trade union members down there

To talk through staffing issues. So I think again, that's something that should be commended

Thanks, I'm councillor Mandan then councillor

Kabir said

Thank you for giving the opportunity.

I've got a common question about the collection as well.

The underground refuge systems, I know you invested a lot of money on those trucks,

but I'd like to see the improvement on this,

consistently sending a member's inquiry and also the lead member on WhatsApp saying bin collections.

I'm very thank you for quickly acting

Counsellor Shafi on many occasions last three four weeks laws have been overflowing

But my question is when the miss collection happened and then your your system goes in pick up the bin

They pick up the bin like that leave all the other beans around it. They don't do anything now that they just go away

So who pick up those others unless somebody?

making an inquiry or sending, then somebody is going to pick it up.

That's not just happening, not just once throughout the whole URS system.

I just want to give you a question.

Also, because of miscollection,

they're putting people living outside the URS system.

The cleaners don't clean it properly and therefore

foxes are invited easily and

the holistic get messed everywhere.

So you can see where I'm coming from.

Refugees, underground refugees, with bin goes inside,

they should pick the outside.

So they're not picking it up.

Just very aware of time.

So my question is,

nobody picking up the access bin outside

when they go to the bin,

and what are we doing about it?

Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Councillor.

Just to let you know, on the URS service,

the underground refuge service. First of all the vehicle is a specialist vehicle

with specialist operators on it so they're not able to load that vehicle

it's purely for lifting the bin chambers out of the ground and the waste

is then deposited from the top of the vehicle into the body of the vehicle

itself so they can't clear the excess waste we have to send around a

a separate crew to pick up that excess waste.

It's unfortunate but that's the way the URS system works.

If residents living on estates, and we've got 80 % of the collections to place on estates,

but if residents living on estates where we've got over 400 URS bins,

place waste around the top of the bin, then we need to send a waste clearance crew to collect that.

So that's the reason why you're seeing this issue about the vehicle turns up, empties the chamber

and then another crew has to come along and clear the surface waste.

It's unfortunate but that's the way it is.

I have to ask, my question is still not answered.

Yes, I understand that another crew need to go in but who report that?

Unless somebody like myself or a resident complain, nobody is taking no notice.

So what mechanism are you putting in place to make sure that somebody goes after it to clear this?

There isn't any mechanism for the last three, four months?

We've got dedicated refuse managers, all the crews are in contact with us,

by phone on a regular basis, and any issues in terms of surface waste,

where it hasn't gone into the chamber, the resident hasn't put it in the chamber,

is reported back to us and we will clear that the same day that it's reported and it's reported on a daily basis.

Let me say this, is that we need to get the registered social landlords taking responsibility for residents who place waste on the street instead of putting it in the chamber.

Can I just show of hands how many more questions we have?

I'll take three more questions.

Councillor Halima, Councillor Kibre and then Councillor Abdui.

So Chair, is there any particular reason you were allowing me to ask a question?

Can we carry on please?

Thank you, Chair. It's not a question from me, it's from Jahid. It's around waste

recycle bags. He just wants to know are there more bag sizes available as the smaller bags

have had a negative feedback, especially in tower blocks? So if you could kind of confirm

what the position is on the bags.

Thank you.

Thank you, chair.

So lots of miscallection in my ward related to the housing association, they are now implementing

parking enforcement.

So what the council is doing in terms of improving that within the state managed by

the

Housing Association or RSF?

Irish

Social housing. Yeah. Thank you

I'll take those two questions. So we're working closely with housing associations now, and I know that

particularly where we've got issues with parking.

So to give you some examples, where we've got...

..one A car can prevent a 26 tonne dust cart

from getting access to the URS chamber or to the bin chamber.

As a result, the crew will have to return later that day

and if we still can't get access, then it's reported as a miscollection

and we have to return the following day.

In actual fact what we're doing now is we're going out in the evenings, but there are issues on estates where

residents are

Inappropriately parking cars which prevents prevent us from getting access to the bin chambers

We are working closely with

RSLs

to address that situation in particular with

so homes or housing and

and they're making sure that the relevant signage is put up in that way.

Enforcement action needs to be taken against residents, they're taking that enforcement action so we can gain action.

We've got a very close relationship now with a lot of registered social landlords.

Again with Popular Hawker on the Yarmouth -Feldy estate, they've got particular issues with parking

and we're working with that RSL to address those issues and make sure we deliver the collections as scheduled.

Tower Hamlet is a particularly difficult area because of the number of properties that are on estates

and the heavy parking that takes place on estates.

One thing I can say is that 18 months ago there was an awful lot of noise about a waste emergency and about the fact that the refuse wasn't getting collected.

I can tell you now I've worked in this industry for 46 years in places like Westminster, Hackney, Wandsworth, Camden.

and I can tell you now in the last 18 months that noise has settled.

We are now working very closely with residents, RSLs.

I can tell you we're working very closely with our workforce.

There's people in the workforce who want to do a day's work

and we're working with them, supporting them and developing them

and then there's those who would want things done their way

and we're dealing with that situation as well.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Okay, so we introduced a scheme around 12 months ago where we have been delivering single -use recycling sacks to residents living on a state.

At the time we introduced that system, the recycling rate was 15%.

That recycling rate today is just short of 20 %

and the single use recycling sacks that have been delivered

have cleared a large part along with the waste strategy group

working with the residents associations to get that recycling rate up.

So we're talking about a 4 % increase in the recycling within the last 12 to 14 months.

That's the reality of the situation.

They're the official figures.

And a large part of that is because of the use of single -use recycling sites.

We're going to take two more questions.

Thank you very much.

We're going to take two more questions.

Councillor Abboud and then Councillor Cabuas.

Thank you.

I won't go on about the mis -connexions that have been spoken about a lot, but I completely echo what all of the councillors have been saying.

I'll wait until it's turned off.

I want to focus in on the communication engagement, so slide 10.

We had this last time when you came before the committee, speaking about the quality of the comms.

I acknowledge your points about

it is a complicated

bar at 8 square miles, 320 ,000

people.

Do you really think

engaging through Instagram,

Facebook and

any of the other

metrics,

the way to get to

what is a

complicated bar

or across many different

types of people

across the bar?

At what point are we going to get serious

about how we try to reach out

to different types of residents?

It doesn't strike me as

We have a lot of

who might be a

cabinet member

promoting something

with a number of views

that is vanity metrics.

We are not ever going to get

past the 20 %

order.

There has been a heck of a

lot invested

in your service.

I am keen to understand

how much is spent on

communication and engagement

and what is the strategy

that sits behind this.

As it currently stands,

we had this last time

you were here.

It strikes me as vanity and it does strike me as really thorough, thoughtful engagement, quite frankly.

Can we be...

Here to hear from the director, and this corporate director, please.

Can I just ask you to be brief on the answers?

I'll be brief, Chair, thank you.

It's not straightforward answer in terms of addressing the comms and behaviour,

and I think the last time I mentioned that is significant work is required in order to behaviour change.

Comms is one means of reaching out to residents and various activities.

I stand by obviously in terms of some of the videos and some of the social media

and community engagement that we've shown the resident in terms of recycling and waste,

how it can be collected and how can it be better recycled.

Now it's not just through the comms that we did, we did engagement through various events,

various door knocking and reaching out to residents,

and including working with various community groups and faith groups

to actually really work on the behavioural change.

And this is not an overnight fix or an already fixed,

it's going to take a long, long period of time to change behaviour

and the mindset in terms of what recycling means.

So there's much, much more work to be done in terms of engaging people

at early stage. We've worked with various youth groups and schools

to actually engage young people at early ages understanding about recycling

and long term impact on the environment and biodiversity

and how they can be actively involved in recycling.

This is just over a period of showcasing in the powerful presentation what we've done

and we have actually seen some benefits, not entirely, you know, I would say everything has been,

for example, the information about the batteries that damages our vehicles.

It reached more than a million people through working with the fire brigade and engaging in them,

in terms of how dangerous and important it is to not put batteries in the waste,

because that has consequences and impact to service, consequences to mis -collection,

because those vehicles could be, as a result, out of service.

So there's a profound implication that message goes out to how we actually monitor that impact.

That's the challenge, that's for us to actually work in more detail, but we know far as possible we can reach, the message will go out there.

And that's the further work to be done around that.

So in terms of the last 12 months, in communication and engagement, that's not just about the media, posters and videos, but it's also the comms teams, officers,

So just under 300 ,000 pounds was on communication and engagement.

Thank you.

Councillor Cabriase.

Thank you, Chair.

I think this is all about how you can monitor the performance.

When I was the lead member, I felt it.

It's not all about council, the missed collection.

It's all about other providers, such as Veolia, Bifa, in terms of commercial waste collection.

And also I recommended we should be more reliable than any other providers.

I go one complaint today, the missed collection happened by housing association, not the council.

So people are quite, frankly speaking, they said something happened, all the blame goes to the council.

supposed to go to all the housing associations.

So we need to have a KPI where how you can, what mechanism you have to monitor those performance.

They are performing very well.

So I don't know what mechanism you have in the place.

I think if I could understand your question, Councillor, in terms of others responsible

for collection.

It's a challenge and I'll give you examples.

A couple of weeks ago, BBC actually reported a missed collection that was in Alparra and

you're absolutely right.

The first thing is the councils.

What the report did not take into fact,

it was actually a private company collecting on a private state.

But the responsibility came onto the council.

So obviously through the comms, narrative has to be provided.

And we do that through our comms and engagement

and ensure that narrative as a council service

will, you know, what their responsibilities of collection,

so we do that.

In terms of, I don't know if I have answered your full question.

Other providers.

We cannot be responsible for other providers in terms of the KPR and performance.

However, saying that this is where the time band comes in, in terms of the time band, we can do that and we can actually enforce

and we are actually taking those measures to enforce the private companies

who are not collecting within the time band and so we can actually do actions on those.

So just to summarise, the introduction of the time bands just over 12 months ago,

there's two time bands, seven days a week, and those time bands mean that residents,

businesses, living on those high streets and in the town centre

must place the waste out within the time band.

If there's any waste out outside of the time band, it can be enforced against.

And that gives us the opportunity to deal with any

private sector waste that comes out onto the street

whether placing it out any time of the day.

Tom Hamlet's vehicles are running through those time bands twice a day,

at least twice a day, seven days a week.

Where you get the private sector who will say stick it on the street and we'll come on a

Wednesday and then they don't come on on Wednesday and they leave it on the street for longer

So we're able to identify the waste identify the offenders and take enforcement action

I'm working closely now with the enforcement team to identify

Unregulated waste that's coming out onto the street and deal with it

Simon you want you to come in if you can be very brief please. Thank you councillor

All I was going to say is I've listened to what members have said.

I think it's important I take that away in terms of your views about mis -collections.

I'm going to ask my team to do an analysis of probably your wards to understand what

those issues are and perhaps if there's regular patterns then I can dig deeper.

As I said, I don't want to say I'm defensive but I need to address what concerns you've

raised.

So I will take the members comments away on the mis -collections,

understand the data that sits behind it and see what we can do to improve.

Because as members perception is everything.

But I need to use the data wisely as well.

So I'd just like to thank the members for bringing it to my attention.

Thank you very much.

I want to thank all the members for their contribution

and I want to thank the officers as well.

There have been improvements, we acknowledge that,

but I think the frustration is that basically there needs to be the amount of money that's been invested

there's got to be sometimes we want to see results instantly but we're not seeing

we want to see even if we see gradual improvements needed up to that that would be fantastic

thank you very much I know members want to give some recommendations what I can suggest is that

If you can fasten those recommendations and we'll forward on to officers and if you can have a follow up on that as well.

Thank you very much for your contribution. We're going to move on to the next item on the agenda which is scrutiny leads update.

If these want to give any updates. Yep, so Councillor Lambda.

community get involved in

I would be very busy

working on the community

safety.

We are holding a challenge

session on Monday,

the 1st December, so next

week Monday.

I would really

encourage and love to see

members come and join.

It is focusing on reoffending

rates with a specific focus

on 18 -25.

As they grow out of youth

offending and how we support

them, so really keen to

to engage different members around that,

especially Councilman, I'd like to see you there,

with the kind of children's hat on.

Been going around doing a number of different visits,

so talking to the probation service,

along with our officers, and just want to say

thank you to them, especially the team who run the IOM,

the integrated offenders management,

kind of, I think it's a pioneer bit of work

that we do as a council, so it's fantastic to see

that we're leading the way in this space.

But yeah, hopefully see all of you on Monday.

Thank you any other members

because of that

Thanks chair. So likewise also been very busy with my scrutiny review

I'll be holding two sessions counsellors are welcome at both of them. The first session will be on Tuesday the 9th of December

And we will be hearing from residents only

9 SCRUTINY LEADS UPDATES

About their experience of road safety and road danger

The second session will be Tuesday the 16th of December and that will hear from organisations

who are working, either have some, they have some experience of working with residents

who experience issues of road safety, like disabled residents or women.

And we will also be hearing from organisations that campaign on issues of road safety as

And we'll also give the service an extended opportunity at the second session to lay out their road safety action plan

What they're doing to address some of the concerns that are raised by residents and organisations

One thing I mentioned at the last meeting is that the timing of the review is a bit awkward

With the timing of the approval of the road safety action plan, which has to be ratified before

the elections

The service wanted us to provide some early feedback.

I tried to kind of get some feedback from councillors

on the committee, but I think there wasn't really

enough time to do it properly and to get proper agreement

on some of the issues.

So we've had to postpone that for the time being.

Once we've spoken at length in December in the sessions,

I hope that there'll be a bit more time to discuss this

the issues and come to some recommendations together as a group.

Thank you, Chancellor. Any other screeners?

Chair, quickly. I have my meeting, obviously some of us on my screen meeting last, just

on the fourth night ago, I'm working on the next phase of action for mental health and

I will email all of you updates where we are and where we are going.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any other?

Just wondering if Councillor Sabina Khan is going to give us an update.

I don't think she's given us one since the AGM.

Sorry, is Councillor Sabina Khan, doesn't look like she's online anymore, going to give us an update?

We are going to move on to the next item on the agenda, which is any questions for cabinet.

If you can send them to me by 12 o 'clock.

I just want to record that I put in a pre -decision scrutiny question last time round.

And the title kind of suggests it's pre -decision, so the answer should come before the cabinet happens.

I got it three weeks later and I chased it with officers, the corporate director, the

service director, Matthew Menion, head of democratic services, Daniel and the ONS team

as well.

I think that whole episode was absolutely disgusting because we were promised that this

wasn't our member of officers that support us in ONS.

it was lacking from the council's other side and we were promised that these are the kind of things that aren't going to happen again.

If I put the effort in, I would want those answers so that, because that's the whole reason that the mayor's considered this in his decision making,

the whole process doesn't work if he doesn't do that, that's the first thing.

And the other thing is on Councillor James King's questions about Councillor Sabina Khan.

Okay, she hasn't given us an update since she got elected into her role.

we're going into the budget. Chair, as the leader of this committee, I would expect you to make sure that we've actually informed for that budget ready

so that we're scrutinising the budget as we do every year and if she's not here to attend or do any of the work, that we are asked to support that work

or whatever way, but let's not be oblivious about the fact that she's non -existent to this committee.

Thank you, Councillor Lattice. Not noted yet.

Not noted and also Steve's here as well.

Steve Reddy's...

So if you can note that as well, Steve.

Yes, but I've asked you, Peter Gills, the Chair of the committee, to take this on, please.

Thank you.

Noted that.

So if any questions, if you can get it to me by 12 tomorrow.

So we will move on to the next, before we close, can we just agree on the minutes for

the last meeting?

We did it.

Okay.

And we're just going to, the action log, that's going to be out again.

Just very quickly as well, just in line with what you were saying about the budget, so

we've got a training session on the 3rd of December for members to attend that.

That also will help us to prepare for the budget scrutiny in January, so if you can

all attend that, that will be really good.

Just on the note of Councillor Sabina, I have been meeting with the lead members as well,

So I will give an update on what's been happening in regards to that.

So moving on, if there's not any other...

Daniel is inviting and the update, are they online?

Can I ask when is the asset management strategy coming back?

We have to approve it as a committee, am I correct?

We haven't looked at that, we haven't got a schedule but we can have a look at it.

A lot of work went into that, it would be really nice to see this committee.

Let me have a look, I'll pick it up.

If you can lock down, if you can chase that up.

If there's any other assumptions, we're going to end the meeting here.

Thank you very much for your contribution, have a good evening.

Thank you.

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Overview & Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday 25 November 2025, 6:30pm - Tower Hamlets Council webcasts

Overview & Scrutiny CommitteeTuesday, 25th November 2025 at 6:30pm

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Votes

1 APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

7 a) Mayor's Spotlight

7 b) LBTH Women’s Commission

7 c) Waste Services

9 SCRUTINY LEADS UPDATES

Overview & Scrutiny Committee
Tuesday, 25th November 2025 at 6:30pm