Interactive webcast player

Overview & Scrutiny Committee
Tuesday, 28th July 2026 at 6:00pm

 

Welcome to our Webcast Player.

The webcast should start automatically for you. 

Webcast cameras are not operated by camerapersons; they are automated and linked to speaker microphone units. The aim is to provide viewers with a reasonable visual and audio record of proceedings of meetings held in public.

Note: If your webcast link appears not to be working, please return to the Webcast Home Page and try again, or use the help email address to contact us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
  1. Webcast Finished

Good evening everyone and welcome.
My name is Councillor Halima Islam, Chair of Overview and Scrutiny Committee for this
year. Before we begin, let me explain the shape of tonight, because it is different
from a normal committee meeting. As members will know, I was unwell yesterday and unable
to attend, and our Vice Chair was also unavailable. Rather than lose either our formal committee
Business or our Work Programme Workshop, the two have been brought together into this single
extended session tonight. I want to thank the scrutiny team for turning that around
at short notice and cabinet colleagues and corporate directors for their flexibility.
So tonight runs in two halves. The first half is our formal committee meeting where we will
the Strategic Delivery and Performance Report and the two budget monitoring reports, introduced
together by the Chief Executive and the Cabinet Member for Finance, Assets and Governance,
followed by members' questions. We will then move into our Cabinet Member Spotlights, where
each portfolio has five minutes on the priorities and decisions coming down the track.
After a break for food, the second half is our work planning activity for scrutiny members.
Can I remind everyone that this meeting has been filmed for the Council's website.
Those participating will be included in the footage.
If there are any technical issues, I will decide if and how the meeting should continue
after taking advice from officers.
Members should speak only on my direction and please speak clearly into the microphones.
Apologies for absence. Matthew, can you advise if any apologies have been received, please?

1 APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

Thank you, Chair. So I've had apologies from Councillor Rabinha Khan, who's away at the moment,
I don't think Councillor Gold's been able to substitute for her, I know he was going
to try.
I've also had apologies for absence from Councillor Abdal -Ola, who is also away.
I don't have any other apologies, I'm just going to look around and see whether I'm missing
anyone else from the committee.
But yeah, that's what I've got, thank you.
Thank you Matthew.

2 DECLARATIONS OF DISCLOSABLE PECUNIARY INTEREST AND OTHER INTERESTS

Declarations of interest, can members introduce themselves formally and declare any disclosable
Pecuniary interest indicating which item the interest relates to and whether it is of a personal fiduciary nature
Thanks, Councillor Abu Choudry, nice to see you fit and healthy nothing to declare in terms of interest
Councillor Campbell will say nothing to declare
Nothing to declare.
Councillor Rupert George, nothing to declare.
Councillor Bournes, nothing to declare.
until the minutes of the
The minutes from our meeting on the 22nd of June 2026 have been circulated.
Can the members who were present confirm these as a true and accurate record?

3 UNRESTRICTED MINUTES

I'm just going to give everybody a bit of time to settle down and then we can move on.
Anyone presenting will be expected to come up here.
So cabinet members on this side and we're going to have scrutiny members on this side.
Moving on to the Action Log.

4 OVERVIEW & SCRUTINY COMMITTEE QUERY AND ACTION LOG

I understand there is one outstanding Action Log item from the last meeting and officers
have confirmed this will be tabled at our next overview and scrutiny meeting.
We have one piece of business carried over from our last meeting where we need to agree

5 UPDATE INEL JHOSC MEMBERSHIP

are representatives for the Inner North East London Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee,
it's a bit of a mouthful, which considers regional health and care issues and is led by Health and
Adult Subcommittee. Following discussion at Health Scrutiny, the names put forward are
are Councillor Abulkash M. Halal, Councillor Iqbal Hussain, Councillor Oti Swinyard.
Do members have any comments or can we agree those names?
Agreed.
Matthew, can I ask for you to note the members have agreed this year's representatives.
Thank you, Chair. That's noted.
We now move to our substantive committee business. We are taking three reports together as one

8 a) BUDGET MONITORING 2026/27 PERIOD 2

item. The Strategic Delivery and Performance Report, quarter 4, Outturn for 2025 -2026,
the Budget Monitoring 2025 -2026 provisional out -turn and Budget Monitoring 2026 -2027 period
2.
Taken together they give us the full picture of how the Council performed last year and
where we stand as this year begins.
Matthew.
Sorry, Chair, just to add on this one, that Jonathan Lloyd was going to do part of this.
He's just managed to arrive, I was just going to try and shuffle things, but I know he's
got to run, so if he could do his bit very quickly first and then we'll move on.
Just a question, so instead of Steve, are you?
Yeah.
Okay.
So for this item, we are joined by John.
Sorry, apologies.
What is your...
Jonathan Lloyd.
Jonathan Lloyd.
Okay.
And Councillor Abutal Hachadri, cabinet member for finance, assets and governance.
Our corporate directors are also in attendance to take questions for their areas.
Can I ask you both to introduce the reports together?
Please take the papers as read and use around 10 minutes between you to highlight the most
pertinent points for the Committee.
John, it would be helpful if you could open the corporate picture on the performance and
delivery and Councillor Chaudry, the financial position.
I will let you know when you are nearing your final minute.
Thank you.
Do you want to come up?
Thank you, Chair.
For those I've not met, I think I've probably met everybody.
I'm John Lloyd, I'm the strategic director for change and improvement here at the Council,
and part of that remit includes the corporate performance framework.
So we'll do a double act with the cabinet member responsible for this area, but just
to give you a little bit of context for this report.
So the KPIs, the key performance indicators that are part of this report were identified
and have been refined over the previous administration and obviously indeed reflect many of the priorities
of the former strategic plan.
But as part of development and work with yourselves providing scrutiny and an overview, we would
want to look at a refined or in many cases a new set of measures that are really important
to both the Council and indeed yourselves of what a really high performing organisation
delivering its priorities looks like.
Obviously things have changed in the last few years, there are new expectations on local
government as well from government.
So that will shape what we design and define over the next few months.
So really just a bit of an invite and opportunity to shape that as time goes on.
But to talk about this specific report, I'm going to hand over to the cabinet member who
is obviously very, very close to measures themselves in where we think that we're having
the biggest impact and where there are areas where we recognise we need to improve.
Thank you very much for setting the scene.
Looking forward, I think just looking back one quarter, at the end of Q4 you will all
know that we have 54 strategic performance measures, of which 34 were green.
There are five reds and six amber.
In terms of positive movement, two that were previously red have moved to green, which
is good news.
And two that were previously AMBA measures have moved to green as well.
So we do challenge the non -conforming areas or where we've had challenges in the red and AMBA areas.
And it's good to see that four measures from Q3 have moved into performing and within the green area in Q4.
As John mentioned, we'll be looking at these sort of suite of measures moving forward.
Just like a business has a business plan, this is the Council's business plan.
this strategic plan.
So it's so important for us to make sure
that we are performing on every single metric,
but also the fact that the metric is right
from the beginning.
The fact that we are measuring the right things.
The fact that residents actually resonate
with some of these metrics, with these matrices as well.
So with that being said, that's sort of a look forward
and a look back on the previous quarter.
Cool?
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you both.
I will now open up to members for questions across all three reports.
Can I ask members to be to the point so we can get through as many as possible?
I will take two questions at a time before asking for a response.
If we need more detail than time allows, we will use the action log for a written response.
Can I also remind members there will be an opportunity to ask questions to our cabinet
members on any points from the report as we go through their spotlights as part of our
work programme presentations.
Sorry, Chair, just before we invite questions, I thought we'll just clarify we went through
one report, so forgive us for not understanding the instructions, but we'll take the paper
as read.
So the P2 report, which is sort of our period 2 report, where there's a number of recommendations,
have to take questions, and the previous downturn.
So we're taking them as read, but we didn't actually present them.
So that's fine.
That's fine.
That's absolutely fine.
It should be taken as read.
Okay.
Questions?
Yes.
Last question.
To overcrowded household remained red and has worsened from 38 to 30 against a target
of 53.
So is this primarily a supply problem rather than a housing management issue?
I'm looking around to see whether we have any housing colleagues, but I think it's a
mixture of issues.
I think all of us will know that overcrowding is a big problem in our borough and it's one
of the top priorities for this administration.
I think when we first saw a glance of this being a red measure
It's something that you know, the cabinet colleagues all challenged because you're absolutely right
This should be an area where we prioritise there are less that we should prioritise overcrowded households
I think predominantly the challenge here is that the supply issue?
When we do have obviously properties coming online
they do tend to come, especially with big regeneration schemes and big projects, they
do come a lot in one go.
But I think for what we found in Q4, it was a major issue with supply.
Correct me if I'm wrong, John.
Absolutely, that's correct.
But I suppose the one thing I would add also, this is an example of a measure where we can
have the council could have success in one area which is for example tackling temporary
accommodation which is an issue that some of our neighbouring boroughs have actually
you know a severe financial risk for. So we've moved and supported more families than before
to move from temporary accommodation into social housing. That's been obviously a good
thing and that's a good thing for families in temporary accommodation. But whilst we've
that may have an impact on the number of properties available to overcrowded families within the
waiting list.
So we're always looking at that and learning about that as well.
Both groups are in incredible housing need and we need to get the balance right.
So it's an area of learning for us.
Rupa?
Yeah, can I ask about this priority two where you're talking about decent homes?
And I'm interested in that, obviously as a borough we have a huge challenge around retrofit and insulation
and it doesn't appear to be something that's being measured in terms of how much social housing as a percentage is actually ready for the gas phaseout date
which if it sticks to 2035 is only nine years away,
which means that there are literally tens of thousands
of homes in the borough that need to be insulated
in order to keep people in homes they can afford to eat.
And I'm just curious about whether,
why there isn't a measure of that here in this document.
I mean it, I think there are a few things around that.
There is an answer that we do measure quite a lot the layer below in terms of operational
measures whether it should be in the, let's call it the top 65 or 68, which around about
these measures are.
But I mean I think perhaps that's a really good conversation for devising the next basket
of measures and I would also, my personal view would be decent home standard would be
a strong measure as well of which we could discuss and debate and refine as part of the
next bundle of measures. So recognise the challenge. It is measured at the level below,
but should it be in the top measures, there's a good discussion, future discussion.
Thank you. Just on the earlier question around overcrowding, we're doing some work on underoccupancy
as well, where we've got families who are underoccupying to free up the larger properties.
We've also got an enlargements policy where we're doing extensions to existing properties
to make them larger.
So there are some active measures we're looking at on the overcrowding.
On the retrofit, we do have a condition survey happening at the moment and we've got our
£609 million investment over the next 10 years.
A lot of that investment will be spent on replacements of elements like windows, spandrel panels
and they in themselves will make those properties more thermally efficient
because we do still have quite a lot of single glazing in the borough that we need to replace.
On the communal heating systems, heat networks, removing gas from our properties, that is a challenge.
We do have some plans to do some non -gas heating systems around the borough,
which we're in early stages of development.
And also colleagues are looking at the heat networks
and how those heat networks can decarbonise our housing stock.
Are you happy with that, Councillor Rupert?
Yeah, I think so. I would like to push the idea that it is top -level information.
If you think the scale of the challenge and the amount of planning that the council have
to do to hit that as a deadline, I would hope that that's something that was flagged up
to cabinet and to councillors more widely in terms of actually getting the level of
attention it needs to actually hit the kind of target that isn't actually in the council's
control.
The gas phase out date isn't in the council's control and we will land people with huge
Huge fuel bills.
Homes will become unaffordable to heat in 10 or 15 years' time if the council doesn't
actually do that work, start planning that work properly now.
So I think that metric is really, really, really important in the longer term.
Thanks, council.
I noted as we sort of draught the new set of measures, there's one that we can look at.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Councillor Kamrul Hussain.
Thank you chair.
Can I start thanking to the lead member and Richard and the wider finance team for creating this report?
Also for your hard work
to deliver a
balanced budget.
My role as a scrutiny lead for finance, I as a critical friend, is my job to
help you by challenging or getting assurance on some of the items.
So I've got a couple of questions in mind. I'm not going to go into detail other questions because of the time constraint.
On budget out -turn 2526, the Council risk reserve reduced significantly.
So what assurance can it give us? What is the appropriate level of reserve we should have?
and what the financial complication we can have because of that.
And also on budget monitoring period 26 -27, the Council has a saving target of 69 .8 million
for 26 -27.
Do you have any concern?
Is it realistic for us to deliver this savings target and if you have any risks, what are
those risks and how we can mitigate those risks?
Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor.
I will say a few words and then bring Richard in and colleagues in if you wish.
With the first question, I think the use of reserves, what I will say is in our case it
was planned, so for us, when we set the budget in February last year, we knew there was going
to be demands in many areas, just like those demands have continued in homelessness, in
timber accommodation, special educational needs, and adult social care.
So we knew that we would have to rely on some level of reserves, and we are quite healthy
in comparison to other London boroughs.
you'll see from the P2 report that we still have close to 100 million pounds in earmarked
and non -earmarked reserves.
But the point is noted, we cannot continuously rely on these reserves and the plan isn't
to do so.
That's why as part of the other paper, the one around P2 and looking forward this year,
there's a number of forums and I guess strengthening process that we've done to really
We have just come back from a budget session scrutinising a service area and seeing how
we can really drive down spend so we are not forecasting overspends and we don't have to
draw down on reserves.
But when there's national pressures, we're not exclusive in some of these areas where
every single council across the country are facing these pressures and we know we're going
to face these pressures and services won't be able to contain those pressures.
Sadly, in some cases, there will be an element of, you know, using those reserves in a planned
And the second point around savings, so you'll see the vast majority of that
nearly 70 million pounds is on track to be delivered or has been delivered.
There is some at risk and I think the general line is we will push every single
moment to ensure that even if there is a savings target at risk we can bring as
much income, let's say for example, or much savings from that proposal as
possible rather than just wave it off and say we're not going to take this.
So we are having discussions with corporate directors, with service areas in areas where
savings could be at risk and we're hoping we can achieve some of those savings.
But the headline being we are actually achieving most of the savings proposed.
I mean, through you, Chair, just to underline, there are national pressures in adults' care,
children's and temporary accommodation, as we know.
I think the departments are working very hard to come up with mitigations to deal with those
pressures and we've had some good success in that.
It is certainly very much being led by both the cabinet member, but the other cabinet
members and the mayor to make sure that we get this out and figure as close as we can.
We are, it is only a period to report, although we are a couple of months on since then, so
there is time for us to find the remaining 19 .2 million that we flagged, but there have
We have seen some good mitigations put forward already and we are not sitting on our laurels.
As the cabinet member says, we have just come out from another meeting where again we are
probing and pushing for further efficiencies to try and close that gap further.
I think the cabinet member is absolutely right.
We can't rely on reserves forever.
Some of those do rebuild.
What I would say is where we have local sill money which the authorities achieved, there
There is a balance between holding some of that in reserve and spending some of it on
the services that our residents deserve.
It's not for me to sit on too much money in the reserves equally so I can't get to the
stage where we've got too little.
I think as the report to cabinet sets out, the coming medium term financial strategy
work which we do over the autumn period will be incredibly important where we strengthen
and the robustness of the budget as we move into the next period as well, both across
different funds, the general fund, the housing revenue account and indeed other sort of slightly
less well known funds, the parking places reserve account and also collection fund and
so on, areas where we collect money into.
So I think we're doing well.
we have not, the other point I would add is we are not an authority that's had to ask
for exceptional financial support. There are over 30 councils in that space, a number of
them in London, I think it's eight at last count, so the council's in control of its
own destiny and it's really important that we maintain that position as well because
As many would have heard, there are boroughs who, once they get into that space, they have
to take exceptional financial support every year for a number of years.
And for some authorities, it's difficult to see how they get out of that space.
Thank you.
I'm going to take two questions.
We're really short on time.
I'm going to call upon Councillor Helal first and then Councillor Kibbeach -Houdry, please.
Thank you, Chair. My question is regarding Part 13 .41 referred to saving 1 .2 million a week and 1 .5 million unlucky.
Can the reason for this be clarified please?
What institutions are in place to manage that 2 .4 million overspend across the HSC?
And Councillor, do you want to do your question as well?
Thank you Chair and good evening everyone.
My questions are in relation to budget monitoring 26 -27 period 2.
The report shows 14 .7 million overspends in supporting families, particularly around residential
placement and fostering.
What are we doing to reduce reliance on costly external placement and what gives us confidence
that early intervention will help bring this cost down over time.
And my next question is, the dedicated school grant,
DHD, deficit continues to grow and is forecast to overspend
21 .7 million this year.
What's giving the increase and what evidence should
to see that the same reform plan is starting to have an impact.
It's page 45 to 47.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Would you like to respond?
Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor.
I'll be very brief and then hand it over to Steve, I think is there.
I know your point around expensive placements.
I think what we do have to do is draw context.
I think Tower Hamlets compared to other boroughs in terms of having children in care is considerably
lower in terms of our numbers, but I take your point if this continues at this rate or
Dare I say even gets higher then it's a significant cost pressure
And what we are doing is looking at mitigation whether that's looking at the care homes
Themselves the people that within those care the children that within those care homes and what other things we can do to reduce that pressure
So I'm going to kindly ask Steve to touch on both questions. They're a bit similar
One is more focused on
of care, residential care and the other one is the general sort of pressure.
Evening everyone, Steve Reddy, corporate director of children's services.
Thank you Councillor for your questions, really important issue within social care
but as has been stated we're in a relatively positive position with a relatively low number of children in our care.
We do work really hard to keep children with their immediate family and if that's not possible with the extended family
and we do place children in foster placements all over the country and even abroad to make sure they can stay with their family.
We have about 190 -200 children in foster placements that are outside of their immediate family.
half of those are in -house foster placements and we're just talking today
with the Councillor and the Mayor about a campaign to recruit more foster carers
and we're going to have a huge push on that in the next six months
and our new lead member Faisal will also be supporting us on that
because the in -house foster carer cost is around about £500 to £1000 a week
an independent private foster placement could be at least double that
and as you yourself highlighted, if we then can't get a foster placement
and have to put a child in residential, it can be on average 6 ,500 pounds a week.
So we do everything we can to avoid that and also it's not always the best place
in terms of residential.
So our strategy really is continuing with our early help and prevention
and supporting families to keep them away from statutory social care,
through our family hubs and early help offer, but also in terms of children that are in care,
making sure we find foster placements and avoiding residential care.
Your second question was around the bigger spend on SEND.
No, it's 1 .7 million for the DSG, but it's affected by the same D .C. plan.
The deficit in the DSG, how is that going to affect the same reform plan?
That's a really important question and all councils are struggling with the high needs part of their DSG.
In some councils the deficit is running to many hundreds of millions.
So again, context -wise, I know it sounds very strange to say only 35 million is our send high -needs block deficit.
But that compares quite well to other boroughs, particularly when we've got something like the second highest number of children on education, health and care plan in London.
So we are working really closely with all our partners, particularly our headteachers and their school teams.
The key to bringing down that spend is the promotion of mainstream school provision
and supporting our mainstream schools with additional investment,
that's capital investment which have already started to help them make their schools adaptable
so children with additional needs can remain in mainstream school.
We're also doing work with schools and other providers, health providers and others
to make sure we can train up and develop staff in mainstream schools
to keep children who have additional needs from needing very expensive,
complex places in special school, because that is where there's a significant amount of spend
and we have obviously our own special school which is pretty full at the moment
and then if we can't get places in there, it's the independent sector which again,
you're looking at £100 ,000 plus a year.
So we're working really hard to avoid those sorts of placements
and again support our families as early as possible. Thanks.
Thank you.
Councillor Helal's question on overspend on social care,
who's going to take that question?
And we've got Bridget out there as well.
Okay.
Once Bridget makes her way down, thanks for the question, Councillor.
This was one of the areas that I mentioned where there are national pressures.
Just like homelessness within this area we have a statutory duty.
So if someone needs care, the Council doesn't have a choice to say, sorry, we can't give
you that care.
It is one of those areas where we have received significant demand, just like other councils.
That is what is driving a lot of this overspend.
However, having said that, at this rate, we can't keep on saying that year on year and
sustain our budget.
There are a number of things that the department are doing to mitigate that.
So I will let Bridget follow.
Hello, thank you for that.
I am Bridget Cameron.
I'm the interim director for commissioning and here really because Georgia Chimbani isn't
unable to attend so I'm here for that as well.
It's a really good question where you're just adding on to the pressures that we have, growing
numbers, it's demand led so people come needing support and we have that duty to provide things
but and to provide to meet needs.
What we are looking at is where we can commission services so that we look at maxing out the price,
getting better deals on working with the market to have less one -to -ones, for example,
looking at where people have a number of activities that we can commission at the moment,
but maybe we could use through the voluntary community faith sector
that would be more cost efficient.
We're looking at individual, we've got a transformation programme
on looking at all the care packages.
What we're looking at is going through each individual person,
I mean there's thousands of them,
so we're looking at how we can target that review team
to start to look at those care packages that are higher cost, higher need
and see if there's different ways that we can do them.
We want to bring a strength -based approach into that, which really is connecting people back into the communities where we can do that, and looking at where we have to provide.
Unfortunately, costs will continue to rise, so we're always fighting a battle to keep prices.
So instead of having the prices going up at a dramatic level, our role really is to keep it so that it rises much less than it would do if we weren't managing the pound.
So, and the idea being that we can support people in much more of a preventative way through much of our public health services or within the community to do things in a lower cost, no cost way where we can.
and that's part of our work on the adult social care strategy prevention
and that prevent reduce delay approach to adult social care.
Thank you. Richard.
I mean it's just to say in the council's priorities,
looking after its older people is clearly a very significant priority for the council.
People are living longer, that's a good thing.
But it's also worth making the point that successive governments have not been able
to resolve the issue, particularly between the NHS and social care provision really.
So the issue about the underfunding in social care is nationally known, it's a Tal Hamlet's
issue as it is in all other boroughs but the team are doing many things to try and mitigate
those pressures. The other point I'd make on the SEND budget that Steve talked about
a moment ago really, this Council and many councils have effectively cash flowed the
under provision of funding for SEND and it's really important and really good that the
have recognised that by our plan going in.
It will also be really good if they give us the cash that we've expended for so many years
relatively as quickly as they possibly can because we've been funding these areas where
the provision has not been sufficient to meet the demand both here and nationally outside
of our authority.
We have no more questions. Thank you to John, Councillor Chaudry and officers. Before we
move on, can I cheque with Matthew whether we have received any pre -decisions, written
questions on the forthcoming cabinet items, please?

10 PRE-DECISION SCRUTINY OF UNRESTRICTED CABINET PAPERS

I suppose we should mention there is the one urgent report you might mention later, so
maybe we have a later deadline for that one.
Okay, unless anyone wants to ask the question now or, okay, that's fine. I just want to
encourage members to keep using the pre -decision and scrutiny question channel. We cannot look
at every cabinet paper in committee time, so it's important that you have oversight,
maintain oversight. Just to add, I have accepted as a scrutiny chair a late report to cabinet.
This is on Beechert State School expansion. It is important members have a look at this
report and send in any pre -decisions, scrutiny questions they have to officers by tomorrow
12pm.