Chief Executive Roadshow - Monday 22 June 2026, 2:00pm

Chief Executive Roadshow
Monday, 22nd June 2026 at 2:00pm

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record player plays lord of.>>

you

Thank you.

All right then.

So shall we get started?

You can all hear me?

Yeah, great.

Okay.

Thanks very much for coming.

For those of you that have been here a couple of years now, you'll know what this is about.

You'll know what it is that we're about to do.

Chief Executives Roadshow, they're popular, believe it or not.

We've got a series of these coming up this year though.

They're themed slightly differently.

Today, the focus is going to be on you.

It's going to be on the people survey that you completed, a lot of you completed, half

of you, at least 50 % of the workforce completed a couple of months ago. And we're going to

talk about departmental impact and best practise. So you've got a series of people here that

are going to talk to you after I've finished giving you a bit of an update about what's

going on across the council. I think there's a moment to ask me some questions at the end

of this little bit, so please feel free to do so.

Here's the agenda.

I'm going to be talking to you then, Ellen.

Ellen, our director of HR and OD

is going to introduce feedback

on what we proudly call the people strategy

and talk to you a little bit about promoting best practise

and how managing staff and liaising with staff

is going to progress and evolve moving forward.

and then you're going to hear about best practise from within the departments.

We're also at the very end of it, I'll come back and I'll talk to you about the next steps,

not just with what you're going to hear and how we're going to roll out the results of the people survey,

but with a few other things that I'm about to mention to you.

Ellen will introduce each of the speakers before they present.

So, what's been going on?

Well, since I last stood up in front of you all at various events, we've had an election.

Did many of you work on the election?

Will you sort of put your hand up if you were involved in a polling station?

Yeah, they're great, aren't they?

We had an election.

The elections went very, very well and I'm really grateful to all the staff that were

involved.

Over 800 staff were involved.

we had a considerable turnout and you will know by now what the outcome of the

election was. So we have Lutfeur Arman back as our Executive Mayor. I'll talk to you

a little bit more about how that's going to impact upon the council moving

forward but one of the most important things that it's going to do is it's

going to change the way in which we take forward budget savings, which I'll talk

you about in a minute. The mayor has a load of new manifesto commitments, which I'll

also talk to you about in a minute, and the way in which those decisions are

made to spend the money and deliver the projects that comprise the manifesto

I'll also talk to you about very briefly. We're also going through a process at

the moment of having to balance our budgets. So I don't repeat the stuff you

all know but there is an impact. So we spend two billion pound a year. We income, generate income

of about one and a half billion which means we net spend half a billion, 500 million pounds roughly.

We have to save 10 % of it. 10 % of that 500 million, about 40 to 50 million and as we move through the

next year or so we are going to have to make some tricky decisions. Now we are a well -run local

authority when it comes to our finances, there's nothing to be concerned about,

but we are going to have to do things a little bit differently. One of those

things is slowing down the speed with which you spend. So although it gets

really frustrating, it's over bureaucratic, you have to report to

boards, you have to go to spending panels, you have to do all of those things, I'd

rather be doing those things than having to restructure and make people

redundant as lots of other local authorities are having to do.

We are not in that place and we don't ever want to be in that place and we're not because

we manage our funding well.

Alongside that, this will make some of you wince, but we are going to look at the structure

again of the council.

Now I want to take forward some minor tweaks to the structure of the council over the next

couple of months and they'll be reported and communicated.

If you are in children's services or health and adult

social care or housing and regen, you won't be affected.

If you're in the chief execs or the resources, you will.

We are going to move things around a little bit to make

sure that we comply with the aspirations of the envoys.

You will know that we have envoys.

you will know that earlier this year,

the directions were reissued,

giving the envoys some reserve powers.

I have to say, with the envoys that we have,

we're working really well.

They really have adopted and taken a partnership approach.

We really are learning, and we're doing things better

than I think we've ever done them before

in a number of key areas.

One of those key areas relates to recruitment.

So, in the next couple of weeks, in fact this week I think,

you'll see there are a number of adverts going out.

We are recruiting a new corporate director of communities

following the passing of Simon Baxter.

We're recruiting a new corporate director of resources

so that Richard, our current interim, can leave.

Not that we want him to leave or that he wants to leave,

but we need to recruit permanently and we're recruiting a new director of finance following

the departure of Abder Razzak.

That will be followed by several more posts.

We're going to do this over the summer and we're going to do it relatively quickly.

The reason we're doing that is because there's been concern that there's too much staff churn.

There's too many at senior level, too much turnover and we want to make sure that we've

got a stable workforce.

That will be scrutinised and it'll be scrutinised not in terms of where we're advertising or when,

but our recruitment practises will be scrutinised as a result of a deep dive.

The envoys, as a result of the Secretary of State insisting, are undertaking several deep dives.

And those deep dives you'll be able to read about online, they were part of the directions,

but basically they are to address perceptions.

So for example, if you look at planning,

they're doing a deep dive on planning applications

because there is a perception that if you're close enough

to the administration, you get the planning application you want.

They're going to look at recruitment because there is a perception

that patronage exists in the council.

If you're close enough to certain politicians,

for example, the mayor, you're more likely

to be successful in an application,

getting promotion, or being rewarded.

Allocations, housing allocations, TA.

If you're close enough to the mayor,

you're more likely to receive a property

that you aspire to than if you're not.

These are all perceptions, but they're perceptions

that in my experience have no relation to actual practise,

and that is my position, but it needs to be tested.

If there are issues, if there are concerns

of things going wrong, then we need to address them.

So there are several deep dives going on,

you'll read about them, they'll be progressed

over the summer, and the results

will ultimately be published.

The election.

We now have 33 aspire members, five Labour, five Green, one Conservative and one Lib Democrat.

As opposed to 22, 22 and 1 or whatever it was historically. That is a sea change. You'll have

seen this morning the Prime Minister has resigned. He's resigned for a whole load of reasons but the

start of that were in the middle of all the May local elections in England, where actually

in the UK.

What's that?

Oh no.

Thought something had happened.

Mentioned the envoys.

Is that okay?

No, it's all right.

I've lost my train of thought.

What was I talking about?

I was talking about the...

Prime Minister and ignore him.

I was talking about the May elections.

Yes, talk about the May elections.

So that has changed the way in which we're going to operate here.

The mayor has 33 councillors.

What does that mean?

When in a local authority we only have 45 councillors,

you have to control the chamber.

You have to have more than half.

If you have more than half, you control the budget.

So now we have a mayor that not only controls strategy, policy,

but he controls the money.

Now, that's a very influential position.

and we have to make sure in the coming months that he is held to account,

that I'm held to account, that there's effective scrutiny.

He has the majority now on all council committees,

so we need to make sure that in some local authorities where that's the case,

it's a bit of a runaway train.

They run off and just do all sorts of things

without having proper cheques and balances in place.

Part of my job over the next six months is to make sure

that those cheques and balances are created and that they work effectively.

The mayor got elected primarily because he is the mayor, he has a profile into

Hamlet's but he also had a manifesto and some of his pledges are on there and

there are some quite exciting things. He wants to deliver another 12 ,000

affordable homes. He is going to put the Lido back in Victoria Park. Some of you

don't look. Yeah some people remember the Lido. Closed in the 80s I think in the

mid 80s where the car park is as you drive through the middle of

Victoria Park. Anyway that's going back in. There are a number of issues

pregnancy payments if you have a child you live in town Hamlets we will support

you with clothing, food. The whole approach of looking after people that

born and live in Tower Hamlets from birth with pregnancy payments

through to when you are older with free home care,

the manifesto touches upon every key stage of an individual family life.

In the middle of that, we still have to deliver the savings.

There's a real challenge there.

But as I say, we're not like any other local authority

or many local authorities in London that haven't got the funding

to deliver this, we're delivering stuff that loads of other people aspire to.

We're the only ones, or one of very few, that are actually able to do it.

All of that stuff in the manifesto will appear in this.

We're about to launch a new strategic plan.

We've had one for the last four years, but a strategic plan represents the administration's

successful mayor's agenda as it's detailed in his manifesto, so in November

we'll launch a new one. That new one will involve all of those manifesto

commitments, they'll all be costed, we'll have set a budget for the next three

years and then you've all got to rewrite your service plans, unfortunately, to

represent the new strategic plan. All of this is a way of making sure that as a

authority and there's a 6 ,000 staff that we employ are all pointing in the same

direction and part of that involves making sure that annual reviews are

concluded. You have got just over a week to get that to 100 % so genuinely if you

are a manager or if you are someone that hasn't had your annual review you need

to insist upon it. So although we're having to balance our budget we are

a considerable amount of money aside for training and development.

Your Mars is your chance to make sure you get it.

People that turn around mid -year saying,

well I haven't had any training, no development opportunities,

you should have had your Mars. You should have insisted.

And then if you're not having it delivered,

if you're not getting the training opportunities that you aspire to

and were agreed as part of your Mars,

then your manager needs to be held to account.

Please make sure you complete your Mars by the end of next week.

on July the 16th, we're all going to the Excel again.

And at the Excel for the full staff conference,

it's slightly different this year.

There'll be a few new and different announcements.

There'll be some presentations from young people.

There's obviously the quiz,

some really good prizes for the quiz this year,

as they were last year.

But most importantly,

I'll be setting out the new structure.

We'll be talking about everything from budgets, redundancies, the opportunity for people to

leave the organisation if they so wish, our retention packages, pay review, a whole wide

range of things.

It's your opportunity to find out.

Last year we had just over 3 ,000 people.

We are three weeks away.

We're currently at 2 ,500 people.

The target is to get to 4 ,000.

Please don't miss the opportunity because it's a shame when people do that they then

and get the chance to learn things or claim they didn't know.

I stood up in front of you guys a lot now over the last three or four years

and constantly tried to make the point.

Everybody should be given the opportunity to hold me to account

and ask me a question.

I've had nearly a thousand people come to tea and chat sessions.

We've had nearly two thousand people over the last few years come to these.

We have three to four thousand people turn up for the All Staff Conference.

Please make sure that you keep yourselves informed.

and they're very simple ways of doing it,

as well as reading everything else that we put out online.

Okay, now, I said I'd be brief,

well I didn't say I'd be brief,

but I wanted to be brief.

I'm gonna hand over to Ellen in a moment,

but is there anything pressing

before we get to the end of the session today

that anybody wants to ask me or put to me?

Anything at all?

Anything?

If you stare at people, they tend not to ask.

Is there anything that anybody wants to ask? Excellent that's gone very well then.

Ellen, over to you.

Thanks Steve.

Just about to drop my papers.

Thank you everybody for coming. As Steve said, today's session is focused on the People Survey

and it's been a little while since we completed this People Survey.

It launched in October of 25, run up until November of 2025, and was a really robust

way for us to hear from our workforce.

So I'm just going to give a little bit of a potted history, and then for those of you

that know me, I don't like to do all of the work, so there is going to be some work for

those of you in the room to participate and to give us some feedback as well during the

course of the session.

So why is it that people surveys matter?

Well, the number one thing is it's really important that you as a workforce have the

to feel heard. We know that when actually you have opportunity to share your

thoughts it builds a connexion to the organisation and what we did in 2025 is

we partnered with an external organisation called DJS to make sure

that everybody had the opportunity to share their feedback anonymously and

that's really important that builds trust in senior leadership it helps us

move forward collectively together. It means that you've had opportunity to

share your concerns. It also means you've had opportunities to tell us what is working

well and that's really important because I've now been enrolled here as the Director of

HR and OD for six months and one message that's coming through loud and clear is that you

want us to be that listening and learning organisation. We want to listen to our residents

and actually we want to listen to our workforce and people surveys absolutely underpin that.

Another reason it's really important is Steve's talked about the importance of service delivery

the Merrill Manifesto. As employees you know our people and our place much better than

we can, especially when I'm sat in the corporate centre working out what it is that I need

to do to support you to be the most effective workforce that you can be. So this is a way

that actually you stay motivated, you stay with the organisation and our residents benefit

as a result of that. So what should we be proud of? Well the first thing we should be

and that's no mean feat in an organisation as large and as complex as Tower Hamlets.

But you'll see from the slide there that response rates varied.

Again, you can look at that and go, that's a bit strange, it's perfectly normal behaviour.

Perfectly normal behaviour for us to have higher completion rates in the corporate centre

or roles where people easily have access to technology, harder to get out to the frontline services,

those of you that are out in the communities, in our markets, making sure our streets are

nice and tidy or manning our leisure centres. So they're the sorts of things that we're

looking at now when we're trying to learn what do we need to do better for this year's

survey. But overall 50 % of the workforce provided us with their feedback. So we go, yeah, that's

really good. That gives us really robust evidence based on which to build our plans. And we'll

I'll come on to that in a minute.

So what we do know is that we have excellent engagement.

Anyone want to have a rough idea of what we think the average

tenure of employment is at Tower Hamlets?

I did warn you I'd like to have an interactive session.

Any ideas?

15 years.

Higher or lower?

Higher.

Higher, yeah.

I like this.

So higher than 15, what do we think?

Yeah, so it's just over 20 years.

We have a fantastically dedicated workforce.

Like, it completely blows my mind just how connected our

workforce is to our place.

And it's something we should be really proud of.

So we have great engagement scores.

73 % puts us just at the median, maybe slightly tipping

into being slightly better than the average.

But one thing I've learned about Tower Hamlets is we don't want to be average.

We want to be better than average.

So this is about looking for those areas where we can identify opportunity for improvement.

So when you look at the directorate scores then, we start to see a bit more consistency.

So the average was 73.

We've got some, Steve Reddy always likes to point out the highest completion rates

in children or highest engagement rates in children's services.

It's okay because David Joyce comes back with higher completion rates, nothing like a little bit of competition in our corporate leadership team.

But actually we've got really good engagement.

But if you cross -reference that to the lower completion rates, what I did when I came in is I identified there were some cohorts

where I just didn't know enough and I'm a little bit nosy.

So we've undertaken over the last three months a whole host of activities to try and really get under the skin of

everything we think is going to make a difference for our workforce and then

we've also been busy putting actions into place to start to make that

difference now because the next survey is five months away, spoiler alert. So

these are the things that we know drive meaningful change in any organisation

and as I say you can definitely see some key strengths that are coming through. So

people feeling connected to our values, us making sure we're developing the

culture, you heard me talk there about being listening and learning, something

that's important for us as an organisation, something that's important

for the residents and something that's important for us on our improvement

journey. People want to be connected to their teams so this is about the fact

that you know we are a service organisation, everything we do is about

the people that we work with and the people that we serve. People want to feel

valued and definitely recognition is coming up as a key theme for me to

people want to be empowered. I want to be able to do my job

effectively. And there is always this balance around

making sure we've got good governance in place but

actually allowing people to make the decisions that are

right for them and their teams. And actually really

importantly, people want to do a job that makes a

difference. That's what we're here for. It's called

public service for a reason. So what have we done? We've

been busy. So we've engaged staff networks, we've

engaged trade unions, we've met with the Your Voice

We've had loads of opportunity to hear and to validate the findings.

We've been talking to you constantly through Steve's messages, through senior leadership messaging, through Tower Hamlets Now,

and then we've also run some additional key stakeholder engagement sessions.

And what we've done is we've taken the survey out to those areas where we did have under representation.

So there was specific under representation in some key frontline services.

services, so leisure services for example. We also know that we didn't have particularly

high rates of completion for employees that felt that they potentially had a disability

or especially if they were neurodiverse. So again we've gone out to those particular cohorts

to validate everything before we've put plans into actions. And then we've been working

very, very closely with directors, with corporate directors and with senior leadership teams

to help them develop action plans that are relevant to their services,

because we are not a one -size -fits -all organisation.

I can't sit here and say I know everything that needs to be improved

or everything that needs to be built on in every element of the organisation.

I wouldn't want to and I definitely don't have the time to.

So we've empowered those leadership teams to be able to do that.

And we've tried to keep you informed and updated on progress,

but there will be a feedback form at the end of this.

and if we're not reaching you often enough, please do tell us

and tell us what else you'd like us to do differently.

So that's the level of engagement we've had.

You can see there are nearly 3 ,000 survey completions

and when you wrap up all of those other things,

we've probably spoken to about 4 ,000 people in total

to make sure that the action plan

that we've developed is fit for purpose and enables us to work

on a few key themes for the next six months.

It won't address all of the feedback that was in the survey.

that definitely takes longer.

And normally you'd run a staff survey every two years,

but actually we're being bold, we're being brave,

and we're going to run it again this year,

because we want to be able to A, demonstrate our commitment,

and B, tell you where it is that we are aiming to make progress,

and that way you can hold us all to account for that.

So this is what the staff survey action plan looks like for 2026.

It's got three key areas.

So one of them is that one of the key themes that's come through is that you found it really

important to want to understand how decisions are made and you want to do that in order

to have trust and confidence that all of those decisions are being made in the best interest

of our workforce as a whole and as a community as a whole.

So you'll see that there's a number of key actions that we've actually introduced.

We've started to share key messages more openly.

You will have seen your directorate newsletters.

We have increased the number of toolbox talks in front line services so that you are kept

up to date with things that are happening in the corporate centre.

We have started to have greater involvement of CMT.

You have probably seen a lot of us pop up from time to time.

I know that there was a number of people put their hand up for the election.

I had a great amount of fun actually going out and about in the community supporting

that and you all did a fabulous job and I know CLT colleagues did as well.

We know that there's more that we need to do to continue to increase visibility of senior leaders in the organisation.

And that's a tough balance to strike because we've got very, very demanding strategic ambitions and there's only so many hours in the day.

But we're going to commit to doing things differently and the corporate directors are going back to the floor day,

going to have a back to the floor day between now and the end of November.

If you've got any suggestions, please feed them in.

The second one is that we actually want you to, you want to be able to feedback and see

how you are influencing change. So we're talked about the importance of a people survey

and why it is that we run them. The people survey is once a year in our case, but we're

actually setting up feedback loops. So we're actually looking for other ways in which we

can allow you to have the opportunity to talk to us more regularly.

And then the last thing is around psychological safety. You want to be able to feel able to speak

up. You want to be able to engage more openly. You want to feel free to be yourself and to have

an environment that enables you to achieve your full potential. And I'm going to talk to the

workforce strategy development in a little while and hopefully you'll see how we're starting to

put some of those plans into action. So there's three slides there, there's quite a lot

of on that's on those three slides, but the good news is we've published them, so

in the spirit of openness and transparency you'll see that our full results pack and

the plan itself is published on a dedicated site on the bridge. So if you do have access

please make sure that you save that in your favourites, go on there regularly. We'll

also have regular poll surveys that we're going to put on there, so this is again part

of the opportunity for you to feed into the organisation.

So as I said, there's been a lot going on,

and what we haven't done is we haven't sat on our laurels.

So I'm conscious that it doesn't take long before the next

survey's around.

So we've been busy helping people

to demonstrate that we're able to move forward.

So you'll see there, we've talked

about psychological safety,

and I can see I've got some employee network co -chairs

in the audience today.

We've made a concerted effort to create safe spaces

So listening circles for our race equality networks.

We're building out on previous activity against things like anti -racist practise.

We've engaged specifically with Tower Pride and Enable Networks to really start to get

under the skin of the things that are making a difference and the barriers to enabling

people to progress.

We've listened to you around things like career development.

We're trying to improve the My Annual Review process so that it's actually more focused

on you and your career aspirations, your development and what it is that you can do to help you

move through this organisation. It's great we've got 25 or 20 odd years of experience

but we can absolutely aim for even more bearing in mind that you can have squiggly careers

as I like to call them. You don't have to go up in this organisation, you can go up

across, you can move back sideways, so many different opportunities and we're focused

on making that better.

So the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to ask you

to get your technology out.

So for those of you that have got a mobile phone,

we're going to do just a couple of polls

that are here today, and then we're going to reflect

on a little bit on the workforce strategy as well.

So if you could go to slido .com

and enter the code that is on the screen.

I'll give you a couple of minutes to do that.

There is a QR code you can scan as well.

I'll give it a couple of minutes just because I know sometimes the reception in here is

bit challenging.

I think we've got everybody in the room ready. We'll give it a go. Shall we select

if the technology is going to work for us.

So we've got the first question on the screen there.

Hopefully you can see it on your device.

So I'm interested to understand, did you take part in the 2025 people survey?

There's only two questions, the second one's a little bit more in depth than that, just

you in advance. Numbers are going up.

So it looks fairly stable. conscious there's a couple of you that might still

need to put it put your responses in. So it looks like we've got a third of the

those of you in the room that didn't take place. I'm not going to pick on

anybody, but can I just ask if you could raise your hands if you didn't take place, didn't

take part in it because you didn't work at Tower Hamlets at the time. Is there anybody?

Fabulous, thank you. So there will be a proportion of those in the room that didn't take part

for that reason or weren't eligible, but that's really important and it provides us with a

baseline. So this is about us being evidence led, we're going to need to be evidence led

when it comes to demonstrating our ability

to meet the requirements of continuous improvement.

So there probably still is about one in four people in the room

that for one reason or another didn't take part

in last year's survey.

And you will have heard me talk a little bit, just looking back

at the reasons as to why people surveys are important.

But the next question really goes on to this.

So all of your insight has started to drive what I am going

to look to build in terms of the workforce strategy.

So we have a fantastic strategic plan,

we have amazing strategic ambitions,

but we can't deliver that without you collectively

as our workforce.

So these are the things that have come through

from the staff survey, from all of the forums,

from everything else that we've done as the key themes

that are really important.

So the first is trust psychological safety

and inclusive culture.

People want to be themselves at work.

They want an environment that enables them to be successful,

that recognises they are an individual

and have individual needs.

The second is talent management and future skills.

The world around us is changing at a rate of naught.

Introduction of artificial intelligence,

all of the other things that are going on.

People want to feel invested in

and they want to feel that they've got opportunity to grow.

The next one, career pathways and succession planning.

And I'm not going to say too much around that because I'm going to come on to a real -life

example very shortly when I hand over to Ashraf and his team.

Leadership and management development.

We've got amazing leaders in this organisation.

They are very, very busy and we just want to be able to support them with simplified

policies and processes, things that enable them to understand what it really truly means

to be a great leader here at Tower Hamlets.

and you'll see the simplified policies and processes further down.

Data quality and access to systems.

So again, I know that we've got a big percentage of the workforce

that are frontline workers and Anna -Marie has done a great job in waste

trying to get everybody on their own devices

so they can get access to our systems.

We're rolling that out.

We're putting desktops, laptops in various locations

just to enable you to be able to feel connected to the corporate centre

so that you've got the same level of access

and we're also working with colleagues in IT to roll out the same philosophy around

a bring your own device. And then the last is reward and recognition. I think it's fair

to say I've touched on the level of tenure that we have here at Tower Hamlets. We currently

recognise 25 years service. I think we might want to do a little bit more. So they're the

sorts of things. So that's why it's important that you take the opportunity. But being realistic

and with six months to go, can't do everything all at once.

So just going to ground myself a little bit here.

And the next question focuses on,

rank those in the order of importance.

Tell me where it is you think that me and CLT

should be spending our times and efforts

to really make a difference to you as a workforce.

I did say it was slightly more complex.

I'll be here shortly.

Quick look, yes?

Just give it another minute or so.

It's fairly easily spread.

You definitely want me and my team to be busy.

So just whilst we're allowing you to populate the last of the answers in there, the good

news is we've already started on some of the development. I did say we were putting learning

interaction straight away. So we have three live sessions that are available to support

you and to support your development that are built around these key themes based on the

feedback that we've heard to date. The first is around tackling toxicity in the workplace

and that's around building psychological safety and trust. Positive team culture, so that's

around us feeling connected to each other and to our organisation. And the last is about

rethinking resistance.

It's natural that we won't always agree all of the time,

but actually that one's helped focus on how we overcome

differences and really pull together

to achieve collective goals.

So they are available to book on the learning hub now,

and I would absolutely encourage you to participate

if you can.

So we can see there that the culture

is still really important.

Leadership and management development is important,

and we just want things to be simple.

So we'll take that away.

we'll continue to build that into the plans. There's lots of exciting things to come.

I'm reassured by some of those things I see in there and you can look forward to updates

on the dedicated bridge site in the future. So I'm going to hand over to colleagues

in a moment who are going to talk through some of their lived examples of some of the

things that are going really well for them. Before I do, I just wanted to talk a little

bit about our spotlight on apprenticeships. So apprenticeships is a really good way to

bring new people into the organisation, create meaningful jobs for young people, underrepresented

groups, other sections of community, bringing them into Tower Hamlets. We are one of the

largest employers in the borough. We should be proud of that, but actually Apprenticeships

is a way of us to maximise that even further. The other thing that Apprenticeships is also

good at is around supporting your development. It could be professional development, it could

help you move across into other types of roles.

And for us as an organisation, it's really good at helping us

to address skill shortages.

And so to do that, I'm now going to hand over

to John Wheatley and to Liam,

who are gonna tell you a little bit about their storey

as how they've used apprenticeships.

So John, over to you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We don't think it is.

They think it's a little less. But one of the things I've always been keen to do

when I throughout my career is to ensure we give people who have got potential in

the workforce the opportunity. And it was something certainly when I was a lot

younger that wasn't necessarily available. It wasn't until later in life that I was

able to benefit from training so I found myself in a position where I was

relying on experience, my drive and commitment because I didn't have

academic qualifications. I do now but at that time fairly late in my

career I didn't have those academic qualifications so I've always

been very keen to ensure that people coming through the workforce, doing the

job on a daily basis because they're the best people, they've got the experience,

they know better than anyone how to deliver the services, get the academic

qualifications that are available to them and that can help improve their

of moving up in the organisation and building a career in waste management.

When I arrived in 2024, I realised there were lots of issues.

One of the issues was there was a mistrust in the workforce

and also there hadn't been the training that needed to take place.

we hadn't developed the workforce and I was very fortunate to have

obviously Ashraf as my director and Simon but also talking to Gail in HR

and John Mark over he's around I was very kindly loaned and she's now been

with the service nearly two years and Marie Dixon because I said I can't deal

with all of these HR issues that we have and some of them and a lot of them

related to training. So I got the support of HR and I met another guy, a guy called

Rippon Mear and you can tell I'm coming on to the training bit now because

Ripon is the one that holds the corporate pot for the levy for training

and I had long conversations with Ripon and he said yes to basically everything

I asked him for because he said there's a pot of money here it's available to

you and I wanted to develop team leadership courses, heavy goods vehicle

courses. In an industry where there's a shortage of 80 ,000 heavy

goods vehicle drivers, it's scandalous that across London we're not training

more heavy goods vehicle drivers. So we set about through an apprenticeship

training heavy goods vehicle drivers, large good vehicle drivers they call

them these days, team leadership, putting people on team leadership to bring out

and tease out those leadership skills and qualities.

And also to ensure that within the operations team

we've got people who are skilled to manage vehicles.

Because the vehicle budget is 50 % of what we do.

We're running 26 tonne dust carts.

You know, these vehicles cost a quarter of a million,

nearly £300 ,000 a piece.

And we're running 30 of them on a daily basis at least.

and to not have someone skilled who understands all the law, the legislation around that was absolutely...

well, it was none.

So we set about training through the apprenticeship schemes, through the levy.

We did 12 LJV apprentices in the first year, we've got another 12 going through the LJV apprenticeship.

We've now got six people who are on what you call a CPC, Road Transport Management Apprenticeship.

That gives you a qualification to manage transport operations.

You can't just pitch up, open a workshop and run a workshop.

You have to have a licence from the Traffic Commissioner and you need to know what you're doing.

We've now got people within Waste Services who are learning what they need to know about how to run waste management vehicles.

We've now got the team leadership apprenticeships going.

I'm going to move on to other apprenticeships that we're starting, business support apprenticeships and others available to us.

You might say, well this is great, it's great for the service because now

just within the last two years we're seeing people coming through and they're

moving into management positions or they're moving into positions of

influence within the service. But in a workforce where we've got 350

people employed, we have got massive potential and it's really important that

we don't let that potential go to waste because you're only young once so you've

got to start the business of learning and developing and you know the

development side of things has to come from experienced managers. We've got to

spot the potential and we've got to bring people through. So we're doing a

a lot in waste management. It helps change the culture. So we did have a quite a difficult

relationship with the trade unions in those days. It's not always lovey -dovey, it's not always the

best thing but you know what we've got, we're in a good position where we respect one another and

we talk to the unions on a day -to -day basis. I respect their point of view and the position

They come from and they understand that we've got to deliver high performing, cost effective services.

It helps change the culture. We're producing the managers of the future.

We're improving services through efficiency. We're reducing costs.

We are delivering and we will be delivering high performing services.

So one of the stars I suppose you could say of the apprenticeship scheme is Liam

Liam Boulderstone who was a driver within the workforce. He's now doing a

transport apprenticeship so he's doing the CPC it's extremely difficult. You've

got to learn all about the legislation but I'm going to get him up and he's going to

talk a little bit about that apprenticeship that he's on.

Thank you.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. My name is Liam Boulderstone and I'm the newly appointed transport coordinator for the waste services.

So a bit of background about myself. I grew up in a little village in North Wales and I went to an all -Welsh speaking secondary school and primary school.

So all my education was in the Welsh language.

I left school at 16, minimal GCSEs.

I joined the army where I did six years

with the Queen's Guards.

Then I left the army and I've been in the waste industry now

for 17 years as a driver.

Last year, late last year, I got offered the opportunity

to go on a apprenticeship course.

And to be honest with you, I wasn't really keen.

I thought, well, believe it or not,

I'm a week away from turning 40.

So I thought I'm a bit too old

for becoming a student again, so I didn't want to do it.

But then after reassurance from John Wheatley

and the senior management team on the waste services,

Charles Cauls, Nigel Flaherty, I thought, you know what,

I'm the only person who can make the change in my life.

I was bored of driving, it was getting to a point

where I got 27 years until I can retire,

so I didn't want to be doing driving

for the rest of my life.

So I took the apprenticeship.

I started in January, and then luckily,

in March a job come up where transport coordinator and I thought that would be

perfect for me and I got the job thankfully of the rigorous interrogation

and I got the job so now while I'm on the on the apprenticeship I can learn

and I can put what I'm learning into my daily job so it improves my job and it

makes my job a lot easier, my job becomes easy,

everyone else's job becomes easy.

When people are asking me, where's your vehicles?

I can give them an answer, I can give them an answer

why they're not there, and it's all kind of

worked itself out for me.

I've been one of the lucky ones, really.

So at the end of this apprenticeship,

I will have my, as John said, I'll have my CPC management,

my O licence, as they call it, and that qualifies me then

as a transport manager.

So then again that opens up all doors for me. I can climb up the ladder in the

transport side and it gives me all the opportunities then so I'm not I'm not

just stuck in my role. So going forward I am excited to see the changes happening

over the waste services. You know as John quite rightly said we've gone for a few

years of uncertainty and since John's been in place a lot of changes have

happened and we as a former worker now I'm manager side I can see it from both

sides of both sides of the the desk and you can see the good changes that

happening and I'm looking forward on a personal note of climbing the managerial

ladder myself so I've given myself a 10 -year goal where I want to be in 10

years and with this opportunity by doing the apprenticeship scheme I can get

there I know I can get there I believe I can get there with the right support by

doing all the, when I finish this apprenticeship,

I plan on doing another apprenticeship

and then just getting as much courses

under my belt as possible.

So yeah, that's it really, so going forward.

So I'm sorry, I lost my trailer for a second.

Thank you all for listening.

Thank you.

Sorry.

One last thing I wanted to say is that the service doesn't pay for the training.

They're paying for it corporately.

So there's a pot of money that the government will hold for each local authority and if you don't use it, you lose it.

And it's an absolute no brainer. We're developing the workforce potential and there's massive benefit to the organisation.

I mean, I've had massive benefit from seeing people in the service area go on to become,

who will be coming, moving to management.

But it's free money, so it's a double win, so to speak.

Thanks, John.

So, the good news is, there's still more to come, so we've heard the good news storey around

development over here. We've got some really good stuff that's going on in our place services,

but we've also got some fantastic stuff that's going on in our people services. So I'm going

to hand over to Shoman and to Susanna to tell you the great things that are going on in

children's and adult social care. Thank you both.

I'm Sean Banji, Director of Public Health in Health and Adult Social Care. Today I'm

covering Georgia Chimbani who's the Corporate Director. So I want to say a few words about

what we've heard from the HASC staff survey, how we're using that feedback to shape our

on culture, leadership and staff voice.

So this is a joint presentation.

I'll start with a HASC perspective

and then Susanna will talk about some of the great stuff

that's going on in children's services.

So the first thing I want to say

is there's a lot to be proud of in HASC.

We had a 47 % response rate, which as Ellen said,

gives us a really strong, meaningful picture.

Staff told us that there's real commitment

across our services, many colleagues feel trusted to get on with their work, get a strong

sense of fulfilment from what they do, and experience good support from their line managers.

That matters because our work in HASC and actually across the council is complex, demanding,

and it's deeply human in HASC. Whether we're supporting vulnerable residents, improving

health and well -being, helping services to deliver well. Our impact relies on skilled,

caring and committed staff. But the survey also gave us a clear challenge.

Colleagues, as Ellen was saying, colleagues want leadership to be visible, communication

to be more consistent and decisions and changes to be explained in a way that connects with

their day -to -day work.

We also need to strengthen confidence in senior leadership

and create a culture where people feel safe to speak up,

ask questions, and challenge constructively.

So our HASC action plan is focused on practical things

that colleagues can see and feel.

Firstly, we want to listen more regularly

through staff forums, team meetings, one -to -ones, informal huddles,

director conversations, Your Voice forums,

and also, as Alan was saying, the Pulse surveys.

And secondly, and really importantly,

we want to make our leadership more visible and approachable

by getting out into services more regularly,

joining team discussions, being clear about why decisions are made,

and creating more informal opportunities for colleagues to raise issues directly with senior leaders.

And thirdly, we want to close the loop through clear, you said we did, updates,

so people can see what's changed because of their feedback.

If colleagues are taking the time to tell us what is working and what is not,

we need to show that we have listened and active.

And for me this is not just a hask issue, it is part of a wider culture that we're trying

to build across the council, one where people understand the direction, feel able to contribute

and see that their feedback leads to action.

The real test is not about another action plan, it's about whether colleagues, yourselves,

can point to real examples of change, whether participation improves and whether future

survey results show stronger confidence, trust, leadership, visibility and staff voice.

Because culture is built every day, in every conversation, every decision.

And as leaders, we take a particular responsibility to make our response visible, consistent and

credible.

We've heard what colleagues told us.

Now we need to show through action that we're listening and keep coming back to you with

what has changed. So thank you very much.

Good afternoon. I'm Susannah Beasley -Murray and I'm the Director of Supporting Families,

Children's Social Care. So actually we were really fortunate. We had a really positive

feedback from our staff in the survey and so I'm just going to tell you maybe some of

things that we did that we think make a difference to how staff feel and how we value our staff.

And the first one, and I think that I can't underestimate or overestimate how important

this is, communication, communication, communication. And we do this in lots of different ways.

Weekly we have on the floor a keeping in touch briefing. It's only 15 minutes on a Tuesday

morning, you might hear me shouting, rounding people up on a Tuesday morning, but it's a

real opportunity where we can share information, we can talk about good practise, we can give

those corporate messages or a short training in like two minutes and we have about 150

people online and up to 150 people in person every week and we follow that up afterwards

that everybody gets a weekly email as well.

For team managers, we have a monthly managers forum, again in person, and that's an opportunity

for us to share information, but where we have challenges, we use it as a bit of a workshop

to hear what do the managers think, how can we move things forward as well and get that

feedback.

We like being together.

We have all staff conferences probably about twice a year, and they're on a range of different

issues that are important and they're normally co -designed both with our staff but our families

and our children that we serve as well.

So that could be something around young carers, cultural identity, anti -racism, domestic abuse.

We enjoy learning together.

We unify ourselves with our culture and our purpose.

Most important to us is our practise framework called Better Together and that really values

our families and our children and that's something that we all believe in.

And we have also a culture of high support and high challenge, lots of praise, lots of support,

but not afraid to say where things aren't working because then we can have the energy and enthusiasm

to address those things as well.

Staff are our biggest asset and we say that over and over again.

and we value staff and sharing that good practise.

We have opportunities for staff to consult, we consult with them,

and actually to shape what our service and our practise looks like.

We're doing a big response to our government reforms, we have to change,

but actually most importantly is listening to staff as well as to our families.

Staff have regular one -to -ones and their leaders,

managers are visible and accessible.

It's really important to me that the managers are on the floor

and that any member of staff can go and approach a different manager for support.

They know where those touch points are as well and that's where there's team managers,

myself, heads of service or staff as well. It's important.

Again, sharing of good practise, learning from teams and each other.

We believe there's so much expertise within the service.

We don't need lots of experts from outside.

It's about training up our staff and listening to them to help us develop them in their confidence,

but to help us develop to be even better for our children and families.

So the three main things I would want you to know is that communication, communication,

staff being the greatest asset and everything we do being framed around our

purpose which is making a difference to children and families and so then the

next slide is just says stronger together about how much we appreciate

being together and learning together and Shoman you were going to say what you

do in adults around that? Yeah it's just a reflection people here from HASC will

know that we had a big celebration because we got good in the CQC, Adult Social Care inspection.

But the reflection I have about that is the importance of sharing collective joy.

It's very rare, we're a big directorate and for us to all come together.

I think Georgia did a really great job in making sure that everybody was included

in both developing the response and celebrating together.

And so meeting people who never usually meet,

some of them work in Mile End,

some of them work in the Royal London Hospital,

but that point of connexion feels really important

around building our culture.

And I know in children's they also do

great stuff around that.

Yeah.

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. You will be pleased to know it's really time to turn the tables and you can

ask us some questions. But you've heard there's been lots of activity, so this is what you

can expect to see next. I've talked around the organisational action plan being on the

bridge. Directional directorate action plans have also been sent out to directorates and

you should be able to talk to your senior leadership teams around them.

Please just don't talk about them, get involved. Change gets implemented quicker.

We get greater impact if we get momentum behind it. We've got a workforce that's

around 6 ,000 strong so just think of the impact we can have if we get more of us

around these key activities. But you can expect to see much more two -way

communication. We will be having directorate away days, we've got Viva

engage communities set up I think for all directorates now.

Asha's nodding behind me.

That means I got the message right.

We've got poll surveys coming in

and there's also feedback forms being built

into the bridge site as well.

So you can tell us the things that you like,

you can tell us the things you'd like us to do differently

and we will continue to learn together

as we put these plans into action.

So what is coming up?

So you've seen there,

we've talked around the comms and engagement plans.

I've talked around the poll survey.

people strategy. I'm excited, I probably should be excited. It's the role that I do but there's lots of great things that's going to come that's going to really help build on some of the success storeys that John you talked about.

Waste is just one of many areas of the council where we know we've got skill shortages. Imagine the impact that we can have on things like financial sustainability if we use all of our money against those areas.

it's an exciting place for us to be.

And really exciting, we've got the People's Survey

launching in 2026.

We've already undertaken a lessons learned.

We've heard you.

We're not going to be running paper versions this year.

We heard the fact that people felt that that potentially

compromised their ability to respond anonymously.

So we're working really closely with DJS now in the preparation

stage to make sure that we've got better accessibility

through technology for everybody.

We're clarifying some of the language.

You told us it was a little bit wordy.

Might have been a bit HR speak that's in there.

We're going to try and simplify it as part of the process.

So hopefully it will look familiar,

but it might feel a little bit different for you.

There's also some other ways that you can get involved.

And I know that this is something

that you're very proud about as well, Steve, isn't it?

You're passionate about us having real opportunity

to have working sessions to work

through organisational problems.

The reason we've been able to share the progress

we have with you today is as a result

of two Your Voice forum sessions that were run.

There's also been sessions run on AI

and how we use AI in the organisation.

And there was a really honest and frank conversation

around decision making.

These things make a difference.

Come be part of the journey.

So we've also got some additional ways

to engage with Steve and the mayor.

we've got an upcoming session that is scheduled to take place next Monday. If you've enjoyed

this come back next Monday, speak to Stephen the Mayor about the strategic priorities,

tell your friends, get them to come along as well. But these are all really important

ways for you to hear call messages, get involved and tell us the things that you like and the

things you want us to do differently. So this is the last bit but if I could ask you to

to your phones, please. This is a really important thing for me in that actually you've heard

a lot around everything that's happened since the last People survey. What I'm really interested

to know is have I done a good sales job? So on that basis, could you please vote and tell

me, tell us, are you going to be part of the 2026 Your Voice survey? Have your say in shape

the future. Oh, there's some bold people in the room. Must try harder.

Okay, so I think that draws me to a close, Steve.

I'm going to hand back to you.

All right, before we move on to the next bit, can we just go back?

Is it possible to go back to that slide?

Yeah, that one.

I'm really interested, I really am interested in the 10%.

So, if you'd like an increment, no I'm joking,

if, would anybody who said no,

I mean it's a bit of a hard one, let's pretend I said no,

why would I have said no, I might have said no

because I don't think you take it seriously,

you don't think it has any impact,

Anybody that said no? Yes?

I didn't say no.

I just thought that there was an element of trust in the anonymity of the last survey.

And I found that my staff, because they got emails that said, please, you haven't completed the survey,

they didn't actually feel that it was truly anonymous.

And so they were wearing the pattern again too.

That's really interesting, that's a fair point.

How can I defend that?

If you haven't completed an email,

you get an email telling you haven't completed,

yeah, that's not good.

We can do better than that probably.

Well, I'm sorry about that,

because actually the intention is to get as many people

to fill in as possible.

So just one more, if there's anybody else that said no,

that wasn't as a result of that, yes.

I didn't say no.

Oh.

I didn't say no.

I deliver psychological safety, culture training

to manage and start across the organisation. I've actually said to people, I encourage

a start. I've had feedback that said to people, again, hopefully it makes a change. Some managers

have said, regarding my staff, I recommend using it. It's interesting because we've got

managers in here, we've got someone in here, but we need to do more. This year we've done

the, you said we did, that's really helpful. I also included a lot of the staff in the

pages. So it says, don't have good culture in your workplace.

Go to the page and think about it.

I've got others that might be able to do it.

Okay. No, thank you. All right. Okay.

So there's 200 of you here. 10 % of you didn't. So that's 20.

Can the 20 stand? I'm not going to get anybody, am I?

So is there anybody? No, you don't. Ah, yes.

I would really love to put it in the set and say all the wonderful things that we're doing in the...

I would love to fill in the survey and let Susanna know and everyone know the wonderful things in the children's directorates.

But I'm only on like a fixed -term contract, so my understanding is that unless you're permanent staff, you can't fill in the survey.

I'm happy to be wrong and do it when it's the next one's out.

So the good news is that's one of the things we've changed.

If you've been here for a qualifying period of time, that both fixed -term contracts and agency staff will be actively encouraged to complete the survey.

Okay.

Does anybody else want to volunteer or no?

I'm looking around the room, again,

based on the theory that if you look hard

at somebody long enough, they won't put their hand up.

Okay, so, all right, so what we're gonna do now

is move on to a bit of a Q &A.

Now this is the moment where it lasts

as long as you want it to last.

Don't go, it's really hot, I wanna go home.

Ask a few questions.

So, you've got me and you've got, well you've got Ellen, you've got Ashraf representing

the communities department, you've got Shoman representing health and adult social care,

I'm just showing I know everybody's name, you've got Susanna from Children's, you've

got Richard from um, I can remember the names but not the departments, resources, um, and

you've got Steve from Children's and you've got Hannah from Housing and Regent.

So, anything you would like to ask about whatsoever? Here we go. Yes. Oh, do you need a mic? You

might well need a mic. I think it's being passed along bro. Guys, you don't have to

sit down, you know, you can sort of move around. Okay, you can stay sitting down as well. That's

good as well.

Is it on?

Yes, it's on.

Yeah, my name's Kieran. I was working to before, Steve. I'm a health and safety rep. I also

work in housing options. The thing I want to talk to you about, it's been alluded to

already actually on the show.

We've been asked to go to a compulsory,

emphasise compulsory session tomorrow,

to do a technical matter to do section where I work.

And it's between 12 .15 and 13 .45.

That is lunchtime.

That is our health and wellbeing time.

And I'm absolutely disgusted.

I'm very emotive about it actually.

I've only found out today.

So it's a compulsory meeting

that we're supposed to attend to tomorrow.

I probably wouldn't say this if I wasn't coming

towards the end of my working career

because who knows what senior managers might say,

but hopefully you might back me up, and HR.

And even your meeting next week,

should never meet, it's done at half past one.

There's plenty of time between 10 and 12,

and two to four to hold meetings for staff

over a five day week or a 10 day fortnight.

That's my point, thank you for listening.

No, thank you very much, it's a very good point.

I don't really know how to answer it, other than to say,

when you've got six to 10 ,000 people you're trying to manage,

and you've got to come up with suitable times,

I appreciate it may be traditional lunchtime for someone in the town hall working traditionally

nine to five but it's not necessarily true for everybody so we do need to try and cater

for everybody.

Having said that, I don't know about tomorrow.

I'm not going to pretend that I do know the detail of that and I've no doubt that directors

try and make these meetings as accessible as possible.

Saying that it's mandatory and dictating a time, I mean, I don't want to be defensive

either.

This is a departmental matter but I am referring, I'm not going to now unless...

I'll flag that with Jennifer and take that.

So we'll be flagged back to the director, but thank you.

I'm not gonna do a lot of that on, oh blimey.

We've got one here, yes, and I'll come back.

Hello, okay.

There was a corporate director, I'm not sure,

it was in the past two years,

she held meetings with all the managers

and I think to look into the, you know,

how we could improve communication, that sort of thing.

And one of the things she said that I found very interesting

was that in her long career, she's not here anymore, she said that this was the organisation

with the highest number of grievances she'd ever seen and that many, many things were

being taken to the level of a grievance rather than just, you know, communicating amongst

managers and so on. So I'm wondering if there's anybody in the room who can, that person isn't

here, can speak to that. Has that changed? Is that still an issue or is that something

we could hear about at some point?

Okay, I will say a couple of things. I don't know if you heard all of that, but I will

say a couple things. It's really interesting from my perspective. So yes, we do have a

substantial number of grievances, whether it's the highest that any particular individual

has experienced, I don't know. We also have an interestingly high number of employment

tribunal cases as a local authority. We also have a number of complaints that are received

about staff, particularly more senior staff.

Now that last one, I don't think is any higher

than any other typical local authority,

but it's really interesting.

There are two answers to this.

I'm gonna ask Ellen to make a comment.

It's either, it can only be one or two things,

in my estimation.

It's either that every single grievance

or claim that we receive is genuine,

agenda -free, and based on actual issues

or an issue and if that's the case we need to resolve it, we absolutely need to resolve it.

Or there's something wrong with the process that allows something to enter a formal process

before we've exhausted an informal process. And if it's the latter, that says something to me

about the expertise of managers in dealing with issues that are either challenging, can be quite

personal or about non -performance or about trying to ensure that a member of staff does

their job but perhaps isn't always doing it with the sort of the commitment and motivation

that the local authority expects. We're addressing both of those. Ellen, do you want to talk

a little bit about how? Yes, so we do have a large volume of cases. We do have a large

number of ETs. In typical fashion, it's not linear, there's not one cause, but it definitely

leans to a couple of key indicators. The first is the ability to have informal

resolution, so building trusted relationships, and I think it's fair to

say that whilst we have a significant tenure in the majority of our workforce,

we have and we do acknowledge there has been higher turnover in managerial and

senior managerial positions and it takes time to build trust. That's a human

That's an emotional connexion.

So we know that because it takes time to build trust,

there is a tendency to go straight into processes.

Our processes are complex and we are doing an awful lot of work

in simplifying policy, aligning with ACAS best practise.

And what we do have though is we have amazing relationships,

actually largely positive relationships with our trade unions.

The two -way communication is fantastic and that isn't the case everywhere

John, you talk through those relationships that we've built and you've built in ways.

So we're on a journey, but it's complicated.

The other thing we want to do is we want to help people understand what good looks like.

So that means investing in training.

It means supporting honest and open conversations.

And again, we've done some great work in HR in building out the amount of mediation training that we've done,

and we continue to build on that further.

So it's multidimensional.

Are we where we want to be? No.

are we committed to improving it?

Yes, and can you continue to hold us to account?

Absolutely.

Okay, there was another, yes?

Can you just update it on the APMD survey board?

Aha, no, any other?

No, it's a very good question actually, yeah.

So for those of you who don't know,

it sort of links to the restructure comment

that I made earlier on.

So KPMG were commissioned last year and we asked them to come and have a look.

So as part of the budget process that we go through every year, we have a saving allocated

to the MTFS to achieve two and a half million pounds worth of savings in the current financial

year.

I'm going to ask Steve to say a few words in a moment because Steve was the senior responsible

officer for it and he'll give you a little bit more detail.

but basically KPMG were asked to look at

spans of control and duplication.

What I mean by that, and we've talked about it before,

we have some managers in the organisation earning X,

managing three people.

We have another manager in the organisation earning Y,

which is less than X, and managing 500 people.

And there's something that needs to be looked at

in that space.

We also have issues of duplication, potentially.

You know, we employ 6 ,000 something odd staff,

if you exclude education staff,

and we only have two and a half thousand job titles.

Which means there's a lot of people with the same job title

probably doing the same thing, maybe not.

And we need to think about whether that's really

value for money for the organisation.

Part of the reason that we've had a recruitment freeze,

part of the reason that you have to go through a board now

to get approval to recruit is because we're not going

to let that continue. If we have to make difficult decisions we will but we want

to hold vacancies open whilst we do it. Steve.

Really grateful for colleagues who filled in the survey for KPMG. I know

everyone's incredibly busy so just to say a big thank you for contributing.

There are KPMG fed back to us what they found. I would say some of it is not

significantly contentious so they found how many layers of management there are

in different parts of the organisation. So one part you've got five layers of

management and over here you've got nine layers of management so that's something

we need to reflect on. As Steve says we found some some duplication across some

teams or across some roles that we need to look at and also staff to management

ratios so you know why in one team that's got a very similar type of role

Why has a manager got five direct reports and another one's got 25?

So what's going on there and what's the optimum number of layers of management

for types of services and then staff to management ratio?

So CMT colleagues or co -director colleagues, we've had that feedback on those elements

and we're reflecting on that and as Steve says, feeding into discussion about the structure.

The activity analysis where people said what they did with their time,

I would describe that as a little bit contentious.

So there were some things in there where it said the percentage of time people spent,

for instance, on customer contact was quite significant.

And a few things like that.

So it was more like the start of a discussion rather than the answer.

So we're going to start looking at the detail behind the activity analysis.

But those other elements like management layers, staff to management ratio, duplication, is

stuff we're going to use to take forward in the restructure now.

Thank you very much.

Don't applaud that, by the way.

Thank you.

Can I just do a quick follow -up?

Yes, of course.

I spent a lot of time with my team,

and the team has been really good to me.

We spent a lot of time trying to work out

what percentage we have depending on,

I don't know, customer service.

I wouldn't get that feedback, given that

people are on my back asking me what has happened to the result.

It reminds me of an old joke I once heard.

Question.

How many people work in town's council?

Answer? Ten percent.

I mean it's an old joke that was said to me when I was recruited and I was asked

what I was going to do about it's actually a question said in a very

light -hearted way three things come together here there's the KPMG work

there's the workforce strategy and there's a workforce to reflect the

community strategy all three know you need to come together so the intention

is another reason for coming to the Excel. I said there'd be some announcements. There

will be announcements around strategic vision, but there will also be some announcements

around structure and how those things fit together. You will get more detailed feedback

after that. Okay, yes.

My question is about restructures and reorganisations within the organisation. When you're going

to make change, do we have a process in terms of speaking to the staff? Meaning, I

don't mean trade unions and staff, I mean you as a manager, director, head of

service, sitting down with staff and saying this is a situation, this is a

reality, what can we do? We need to make change, that's one. The second thing is

why does it always take so long to implement the change? It can't take a

year, two years, even three years. Why would you be sitting down so long? Why

can't a decision be made as to what the structure looks like and implement.

I was going to thank you, but then there was a round of applause.

Helen.

Oh no.

Let me, just before Helen answers, I think it's really interesting point, okay.

We could talk about resources, legacy issues, we could talk about levels of

and how many people got in HR,

how many people we haven't, all of that.

But at the end of the day, that's just offensive.

We need to get better at it.

It takes far too long.

There are restructures, I mean,

I don't want to get into specific details,

but there are restructures that have been going on for years.

I know people across the organisation,

even if I go and speak to some people in the parks

and what have you, you know, I...

Sorry, say that again.

Yeah, don't clap that. That's not helpful. Seriously, seriously, this is a serious bit.

Ellen. So it goes back to the conversation we were

having earlier with the ETs. It's a little bit around the complexity of the policy and

process. There is a very complex employee relations landscape here. We have unusual

relationships with our union, definitely not standard for local government and we want

to look at how we can make them work more effectively. Some of it comes down to that

leadership and management training. You might have seen on there, there was a training module

around emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, how we just have honest but sometimes quite

difficult conversations. I mean I would ask for a show of hands who would actually relish

the thought of having a difficult conversation where you know that that potentially is going

to have an impact on someone's livelihood. The human nature is to step away from that

and what we need to do is to make sure we've got the framework to pull people into that

and to help move it forward. So to Steve's point, don't have all of the answers, still

working through, I'm not going to get bored any time soon is what I would say, but absolutely,

how we manage change is one of those key areas of focus for the organisation and I suspect

being honest and realistic is going to be pushed into next year's plan because

it's not something I can deliver in the next six months. So we can start the

exploration work but it is going to take longer and we need to learn from those

areas where it hasn't worked. So I apologise that you've been in that

situation for two years. Hopefully we can bring that to a conclusion soon for you

and for whoever else cheered over that side as well.

Okay, next question is up in...

Oh, we've got one over there.

Go there first.

Nothing serious, too drastic.

I took that photo 40 years ago.

There's an N missing at the end of my name.

Say that can be sorted, please.

That's incredibly helpful as well.

Thank you.

Is there really?

No, stop.

I'm enjoying this now.

Where are we going now?

Yes, hello.

I just want to ask a question about the local community.

It's actually quite great to hear all this development for the local authority,

which is great news actually.

I was just wondering how much the employment strategy of the council

will reflect the local community in the entire Amelie.

Particularly, there's quite a lot of youths

that are in school leave that are not being able

to access the university who could be benefiting

the apprenticeship schemes.

So is there any particular plans and way to help

those particular, the youths that are actually

from the local community basically?

Excellent question. There is real concern isn't there about the percentage of children not in employment, education and training.

Last year in town, we had a good year in terms of the percentage of those children were actually in the top sort of fifth nationally.

So we're in a good place through the investment in the youth service and all the great work in employment and skills and work like supported internships with children with disabilities.

We have been doing some really good work and I think through with Hannah and obviously David and Housing and Regen

the links to employers is really strong and our relationship with schools is really strong. So I think that

connecting the employer to the school and to the kids is the trick isn't it?

And I think some schools do that really well

but I think we're trying to do that with our employment skills team trying to make that a bit more efficient and make sure that

when our kids can see

Canary Wharf in the city they could say well I grew up in Tower Hamlets

I went to the local school and I can go on to one of those jobs there

But I think the investment in youth services the EMA and bursaries and all the other support and you in the manifesto as well

There's some investment in transport like free travel passes for children with

Education maintenance allowances as well and and other support for them as well

So we do feel positive that we've got some investment there to support more young people

But it is tough for some of our youngsters when you look at it nationally in terms of looking for opportunities.

Hannah did you want to add?

I think you've covered a lot of that but we do have a lot of apprenticeship programmes that we're running as part of the organisation.

We're working really closely with some of our big employers to look at pathways into employment.

Obviously we just had the Melbourne report out that really talked about the NEET issue.

and we're working sub regionally with other local authorities and the areas

around the Olympic Park to see if we can pilot some really interesting work

working with some of the employers in that area creative industry to see if we

can work at a sub -regional level to offer more opportunities to that cohort

but it's a big issue you've got AI and you've got it's just

very, very challenging to get into work as a young person. It's one of our priorities

and focuses for the next few years.

Okay. Thank you. Next one.

In the mayor's manifesto, there's something about delivering 12 ,000 properties. Of that

12 ,000, what percentage is actually coming into social housing?

And a number of social houses planned in the new manifesto 12 ,000 the number I

think I know the answer to this question but please.

Yes, so we've got manifesto commitment to deliver 12 ,000 affordable homes over the last term and this term.

In terms of our own direct delivery programme we've got 1 ,300 homes in delivery at the moment

which is 95 % of new council homes.

And we've got the Mayor's Accelerated Housing Programme

as well, where we've reviewed our land and assets

and identified over 40 sites

where we think we can deliver up to 4 ,000 new homes.

And a number of those schemes are now submitted to planning.

And then the first batch of sites

will be going out to the market this summer.

We've also just completed

a really successful acquisitions and buybacks programme.

We've bought back 237 ex -council properties,

turning them into general needs housing

or for temporary accommodation.

And we're looking at expanding that programme.

We've submitted a £750 million bid

to the new GLA Social and Affordable Homes Programme.

So that shows our commitment to delivering new affordable homes.

But obviously a lot of that delivery is also how we work

with partners, RPs, developers through the planning system as well.

and we've just worked, we're just working on a challenge

in terms of the GLA's emergency measures,

where the GLA had set out that they wanted,

they were going to limit affordable housing delivery

to 20 % to fast track planning applications,

but we're challenging that as an organisation

because the evidence suggests that a lot of planning

applications that come through the borough

in the last couple of years are delivering

over 20 % affordable housing, so we are challenging that

and I'm putting together legal case working with both Hackney and Lewisham on that at the moment.

So I think there's going to be some comms coming out this week on that.

So we're trying to do a lot, we're trying to deliver as much as we can ourselves,

we're trying to work with partners to deliver as much affordable housing too.

But yes, it's obviously with current market conditions, cost, inflation,

and viability challenges, it's challenging,

but we've got really, really ambitious housing programme

here and it's about what we can do

in terms of our own delivery programme,

but working with our partners as well.

It's a really interesting point though, isn't it?

Because we're seven and a half square miles,

we've got 330 odd thousand people already living here.

We're building more than any other local authority,

got 17 ,000 people living in every square kilometre,

how much more pressure can we put on our revenue budget when we're trying to save

10 % of our net spend. It's a really interesting challenge. Right any more

questions from, yes, in the middle.

This is more of my personal opinion. I'm still very early into my career with

in Tower Hamlets, but I've grown up and I've born in Tower Hamlets, but I think for me

something that I'm quite passionate about is safety. So I just want to know in terms

of what's the sort of action plan in place to tackle anti -social behaviour and crime

levels within Tower Hamlets. So what work is being implemented basically?

Thank you. Okay so it's a really, okay, under the current climate it's a really interesting

question. So this is what about what we're doing in a community safety space, how we're

providing a safe environment for people to enjoy living in the borough whether you're living here whether you're working here or whether you

You visit the bar for whatever reason it might be as we try to promote a tourism agenda. It's really challenging. So I

could go on about this forever and I'm gonna ask a stress to make a point in a moment, but I

as chief exec, I get a lot of correspondence from the met from the Met police and

and in fact I had one only this morning.

And the Met talk about and get a lot of intelligence

about what's going on in London

and they can hone that down to very small postcode areas.

And most of the stuff that I get

tends to be about far -right activity

or intelligence that they've received

that there is potentially going to be some far -right activity

within the borough boundary.

and we focus an awful lot on all of the stuff about having a cohesive population

working together, community cohesion and all of that, but at the end of the day we

need to resource the practical steps of making sure that everybody feels safe in

their own home and everybody feels safe walking the streets. I'll say two things

first of all we're the only local authority left in London that buys

police officers. We spend nearly £2 .5 to £3 million a year buying police officers.

It gets us about an extra 25 to 26 police officers and we joint task them, or we're

meant to. Last week I got an email from the Met telling me that the cost of those police

officers is going to go up £30 ,000 per police officer because they can no longer afford

to do it themselves. Now they have hundreds of police officers working in the borough

and it's their responsibility to make sure that they dispatched in the right way.

But it's clear that the police can't do everything.

So we spend an awful lot of time working on prevention.

What can we do to prevent things happening that make people feel unsafe?

We employ Theos. We've got over 80 of them.

We have a complete workforce that's engaged in safeguarding.

We have a complete workforce that's engaged in making sure that the streets are safe,

that street lighting works, that our parks and open spaces have staff in them,

and when they need to have, we have all of those things going on and the result

of that is that in our annual resident survey, two out, which we do every year

and I reported it last year, two figures really strike, they really strike me as

important. First of all, the highest return in London where over 90 % of

people believe that the 154 different communities that live in Tower Hamlets

get on well together and we should be really really proud of that despite the

efforts of some to undermine that. That's something we work really harder.

Secondly, the other one that really I found really interesting is the

satisfaction with council services, general universal council services has

increased from around 73 -74 % again in the upper quartile in London. At the same

time we have a, I have a set of responsibility, the council has a set of

responsibility to make sure that that's sustainable. We can't do it on our own.

So partnership working is really important. Ashraf and his team can fix

the lights, they can, street lights which are really important, they can do

potholes, they can make sure parks are staffed, open spaces are staffed, that we

have a safe nighttime economy, but at the end of the day we can't do it on our own.

We have to work effectively in partnership and we do that by trying to

resource the police, but at some point, it's not just the police, there are a whole range

of organisations from the LMC right the way through to the smaller number of synagogues

that exist within the borough boundary when we're talking about that community cohesion

piece. But at the end of the day, it's not a sustainable solution. Things have got to

be done differently. We've got to work differently. And you'll find that that agenda will inform

the work that we were talking about earlier on, potential restructure, the work of KPMG,

where we're going to spend the lesser money that we have than we had 10 years ago.

We're really conscious of the question that you've asked, and I think it's really important

that we communicate across the organisation about how that agenda is going to inform how

we structure and how we spend money moving forward.

Ashraf, some practical examples from the department.

Thanks, Steve, and a very good question.

I think you've pretty much covered everything really.

So what I'm going to just add into what Steve has said,

across the community safety, across the three directorates.

So my area, which is a public transport, which Steve said

about looking at the physical improvements like lighting,

road, transport, et cetera.

I've got Kieran over there, obviously the director

for public protections, looking at a lot of work

across the partnership with the police, the Theos,

private sectors and third sectors.

So there's a lot of integrated work.

And then we've got Johor, which is the director of leisure and open spaces.

So again, safety around open spaces.

So there's a lot of work that we internally can do within the different directorates together,

but really important what Steve said is partnership work.

So we've got to actually look at outside just internally is how we can actually forge this

partnership with our third sectors, police and so forth, etc.

I don't know if you can spend a little bit more time on this, because that's a really important question.

I know you didn't expect this long an answer, but are you going to stop with me now?

Kieran is just going to say a very few words. A director of all of that.

Hi, lovely to see you all. I joined the council in January, but I've been in public protection for about over 20 years.

So I think I just want to separate this up into segments.

I think in my experience working in local government,

we do focus on the public, but we end up forgetting

that we've got a workforce that lives in the borough

or works in the borough.

So if we talk about victims first,

I think the first strand is the here and now.

If anybody's a victim of crime,

be it somebody who works for the council

or a member of the public,

we need to make sure that we're able to be responsive to that,

that they know where to report

and that we respond on an individual level.

It's not just down to the council, as Steve said.

It's around having a really strong partnership,

and that's something I'm working on with the police,

with probation, with fire service,

with other registered social landlords.

I think the second bit is around place, because, you know,

for me and my workforce, it's the fact that we need to know

where those spaces and places are,

and having that insight and analysis.

We've got one of the best -resourced analytical team

that other local authorities have had that I've worked in,

and across London as well.

We've got a really well -resourced team in our borough.

So we've got good analysts, I met with them this morning,

and we've got to know our places and spaces,

what happens where, where is that substance misuse,

where are those transport hubs where people feel unsafe,

and making sure that we push and pull our resources

in the right places and spaces.

We've got a really great substance misuse offer as well,

I work in partnership with Showman.

We know that, you know, our residents have told us they're concerned about that.

So again, using our FIOs, making sure we're present and we're visible.

But I think it's everybody's business in terms of keeping space, keeping safe, sorry.

So if you see it, you should report it.

But also, it's about making sure all our areas and spaces have got presence.

So if we've got parks, which are no -go spaces,

how do we make sure that we've got community presence there as well?

So I think the partnership just to finish off isn't just around our partnership with other agencies

It's about our partnership with our communities as well, and that's what we'll be working on

Excellent. Thanks, Gary

Everybody else gets it right. Um

Last question. Is there one last question?

one

excellent award winner, but you know, yeah, we get in the mic

Is it going to be a good observation?

Okay, thanks.

Can you hear me?

I think it's fantastic the Mayor's Accelerated Housing programme and the number of new homes

that will be delivered over the next five, six years.

But isn't it time you started having the difficult conversation about controlling the demand

that's coming in for those properties?

You know, it's all very well built in at these homes, but at the moment,

the number of people on the housing register has soared past 30 ,000.

And the honest truth is that two -thirds of those, three -quarters,

will never achieve a social tendency from us.

And many of them don't need a social tendency.

When are we going to be allowed to start having that difficult conversation with our residents?

Right, I'm going to answer that in a second.

I was going to finish on a happy -go -lucky topic, which is why I came to you.

And, no, no, okay, I actually believe that's not a question for Tal Hamlet.

we have massive demand. This is people's homes. This is where they want to bring up their families.

We can talk about the waiting list. Hannah might want to say something in a moment,

but it's how big a problem is that? A growing population, limited infrastructure, limited

resource, trying to build houses to accommodate those in families, extended families, other

organisations and people who actually want to live in town. Hamlets, the fastest growing

population in London, but probably one of the only areas where there's real development.

I really, I'm diverting a little bit, but I'm really interested in, for example, the

JP Morgan initiative.

You know, 12 ,000 people are going to be working in that building.

Some of them are going to want to live in the borough.

Some of them will not just work in the borough, but they'll go out in the evening in the borough.

That will create jobs, create thousands of jobs.

It's a billion pound building, it's a multi -billion pound building, but the amount of investment

an inward investment that will generate is massive.

We should be using that to make living here more comfortable and secure for those that want to,

those that were born here. If we speak to the mayor, it isn't just about building houses,

it's about wanting people to stay here. He doesn't want people disappearing off everywhere else to

live somewhere or go to education or university, he wants them here because it's his borough and

he's passionate about it. I don't have the answer to that question but I don't think

it's a council question. I think it's a question much more for London more widely, nationally

and probably internationally if you have to go to major cities across the Europe.

Andra, is there anything else you want to say?

Well, not really obviously.

We're trying to build as much as we can to help our students

and our supports that they're in the need.

We've got massive crowding as well.

But there are other different types of tenure that we're bringing forward

as part of the new GLA programme,

there's key work for living rights,

This is a new tenure for discounted market rent.

Obviously through the planning process,

there's also shared ownership as a tenure, which

helps people hopefully get onto the property ladder

for the first time too.

But in terms of our allocations policy,

potentially it's going to be reviewed at some point.

So if there's any sort of specific feedback on that,

I could take that back to the team,

but we know that there's a real big demand

to still continue to build new council housing

and for residents of Tower Hammers.

We've got over 3 ,000 people in temporary accommodation

as well, and that's not only a massive issue,

I think 2 ,000 of which are families,

so children living in TA in this borough

that we need to address.

But that's got a massive financial impact for the borough

to what's the TA overspend in years,

that forecast at 40 million.

So obviously there's a housing need,

but there's a real financial pressure there too.

It's only part of the solution in terms of building

new council housing.

We're obviously looking at other ways of addressing

that TA issue.

But in terms of the wider allocation point,

I think that is a bigger central government question

and a regional government.

but if I can feed, yeah, there'll be chances to sort of review that going forward

and any sort of feedback that you have we can feed into that process.

Okay, thank you. Excellent question to finish up. We are, however, just before it goes,

some of these questions being put to a democratically elected mayor would be

really helpful. Next Monday there's a session, it's online, you don't even have to turn your camera on,

but if you want to ask a question and you want to hear what the mayor's got to say,

It's next Monday, you can sign up online.

Please, please make sure you complete your annual review.

It's really, really important.

If you don't, we're, you know, look, this is all talk.

So you have to.

And also please, I can't remember who asked the question about mandatory meetings.

I think I probably can.

But the Excel on the 16th of July, please make sure you sign up.

I'm really grateful for you coming.

Thank you very much.

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Chief Executive Roadshow - Monday 22 June 2026, 2:00pm - Tower Hamlets Council webcasts

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