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

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

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Disclaimer: This transcript was automatically generated, so it may contain errors. Please view the webcast to confirm whether the content is accurate.

I'm the chair of the overview and scrutiny committee.

I want to welcome everyone to this evening's meeting.

Before we go ahead, just get some of the formalities out of the way.

This meeting is being webcast for public viewing.

Also, if there are no planned fire drills or if the fire alarm goes,

please follow the instructions of officers.

We will move on to the next item on the agenda which is apologies for absence.

Before I go on to that I want to welcome our new DSO Nasima Begum to the ONS.

Welcome to you.

Also I want to take this opportunity to thank Jack who will be leaving.

So I'm sure we can acknowledge that Jack has done a fantastic job in supporting us in terms of our meetings.

So thank you very much Jack for your contribution.

Thank you very much.

Islam she has

That so cancel a so sorry it was just one of the apology from cancer after Muhammad

That was he he sent the email over like two and a half weeks yeah you yeah

Thank you

Yeah

As I was saying, one of our co -optees, Halima Islam, will be stepping down.

I'm all by myself, Chair. I need some support.

I've got to do something about it really quickly.

I'm sure we'll fill that in very soon.

Halima, again, has been a very pivotal part of the O &S.

She's been, I believe, part of the O &S for about eight years.

and she again has contributed so much so I wanna thank her as well and on to any

new endeavours as she goes we wanna I'm sure she would be fantastic wherever she

goes so thank you Halima also another apologies Amy Jackson I've got a message

from Amy Jackson she was supposed to be a part of the mean anyway she's not

going to be here so apologies for Amy Jackson okay that's the apologies done

if we move on to item number two which is declaration of proclary interests and

other interests any members oh thank you we're gonna move on to the next item

which is number three unrestricted minutes from the meeting on the 25th of

the 11th is to an accurate record everyone. Thank you very much. Number four

overview and scrutiny committee queries and action log. I couldn't see any action

log on there but if I can remind officers to if you can please circulate

this at the end of this meeting. Thank you. We will now move on to our

Our main agenda item for this evening, 7 .1,

Scootin' the Spotlight.

The items are London Borough of Tahemless Improvement,

LGA Corporate Review Challenge, and the MHCLG Report.

I believe that the CEO, Stephen Halsey,

has given apologies as well, he's not gonna be here.

But I want to welcome Jonathan Lloyd, Strategic Director.

Kirsty Roberts is supposed to be joining us as well, I believe.

Just me, Chair, for these papers, yeah. Thank you.

Also, Abdul Razak and...

Yeah, okay.

The floor is over to you for this first item.

Thank you.

Thank you, chair.

Thank you, councillors.

I just point of clarity, shall I introduce both papers or shall I do one paper then the

other?

LGA.

Yeah.

So you just got LGA and the other item.

Great.

So I'll do the LGA first.

So bear in mind I'm introducing a report written by the LGA but I will try and frame how it

came about, see the words speak for themselves and they've actually thought a huge amount

of that and we've received them and accepted them in their entirety.

But a bit of context was the peer review took place on the 7th and 8th of October and it

looked at those 18 recommendations from the original, the deeper, longer peer review which

and it develops those recommendations and it reviews progress against those over a period

of two days, so bringing back much of the old team and some new faces to really look

at the progress against those.

They found real progress in 17 of the 18 of the recommendations and some of the key elements

were an increase in trust and a movement, a significant movement away from the two council

cultural which they experienced previously. Some key areas of which they focused on and

they felt there was positive progress were around financial management, particularly

around the outstanding accounts and obviously being first to be published in London. Some

progress in governance and some of that reflected within some of the external challenges and

scrutiny of our services, for example, referencing the children's services,

ofstered outstanding. Recognising progress around, we've got a paper today,

around performance framework and the levels of accountability that were

scrutiny and the administration and senior officers were holding that

progress to account. Recognition of member development from anything from

personal development plans through to the chart to mark achievement and of course the

annual government statement being published for the first time in some time.

Those are some of the areas of which that demonstrated kind of clear progress against

the recommendations but they also wanted to challenge and offer steer on areas of where

the council could develop more grip and go further.

So in our self -assessment for example, the LGA peer team felt there was an over -optimism in our progress against those.

Pride of some of the work, but an over -optimism. So a real challenge on us to reflect on that and think about how we embed that in the rest of the improvement work.

and a real challenge to develop clear evaluation

and evidence of some of the more kind of knotty areas

of progress as well.

There's also a challenge on the progress

that we achieved in terms of the workforce strategy.

So the very explicit challenge to go further and faster

on developing our workforce strategy over the coming months.

Recognition around the Mayor's office had changed in size and nature, but also a challenge around clarity of roles for the next piece of work,

which again we're thinking about in terms of the continuous improvement plan and what develops next.

So overall we felt it was a fair but challenging and honest peer review update and a really

helpful progress.

Next step is how we build on the strengths and the progress within those recommendations

but also think of some of those challenges and make sure that we address one of the final

elements of challenge that we got from the peer review which are there are some significant

plans but there are some areas of work where you can join those plans together.

So that was the final challenge for us to reflect upon.

And I think we'll also speak to that in the next paper as well.

So I'll pause there in terms of the peer review, which is now obviously being published and

shared.

So are we allowed to ask questions at this point?

What we'll do now is we'll have a 20 minutes discussion.

and then after that we'll go into any questions that anyone has in regards to

this report so if it's any specific comments that you want to make

councillor Nattoli or...

Wait chair sorry I just want to cheque are we doing just the corporate peer challenge progress report or are we also including

discussion of a continuous improvement plan at this point?

We'll do the LGA corporate peer review in there, 20 minutes, and then after that we'll

ask John to come back and talk about the MHCLG report and go into questions then.

So if you've got any comments to make.

Yep, Councillor Ainslie.

So I welcome the report.

It was really good to have a progress update and I want to kind of follow up on the things

that were mentioned in the report for us as a committee to keep an eye on and the recommendations

that we actually take on some responsibilities for managing parts of the Council's improvement

and just want to say, you know, I really kind of welcome the challenge but also want to

kind of maybe discuss a little bit more about the detail about how we would ensure that

we are keeping on top of certain things.

So the particular things, and I might have missed some, but the recommendation that asset

disposals are reported to OSC as part of the approval process and that we have potentially

have responsibility for the work programme on ensuring that the workforce of the council

or reflect the community.

I think that we can potentially have some influence,

but I'm a little bit concerned that I don't,

I want to make sure that the responsibility

for performance is retained with the council.

So we as councillors and members of the committee,

we don't have responsibility over hiring.

and so I'm a bit not sure about how that would work in real life.

And I'd also like to really reinforce the point that they make that there is a need for there to be a clear mechanism

for the Women's Commission to influence policy.

I think that's a really, really vital point and I'm really glad that they've made that in the report.

Thank you, Councillor Latticelli, for those comments.

Sorry, forgive me. Are we asking questions or not?

No, we're just having to discuss if there are any comments that you want to make on this report.

Yeah, if you have any questions, you can go ahead as well.

I missed the last meeting, but that concept is new to me. Sorry, I'm not asking a question.

I wanted to ask, thank you for summarising that, I know it's not your report, so it's really useful.

I want to ask about something that you mentioned, which is I think what they describe as the Council's overly optimistic self -assessment, that was their words.

Could you just tell me who sort of has ownership of that self -assessment, who was responsible for that, who ultimately signed that off?

You said it's something to be reflected upon, about how we can address that, which is really good to hear,

but how will we reflect on that, how will we review that, what's actually going to happen,

and how will we challenge what they're calling the Council's tendency toward internal optimism bias?

The self -assessment went through the conventional governance process.

It's worth saying that the one area of which they felt that our assessment was particularly

optimistic was the workforce strategy.

They made that point.

and because whilst we felt, as a council and the officers that contributed to that, felt

that there was progress in terms of gender pay gap for example, that wasn't in relation

to the specific recommendation.

But the challenge, it's fair to say the challenge could go broader than that and to say that

well this is complex long term work so the need to embed evidence within that is important

and there's a phrase of letting the evidence do the talking.

So in terms of how we're responding to that,

trying to be very deliberate in terms of evaluation

and measure success, both in the continuous improvement programme,

which you can see, which will be really developmental

because we haven't got it right yet,

and just ensuring that the performance review today,

that it is evidence doing the talking.

Because some of this work, not all of this work,

is a you know is we learn by doing not just not just kind of ticking off and

Reducing the boards from 20 to 5. It's it's more complicated

as you know, so really evidence and evaluation will be our biggest biggest response to that but also just

Reflecting as officers. It's good to be proud but also to be sober

Any other comments or question

because I change

Thank you.

Comments and questions.

Firstly, a question for you, Chair.

Obviously this is an important strategic challenge the Council is facing, so if you just tell

us.

Obviously this needs political oversight as well as oversight from officers who can only

come and speak to us in a very factual way rather than perhaps a political prioritisation

way.

So can you ask us what reaching out has been done to the Mayor or offering to perhaps a

statutory Deputy Mayor if the Mayor was not unable to come today in order to highlight

the political direction and priority that's taking place on this project.

That's the first question.

Second thing, the comment which will lead to a question.

Now I think I agree with the peer reviewers when they say that the Council's many plans

and there's always a sense of a plan for a plan.

So could you further clarify how there will be measurable milestones in place?

And if you look at the continuous improvement plan, we can see how in quarter one and quarter

two and three of 2026, it says that they're just, as examples, there will be new strategies

in place, new functions in place.

Obviously they need to be designed, but why is there not more of a sense of what deliverable

outcomes will be in place, and why do you think that the LGA might have noted that to

begin with?

And, yeah, that's my question on that.

So two questions.

Okay, in terms of the first, the mayor was invited to come and present as you can appreciate.

He is, you know, in terms of a very busy schedule and officers have approached.

I don't know in terms of what sort of reason is that the mayor has given, but I know he's

very busy in terms of other priorities.

But we have the corporate directors here in order to answer any questions in regards to

anything that us as members want to scrutinise, have to ask them for clarification.

And I'm sure the opportunity to also for us as members we can email

any

questions

Terrific is that we have

For the mayor as well, so I don't if Daniel in terms of

you and I clarify anything out any further in terms of

the mayor

Just he was invited to attend or to send the deputy

I'm not sure if he was sending cancer say it Ahmed. He'll be joining us for the for the second item

So if there are any questions

He'll be joining in 730 so we can we can ask some questions then as well

Local government association

Ministry for communities housing local government and now our auditors are all finding strategic

issues

embedded within the culture of this council and for the mayor to not come and

and explain what is being done to tackle them, highlights a lack of political priority in

my mind for all these things.

Over to you.

Okay, a mayor or any cabinet member.

Okay, can we, over to Jonathan.

Thanks chair, thanks councillor to pick up the joined up planning challenge and feedback

from the LGA.

So an example where we're responding to that more immediately would be, Councillor, you

highlighted that we have some improvements to make around from our external audit challenge,

for example.

So our mobilisation plans, our plans to address those improvements have been brought together

with the continuous improvement programme so that it's under one governance and one

area rather than separate plans.

So that's an example of where we're aligning the work

under the same governance, and of course that will then

progress to TAB as well and also make reporting easier

to this scrutiny as well.

But I don't think that's the answer to everything.

We need to continuously address and look at where there are

plans, where there's dependencies or things that can

join up better, but that's probably an example where

where bringing them together is a response to that challenge.

Thank you.

Councillor Asma Islam.

Thank you, Chair.

Can I just talk about the Workforce Strategy?

I wanted to talk about, obviously this report is talking about the continuous improvement

that we need to be on and the work that still needs to go into the strategy.

I wondered if you'd touch on retention of staff as well, senior staff in the churn.

Are we open to going back to that strategy to make sure that we can put more improvement

sort of plans in there in order to help with that and how are we going to try and work

with the LGA to see what's worked in other councils?

With the mayor's office, obviously we've had the change and the restructure from the last

recommendation and the bit that we're on now is about just defining the roles that exist

now.

I wondered, is that defining the roles according to the needs of the Council or what's the

benchmark like?

How are we going to define that and are we assessing what the needs are for the Council

or assessing where the gaps are?

What's remained is my confusion.

And lastly on the Women's Commission, so obviously we all know it took a little while

to get started but we're in a good place.

We had them in at the last meeting which was really good to hear from them.

But what I think the report is very right to recognise that we don't still understand how it's going to fit into

Influencing influencing decisions of this council and how that long -term plan how it all fits in

I don't know if you want to speak about who is actually going to be I'd like to know who'd be responsible to be able to

draught at that that graph of how it all fits in with the council and that it's actually going to be embedded for a

longer period because it's not fair to ask another commission's book here but

it's not their job to do that it would be much higher up so if you can give me

some context around that that'd be really helpful.

Thank you, Councillor Lisa.

Thanks, Councillor. On the workforce strategy, I'll give you an example of

you'd be aware that's just been two and a half thousand members of staff have

just responded to our staff survey and of course being do you plan to work here

and your pride within your role

and your psychological safety

and those questions

, really one of the broadest set

of staff survey questions,

challenging questions that I have ever seen

in a staff survey

have gone out

and we are just getting

the reports back now

so that will form

a really important part

of the workforce strategy

when the organisation

starts to digest

and break that data down

in more granular detail

We're also, as part of developing the Workforce Strategy, just expanding our range of measures,

retention, some of the more granular recruitment data, for example, that's another piece of

work which will be part of that.

Another final important element of designing and working on our Workforce Strategy is the

creation of a Your Voice Forum, which is 100 members of staff that are representative of

different grades and demography of our workforce.

And they'll be having kind of deeper conversations

about what's great, what doesn't work,

what the values and behaviours that really make us

be the best we can be.

So there's a whole range of pieces of work

that will help shape the workforce strategy.

And whilst we recognise that the progress has been slow,

we also don't want to just kind of,

a worst case scenario would be to cut and paste,

like hackneys or something like that.

We want to develop it with staff and alongside staff in making that work and for it to be

data led.

The second question on the mayor's office, is that still a piece of work that is in development?

And TAB, for example, have also, you can see from the public minutes in TAB have also kind

of raised what that looks like next.

Now, I think clarity of roles and a needs analysis of where the organisation is will

be part of that, but that work is really early and we can update as part of the continuous

improvement programme.

I feel probably less able to answer in full how the Women's Commission will develop policy

responses but I'm really happy to work with colleagues and come up with a more detailed

response and especially based on the previous meeting of which I watched online as well.

A real example of the optimism bias that this Council has that is really a structural problem

is when you are talking about retention and if it is really important, what is important

isn't just the staff survey, it is the exit interviews that tells you why they are leaving.

You have not mentioned that.

Are you open to that being a really grounding part of retention strategy of our staff?

because it's all good and well to put all these things in place.

We have to keep our staff in place as well.

We need to keep them in.

So do you want to speak on that at all?

Our new director of HR started today, in fact, so

I don't know when to answer for her on her first day, but I will

talk to Ellen and come up with a response.

But thank you.

Councillor, you have a question?

I have one suggestion and one question.

I will ask the suggestion first.

The LGA pair report that decided to transfer the

properties on the third parties should be reported

to the ONS and I would suggest the decision is

acquiring new properties should be reported as well.

Can you add on this action plan, please?

This is my suggestion.

and second one, the question is, we know we need to improve, but there is no time scale

on this continuous improvement plan.

Can you give us the idea how long it will take and implement this main part of this

plan and which deal with the LGA and BBI report before that we can turn to implementing continuous

improvement which we have identified as necessary.

Thank you.

Councillor, if you want to hold on to that question, because we are coming to that continuous

improvement plan on the next part of the report.

So hold on to that question.

It's a good question, but it's for the next part.

Councillor, Goulab Kibre.

Okay.

Thank you.

If we can move on to the continuous improvement plan.

Thank you, Chair, thank you.

So by doing that, what I'll do is I'll frame the report which is draught and you're seeing

pretty early which goes to the MHCLG and that's part of our effectively statutory reporting

responses as part of the best value, so we have to, we want to and we have to, report

every six weeks to tab six monthly reports to the Secretary of State, the previous one

was June I believe, and then this period covers July to December, so that's a good, that's

the report alongside the CIP and the Good Governance Institute reports of which providing

the kind of important context to why we're articulating our progress and the challenges

and next steps.

So again we do talk about the continuous improvement programme and we talk about how perhaps the

first period of following the best value recommendations have been acting in a bit more kind of a task

response.

Of course we set up TAB etc etc and started to do some of the early project work but really

in this period it's been about designing CIP,

getting it ready, getting the governance ready

and starting to deliver some of the key projects

of which there's over 40 projects

and effectively they're reported

with appropriate kind of programme boards

and sponsorship to TAB but also kind of internally

within the organisation.

Some of the key things over the last six months

to give a sense of what's happened in that period

would be the development of the strategic vision

and that's been designed with partners and residents as well.

That will have cabinet approval very, very soon we anticipate.

Additionally the 2700, not 2500 staff that completed the people surveys as we're referring to it,

that's an over 50 % response, so really significant change from previous engagement of staff surveys

in the more recent past.

And really started to look at baseline for our governance,

where are our strengths and where are some of the areas

we need to improve, and that's obviously reflected

in the Good Governance Institute report,

and starting to think about how we can embed

the areas of improving within the workstream,

the governance workstream that's most relevant.

We've also, talking about the plans of plans,

we've also expanded the scope of SIP

and being very explicit within this report

about how we do have some areas of improvement

and statutory recommendations of which we want

to kind of look in the eye and make sure

that we're mobilising all the resources we need to do

to improve around those and that they're part

of the reporting that will go to TAB as well.

Areas where we kind of, we're recognising

that that's still a challenge in terms of kind of progress.

of course we're saying that evidence and embedding are really important words for the next stage.

So evaluating and looking at those measures of success for the change that we're making

is going to be a really important part.

But tenacious, confident and sober to the next bit of progress will be the reflections

of the report.

Within there as well we've asked the tab leads to provide challenge on us of where we've

got to and where we're going to go next.

And there's some really good reaffirmation

of the progress we've made, but also

a challenge on the next steps as well,

of which we're ensuring that we're going to respond to.

But you'll be particularly interested

in terms of the role of scrutiny going forward.

That paper is accompanied by the latest SIP.

Now we do have projects and delivery plans for all the work,

but it's hundreds and hundreds of pages,

but we can really happy to kind of supply

and update on that in terms of like where you start to see the tangible

actions as they as they unfold but it's just the scale of the the programme means

that we've provided the most digestible sense of the work of the work so far

thank you just want to make a clarification to Councillor James

question before in regards to the mayor not being here we and the mayor's office

have mayor has his surgeries on a Monday and here he has made made it clear to

us in previous meetings that Monday is not a good day for him to attend

Our awareness, so I just wanted to clarify clarify that issue

Applies to all cabinet members and could easily apply to the James

Can I remind you please I'm chairing the meeting and it's ask courtesy if you can just follow

The rules of the meeting if you want to have say if you were to say anything, please

Indicate to me you'd have plenty of chance to speak

Does anyone have any questions on the report just been presented?

Thank you for your presentation

My question is the LGA report says on page 4

The council continues to show strong financial management

But are just asked to not to be complacent. How does the continuous improvement plan deal with finance?

All the references I could find seem to be fairly incidental, but surely finance should

be at the core of what we are doing, is my one question.

Second question is, the LGA report says on page 6, the council should have a single plan

with clear, miserable objective to show how the council is improving.

It also says the council does have lots of plan which we do.

How can we bring all these plan together so we can monitor them easily?

Thank you, Councillor.

I agree that it's not explicitly finance in nature, although there are some areas under

the one corporate team workstream which obviously relates to controls and

assurance and oversight which seem very very important in ensuring kind of

delivery within budget and having a strong view of all the

different change projects within the organisation so probably more

in terms of like the foundations rather than specifically

rooted in finances but so I kind of take that on board.

The the the element of like having a single plan

My view would be there are like limits to that. Otherwise it would

Organisation with a spend over a billion pounds as you know the diversity of services

anything from send improvement response plans through to

Responses to legislative changes all those things are very important and we should ensure we've got oversight and grip of those

But from a continuous improvement perspective, what we're trying to do is tell a storey of

all of our improvement work in a single kind of programme of work.

And what the limits of that without it becoming astronomical, we'll kind of explore and review

and share with you as we go.

But the example I go back to is that we did bring this response to the statute recommendations

and external challenge areas of improvement within here because there's such an obvious

link to our improvement journeys overall and that would be a great way of yourselves and

TAB to provide scrutiny of our improvement journey in a bigger more holistic way.

But do we think that all improvement plans will be part of that?

I don't think so, I just think that we need to ensure that we've got a good understanding

of change within the organisation, which we have a foundation for, but we need to do more

work over time and that's actually contained within the plan.

Councillor Lettie. Thank you. So I want to ask some specific

questions about the plan. I was looking at the specifically in the culture and workforce

workstream. I'm a bit concerned about, I mean obviously the staff survey is coming out,

so one question is, and the results coming out, so one question is about how we're resourcing

looking ahead and kind of thinking about how to incorporate what comes out of the survey

into the continuous improvement plan, because it could be that that creates a whole extra

I mentioned to the project and particularly I'm interested in kind of internal, so there's

not a lot about the internal governance of what happens when this internal optimism bias

as identified in the peer challenge report creates problems for people to speak truth

to power, which was one of the main issues in the best value inspection report.

How are we ensuring that we as an organisation face issues and don't try and sweep them under

the carpet?

My second question is around the empowering services review.

It's all very well that we're sending teams of transformation staff into the services,

but are we confident that those services are willing to work with those people?

Because assuming they're the same people, if we had an issue of the kind of more sort

of centralised team not working well with the services, how are we going to overcome

that if the same individuals are working, yeah, so that's my question.

Thank you.

I mean, on the optimism bias, and we look for all of us to challenge and reflect on

our progress, whether that's through the continuous improvement programme or corporate performance

framework for example, what would say is that we are, as officers, we are

reflecting, the senior officers and officers working within our teams, we are

reflecting on that challenge, but I would also say it's actually in the

design of governance as well, so evidence and measures are really important and

there are, even the corporate performance report that's going today, has quite

robust rules for really, there's no subjective elements to what makes a red if it doesn't

achieve the target, then these sorts of decisions and robustness in how we design both governance

and how we assess ourselves are very, very important.

And I think there are times when this council is very, very good at that and there are times

where we need to make sure there's more evaluation evidence, particularly in work like this.

We have made some really deliberate steps around showing that we want to work differently

and with people, particularly around workforce, the Your Voice forum is an example and also

the commitment to, as we get those results in, to share them and talk about them openly

with staff and what are the solutions to that in terms of a workforce response.

Just to give you a sense of the type of responses we are anticipating would be directorate

level of responses because

every area will be

different.

But to rush into those

would be a mistake, to

spend time understanding

and having conversations

with staff and staff

networks and trade unions

about those results is the

important first steps

before developing those

plans.

But it may be that some of

those plans need additional

resource and investment to

make sure that the areas

want to improve do or the

areas where we want to

but also are kind of capitalised on.

So we recognise there's more work to do there,

but we're kind of open -minded to what that might be.

On the empowering services,

I think the question of that is actually,

we're looking at the moment,

we're looking at bringing transformation

and change staff together into one place,

recognising that it's better for staff

to be working on different things,

but it's also better for the organisation

to work on different things,

because there's quite a lot of join -up

in the challenges that we face.

Our response from staff and colleagues and even partners that have involved in some of

that work has been really positive and see it as a kind of opportunity rather than a

threat.

But you're right, Councillor, how we do things is important as what we do and I think that

will be, we're doing things in a kind of measured and slow, progressive way with people rather

than to people and that is one of the mantras of both the staff survey and the change that

that we are making in apparent services.

Thank you.

Do you want any clarification?

Councillor Ahboudou Kabir and then Councillor Asmaislam and then Councillor Ahboudou Khan.

Thank you, Chair.

As I asked the question, we know we need to improve but there is no time limit on this improvement plan

and can you give us the idea how long it will take

to the improvement plan, part one plan,

and which deal with the LGA and BBA report.

Before we take, can we turn to the implementing

continuous improvement which we have identified

as necessary?

Thank you.

So then we have more detailed project plans under every work stream, which we would be

happy to share.

But there are also areas which you can see in the colour coding of the projects which

we haven't started yet, which are kind of future projects which we want to start, but

have a kind of broad time scale of doing so.

So we just want to be clear that all the work isn't underway at the precise times.

We want to be transparent and open about that.

But with the work that is underway, it has detailed project plans with time scales and milestones.

And of course we're kind of happy to update on that, but it is quite granular information.

And as we expand the team, as we, in some cases, as we choose to invest on best value funding,

we will start to get through the projects that haven't yet started.

Councillor Islam.

Thank you. So can I just take one strand of this, which is governance, political culture and decision making.

When we started this, because we had the Envoy models and everything that was happening in Tahemelet,

there wasn't really a blueprint for us to use, so it was about going along with the journey

as we go along. And now that we've had time to reflect and have a look at this, my worry

is, is how is any of this actually going to work? Is it going to produce the outcome that

we want? So the measures of success, I'm looking at that particular page in particular, the

things that have been done and the things that are supposed to be the measures of success

haven't resulted in that because we're not there.

There are things when it comes to governance

that are going the other way around.

So for instance, the pace of improvement isn't there

and the improvement itself in certain places

is just not there.

And I'll give you one example from the last overview

and scrutiny meeting when I talked about,

it was a really small thing but I just spoke about

how one of my pre -decision scrutiny questions

didn't get answered and I raised it here

and it was the right place to raise it so we can keep a tab on that, the chair went

to cabinet meeting and he asked the mayor why that's the case.

Now it's very clear, like the mayor gets to see the question, gets to see the answer,

and then he will reflect on it and he will make a decision in my decision or he might

clarify why he's still making the decision, but he's subject to the same disservice.

If it's late for me, it's late for him as well.

It's just like those simple things aren't in place.

I just feel like each committee, each governance aspect from the political side isn't there.

It's not working.

We've had the training, we've had all of the things that you know and I've been part of

it, participated in it.

I'm not sure that we're actually going to be able to achieve the outcomes that we're

trying to achieve.

I guess I'm saying it's a difficult one because I don't really know what to suggest in return,

but there's a lot more work that needs to be done with the corporate side as well as the political side,

because I genuinely just want to be able to participate in things that are going to achieve an embedded change,

and I feel like there's so many things I've participated in, and I've come away from it not thinking that it was the best use of my time,

or I actually achieved what it was aimed to achieve.

Yeah.

Thank you, Councillor.

I mean, I hope in the report to the Minister or Secretary of State, we are recognising

that there is a long way to go on some of this work, and there's a whole range of learning

as we go, and let's try and use an example of, and of course it's imperfect, because

is really difficult work, but the work around the member

pledge, for example, of which councillors came together

to explore some of the behaviours and contexts which

relate to the original best value judgement.

Well, a key element, a key finding of that,

and a key expression was actually

there are some fundamental things that the council could

do better.

So it's not about ticking that element off.

It's about doing that piece of work,

recognising it's long term and it will change as it go.

But actually there's a learning from that

and we're exploring what office can do more

in terms of a member support protocol, for example,

like working title.

So I'm trying to show that there's a whole range

of learning and adaption to go as part of that work,

especially that work stream because it is,

you know, there isn't a blueprint,

there isn't a path ahead.

People talk about sand well, but it's really different.

So it's continued oversight, continued scrutiny,

continued learning, and those measures of success

that we have in now, they will be different in six months

or more expanded in six months because our intent

will be in a, we will have made progress

and we will have learned more, and that we might have

some steps back, but as long as we can see them

and we can discuss them, that's the way we want to do

and we have to do this work but we recognise it is long -term.

I just wanted to come back and follow on.

The political culture is the bit that is difficult and that doesn't have a blueprint.

What does have a blueprint, good practise with LGA and all other organisations,

is the corporate good practises that need to happen.

For example, the Ernest Young report picked up about the optimistic biasness

biasness that this council has.

In the audit committee, when this was introduced and you were both there, you know, it talked

about the council accepted the findings, but then three days later there was a comms piece

on our website to almost say none of this is happening and we're in a great place.

That doesn't show improvement.

None of us councillors are in charge of the comms.

Why is that still the case?

So there are ownership and accountability that needs to be taken for things that are

still going wrong.

It's actually not acceptable.

And I guess that's where the blurred lines is because we don't know who's responsible

for what and when something does go wrong, who's held accountable for that and who actually

stands up and says how we're not going to repeat those mistakes.

Because making mistakes is one thing, but repeating them time and time again, that's

the cultural part that I have real problems with because that's not best value for our

and neither is it best value and use of resources and money for this council either

You only respond to it?

Arthur?

I can respond if I thank council, I'll reflect on that in there.

Councillor Ahudul Khan, then sort of Amy, then Councillor James.

Thank you, Chair.

In the continuous improvement plan, there are a commitment to involve residents to measure

success by measuring resident participation in council.

There will be a resident panel which relates to adult and social care and children service

support.

But any residents reading this continuous improvement plan will be finding it hard to

see how they can be involved in council decision making.

Thank you, Councillor, it is a challenge that is weighing a little bit heavy on us.

What I would say is that it is a large element of this to do with the corporate centre and

governance and I'm not saying that that's not, it's obviously incredibly important for

for residents, but it's not necessarily a plan that's often involving in how we manage meetings and things like that.

It's fair to say, I hope I'm not doing residents a disservice, that the majority of residents are less interested in that.

They're interested obviously in the impact of what good governance does in terms of the services of which they receive.

What I would say, if you agree with this challenge, we are thinking about how we communicate it.

We spent a huge effort in terms of communicating it with staff and even recording that as part

of the staff survey and our understanding of that.

But we will think more about how we can articulate it with residents in terms of particularly

around governance.

But we're not quite there yet in terms of how we're doing that.

We're working on engaging with staff primarily at the moment.

Who owns the continuous improvement plan?

Introductions of the continuous improvement plan say that we will continue work with the

transformations and assurance board.

Who is we in that context?

Thank you, Councillor.

Ultimately the chief exec is responsible for the plan overall.

In terms of the role that the transformation assurance board has, that is to agree, assure

and steer the work of the plan.

So you can see in some of the report to the Secretary of State, the TAB leads, including

Jenny and Carolyn and the people you will be aware of, have offered a steer and a challenge

and assessment of the progress over six months.

That's a snippet of the type of challenge and oversight that we get from TAB.

But ultimately, you know, the Council owns its improvement plan with oversight and scrutiny

from the envoys.

Before I go to Councillor Amy and James, I just want to come in with a clarification

and also a question.

We have been listening to some of the questioning from the councillors and members.

I want to particularly pick up on the question where Councillor Ahmadul Khan brought up in

terms of how scrutiny should be part of the policy making, etc.

and also where Councillor Islam said about who takes those responsibilities in terms of when things don't.

So in terms of officers and different directors, where do they come in and how, you know,

what sort of surety do we get in terms of basically getting information and questions and responses from officers?

how can, you know, what sort of surety do we get that this has been followed and we

are, you know, in terms of getting the right, the papers on time, etc. and so that we can,

as members, we can scrutinise properly and have meaningful in terms of outcomes.

So if you could just...

That would be, from my perspective,

as a person overseeing the delivery,

I'm incredibly open -minded to how we share progress,

as I should be in terms of providing you

with the assurance and oversight

and lines of inquiry that you might get.

There's one area that I'd say that we are,

we're working on it and improving,

and that would be the engagement with groups around TAB just to ensure that there's a more

granular sharing of progress and information and risks around the continuous improvement

programme ahead of TAB and perhaps with a kind of broader audience.

So that's something that we're definitely thinking about in the next year but we want

to engage with councillors on that.

But otherwise, we have oversight of our programme and we deliver it and we would respond to

the requests of course of this group.

Councillor AB, then Councillor Chit.

Thank you.

I think there may have been a possible answer to my question in that, which is helpful,

but it's slightly going back to what Councillor Islam asked earlier, but it's about the sort

of, so I'm looking specifically at the point about development of members pledge and support

package and then also in this big chunky document, that sort of bit, the corresponding bit.

Now my question is sort of about in terms of continuous improvement, where does, I'm

not seeing where sort of continuous member feedback comes into this bit.

I guess I think perhaps what you just said about engaged with that is perhaps where it

come in. But I think you've got this programme board which I'm not saying there has to be

political representation in every single one of these, I wouldn't agree with that at all,

but I think with this one there might be room to think about that. And I'll just say specifically

why if that's okay, Shari, it's just that I have a concern that there may be an overreliance

on what happened in those sessions with the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny. I can

it mentioned in here as sort of a baseline for what's to come and potential changes,

that there is a hope that those changes will improve behaviour. I just have to say that

I came out of those sessions, I don't think I've ever felt worse leaving this building.

I was absolutely appalled by what I heard in some of those sessions. So I'm just a bit

concerned that that seems to be the end of the member feedback in this. So there's just

bit more you could tell me about this specific bit about the support package of Members Pledge

that would be useful.

Thanks, Councillor. Recognising how hard the work is and also appreciating everybody's

input into it. Again, first we'll reflect on the language around that, recognising it's

mixed and a bit of a long term piece of work in some parts of it are.

So if the question is around just ensuring there's continued feedback around that piece

of work then that's definitely the intention.

But actually our reflections and plans go a little bit further in thinking about how

can we involve, and we had a couple of member briefing sessions for example, how do we build

on those and ensure that we're getting ongoing reflections and challenge and wisdom and experience

and how to crack on with the work really.

So those are the thoughts we're having and in fairness that's some of the challenge from

our envoy colleagues as well, like how can we better get more involvement from elected

members and that's what we're thinking about.

Councillor James.

Thank you. My first question sort of reflected the LGA report that like a concern that we

don't as a council have that much measurable that we're measuring ourselves against to

highlight, you know, to address the challenges of the LGA peer review. You've said in some

that sit behind some of the things in the SIP.

So I was just going to ask,

looking at the timeline of key activities,

we're in an implementation phase,

we're empowering services review,

communication of a new model approach

should be happening now for the oversight

of statutory recommendations.

Data modernization, the development of the new,

and delivery of new approach should be happening next month

and in transformation, funding should be agreed.

So if you could just tell us more about the plans behind them, if you can give us an insight

into any measurables that sit with them and then we ask if you'd be able to send them.

I appreciate you don't want to present them all here, so you might not send them, just

send them for us to do some light reading over Christmas.

That would be welcome if you can.

Really happy to update on those works.

I mean they'll be starting then, but it might not be realised in full, but it will give

you a sense of what those are and purpose and intended outcomes.

Does that sound okay to do that as a follow -up rather than talk?

As a follow -up, yes, I just want to reassure us that, yes, that this SIP plan is being

delivered to, as I said.

So, yeah.

If you're happy just to send that, that would be great.

But if you can speak, give us any further details now off the top of your head, that

would be welcome to.

I feel if I talk to all those areas it could take some time.

Okay, fine, thank you.

If you send them that would be great.

Thank you.

That will have to be the last question on this.

Thank you very much to you all for your presentation and also everyone's contribution.

I just want to sum up in terms of this item by saying I think there's some really good

questions and comments made just for you to take away that I think is so

important and in a lot of our scrutiny meetings we discussed this in terms of

the involvement of our residents. All of us sit here because of the residents

have put us here so I think it's really important and we're here to serve our

residents and I think it's really important that in this we give extra

Emphasis and focus on getting the opinion of our residents

And we take that on board as well so that's that would be my suggestion for you to take them

Go forward and once again, thank you very much for your presentation

this evening

We will move on to our next

item

Did you want to say anything

I think I'm here for corporate performance as well.

My voice is going.

We will move on to our next agenda item which is the quarter 2 strategic delivery performance

report 2025 -2026.

Also the quarter 2 budget monitoring 2025 -2026.

I just want to remind officers that we're going to take this as read, so if there's anything that you want to highlight,

I'm more than happy to do that.

So, join us.

So I'm going to open it to the officer or the lead member.

Councillor Said, thank you for joining us as well.

Over to you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Chair, good evening to the committee.

So I'll try and cover both of them together at once just to highlight firstly just a bit

on the Q2 strategic delivery and performance report.

So we've got 43 measures that's got target against them.

And overall picture is positive

as the council continues to progress

on its four year strategic plan.

And we face challenges throughout the process,

but the picture overall is positive.

Of the 42 measures, we have 32, 43 measures, we have 32 that are green, seven red and five

amber measures.

From previous quarter, we've got amber measure that was red previously, so we've got improvement.

We've also got greens that were previously amber, so those are the household recycling

KPI 46, Business Support KPI 33, as well as Council Tax Collection KPI 52.

Those are now all green, which is as a result of the hard work and the mitigations we put

in place from the previous quarter.

We still face challenges.

There are seven red measures and each one is being looked at very seriously and officers

are working very hard to put in mitigations in place, which we can talk about in detail

afterward and we have four AMBA measures in that area too. Mitigations are in

place for all of them, corporate directors as well as lead members are

addressing them as you speak to make sure that they all turn green as soon as

possible. In terms of Q2, the budget monitoring briefings, what I would like

to highlight is that we are facing pressures like all London councils. It's

TAs and adult social care as well as send pressures across the country.

These pressures are felt by everyone but it's how we manage and how we control the overspend

is what we can focus on.

We have a general fund overspend projection although it's a forecast that's not exactly

happened it's forecasted to be an overspend but we are working hard to make sure that

overspend is controlled.

looking at 18 .9 million at the moment.

So it went up from Q1's projections.

The dedicated school grant is looking at 9 .4 million pounds

and the HRA is at 3 .2 million pounds.

Now these, like I said, they're demand driven pressures,

particularly around homelessness, which is 21 million pounds in its own.

Adult social care is at 22 and SEND is at 3 .6.

Our mitigations are put in place corporately as well as departmentally, how we can look

after those, how we can tackle those pressures first hand.

So corporately we looked at substitution where we can, where we can make sure that where

there is funds available to make sure that we balance our books, we keep it sustainable

going forward with the use of reserves as well, as well as pots of money where we know

that is available for the council to use for its sustainability.

But more importantly, we've introduced expenditure control panels this time around to make sure

that the expense that we need to face for the council is controlled and it's gone through

proper scrutiny and review.

The panel is part of members as well as senior officers who look at costs on a weekly basis,

corporately as well as departmentally to make sure that we can review them and scrutinise

as much as possible.

And that's given us a £3 .9 million controls as well as a £5 million contingency that

we had put into MTFS to start with.

These are some of the actions that demonstrate grip and already is consistently being applied

to manage the Council's finances in -year.

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

but it's monitored regularly to ensure that deliverability with any changes addressed promptly through the alternative mitigations.

To strengthen controls and drive down these costs, these dedicated spending controls have been established,

covering temporary accommodation, adult social care, SEND, ensuring closer scrutiny and tighter oversight of expenditure in this high pressure area,

as well as allowing exceptions where we know it's critical service for it to continue.

Corporate directors are working very hard in the India mitigations and the actions that they're putting through

through the spending review panels, including vacancy management.

That's also very important to look at vacancy management, reducing and slowing down of non -essential spend

and tighter controls on agency usage.

And corporate directors, as well as lead members, are accountable for delivery of agreed management actions

and progress will be reviewed and managed corporately each month in this spending review

panels.

So we have savings target where we are targeted on 81 .5 % on track, 18 .2 % is phased and 0 .3 %

very small amount which look like might be undeliverable but the year hasn't ended, we

still have six months to go and the pressure is still on.

In terms of capital, we have a general forecast of £62 .5 million and the HRA forecast is

£170 .3 million.

I will leave it here and we are happy to take any questions.

We have corporate directors and members.

Anyone want to add anything from our side here?

Does anyone want to add anything?

Thank you, chair.

Thank you, councillor.

I'm just going to reference what Councillor Childrie mentioned earlier about the LGA paper

regarding us being complacent.

All the measures that we've introduced clearly states that we're not being complacent,

we're not taking this seriously.

There are weekly reviews where directors are held responsible for their forecasts and mitigations,

but we've also got, looking at different ways we can substitute these really challenging

times across London, especially for homelessness and adult social care.

So we are doing everything we can to enable us to get to a good place, but just for reference,

you know, there's no complacency across the Council.

Thank you.

Any members have any questions?

I'm going to go with Councillor Lattari, then Councillor Criar, then Councillor James.

Thanks, Chet.

So I have a few questions mostly on the budget actually because I see that there aren't any officers from

the communities directorates

So I'm not sure whether okay

Where the questions about the recycling rate would be able to be answered

So I'll start with the budget and maybe chair you'll be you'll give me some time later to ask about recycling. I

Have maybe some basic stupid questions about the budget

overspend. The first question is what does substitution mean? And the second question

is is the projected overspend of the 18 million before or after, is that the calculation before

or after we have put in anything like the substitution or the savings? And the second

question is about spending review panels, who sits on these, what is their role in the

kind of internal governance structure and would it be appropriate and is there a way

of it getting, of their findings getting reported to us at the committee through the quarterly

budget process?

the

The first question is about

substitutions.

These are

external fundings that could

qualify for us to use

legally, which will

substitute the general fund.

The general

fund was funded by the

council tax.

We go through

a process, we test, we cheque,

we work with legal

planners and

public health to ensure

that the criteria is met

for substitution.

And then the

second question is

part of the 18 .9 million, that's after we've substituted.

So that's what we will use to basically,

our risk reserve will fund that element of it.

And the plan is now to really drive down those costs

so that we spend less on our reserves.

In terms of the spending review panels,

that's normally chaired by the mayor, the chief exec,

and I'm also there to support.

And the role of that is every corporate director

is challenged in terms of their forecasts,

So the in -year mitigations and we stress test what those mitigations are and those are actually

reported to yourselves quarterly.

So all the mitigations are proposed.

It's at the back of the spending review panels.

Okay, Councillor Glamkibiya.

Thank you, Chair.

Chair, I have two daughters.

They are school teachers.

And I know education healthcare assessment is how important for the students, especially special needs students.

Previously the KPI, 0 to 1 was green, now it turns to red. It's very disappointing.

And my question is what can we actually do to real change for this?

Because since I was here as a counsellor, there were a lot of meetings where we just raised this question.

It seems to me like I saw a film a few years ago, just finding the Nemo.

One dialogue was there, they keep swimming, keep swimming to reach the destiny.

Like this, it seems to me we are in keep saying, keep saying to reach the destiny.

Chair, we have Steve ready online who will be best to answer that question.

Thank you, Councillor.

I believe you can hear me okay.

Apologies I'm not there in person.

Yeah, I appreciate raising the issue around EHCP performance.

Councillors have been very kind to give us positive feedback when we've seen the performance

go above target, so it's reasonable to challenge us now in quarter two when you've seen it

reduce.

We did have a large rise, as you'll see in one of the other KPIs, about the number of

and Care plans, we saw a rise in quarter two of the number of plans but the main reason

for the performance not hitting target in quarter two is because it includes July and

August period where schools and other providers are closed so in terms of actually getting

through the Education, Health and Care plans quarter two is always a dip in performance.

the individual month performance since since then has improved and September

and October are both over 60 % which is encouraging so I'll be able to share

that with the next reporting. I think the other point just to stress and I

guess to provide reassurances during the EHCP process assessment process there is

a whole range of support offered to children and families during that

process but I'm conscious that you know 20 weeks is still a long time and we do

need to get through it. The reality is here we've had additional investment and

additional staff brought in the reality is the level of demand. I am I am hopeful

that a national reform which is due in the new year will help us as a system

overall cope with demand better with a big focus on early years, early help and

early prevention, but I'm hopeful the next time we talk at ONS about the performance

report this indicator will be green.

Thank you, Steve.

Councillor, can you just let me follow up?

Councillor James Green.

And then Councillor Agbani.

I've got a question about finance and then as well as performance.

I'll do them separately, yeah?

Yeah firstly on finance quite simply just looking at appendix 4 the savings

tracker there's still six well just over six million pounds of achievable savings

that are still required particularly I think a forecast increase in leisure

income is probably the chunk it was close to a million as well as care

technology transformation that's over a million as well which I can imagine is

quite difficult to implement.

So just I get some idea of how confident you are

that they can be achieved or where you forecast

there might be unachievable savings that might need

to be varied until we finish the financial year.

Kate, that's it on the finance.

I've got some on the performance side.

Thank you.

Thank you, I think it's a very, very good question.

A savings is something that we take very seriously

because any slippages on savings means obviously

there's an impact on our outcome.

So I think the savings are very closely monitored

and what we've touched on, some of them are quite technical

and we need to make sure that these are delivered on target.

When it comes to the, have you got anyone from

Adult Social Day?

Show me, we have Shobhana, so Shobhana can speak on that one

for us in more detail.

But I think overall, we have 81 .5 % which is either achieved

or on track, I think that is on the safe side.

So the bulk of it is deliverable.

6 .1 million is where we have, is being phased.

So I wouldn't say it's not achievable.

It's being phased, it's being tracked to make sure that it is delivered.

Where Shoman can talk to his part.

And the element which we think that possibly isn't achievable is 0 .1 million pounds.

So which is about a hundred thousand pounds compared to everything that we have.

It's very small, I get that.

But again there's no room for complacency.

We need to look into this and make sure we keep pushing or finding alternatives within

the six months remaining.

I will pass to Abduraz.

Thanks, chair.

I was just going to make a general comment in terms of why these are AMBA.

These are savings delivered and the other part services are requested to find other

mitigations to ensure we don't have a gap in here.

That's what we say they are phased.

If they are not deliverable at all, we colour them red.

We are also working through a proper change process as part of the Budget Board, which

happens every month.

So myself and John Lloyd are looking at ways to really formalise that.

If it can't be delivered or if it's being phased, then they need to formalise what are

the alternatives and we are going through that process at the moment.

I got two questions, one in the report and one in the budget monitoring.

So I put these two questions to them.

KPI 055 shows that decreasing tenants' satisfaction their home is not safe.

Our own answer seems to be that we have a recovery plan and we work with the regulators.

We are doing to communicate this to residents.

How do we find...?

Councillor Khan, can you just speak into the mic?

Okay, sorry.

Okay, KP I055 shows that decrease in members, numbers of tenants satisfied their home is

safe.

Our answer seems to be that we have a recovery plan and we work with the regulators.

What are we doing to communicate this to the residents?

How do we find out how these tenants are not satisfied?

Second question is budget monitoring.

The QE2 forecast out of the general fund revenue account shows that 26 million of our spend in housing and regenerations.

What is being doing to bring this overspend down before the end of the year? Thank you.

Do you want to take that question?

They are both on housing.

David can cover them.

My question is on housing.

Similarly, just to say, I have got some colleague Councillor Carmswake about 55 and I also wanted

to talk about KPI 54 and looking into why they are on the decline both reporting concerns

about condition of estates, buildings and repairs similarly KPI 56 which is not in the

red but it's in amber is a number of unsafe council homes it's just creeping up slightly

and it's still in the amber so just again my related question is what are we doing about

repairs identifying and highlighting the safety of our council homes and then

you know remediating that in a good good time

and so I was just taking a note of that so that I don't forget so just to come

to the first question from Councillor Khan around the tenant satisfaction

around feeling that their home is safe.

So it has taken a dip this year, although in the most recent quarter it has slightly

improved on the previous quarter.

We are doing follow -up surveys with everybody who said that they were dissatisfied to find

out what the reasons around that dissatisfaction is.

What we're finding is there's a whole range of issues when people think about the safety

of their home.

Sometimes it can be community safety, sometimes it can be around issues to do with things

like door entry systems where we've had some contractor failure in the last quarter so

that hasn't worked as well as it could so we're trying to address that.

In other instances it can be concerns around some of the things that we reported as part

of our self -referral, where we were very transparent about the fact that we've got work to do around

some of the building compliance areas.

So we have made a lot of progress in those areas since the point of the self -referral

and your question was also about how we're communicating that to tenants, cancer canons,

and we're doing that in a number of ways.

We have got things like our tenant voice, we have got new channels set up like our WhatsApp

channel for tenants and residents where we are updating people on progress.

But I think one of the main areas is actually to go back to the people who have said they

are dissatisfied, ask them why and then put in place some actions that respond to the

points that I have addressed.

So I think that is the first point.

On Councillor King's question around tenant satisfaction more broadly, so which I think

is number KPI 55, sorry KPI 54, so it has seen a decline in the most recent quarter

Overall for the year today is is at target and on if you compare back to the relevant quarters of last year

We are seeing a positive positive trend. So overall I would say that ten satisfaction is still trending

Well, however, that doesn't mean it's sort of back to the complacency point that we kind of just say okay

It's going in the right direction

We still phone up and do follow ups with every tenant who who answers that question has been

Unsatisfied to find out what the reasons are and do some action

planning around that so I would like to think we are still taking that seriously.

We do tend to see a dip at this time of year because obviously this is when you

get an increase in things like leaks and damp mould and those sorts of things so

it's not unusual for that curve to go that way and so it's quite important to

sort of compare it with the data from the year before. I think in the final one

which is about decent homes, which is 56.

You're right that that is trending,

Amber has improved and we are continuing to see it proven.

For me, this one is gonna be a much slower burn

because as you sort of alluded to,

it's about long -term investment in homes.

So that's the major planned capital works programme.

It's about getting our stock condition information

up to date.

And this was the thing that when we self -referred

just over a year ago we were always really clear it's not an overnight job. There's a

sort of five year plan to get to full 100 % decency which is where we want to get to but

we will and intend to through the asset management strategy we've got see a steady improvement

over that period and I hope that that is what you will be seeing here but it isn't one that

is going to be solved overnight that is for sure and I think most particularly London

have got a decency challenge which you know to varying degrees and it will take

a number of years to turn around and that's that's what our plan is. I think

there was one other question from Councillor Cairns.

Yeah the homelessness. So yeah we do have a large overspend in the

department and it's been and the reasons for that have been well rehearsed at

this committee previously, it's largely about the cost of homelessness and temporary accommodation

and the increase in demand that we've seen but also the increase in cost, particularly

as the LHA rate remains frozen at 2011 levels.

But we are putting in place a very significant number of mitigations to address that.

So for instance we've got a real sort of stretch target to bring in 500 additional private rented sector properties

that can be let to homeless households and Jennifer Winters here

which is a much more cost effective way of housing those households

and actually better quality than having them in short term overnight,

nightly paid accommodation or B &B accommodation.

We are also looking at how we can use our own council lets and also acquisitions.

So we've now acquired over 100 former right to buy homes back into council ownership to help address this challenge.

All of that has contributed to the fact that we have managed to improve the forecast between quarter one and quarter two in housing and regeneration.

but actually the full year benefit of them doesn't really kick in until next year, the year that starts in April

and so we're much more confident looking at the year to April that all of those mitigations will start to pay dividends

but it is a dynamic situation because obviously we can't completely control demand and we can't completely control what the market is doing

the only good news I can report here is that there has been a slight steadying

of demand. We are low just wanting to monitor that for longer before we can

sort of take a view about whether that's that's a longer term trend or whether

it's just a short term flip and then we go back to rising demand. So a lot of

effort is going into that area to mitigate the position and I think

because we will get the full 12 month benefit of what we have done this year, I'm confident

we are heading towards a better space there, but it doesn't fully address the challenges

we have got in here, which is why we have got the reported overspend we do and why there

is a lot of corporate mitigation.

Thank you.

Jahaed, then we will go to Ahmedul Qabir and then Councillor Nair.

Thank you, Chair.

Just as you were talking about overspend, I just want to touch upon the disrepair and the legal costs and prevention.

So 1 .3 million overspend on disrepair claims, 350 live cases.

So what is the end -to -end prevention strategy that will set us back to pre -set levels?

Thank you.

Thank you chair, thank you for the question.

So I think with legal disrepair the key part of it is having a pre -action protocol where

we try and pick up the cases early before they get to the legal stage and actually negotiate

with tenants at that stage around what works we can do to prevent things progressing to

the full kind of stage where you need solicitors involved.

And so a big part of our plan is trying to sort of head cases off at that stage and I

think we actually do reasonably well here and if you look at numbers of disrepair cases

compared with comparable landlords and other big central London boroughs I think we have

we do reasonably.

But I think we're only really going to come back to trying it comes back to Councillor

King's question earlier, we're going to have to get our stock to full decency in order

to completely address the challenge of disrepair and that means the long term investment strategy.

So it's another one which isn't a kind of overnight position but I think where we do

have cases arising, the intention is to deal with them, do the works as early as possible

at the pre -action stage to prevent them becoming full cases.

Thank you, Chair.

You've given me a chance.

Basically, I don't understand one of the things.

It's not very clear to me.

KPA005, attendance on holiday activities has gone green to red.

It's really warning for me.

But attendees are 95 per cent funded places.

And can you explain why?

And why is this going green to red?

So this one, the reason Amy Jackson apologises is because I asked her to come talk about

this and she wasn't available.

But from what I understand, we've had four providers pull out from this scheme, which

is why it has gone to red.

From what I understand, it is going to be back on track.

There is some work to do around processing so that when providers pull out, we can get

new ones up and going fairly quickly.

So I'm not the expert on this topic, but I'm told this will recover quite quickly.

Chair, if I can just add as well, where Councillor Kabir has made a good point where attendance,

which did go ahead had 95%.

So I think that's quite important to know that

where we fell short for is because of the providers,

but the ones that did go ahead,

it wasn't like, the last service that we provided

was 95 % attended for those children who are eligible,

if that makes sense.

So it's just that amount of provision available

going forward will spread it out,

so then the targets are met more bar -wide

rather than sort of relying on certain providers,

If they don't meet the target, it affects the whole KPI.

So we want to spread out the available spaces going forward.

What is the action or measure you take for this to come to the green again?

And what other plan you have?

So one of the plans is that we want to spread out the providers, have more providers on

board, so that if one or two can't make it, it doesn't affect the numbers, because if

a large provider doesn't take up a number of places that they had promised, that affects

the whole KPI.

So I think we have more providers in place who can give spaces to children eligible for

the holiday activity fund.

But overall, the target that wouldn't go, the amount of spaces that did go ahead, that

was 95 % achieved.

So I think it is a good achievement that we did, but in terms of our target, we want to

make sure it's more realistic and we have more providers in place.

Thanks Chet. Okay so I wanted to talk about recycling so thank you for

representing the community's team. I don't know your name so maybe you could

introduce yourself. One of the reflections that I had last time when we

had a waste spotlight is that the missed collection reporting is not externally, it's not possible

for us to validate it externally and so we have this, constantly have this argument where

we as councillors have an impression that there are lots of missed collections but the

would be helpful either for us to have some way of externally checking the missed collections

or for us to not have this on the report because it's great to have a green measure but there's

no way of us like checking it and I don't think it's helpful for us to have, I don't

think it tells us as the committee anything about the performance of the team.

On that though, it's great to see the increase in the recycling rate.

And obviously we're pushing further and forward, further forward.

We made a whole set of comments and recommendations in the last waste spotlight.

And I'd like to ask if the team has had a chance to reflect on the comments

and think about how you're going to implement going forward,

what the strategic direction will be going forward.

Councillor Dalbab, my responsibility is the community safety.

I will take your issues that you've raised.

I know that it's an issue that's taken very seriously and there is a way of actually ensuring

that the missed calls, sorry, the missed collections are dealt with quickly.

There is a communication system in place.

I don't have the actual details of how that's put into place.

But I know there is, when they come through, that they are in real time looking to respond

to it.

So could we potentially take it, could someone take it as an action to send my questions

back to the service and get an answer?

So the question is not about how the miscollections are dealt with.

The question is about how why it is that we're continuing to have this on our

Performance report when it doesn't actually tell us anything about the performance of the team

And how and the second question is how they are reflecting on the comments that we made in the waste spotlight

Last month and how they're looking to implement the comments and suggestions going forward

It doesn't have to be you because it's clearly not your so I don't know who is best for it chair maybe you can advise

Yeah, I mean cancer I'll take that away it's not not my expertise but we will respond to you thank you

Are we able to put it on the action log? Yeah. Thanks

I understand it's a really easy turnaround for this but can I just ask why, what happened

with the providers? Did I hear four providers had bought out?

What happened? Is it the same, is it one organisation that's providing all four, is it all four separate organisations?

As I understand it, it's four different organisations that pulled out last minute and the other issue was that the process to onboard new ones is quite cumbersome and needs time.

Yeah, I understand that bit. It's just they're the same ones, we've had them for years. If it's four, what was the underlying issue?

I don't know, I'll have to go back and ask Amy Jackson.

Because that's really easy to turn around, but if they're a provider that's been with

us for years and they've, like the irregularity is the, I can understand one organisation

having a problem, but if there's four different organisations providing four different places

and that, like I'd like some context on that if that's possible, I'm happy for that to

I think that should have been picked up by the committee.

Chair, could come in as well.

Thanks, Councillor.

I think Amy Jackson has taken this action away now.

It's under her remit.

One of the issues with the timing, because they don't have enough time to prepare and

some providers do pull out, so I think we want to avoid that issue going forward.

So she's drawn up a plan where we can onboard people on time, give them enough resources

and they know how to sort of meet the targets.

So, yes, that is taken away and we will make sure we can come back to the committee.

But another point I was going to make, in terms of benchmarking in position in the corner

of KPI005, against the Tower Hamlets, we have the highest number, we have got 74 ,000 places,

whereas the next one down is near 147 ,000.

So obviously our target is very high, even then we have achieved above everyone else

in terms of benchmarking.

I completely agree, I understand, I know this service quite well.

That wasn't my worry, my worry was when the question around, I know these organisations,

they are long term, they have been with us, some of whom over decades, they do this over

holidays and the onboarding and the process, they are very used to it, they know how it

works, it's very quick.

Even when we have had money, extra money coming in from the government, they have taken up

the service for us and they've delivered. I just want to know for organisation what

happened. Yes, you can onboard new ones, that's not a problem. I have faith that

we're going to do that and that's going to be a quick turnaround.

But if we've got organisations that, partners that have been working with us

for years, is this, my concern is more around the partnership here and you want

to onboard new providers that's all good, but if we've got ones that already have

the knowledge and they've already been serving, I'd like to see the

denying the justification.

Thank you.

That was well noted.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Is this clear?

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

My question is in relation to budget monitoring.

Yeah, that's fine.

Thank you, sir.

Health and adult social care.

We are in now overspent squatter to 31 .3 million

My first question is how have you calculated your assumptions on the demand for these services?

And second question is what contingency plan place?

in yard savings and not if

These are not met or demand exceeds what your forecast

So in terms of how we calculate the future demand, we've just had a piece of work that

we commissioned from Care Analytics which has looked at all our data from the last seven

years and we use that as an indicator of how the trends are going to be like going forward

and the kind of key pressures on adult social care

are one, inflationary pressures

and two, demographic pressures.

And those are the things that are kind of driving

our forecasts at the moment.

So the one assumption that we make is that these,

we've looked at from 21 to current

and they are just continuing to increase.

So we are making an assumption

that they continue to increase at that same level.

So it's a linear increase.

At some point we think that that demand might plateau,

but we don't think we're near that point at the moment.

So in terms of mitigations, in terms of the longer term,

we are looking at a transformational piece

in which we're going to do diagnostics

around actually what are the things

that we could put into place,

technological innovations and actually just looking at our current practises and how we

might mitigate costs going forward. At the same time we're doing a number of things currently

to contain costs. I think I'll introduce myself first. I'm the new interim director of adult social

care. My name is Chanel Arkut. This is my third week. We do lots of things in adult

social care to make sure the budget is in control and we're not complacent at all. We

know that adult social care nationally and in London are overspending so we're not an

outlier. It's not an unusual trend but as I said we are not complacent. We're doing

lots of scrutiny cheques within the budget. So we operationally, we're looking at authorization

levels across the management of all packages. As you all know, our budget is mainly tied

up to our contracts and commission services. Therefore, there's a huge scrutiny on how

with commission services and the authorization levels.

And also, those who are received of care packages,

we are reviewing them, especially the high cost

packages, so that our statutory duties are met.

But those who no longer need the level of care

we provide at the moment, we are reducing packages

safely and managing risk.

So we're also looking at our agency spend in terms of our staffing and currently we have frozen all agency recruitment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. I have a question on capital programme.

What are the three biggest rephrasing risks on this capital programme and the linked mitigate

you have activated this quarter?

So with the capital programme there are always a number of inherent risks with any sort of

construction process and they come at different stages of capital schemes.

One phase can be something like planning for instance where when we're taking schemes through the initial stages of design and then planning we can end up with having to deal with issues that we didn't necessarily build in at the start of the process.

So as an example of one thing cited in the budget report on St Georges Leisure Centre

we had an objection from Historic England which led to a change in design in the scheme

which slowed down construction so we do get delays at that stage.

Also there can be delays during the construction phase as well so for instance when we do the

So although we always do surveys to try and mitigate risk and understand sites when we

take them on, we can and do find things during construction which can then delay things and

can lead to further delays and obviously we try and respond within the contingencies that

we have but this isn't always possible.

and the the other factor is actually around the procurement phase itself so

we were in a very uncertain economic environment in the moment supply chains

are very challenged and often when we're going out to procurement we're seeing

that there can be challenges around things like pricing coming back and a

little bit trying to anticipate as much of that as we possibly can we aren't we

aren't and I would say this is in common with all major capital programmes

when you look around the country able to deal with all the different headwinds coming our way.

And so there are some times when we're having to go back and value engineer the schemes again

to work out how we can come within our budget or go through the appropriate sort of budgetary processes

to secure the budget required to deliver the scheme.

So I'd say those are the main risks that we're dealing with.

So the kind of planning stage, the procurement stage,

and then issues that can occur

and they occur during construction.

David, thank you.

As you mentioned, there's a couple of risks,

supply chain, you're thinking is a challenge for you guys,

and what kinds of step or plan you take

for the challenges facing this kind of challenge?

We do a number of things, one of the things we try and do is make sure that we have a

diversified number of suppliers and contractors so that we don't become overly reliant on

particular supply chains as one example.

And also one of the things that we look for when we're procuring is to make sure that

we're using local subcontractors wherever we can,

and we're doing everything we can to source things locally

so that we're not as exposed to the sort of global factors

that have impacted large parts of the construction industry.

But the other things that we do obviously are,

we put in place some strong governance

around checking the work that is carried out.

through our employers agents and our in -house capital delivery team to make sure that contractors

are performing and pick issues up early so that they don't become an issue that causes

delay further downstream.

So that can and does help as well.

Thank you.

Are there any more questions?

I'm going to say just a declaration.

So David Joyce, in your answer to me, you mentioned the council buyback scheme, which

is reflected on my declarations of interest on the council website, but just to say publicly

after advice from the head of democratic service, that's a contract I'm engaged with in the

council and the process I'm doing with the council as well.

Thank you.

Any more questions?

If not, we will move on to the next item.

Thank you very much for the officers for your contribution.

The next item on the agenda is Gootenai lead updates.

Any leads?

On the pre -disposition scrutiny questions, we have received the answers for the last

... I want to thank the officers for getting back with the answers to the questions.

If we have any other questions that we want to ask, can I suggest if you can get those back to me by Wednesday?

And I will take these forward.

So just repeat that if there's any questions if you can get those questions to be by 12 on Wednesday.

Tuesday by 12 please.

The next item on the agenda is...

I just wanted to say this is really good.

You know this must be heavy.

Can you send us a digital copy of this?

Because then we can send it back to residents who are affected and stuff is very very helpful

although

Even pretty version is that makes me really happy, but if I can have a digital copy like perfection

Okay, we'll move on to the next item and there's no any other business

Yeah

Okay.

Councillor Bienfay, oh she's coming back next, I was going to do an update for her, but she

might as well do it herself.

Oh okay.

Councillor Latt, do you have any updates?

Hi everyone, sorry I thought the meeting was going to go on longer than it did.

So my update is that the my scrutiny review into road safety is in progress.

So we had two sessions last week, one daytime session, one evening session at

which we had residents come and give feedback. The service was very well

represented and I think we had a really positive session and kind of heard a

Real kind of range of views we had people with a kind of range of different

Experiences come and give their opinions and experiences about road safety

And the service found it really helpful. I think the residents also found it very helpful

I've had a couple of people reach out back to me to say they found it really productive

So that was for the residents

And then we've got another session tomorrow evening where we're going to hear from organisations

Organisations as we've already also heard from organisations last week as well. Some people couldn't make the evening

and

so what we're going to have is a kind of hybrid of hearing from organisations, but also an

opportunity to ask the service about their road safety action plan, which is currently in draught and

Hoping to have an opportunity then to

formulate some recommendations as a as a committee

So the session will be in I think 3 .18 and everybody is of course very encouraged to

come. I hope we are going to have a good discussion. We have just received some papers from the

service just this afternoon and we are just clarifying whether we can share those because

some of the information is in draught still so we don't know how much we can share yet.

So there will be a bit of preparation material ahead of time.

But yeah, really, so the, my plan, Chair, sorry, I just want to continue to, sorry if I'm rambling a bit.

So the timing issue of when we publish the recommendations is a little bit tricky.

So the service wants to have the plan signed off by the mayor before the pre -election period starts in March, I believe.

And so that means getting it to cabinet by February.

And that means that we need to give them our recommendations soon, in order for them to incorporate our recommendations into their policy.

and so I'm trying to

Look to try and get early

Recommendations to the team as soon as possible so that they don't have to wait for us to sign them off in January

So for that reason it's really important. I think Councillor. Sorry. I just want to bring your attention to it's really important to

Attend come to the session tomorrow evening about road safety

So that we can make recommendations early to the team so that we as a committee can have an impact

on the policy that then gets approved.

I think it's a really important, I think the service has been really open and willing to

sort of flex their timings so that they can hear from us.

So I think if councillors can be there in person, then we can definitely make sure that

we can give them early recommendations.

Thanks.

Thank you very much, councillor.

I just want to apologise, you did send out an invitation last week, I was at Anwell and

I couldn't attend.

But I think it's really important that we get involved as early as possible in these matters.

So thank you, Councillor Nattilien, for your continued...

I hope we feel better now.

Yeah, I feel a lot better.

Yeah, so on that note we're going to move...

Did you have...

I was just going to cut that.

Okay, okay.

So we're going to move on to...

If there's not any other business,

Just to remind everyone the next meeting is January 12th.

I just want to wish everyone a happy festive break.

Have a lovely time and I'll see you in the new year.

Thank you. Good evening.

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Overview & Scrutiny Committee - Monday 15 December 2025, 6:30pm - Tower Hamlets Council webcasts

Overview & Scrutiny CommitteeMonday, 15th December 2025 at 6:30pm

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