Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Wednesday 3 December 2025, 7:30pm

Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Wednesday, 3rd December 2025 at 7:30pm

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1 Minutes of the Previous Meeting

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2 Declarations of Interests

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3 Customer Service (Paper No. 25-422)

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Customer Service Presentation

4 Treasury Investments and Borrowing (Paper No. 25-423)

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Finance OSC Dec 25 Treasury FINAL

3 Customer Service (Paper No. 25-422)

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Customer Service Presentation

4 Treasury Investments and Borrowing (Paper No. 25-423)

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Finance OSC Dec 25 Treasury FINAL

5 Managing Demand Pressures (Paper No. 25-424)

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Finance OSC Demand Pressures FINAL

6 Finance OSC Work Programme (Paper No. 25-425)

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

1 Minutes of the Previous Meeting

meeting of the Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting. My name is

Councillor Stock and I am the chair of this committee and good evening everybody

tonight. So I will now ask members of the committee to introduce themselves in

alphabetical order so Councillor Crichard. I think that's probably not

alphabetical but anyway Anna Marie Crichard I'm Deputy Chair of this

committee councillor for Tootingbeck Ward. Thank you councillor Critter I think that's because you're deputy chair I think you get the

order first. Councillor Apps. Good evening councillor Apps, Shaftesbury and Queenstown

Ward. Councillor Belton. Tony Belton, councillor in Battersea Park Ward.

Councillor Fraser. Good evening councillor Claire Fraser, South Ballym.

Councillor Graham.

If we're going in that order.

Councillor Peter Graham, opposition speaker for finance.

Councillor Hedges.

Councillor Lindsay Hedges.

Ballam Ward. Thank you.

And I think we've had apologies from Councillor Lee.

And we've had apologies for lateness for Councillor Richard Dones and Councillor Corner.

Correct. I've just had a message and the trains are apparently not in fully functioning order.

So that's why they held up. I hope they will get here in due course

And we also have councillor Ireland our cabinet member for finance

Good evening

And I think we're doing due to be joined by councillor Dickerdom our councillor member a cabinet member for housing later on this evening

And as no papers relate to voluntary sector business engagement and culture this evening

So, Councillor Akinola has sent her apologies.

We also have several offices present who will introduce themselves when they address the

committee.

Thank you for joining us.

So, moving on to item number one, the minutes of the previous meeting.

We have the minutes from the 9th of October to agree.

Do any members have any comments on the meetings?

Minutes no.

Happy to agree them.

Agreed.

Thank you very much.

2 Declarations of Interests

Item number two then, declarations of interest.

Do we have any anybody have any declarations of interest?

No, thank you very much. Okay. We'll move then on to item number three, which is on customer

3 Customer Service (Paper No. 25-422)

Service, so I just want to mention before we move

Substantively onto this item that you'll have seen

That there's a written note on the agenda in relation to items seven and eight. I haven't been

informed by any members of the committee in advance that they wish a separate

discussion on those agenda items. So if members do have any queries on those two

items, so that's the annual corporate complaints and the key performance

indicators, please ask those questions under this discussion. I think at the

work programming meeting we agreed that these papers would be provided as

supplemental information to supplement the discussion on customer service. So

please ask those questions under this agenda item.

And then I do not intend to come back to them

later in the agenda other than to note the report.

So I will release the officers here

who are here to discuss those agenda items at the point

that we move on from this item.

Is that agreed?

Is that clear?

Perfect.

OK, so thank you very much.

So first of all, before we move on to this item,

I'd like to thank very much the assistant director for customer

Service who facilitated a service visit for members to the customer service

centre earlier this week. It really was a very insightful visit particularly the

opportunity to see the net call system which is referred to in the paper in

action and how it's improving customer service and the ability for residents to

have their queries addressed efficiently and effectively. I understand not all

members were able to attend because that visit was during the working day I

understand that but nevertheless I do want to reiterate the offer that has

been made to all members by email that all members are you know the offer it

stands to be able to attend a service visit in the future if there is further

interest please don't hesitate to get in touch and that can be facilitated

because I think it was something helpful for members to be able to see and

hopefully will inform this discussion so members of the committee have requested

this paper recognising that customer service is the front door into the council for our

residents and we have a real clear aspiration to be a welcoming and responsive council where

every resident has clear, timely, respectful support that's quick and easy to access, simple

to navigate and resolve the first time so residents can get the help that they need

to live their life in the borough.

So thank you very much for the report from our executive director for change and innovation

Sam Olsen and I'll hand over to you for an introduction and then take some

questions. Thank you, well I will obviously assume that you've all read

the report and I'm going to apologise now if I cough a lot through talking

just bear with me I've got some water in front of me. What I thought I'd focus on

in terms of introducing it though is what the framework and the principles of

what we are trying to achieve here. For many of our residents in our borough the

The point at which they have to choose to phone us,

write to us, fill in a form online,

is almost, dare I say, failure demand at that first point.

Because actually what customers, residents, users

now look for is a seamless service.

Now all our services cannot be seamless all the time.

And for many of our residents who have a real complexity

of need, there will always, I believe, be a need for telephony and face -to -face support.

But what we're really trying to do here is to automate as many of our processes as possible,

and where we're not able to automate them and we need resident interaction with the

service to make it as seamless and as fast and efficient as possible.

And what that model, the pyramid on the first page gives you is the aim for

what we are trying to achieve there is the more that you can self -serve,

the more you can then move the queries that aren't self -serve into

our first point of contact of that customer service and get resolution there.

You'll see the pyramid of course naturally starts to come to its peak.

And it means that you're then using your specialist expertise staff

to answer those really specialist questions.

So our ambition is simply, she says simply,

to make every interaction with the Council

faster, easier, and more personal.

And technology is moving at a really great pace

at this point as well.

So whereas five years ago we might have set out

a nice vision and a nice endpoint,

I think we have to accept that this will be

a really iterative process that we go to.

But residents need to be able to access the help they need

when they want it using the channel that

is most appropriate for them.

And for some, that will be online.

For some, that will be phone.

And some, of course, that will be in person.

And at each step, we're looking to remove barriers and make

services more accessible so that nobody's left behind.

What does that mean?

What does that look like for them?

It's about convenience and choice in how you report issues to us,

how you seek advice.

It's about automating that help as quickly and possibly as we can,

and it's about faster responses in each of the channels.

So you can hopefully see through the data as we've moved

over the last 12 months to our pledge of seven days, seven rings.

Obviously, seven rings is the element of

that pledge that we're committed to in customer services.

We've used that as an opportunity to move the majority of our calls through our net call system

That means that we're able to track monitor and support individual services

It also means that we can start to see where the blockages in the system were

So it now means we have a rolling programme of continuous improvement

So when we start to hear from residents that the reason that they're calling is because they can't see how or where to do something

online, we're then instigating that as part of the continuous improvement programme.

Safety and security and how we protect resident data is clearly a top priority

for us. Improving our governance and the previously mentioned changes to

our cyber security approach that we've spoken about here before is at the heart

of our ability to be able to deliver this. We've also recently moved, which you

can see in the paper from a telephony and omni -channel programme that was

sitting on our own servers into a cloud -based version of it which firstly

gives us a much more greater level of resilience so all of the problems we

have had with our phone lines over the last 18 months all tracked back to our

own servers that they were sitting on so it gives us much better resilience

having it cloud -based, but it also improves our security footage as well.

What does future development deliver for us?

We have an ability to build off the system that we now have.

That means that we can start to look at the existing systems within the organisation that

can plug into it that start to give us a single view of our resident.

And that's where we want to be able to get to here.

We want to know when a resident calls us that they've already called us about this problem three times before and actually these are the

actions that have been taken but also most

Importantly we want to be able to know when a resident calls us from a particular telephone number that they have a hearing

Imprediments or they have got additional needs so that we can respond to them because the why should they have to tell us more than once

in order to take

customer services now to the next stage for all our residents.

We have got a programme of continuous improvement, which we will continue with,

and will continue to evolve with the technologies.

But also we'll need to start to think about how we bring our back office systems

to align to make the residents' experience as simple as possible.

And I'll stop there, because I said I wouldn't talk for too long.

Thank you very much.

Any questions?

Councillor Critchard?

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms Elton, for your comments.

One of the things that I was quite interested in was you mentioned there's a rolling programme

of continuous improvement.

I'd be interested in some examples and particularly a couple of the things that you've said about

a resident tells you, say for example, they've got a hearing impediment or extra needs, how

we'd be monitoring that in the future because that was one of the things that is in one

of the examples in the complaints about what we should be being better at.

But so, yeah, so examples of things that we've changed because of how we're working with the customer, with the current system,

and a bit more about the future developments and how we can make sure we do that.

Mrs. Olsen.

Thank you. Yes, of course. So continuous improvements. The ranges here are huge.

So one of the very simple examples is in the housing area.

So as part of the housing pilot

that you've got some data on there,

we've been looking at the volume of calls

coming into housing, how we're managing those calls.

There is the ability online to log your own repair,

but when we started the pilot,

effectively our website had been built over time

as we had added services in.

So the first line at the top of how to log the repair was to phone us.

You needed to scroll down three pages on our website to see that actually we're able to

do it online.

So that insight by looking at the housing pay repairs page through the lens of customer

experience rather than looking at it through the lens of how we've built a service, so

we've been able to obviously just redesign the page so that you put now.

There's no cost involved in that, but we immediately saw a 5 % drop in people calling us to log their calls.

So there's some real simple, don't cost us any money, quite low tech solutions in there.

We've also, through the change programme, you've made investments,

particularly in the council tax areas, around how we automate

when residents are changing their addresses

and have got changes in circumstances.

So there's quite a breadth of different options in there.

The key is actually the paper that you've got at the back

and it's keeping an eye on customer complaints.

Our customer complaints data is a fabulous insight

into where the barriers and where the sticking points are

for our residents and how we can be

permanently improving for them.

On the question of how we can support residents when they tell us of any

additional needs they have, at this point in time we can't do that through our

telephony but we only went live this week with our new version of Netcall

which is the cloud -based one and we'll be looking in the new year about how we

add that functionality into it and how we link it with our adults

and our children's data and our housing data.

Thank you, Councillor Corner.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mrs. Orson,

for your report.

I've got a few questions,

which are hopefully quite quick ones.

Firstly, on page four, tier three is expert support,

tier two is specialist support.

How is that different, is like an expert support,

that someone who can create a bespoke solution,

whereas specialist support is someone who has like pre -agreed solutions, could you just

provide some clarity on that?

And then I guess my substantive question is around the pain points.

So on page five, it says that, you know, obviously long wait times and unclear processes, presumably

unclear customer service processes were top drivers of dissatisfaction.

What were the other pain points?

and have these pain points being addressed such that customer satisfaction is improving

in the short amount of time that this new system has been working.

Yeah, just if you could provide some views on that, that would be useful.

Thank you.

Yeah, just two questions there on the tiers of support and the wait times.

So depending on the service, you generally expect specialist response to still be able

to be delivered within your generic contact centre.

So it's your more specialist trained experts that you've got in the contact centre.

Whereas your experts, you're then expecting it really to be people who are embedded into

your individual services.

So that's the, you'd expect to try and have two tiers of support, which is what we've

got in the housing pilot.

So we've got a generic contact centre team.

We've then got a team of trained specialists now working on some of the housing repairs,

some of the temporary accommodation.

But you then keep your X deep expertise.

And at that point, you've got to remember, you're then talking about that deep expertise,

being about the specific service,

as opposed to the expertise being about

how you are supporting and being empathetic

and doing the customer service as being the main expertise.

With regards to the pain points,

the move to the new system has only happened

in the last week, however, the customer satisfaction

ratings that we've had from residents over the last year,

We are already stuck. We haven't done a

equivalent data to what you've got there yet, but we do do pulse surveys and ask for responses from residents

And we're seeing about a 30 % improvement in customer satisfaction

The big pain point now

So if the first pain point that we've dealt with over the last year

Has been an ability to get through to us in an efficient way and get through to the right person

the next pain point for us to deal with

is around our ability to respond

when we have resolved something.

So if we go back to the customer complaints report,

if we look at the responses that we have from ombudsman's,

we very rarely get held up on having made the wrong decision.

Where the feedback has been to us

is about how we have managed the process

up until that point.

to really start to make a difference in that space.

That's where you start to get to a place

where if we need our systems to become more joined up.

So it's really the, we've focused on the front end

resident facing piece first.

We've now got to really deepen to how we improve

our services, the way we design our services

behind the systems.

Thank you.

Councillor Belton.

Thank you, Chair.

I went round on the other day, on Monday, and had a look at the system.

And if I can start with Councillors, just it's always struck me in the past that at

the Councillor's induction, and after all in four or five months' time there's going

to be 20 -odd new Councillors, it's always struck me that the induction was very much

at what departments wanted to tell counsellors.

And I think it ought to be looked at from the counselor's point of view about what counsellors need to know.

And of course, one of the most important things for counsellors is how to do casework.

And there's a kind of assumption, I think, about our knowledge about this.

I don't think you can seriously manage to do that anymore unless you've been around this side of your work.

Because I just saw and thought, okay, I'm very old hat and very old school,

but I just saw a zillion ways where I'm completely out of date about how to process it.

And unless you actually work in a call centre, perhaps you don't know the capabilities of it.

So I do think it should be almost compulsory, like training to be on the planning applications committee,

to go on an induction and learn all about it.

Very important, I think.

I think all members should do that.

I've got a question mark about ethics.

I'm not sure the person we were talking to quite understood my point, so I'll try in

a broad sense.

I have absolutely no doubt about the goodwill and the ethics being pursued in this Council

at this time and if it were by some

mischance to change control in fairly

obvious way I've no doubt about that

either but there are issues about the

fact that the boss man can sit there and

listen to every single in the discussion

going on between case were between the

staff and the public where they can

monitor exactly when they've been doing

things, what they've been doing, whether they've gone for a break, and all those kinds of things

where one hears bad storeys emanating sometimes about organisations like Amazon and the way

they drive people in work terms.

I think not necessarily under this administration and certainly unlikely to be necessary in

any immediate future administration, but I think the ethical issues involved ought to

be explored and there ought to be a protocol about it somewhere or other.

And I don't see how you can do that unless you have really strong involvement with the

trade unions or some genuinely representative organisation of the workforce.

As I said, I've got no doubts about the current setup, but just possible in the future.

Councillor Corner in particular, I think, over the last few years, has questioned why we haven't put real hard figures on your operation and how much you're going to save.

And I was very sympathetic with that.

I used to work in, I was in fact a systems designer for computer systems, would you believe.

and we used to be able to give cost -benefit savings very precise

because it was fairly clear and obvious what we were doing.

We could work out how to pay salary.

This is before there were software products doing salaries, for instance.

So you could work out how much you'd save, etc.

With this system, I can see it's almost impossible.

Just spend half an hour with the gentleman who runs the place

talking about AI's potential to develop the questions

that you put in and how you put in,

and you aware very strongly that we're in a totally

new re -engineering of the whole business of being

the council, I think, and it's almost impossible,

I would suggest, to put figures on that.

So I know that he has a target, by the way,

because he said so, but nonetheless,

I think the potential for the savings is very unpredictable but very large.

Thank you, Councillor Belton.

Just a question on reassurance in terms of the cheques and balances in terms of staff

working in the customer call centre and a question around AI potential and quantifying

that.

And the point about, I think that's for all members actually, interested in views around

potential for us to make a recommendation in terms of a future intake of members around

the importance of customer service and us all being equally aware of it.

So as you would expect me to say, I am a huge advocate of you thinking about mandating coming

to customer services, not only in induction but just actually as you do your, you all

do ward visits, you know, an ability to come from time to time and spend time in customer

services.

For me, it's the front door of the organisation and it's really, really important that we're

all listening to it.

On the ethics piece, this does really interest me having managed different types of call

centres over a number of years, and particularly having seen outsourced call centres in some

of the adverse cultures that particular targets can create.

And I think there's a big difference for staff who are working in environment that's effectively

monitored and performance managed to environments where you have hard targets and particularly

financial targets.

The two most important KPIs for me to keep an eye on on my call centre are around staff

turnover and around the staff survey data.

There are so many roles in the borough and very close to so many of where my staff work

in call centres that they could be moving to that the minute that the culture starts

to slip in that team, that will be the first data that I start to see change.

So that's very much how I keep an eye on it.

But I do also talk to the unions with my,

particularly more in the HR space.

But I do also talk to them

about spending time in the call centre,

spending time listening to calls.

Simon does a lot of quality and

training work with his managers and with the teams.

That's all about the team seeing that

that overall system gives us

and ability to support and develop

their individual training.

So each of the staff who work in the customer services team

has their own tailored training support programme,

which is linked back to what we're hearing on the phones,

how we can support them.

Once staff are up to level three in a particular subject area,

they'll then move on to learning new subject areas.

So there's a lot of staff development,

But I completely agree with you that it is something that you need to keep a really close

eye on when you're managing call centres.

And just as when you're looking at schools or nurseries, one of your first key indicators

of problems is turnover.

It's exactly the same in a call centre environment.

The other piece was a little bit on the AI case for benefits.

Yeah, for AI savings, none of us can really look at a glass ball with regards to what

will happen with AI and how we will use it.

What we are starting to see across contact centres is the ability for AI to have a very

positive impact, not just in terms of channel shift, so therefore reducing the amount of

phone calls in but also AI's potential to be able to

support the customer services person

to be able to answer more complex needs

without that level of training.

So those levels I was asked about

earlier of experts and specialists,

there's a question mark for me as we move forward with

the use of AI as to whether or not we need

as many specialists or whether or not we can have

more generalists because actually AI is able to provide

the agent with the specialist information that they need.

The model that we are trying to work through

with the transformation programme is starting to look at,

we still know we have some telephony in different areas.

We've got a high level of telephony need,

particularly in housing.

And as we start to provide the support

in the customer services team for a broader range

of services across the council, sorry, how are we automating the calls we're already

getting and then using that capacity to provide extra capacity across the organisation.

Thank you, Mrs Olsen. Yeah, and as well as the staff turnover, you touched on the staff

survey and I think it was really good to get the reassurance at the visit on Monday that

the team has some of the highest positive feedback in the recent staff survey, so that

That was really good to hear as well.

Councillor Hedges?

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mrs. Olsen.

Sorry to miss the session at the call centre,

but I appreciate the invite to do it online at some point.

My question is around the 84 % answered

in seven rings in Q2.

Now, is this data, are you able to break that data

down by ward because, the only reason I ask

is because it seems very different to what I'm hearing

on the doorstep in my ward where,

and I have mentioned this to you before,

is that residents are saying to me,

and not just one, a number,

are saying that they've tried to call

and they can't get through.

So I wondered whether this stat is very,

is one's worth wide and if you could get a breakdown,

that would be really helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you, and I think, interestingly, on that point,

I think it would be interesting to know

from residents in terms of what service they're contacting

and the wait times in relation to that,

I think, good to get that feedback from councillors.

Mrs. Olsen? So I can give you a breakdown by service. I can't give you a breakdown

by ward because so many people phone us predominantly from mobile phones and I

won't know where they're calling us from and if we've resolved the issue we and

it's within one of our individual systems so I'm afraid I can't give it

you by ward. By service it does look quite different and but what we have got

an ability to do now is track back from an individual call that has been called

to us and a number of you have given me these to look at and so if the resident

is happy to share their telephone number with you we can then track back when

they called us what it was about and what the experience was.

Thank you very much for that offer.

Councillor Graham.

Yes, just briefly responding to Councillor Belton's point about the unions.

I mean, they're not always the best to consult with matters of technology.

Only last year, we discovered that one train operating company is still sending important

safety information to train crews by fax machine because the trades unions won't reach agreement

on using digital communication.

So although obviously we have duties in relation to the trade unions, I think consulting them

on matters of technology would potentially be a mistake.

Turning on to that, the percentage of calls – right, Councillor Critchard?

I'm pretty sure some people in the unions where they got by two people disagree with

you, but hey, how about – what's your position?

Talk to Andy Burnham.

He was the one who was criticising Northern Train

Company for operating in that way.

Anyway, as we can see on page seven,

84 % of the calls in 42 were answered within the seven rings

target.

Now, that's obviously a good thing.

But is our technology in a place at the moment

where we can know if the calls were actually dealt with

or whether people were then put through to somebody else

and then spent five, 10 minutes on hold or worse,

or just got cut off.

And so do we actually have the ability to see

if we're not just answering a query,

but we're actually dealing with the problem

that the resident is raising with us?

Thank you, and an excellent question.

So at this stage, up until our new system

went live this week, no, we didn't have the ability

to know whether or not we had answered

with first resolution.

or what had happened if a call had been forwarded on.

So from what our customer services agents are feeding

to the continuous improvement, we had their feedback,

which as I've mentioned, we have been working on.

But up until this point, we've not had that as hard data

as you've got on seven rings.

However, now that we've moved into this new environment,

That is something that we will be able to track moving forwards and is something that we're looking at introducing from January

Sorry, I should say Q1 next year

Thank you. That's very helpful to know

Do you have some sense at this this time of when?

As counsellors will be able to see the first indications of what those statistics are and how successful we're actually being at handling

The calls that are coming in

Not until I properly go live with it now

But once we've gone properly live with it, I'm happy to come and try it.

So could we expect it by Easter, for example?

I don't know until we test and trial it. I need to test and trial it in our system before being able to commit.

Thank you. Councillor Critchard?

Thank you. Sorry, I thought Councillor Fraser was…

I've also had my hand up.

I've got Councillor Critchard, Councillor Corner, Councillor Atkinson, Councillor Fraser.

First of all, actually, I think the news about what's happening with the feedback would be very helpful,

and maybe we could sort of make a note that perhaps this could come back to committee in six months or so,

once we have suitable data, perhaps.

I mean, would that be something that would be possible and doable?

Because obviously our residents want to hear that.

My questions were, was really about the housing contact centre pilot.

So I hadn't quite grasped we had one of these going on as well in parallel.

So I'd quite like to know a bit more about this compared with the customer services pilot.

And the other thing that I would say from being on Southern Area housing panel,

I've noticed that there are like four different lists of places where residents have to go for

repairs and I realised that residents, basically what they do is if they need something they

obviously have a list of people to contact and they just contact the right person which seems

to me it ought to be something where you ought to be able to just ring up one person and

ask and just say I've got a problem with my boiler instead of saying oh you've got to

go to this company. I just wondered if the housing pilot covers that or whether there

might be any opportunity for that in the future because that seems an area where we're asking

the residents to make a decision about what they do before they get to us

rather than just phoning up and saying help. Thank you, yes on progress on the

housing pilot and opportunities for growth in the future. Yes so just to

clarify that customer services isn't in a pilot phase it's just moved on to a

new system but we have been continuously bringing more services and more calls

into it as we're able to support the organisation

without expanding the size of the team.

The specific pilot has been the housing pilot,

where we started off with homelessness calls

and the housing register.

We've taken on board the housing switchboard.

We have, we now take calls on temporary accommodation.

If you call the joint control centre

with the repairs query during the opening hours

of the contact centre, they now come through to us.

And we've also set up, we set up a helpline

to support residents of Fox House further to the five.

So it's very much been in a test and trial phase.

We started quite small, but you can see

from the figures there, we've now,

I'm trying to remember the latest data.

So Q2 is about twelve and a half thousand calls. I think Q3 it will be nearer 16 ,000 calls

So what we're doing is slowly up skilling a team. It's a dedicated housing team

That's established within customer services

So those staff aren't also answering questions on council tax and rents. This is very much a dedicated team

We know through the recent work we've been doing

with housing and the housing improvement plan,

which there are many people behind me

who are far more expert in than me,

that how we improve that resident experience on repairs

is very much at the forefront of our thinking.

It's not as simple as just having people

to answer the phones, though,

because obviously there is, within there,

we need to look at how the systems work

and how we ensure that whoever answers the phone to the residents, we're able to support them in a meaningful way.

So it is something that we're looking at on housing repairs, but for the moment that's not where the housing pilot has been.

And Paul might want to add to that.

Thank you. Yes, Paul Chadwick, Executive Director of Resident Services.

Just to add to that, yes, is the point that we are going through a review of the whole of the repair services.

all the repair service for housing, the whole process from start to finish is under review.

It's clearly a lot of repairs being done for a lot of residents.

It's generating at the moment an awful lot of calls.

Initiating the need for the repair, chasing the repair again and again and again.

So a part of the point I'm trying to make is that it's the whole process we're looking at.

obviously kind of designed to reduce the number of calls because we're getting the repairs done quicker, better, slicker.

So just to assure you we're looking at the whole thing.

And amongst that, we'll obviously look at your point, Councillor Critchotte, around the telephone numbers and the profusion of them.

Profusion, yeah.

Yes, thank you.

The one thing I might say is just from my short experience on the housing panel is,

I think the residents would probably be, one of the things residents are very keen on as

well is trying to, for the council to improve its service, particularly in terms of not

having people coming back.

So just a plea maybe is whether the people on our housing panels would actually be interested

in, able to offer you other insights from the other side if they were asked in case

that was something useful.

I can say absolutely and they are already involved with it.

I think there was a meeting in room 140 just earlier this evening in fact on that very

point.

The one that I can't go to because I'm here.

Thank you Councillor Crenshaw.

I'm going to come to Councillor Apsley and Councillor Fraser before I come to you Councillor

Corner for a second go.

So Councillor Apsley.

Thank you.

As it happens I think I might have had my hand up first.

I wanted to dig in actually a little bit on what Councillor Graham was talking about actually.

So about kind of completion of the complaints or you know of the issue, it's more than a

complaint.

Just because I had quite an interesting example the other day which is I had a resident who

had gotten in touch about the fact that she couldn't fit her bike with a child seat into

to any of the bike hangers.

But she wasn't allowed to put it where the motorbikes go,

so she kind of was like a bit stuck

and kind of didn't really have anywhere to put a bike.

And got in touch, got a very quick response.

It was really good to say, it's okay,

we've written back to her to let her know

where a bike hanger is that she can use that's suitable.

And I sort of followed it up,

say I understand officers got in touch with you

and I just wanted to cheque if everything's okay.

And she then got in touch to say,

I've been to visit it and it's a bit broken and there's no spaces and because there's some dead bikes in there

So then I was able to follow that up again

And that's the kind of thing is slightly different to what and council Graham was talking about which was about the sort of

Getting the immediate resolution on the phone. It's about the sort of

The follow -up to make sure that it's met the the sort of resident satisfaction

Firstly are you going to be looking at that sort of the complete satisfaction of them?

you know, coming back to them, say, in, you know, it could be a week's time or whatever

to say, were you happy with the service you received?

And secondly, it would be really good to see some synergy with how we deal with members'

inquiries as well.

Because one of the things I find hugely frustrating sometimes is believing that something's been

resolved and then finding out a couple of weeks later that it hasn't been completely

resolved and then having to sort of chase it up and being able to have almost like a

sort of green light system so we can see that.

And the other thing I just want to ask about,

which was around the tiers of support.

How empowered are the teams to basically to escalate things

to the correct level when they want to?

Obviously the first level going up to tier one

is essentially a customer choice, right?

That's a resident's choice to go to tier one.

But are the teams enabled to make sure they know

where to go to in terms of the further scales.

Thanks very much.

So I'll answer the second bit of that

first because it's the easy bit.

So yes, as a customer services agent,

you can escalate straight to an expert and

straight to a specific expert straight away.

There's not a protocol that says you've got to

go through the different tiers.

The Simon and his team spend a lot of time focusing on

what those protocols are and making sure that they're

the right ones and that they are staying at speed with

what can feel like quite a complex organisation at times,

especially if you think recently we've created new directorates,

people have moved in these directorates.

Our customer services team are obviously also always trying to

ensure that they know where they need to go

to for the right queries.

Your second question of,

we don't have the technical ability

now really to track through in this CRM way that you are talking about there to

be able to go back to residents and say did we resolve this issue for you? Our

systems just aren't integrated and joined up enough. Is it technically

possible in the future? Sorry yes it is but it may require some substantial

investment. And then there is a question as to probably a more political question

at some point in time as to whether or not that is something that you want to

do. I could be slightly controversial on members inquiries and members

casework and say actually from a customer services across the whole

organisation as opposed to the call centre team perspective the fact that

you need to do casework is almost failure demand

that's built into the system.

Because if the system was working for the resident

in the first place and the resident could see easily

on the website that that bike rack is broken

and the council's aware of it and it's going to be repaired

next Thursday, there wouldn't be the same need

for members' casework.

I've chosen a very simple casework example there, I'm sorry.

But you get my point of the volume of casework

that you deal with is connected to some of the complexities

in our systems, and actually the first priority for me

should be about how we deal with the complexity

of the system rather than creating a very expensive,

large CRM solution to try and put over the top.

Thank you very much.

Councillor Frater.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for this paper.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to make the visit earlier this week, but it just sounds like

it was a very useful visit for those that did go.

Looking through the paper, it mentions the use of a voice form, which is directly integrated

into our council tax system, which has removed calls from the call centre, eliminated form

filling, data entry and manual staff processing. So it's great to see what

used to take you three weeks to process paper for form for refund can be reduced

now that everything happens because it's all integrated into that back office

system. So it's a good result for the customer. I'm just wondering are there

other opportunities either that you're looking at or that you potentially

identified for how that can be used further?

So it's a really good example of where the resident

gets a better outcome and the quality of the data

that goes in then becomes transferred through

and our ability to get it right first time

obviously also improves and is one of,

oh I want to say, Fenella.

Oh, oh sorry.

Of one of Fenella's services,

is our ability to get that right first time

is so important for our residents.

The challenge at the moment is almost keeping up

with all the new technologies and the new options

for us out there and how we prioritise

which ones we should be focused on.

So a priority focus for us at the moment,

as we've already been hearing,

is about in the housing space,

because we know that that's where,

And we've got a lot of systems that have been configured

around our internal processes,

as opposed to taking a system and seeing

what the potential of the system is.

So that will be within the next wave of work

that we are doing in the transformation programme.

There's a number of technologies that are out there

that we're looking at with regards to maximising revenue

from EV charges, tracking potholes,

quality

is an opportunity maybe for us to consider as a group of members where we

think actually we should prioritise some of that system integration to improve

customer service from our experience with with residents.

Councillor Cornyn. Thank you chair. Just a couple of questions on the future

vision and kind of current performance. I think an admirable vision that we've

get out here, how does that benchmark in terms of in comparison with other local authorities,

is there an example out there of local authorities that are really delivering best in class customer

service that we know about and what are they doing differently that other councils aren't

doing and to what extent are we kind of following the best practise in the sector.

And then secondly, I don't think it's detailed

on the KPIs elsewhere on this agenda,

but I know staff turnover at the customer service centre

has always been quite high, relatively speaking.

To what extent do you see that that being improved

over time, given that we're now rolling this out?

So I'm really pleased to be able to say

that the turnover in the customer services team

has dropped dramatically over the last 12 months.

A lot of that is to do with the career progression

and the career planning that we've been doing

to support staff.

We have not completely eliminated

the use of agency workers yet, but we are nearly there.

Whereas when I started in the role 16 months ago,

about 25 % of the staff for agency work.

So that's having a very positive impact.

Your other question was about benchmarks.

So I'm really pleased to be able to share that

in the work we're doing with Netcall

and moving to the cloud -based version,

Netcall are using you, Wandsworth, us,

as a local authority that is using it

in a more innovative way of pushing them to do more coding

and more development in ways that mean that it's going

to deliver better for residents.

So from a moving net call into the cloud basis

and how we maximise the impact for that for residents

through customer services, it's great to be part

of leading the pack in some of that.

There will be some choices for us though moving forwards

as to what we want best in class to look like.

So there are local authorities who are starting to move to a completely virtual customer services.

You can look at Amazon, you know, everything is done through an automated version.

Amazon isn't, as I say to people, though, but Amazon is not a public sector organisation.

And I did say at the beginning that certainly as an officer, my steer to you in the public

sector based on the complexity of need that we see

through our door is that you should always be thinking

about how we retain the right level of capacity,

either face -to -face or on the phone

for some of the residents.

As technology improves, if you go back to the chart

that you've got there that gives you the performance,

you'll start to see that whilst the number of contacts

has been growing over time, and that's partly because,

sorry, I should have explained,

we're bringing more contact into the contact centre

as opposed to being dispersed across the organisation.

What we're aiming for, though, is channel shift,

because the more we can move into web chats,

the more we can move into emails

that we can give automated responses to,

and other channels that we could choose to open up,

what that's doing is delivering that automated service

for residents that comes back to your customer services agents then being able to deal with

more complexity of need.

But there's a lot of local authority work out there as to whether or not you move to

a completely automated chatbot solution.

Thank you, Mrs. Alston.

I think on the net call point, I think there is a link to the net call website embedded

within the paper that has some very interesting case studies about the work that we're doing

a partnership with them and the particular work that they've been able to bespokely

create for us.

And I think a fair enough point on what does Best in Class look for us as a customer service

organisation and a public sector organisation because of the breadth of services that we

provide.

Councillor Graham.

Thank you.

Given this is the moment, as you told us, that we could raise some questions about KPIs,

I just I did notice that the council tax collection rate was slightly down on

where it was target for it should be as page 139 and I just wondered if officers

were expecting given the government's announcement that it wishes to place a

surcharge on larger family homes and charge people between 2 ,000 pounds and

£7 ,500 for the privilege of living in their own property, whether the potential ways in

which people could take legal steps to avoid that surcharge would have an impact on the

collection rate.

Thank you very much, Councillor Graham.

Mrs Murray, are you able to build that from what I understand a policy that's not going

to be implemented for quite some time?

Thank you.

Yes, so, Fionn -Hélène Mary, Executive Director of Finance.

Yes, so I think larger bills will necessarily put pressure on collection.

That's right, we've seen that before.

So, until, as you say, 2028, that policy is intended to come in.

We can monitor the position and do what we can to help,

but ultimately we'll be led by government's intention

and also the rules around how we need to collect that.

Just a very quick something because I appreciate that the implementation date is put some time

in the future, that the government has stated its intention to hold a public consultation

early in the new year.

So could I just ask the cabinet member for finance for her assurance that this council

will be responding to the public consultation to oppose this charge on Holmes and Wandsworth?

We will definitely be responding to the consultation.

I can't tell you yet what will be included, but you'll find out in due course.

Sorry, just for clarity, is the administration in favour or against a surcharge on large

family homes in Wandsworth?

I will give you an answer on that in due course.

Do you not know?

Councillor Graham, I'm going to come to Councillor Crichard.

Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to switch a bit to the other aspect of thing we could

include here, which is the complaints report. First of all, I was very pleased to hear from

Mrs. Alston that the complaints report also should provide a foundation for our customer

service work. And I think we know from previous committees, I always think it's very important

that we should welcome complaints that residents make,

because obviously we can learn from them and that's really important.

Although it sounds like an odd thing to think.

So I just wondered, there's a couple of things I wondered

if you could highlight a couple of very helpful learning points

that have come through.

Though I must admit, I read Case Study 2

and I thought it would be great if we could make sure

all our guys knew what they were doing with their bins as I lost a bin lid this week.

And somebody else I spoke to today has had trouble with the doors being opened.

But in general, I'd say it's very useful to have this.

So a couple of key highlights.

I would also like to suggest to the group

that this report would normally have gone to the executive.

there isn't any indication that it would go there, but I would suggest that one of

the recommendations from this committee is that this is seen by the cabinet as

an executive paper to show that we obviously take complaints and our

actions from them very seriously for residents.

Ms. Evans?

Sorry, Councillor Critchard, are you asking for highlights in terms of the learning in

there?

Is that your question?

Yes, a couple of things that you would really pick up.

Yeah, so I've got some colleagues on the call as well who are a bit more into the detail

on it, but I think certainly as Mr Chadwick has mentioned, some of the areas around housing

repairs I think come through quite strongly in there and our work and our commitment to

making that a better process and easier for residents,

better feedback, et cetera, et cetera.

So I think that is an example of us trying to close

that feedback loop through complaints.

And there are various other things in there around

waste mis -collections and working harder to implement

things like real -time waste collection monitoring

and better planning around the rounds and things like that.

So I think there is lots of examples for a report

of where actually we're really pleased

about how seriously our directorates are taking

the learning on this.

I think we've always prepared this report.

We don't have to do this report.

We've always prepared it because actually it does make

and provide a discipline for the directors

to reflect on their complaints

and the learning that it brings.

Sorry, your second point was about reporting.

It's one that's more for this committee is I think

You said to me that this report wouldn't necessarily now go to Cabinet or to the Executive meeting.

And my suggestion was that we should recommend that it does go for them to review

and obviously look at the learning and see how everything is going.

I think that's probably it. Mr Evans, do you want to comment on that point?

I think it's a matter for the committee as far as we can see, it perhaps hasn't gone

to formal cabinet, but it may well have been shared informally.

And I think it is a fair enough recommendation if members of the committee would like to

indicate that clearly complaints is an important area to improve service, services for residents.

So we encourage cabinet to receive the paper formally at a cabinet meeting.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a matter for this committee to make a recommendation if it wants to.

Just to reassure that executive directors and their teams have regular conversations with cabinet members around all of this and has fed into their conversations.

But yes, in terms of where it lands after here, it's a masterless committee to decide.

Councillor Belton, are you trying to come in on this vote?

Your suggestion I think, Chair, but the cabinet should also consider whether it should be included as a kind of compulsive part of the induction process.

One other thing I'd like to add to the committee,

Clark, really, all these,

there's lots of bar charts and so forth.

Most of us nowadays, and this line chart,

I can't tell the difference between whatever,

and it doesn't cost me too much extra

to print off in colour as opposed to black and white.

Can we, I mean, can we have a cost savings

about why, how much we save not having colour,

because as a member I find it frustrating that I can't take full part.

So I'm just being told off about this.

No I'm not, you can see, you probably get it on your online.

Thank you.

Or change the shading on bar charts.

Something to make it easier, please.

Councillor Belton, I understand your frustration.

It is available in colour online, but I appreciate it isn't in the printed version.

4 Treasury Investments and Borrowing (Paper No. 25-423)

And I understand from Miss Ritchie that there are some stats that perhaps might raise an

eyebrow amongst members.

Perhaps we can share them and members can decide.

But perhaps the easiest way is maybe some contrasting colours might be a way of approaching

it.

Councillor Graham, would you like to say something?

Colour coding.

Yeah, the council dropped the rather garish shading around the new logo that appears on

each page or put it on each page in black and white.

It is possible to send things to a printer and just use black toner for everything that's

black.

and then the only colour remaining would be the charts, and that would solve the problem

without adding much to the cost.

Thank you.

I'm glad we've had a discussion on colour coding.

I think we'll take that away and we can further discuss that outside the meeting, but it's

a fair enough point about making sure that we can understand the papers easily to support

discussions, so that's fair enough.

I'm going to bring the discussion together.

So there's been a couple of potential recommendations, one around new council members joining the council in May next year,

and us encouraging all members having the opportunity for some customer service training and some insight with a service visit,

3 Customer Service (Paper No. 25-422)

and as well a second recommendation around encouraging Cabinet to review the corporate complaints report formally at Cabinet.

Members are minded to agree with both of those recommendations?

Fair enough.

And we will then note the report and thank you very much for officers.

And we'll release officers on this paper and also on the corporate complaints report and the KPIs.

And we'll note those reports later into the agenda.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

So moving on then to Agenda Item 4 around treasury investments and borrowing.

4 Treasury Investments and Borrowing (Paper No. 25-423)

So as part of the committee scrutiny of the budget setting process which started with our review of the MTFS members have asked

To for a report on the council's approach to Treasury investments and planned future borrowing

So as is touched on in the report, I think all members of the council and offices

And maybe well well residents as well are aware of some of the high -profile

Investment and borrowing decisions that other local authorities have made which have led to some having to issue

and that's why the council is clear that sound financial management is at the heart of everything

we do and clearly our scrutiny here this evening of this aspect of the council's budget has

a really important role to play and we'll come back to it in February when we look at

the budget again more formally.

So Mrs. Merry is here to introduce the report.

Before I hand over to her, I do just want to say thank you for her taking the time in

this report to respond to the key lines of inquiry that members set out clearly at our

meeting last month.

I think the fact that they've been embedded into the report and answered, I hope, for

a discussion this evening.

So handing over to Mrs. Murray, thank you very much.

Thank you, Chair.

So I won't do a long introduction because I think you did a pretty good summary of that.

What we've tried to do here is tackle both investments and borrowing, but separately,

although they are intrinsically linked.

Increasingly, I think we've had conversations at committee and previous iterations of this

committee about the quantum of borrowing that the Council is potentially entering into and

has plans to focus on.

And we've often said the importance of borrowing and how it's underpinning our continuing

investment in our assets and our capital investment and the impact that that has.

The paper tries to show not just the quantum of borrowing, but what we get for that borrowing and that the value that is added

And the necessity actually of borrowing in some instances

So I'll probably leave the paper there as I said and you said in your intro actually

We've tried to keep this quite high level not go into the numbers and talk more about the the principles and the policies rather than

The specifics so I hope that helps

Thank you, Mr. Rari. So I was intending to, I think there are two clearly two sides

of this paper, one on the investments and one on the borrowing, so I'll take some

questions on investments, although I accept the point that they are

intrinsically linked, but I think there are two separate points here. So Councillor

corner on investments and then I'll move to borrowing.

Yeah, thank you, Chair. In paragraph three on page 13, it sets out, the paper sets

out four lessons learned on sector failures.

I have a question to the cabinet member on this because the four risks are overconfidence

and weak governance and we've seen at this council that we have a reduction in the number

of papers that come to committees and a decision to have post decision scrutiny rather than

pre decision scrutiny.

The second is poor risk identification and monitoring and over the course of this council

term we've seen a reduction in the number of KPIs being reported and a move to qualitative

rather than quantitative comments on those.

Insufficient financial resilience and over the course of this council terms we've seen

a significant amount of borrowing with long repayment terms and a failure to balance in

year budgets in year.

And finally, transparency failures.

And there have been, I've lost count of the number of rows

that have been over scrutiny

and the failure to be transparent.

I mean, just a recent example was over the closure

of Bradstow School and there are many more examples.

Could the cabinet member just comment the extent

to which that she feels that these risks

have increased for the council over the last few years and what she's going to do to

change course and mitigate them.

Councillor Leland, I would just say from my perspective first, clearly we have put this

on the agenda tonight to have the discussion.

So from my perspective as the chair of this committee, for me it is really important that

we have the transparency and that's why we as a committee have supported this discussion

and enabled this paper to be brought forward.

Councillor Belton?

I think occasionally, Chair, it might be better when there's a debate essentially, that the

debate happens before the cabinet, if I may say so, before the cabinet member comes in,

because I think there are two sides to these kind of things.

And I would like to say about Councillor Cornyn's comment, first of all, I think everyone, anyone

who knows me at all well, will know that I have my scepticism about the changing system.

And I think that the first comment he makes is a pretty valid one about the amount of

scrutiny in a way being reduced.

Question is, though, has it been reduced too far?

I think it's absolutely essential in terms of these big disasters that have happened

at some authorities, that we keep the scrutiny at a right level.

And you could argue that having six committees a year with endless reports meant there was

so much paperwork that in fact the scrutiny didn't happen, you were just flooded by it.

And that reducing it to this level, say three or four times a year, is sensible and

is something that members can handle and formulate policies about.

I would be very worried if it got less, let me put it that way.

I think it's at about a reasonable level now, actually.

So I would say that on the one hand.

The other, Council Cornyn also said other things.

Now we know what he's getting at and I could point out, I think it's in this paper isn't it,

how successful the investment in the industrial site in Garrett Lane has been

and they could put down that as a bonus for the last administration's policy.

The last administration also sold off for a pittance, great swathes of parlays in Shaftesbury and Queenstown,

like the Havelock Terrace area, where they sold it off for, which nowadays has got massive

great tower blocks on and would have made a lot of money.

We can all make those mistakes and you certainly did.

But on our case, what you haven't checked out, and which I try to realise it's difficult,

Mrs Mary has done some work on it, but I actually checked out today how many completions the

housing department expects this year.

If you take completions in the broadest sense, the increase in the housing stock this year is 232.

Now, just supposing, I know it's just a one year photographic picture,

but if you just had that 232 addition and said every one of those properties was worth 500 ,000 pounds,

I mean, it doesn't matter whether you want to up or down it,

Then the capital assets of this authority in the last year or this year has gone up by 116 million.

You can multiply how you like depending on the value you wanted to see.

But this other side of the investment, the growth in capital asset is always underrated by the minority party.

And I'm not sure that we've yet found a way of measuring it particularly well.

But nearly always in our investment, that is a capital appreciation side,

which doesn't come through in their arguments.

Thank you. Councillor Critchard?

Thank you.

Couple of thoughts from me.

First of all, I was quite interested to read about the pension and market services report,

which obviously concludes very positively about our investment approach.

I was quite interested to know a bit more about that report

and where it ended up, because it's mentioned here.

But I wasn't clear whether it's a public document or just sections.

So I'd like to hear a bit more about that.

And then the other thing that's been very interested in,

I'm interested in which Councillor Belton has touched upon is our commercial property

investment. Sounds a bit odd for a local council to be acquiring property, but actually is

there any, is there more room for manoeuvre? We particularly know about certain sites that

we've acquired that actually give us an income. And presumably the other thing that we also

can do if we own property is support the local area to make sure that area to

sort of use it like a regeneration asset as well probably got the right people

here to talk about placemaking and regeneration but can we also think about

investment in that way?

So, the independent report that's mentioned in paragraph 12 is something that we commission

at least every four years and we use it as a validation effectively of our treasury management

policy and strategy.

We've done that on a few iterations now.

They benchmark, they do lots of work in the sector and they benchmark against other authorities

and they cheque that our approach to treasury management is the right balance with security,

liquidity and yield.

It's quite a technical report as you'd expect, so it isn't one that we ever bring to committee

or to, into the public, but it's a report that we know is well respected and has got

some really good solid data in it and as quoted there it confirms that you know

we do really well we've got a very very proactive approach to Treasury

management we've got you know we've got the benefit of large cash balances

and we really do try to maximise that so it isn't public but it is you know a

good indication of our our performance. In terms of commercial property there's

a couple of things going on there actually when we purchased our

commercial property portfolio, it was in a time when number one we had capital

receipts so we didn't actually borrow to purchase those properties we reinvested

capital receipts that's the first thing and then number two at that point we

were allowed as councils to purchase properties for commercial purposes.

Government has since restricted the ability to do that so for instance we've

We've got properties in North London, we've got properties in Wales,

we've got properties that are commercially viable rather than local,

and you're not allowed to borrow for those kind of property purchases anymore,

whereas back in the day you were, although we didn't borrow, we used capital receipts.

So the question then becomes, if you don't have capital receipts available to borrow,

sorry, to fund such a purchase, commercial properties are then in competition with the rest of your capital investment

that you may need to borrow for. So as a council, the conversation is do we use our borrowing

power to purchase commercial properties that do exactly as you said, they can often be

used to support wider non -financial benefits like regeneration if you invest locally, or

do we use that borrowing power to invest in our existing assets.

Just worth pointing out just very quickly, I think Woking is mentioned specifically in this paper.

Is it? I think it is. Yes, it is. So Woking is mentioned in PowerAft2.

They specifically went through a big period of purchase of commercial properties in order to regenerate Woking town centre.

and that's actually what has led to them being in significant debt and significant financial trouble.

So it's quite a tricky area and I would say that the landscape has changed since we first invested back in about 2018.

Thank you, Mr. Murray. That was helpful.

Councillor Belton, did you want to come in on this point?

I just wanted to clarify, when I talked about the large asset that we had between the railway lines behind Gladstone Terrace,

it was in fact a very ancient 1920s council owned block which we knocked down and built an industrial estate on it.

I'm sure Mrs. Mary knows that.

So we didn't buy the property, we decided to change the use from housing to industrial.

Thank you.

Councillor Fraser?

Thank you, Chair.

Paragraph 27 of the report talks about the liability benchmark now being included in

the PIs.

I just wondered if you could tell us a bit about what does it show.

So what does the liability benchmark in the Prudential Indicator show about when the Council

will need to externally borrow into the Indicator?

Just before we move on, I think we're moving slightly into the borrowing and I guess this

underlies the overlap between the two.

Are there any more questions just on our investments specifically?

Okay, Councillor Aps' corner and Councillor Graham.

Yeah, Councillor Aps.

Thank you.

I wanted to add my thanks to Mrs. Mary for the fact that this has been looked at through our lines of inquiry.

I find that really helpful.

And so it's enabled us, well, for Mrs. Mary to draw out some key points,

which is like, for example, on page 16, Power 16, it talks about the fact that we've got many different types of reserves, actually,

but an investment volatility reserve, which means that we're sort of balancing out good years against bad years.

But I also wanted to cheque in about, you know, our investment strategy has obviously been

very successful, but how do we make sure we're not over reliant on it as well as a form of

income?

Thank you.

That is a good question.

So we've been tracking our treasury investment returns closely and they are, whilst we do

actively pursue and definitely impact on the returns we get. Ultimately they are

linked to external factors like bank rates so we're constantly

checking that we've got the latest estimates on bank rates and revising our

estimates down. The other impact on our returns is the level of cash balances

that we hold so again we are constantly tracking what we think our cash

balances will be linked to our day -to -day spend and our capital spend as well.

We are prudent in our forecast because for that exact point we don't want to over -rely

on the income and then end up with a shortfall.

So you'll often see when this committee sees any of our estimates in the Cabinet that

there is usually an overachievement of Treasury investment income for that reason.

Thank you. Councillor Graham. Thank you and I think this paper is helpful and sets

out the situation clearly which wouldn't have come out of just the

Treasury management papers that we normally get so we're grateful that to

have this information in this form and I think it's very helpful. My question

is, we will come on to what borrowing is for later, it's about the section

1114 notices councils have gone into trouble because as mrs. Mary stated

Borrowing has been consequential in some of those councils running into difficulty and

Typically the problem is a revenue one which they've compounded

Because they've got repayments that have a revenue consequence on their budgets to make I just in the context of some of the

later comments about assets and the yeah boring

in order to produce assets and the security that assets provide.

Isn't that the problem? Those three councils are not without substantial assets,

but they're not contrary to what it says in paragraph 44,

very free to divest them, that those assets are actually quite illiquid

and are very difficult to, you know, utilise in a crisis.

And so therefore, the borrowing can actually cause significant trouble

even if it's not necessarily for some of the commercial schemes that some councils are very inadvisably pursued.

Yes, thank you, so

some of the assets are very liquid and some of the assets aren't I suppose is the kind of summary. We've always had

the ability to

divest or to sell some assets more than others and that will continue.

We can't sell a property if there's a social tenant in there with a tenancy that means they can stay.

So managing our assets in a way that promotes liquidity in order to divest when you need to,

to reduce your borrowing is something that we do look at and we have looked at.

We've had different policies as a council on that over the years and we've got a different policy now than we had previously.

In terms of the link to other councils that got into trouble, some of the big issues that they've had is they've bought things that are not core business.

And all of our borrowing is about core business.

It's either core business in terms of our general fund assets or it's core business in terms of our legal role as a social landlord

and or our ambition around developing more stock.

So I think the simplicity, and this is where I think

our approach does stand as in good stead,

our simplicity around what we are wanting to achieve

and how we're willing to achieve it,

which does rely on borrowing, helps us.

Croydon got into significant trouble

because their HRA could not support

the level of ambition they had.

They entered into a company arrangement and that got them into trouble.

We don't have those complex arrangements here and that isn't something that's in this paper.

Councillor Grant.

Yeah, just a quick time packet.

I agree with what you said and I agree that the sort of borrowing set out here is certainly not comparable to what Croydon is doing.

However, there has been a certain attitude, it doesn't matter because we're borrowing money, yes,

but we'll have an asset to show for it and so therefore we'll be all right.

And actually, that attitude is not correct if you can't do anything with the asset.

If you've borrowed to repair roads, you can't sell the road if you get into financial difficulty.

If you've borrowed to build housing that you've put secure tenancies on, you can't do anything

about that housing if you then have a financial problem because of that debt.

And so, although the risk may be lower than some of these speculative commercial schemes,

it still is a risk, is my point.

and the asset in and of itself is not a guarantee against financial problems.

Yeah, because I think there's something that hasn't been touched on.

There's the assets, but I think paragraph 44 also talks about the income streams as

against the potential revenue cost of borrowing.

I don't know if you were going to touch on that, but that's another aspect which you

didn't touch on in your answer.

Yes, I know.

Thank you very much.

Mrs. Murray, quickly, and then I'll come to Councillor Corner and then we'll wrap up the

first discussion.

Yeah.

So we are going into the borrowing discussion,

aren't we, a little bit here.

But you're absolutely right.

The income stream that we get from building a new property

that we've borrowed to fund is an imperpetuity sort

of income.

And that's why I'm comfortable that we're borrowing

and we have got the means, so long as the equations work,

we've got the means to repay that.

Things like highways and pavements

and the investment infrastructure,

we've got an obligation to keep those in good order.

and borrowing is a reasonable and appropriate way of funding that.

We do look to fund that in different ways and we've got a significant capital programme.

More than half of that currently is funded from non -council funds.

So it's funded from contributions from developers through either CIL or Section 106 agreements.

So those kinds of mitigations that reduce the impact of having to maintain our highways and

and reduce the impact and the level of borrowing that we need.

They're the kind of ways that we can mitigate the cost of that. We can't get away from that.

And obviously we do have revenue income on the back of highways

and we have parking charges where we have got to reinvest all of our parking income in,

transport and infrastructure, and so there are revenue sources that are available

to fund the capital borrowing that is used to invest in those assets.

Thank you. I think Councillor Belton wants to come in on this.

I should actually control myself, but it is ironic. It is ironic to have someone talking

who's just sold 17 ,000 council properties to talk about the liquidity of it. Please

don't come back at me, Councillor Graham. Just make a silly argument between you and

We both know we can do it better in the pub.

This is just ridiculous by the chat.

I think we can state as a fact that the council has previously sold off council homes.

I think we'll leave it there and I'll come to council.

As long as we accept that labour councils are sold off far more because it's the law.

Thank you, Chair.

Just a question to Mrs. Mary about paragraph 17 and the graph underneath it.

Paragraph 17 sets out that we've got return of 4 .4 % on the original investments from these

properties that we've spoken about. The graph underneath shows that the average rate of return

is and commercial property returns are reducing. That to me seems peculiar based on I know they're

in lots of different locations not just in London but you know generally speaking rents have gone

up apparently so could you just set out the reasons for that short -term trend

over the last year in property returns?

I'm not sure if the colour coding is at play here. I'm not sure. Have we got the right line? Can you see it better on the line?

I actually I think the colour coding is perhaps leading you astray there but the

general I mean the general the general comment on the commercial properties is

that we always purchase them for long -term investment and they have as the graph shows

done as well. The bank rate going up obviously has had an impact on what we could get elsewhere

but we've held the property portfolio and the returns have, you can tell they've gone

down by half a percent over the past five years, some of that is Covid related but they've

held firm for the past year or so and you can see as bank rates come down that those

commercial properties are once again starting to be a better return.

Councillor Belton mentioned one site in particular, the Sargent Industrial Estate,

which we've had a fantastic return on over the past few years, which is

fantastic, but we also hold that for other reasons. We hold that

because it might then give us an opportunity to do something else

elsewhere in the borough and it's a strategically held site. So holding these

for the long term is the right thing to do and holding Sargent's in

particular is the right thing to do and I do think that they will recover in in a way that means that they will

Continue to be some of our higher

higher

return

investments

Thank You. Mr. Murray. Okay, so I'm going to

Pull together discussion on investments and then take some questions on borrowing councillor Fraser. I put in your question, so I'll come to you first

If you want to repeat I think it was a question around

the PI

indicator around the liability benchmark.

Thank you.

Okay, so we, this is a new indicator that was, that's been mandated by, by CIPFA, and

it's a very complicated graph that the committee has seen before.

We haven't reproduced it here, but it effectively, it shows where the, it shows a line that crosses

Roxas deal permission from frontline.

The Kick families need services

Sorry, this is going to be the only stupid question, it's the one you didn't ask.

Assets like infrastructure, does that also include our IT?

So yes, so we can borrow for all the IT changes that we need, and obviously that's where we

think there's going to be a lot of benefit.

We could also borrow if we needed to, to realise there's been...

In terms of assets, the depreciation rate on that will be quite high, right?

So we wouldn't have much of an asset to show for it at the end of it.

We have to match the depreciation with the useful life of the assets.

It will depend on what it is we're investing in.

Yeah.

Councillor Cornup?

Thank you.

On, I noticed Mr. Halleck is in the room as well.

We've got a table, sorry, on paragraph three of page 24

and details of the overspends by the service areas.

And obviously children's social care

has a really, really good storey to tell there, I think.

And we've been discussing this, Councillor Stock,

over the last few years,

and I think that has genuinely been great progress.

But the big question is, of course,

what read -across is there between what's happened

in Children's and how that can be deployed

in other service areas?

Because it seems like there are some incredibly

significant challenges in those other areas which just we aren't seeing it's

good it's good progress on that I'm afraid. Thank you Councillor Conlon. It seems that the

committee wants to race through the agenda. I think I might put a pin in that

question until the next paper because it's fair it's a fair enough point that

there are areas of the council where we're seeing overspends and there are

risks that we're having to use our reserves as a result of that so I can

see that that there is synergy between the two papers but I think if you don't

I will await that question until the the next next paper. So anything else on on this paper

counsellor apps I

Think councillor Richards Jones you were first

Thank You chair, he's probably a question for Miss Mary, but it's to do with

Some additional figures that that could help this discussion. So

paragraphs 34 and 35

discussed the HRA borrowing, and they quote a figure of the principal sum being borrowed,

that's 670 million, over a 50 -year period.

So what's the current estimated lifetime cost of that borrowing?

And then paragraph 41 talks about anticipated borrowing on the General Fund for Capital

Investments.

what is the current assumed level of borrowing, both the principal and the lifetime cost?

Ms. Brown?

Yes, thank you. So I haven't included those lifetime cost figures in the paper,

and that's intentional actually because I was talking to Councillor Graham earlier

and saying I don't think it accurately reflects the position in that it doesn't show the other side of the coin,

which is the investment income or the value you get from the borrowing.

So, haven't included it.

I think the rate that we've assumed is 4 .5%.

So, there's a bit of a calculation, I suppose it could be done on that.

In terms of the borrowing for in the general fund,

the current capital programme has over the next five years,

134 million that's assumed to be funded from borrowing.

That's about 30 % of the capital programme.

The majority of the capital programme, more than half of that, as I said earlier, is actually

funded from CIL and Section 106 contributions.

And just to confirm on that, looking at paragraph 41, the last sentence refers to internal rather

than external borrowing.

Can you just clarify in relation to that whether the assumed borrowing is internal or external?

Yes, so that links back to Councillor Fraser's question.

until 27 -28 we would expect all borrowing to be internal borrowing. So we are effectively

only for forgoing interest on our cash balances, we're not actually paying cash out to external

bodies. Thank you. Councillor? Yes, yes. Thanks very much for that and I take the point

actually that if you're going to produce lifetime cost estimates you need the other side of

which is the lifetime revenue from the revenue of the assets.

Presumably the directorate has done that and it will have a series of models.

Have you given some thought to the appropriate way that this committee might have sight of those models

or at least an insight into how the department is weighing up these risks

and what assumptions and what error bars lie behind these models, because so far that's

not been shown to the committee, but it might really help our understanding of these issues.

Thank you, that's a good question. So in paragraph 34, which is the one I think you referenced

with the quantum of the new build investment in housing, there's a reference there at the

end to the net financial benefit to the council. So instead of effectively what you've asked

for there is a multiplication up of all the borrowing that we expect to do and the lifetime

cost of that. What we also do and I think is probably a more useful calculation is we

look at it on a unit cost basis. So we'll look at the cost of building one unit and

we'll look at so say the average cost of building a new housing unit is four

hundred and fifty thousand say we'll get grant of about two hundred at the moment

maybe two hundred fifty thousand from the GLA so net cost of say these are all

figures off the top of my head but two hundred thousand and then we'll look at

the lifetime value of the income that will be generated on that property we'll

also then look at the avoided cost of temporary accommodation because we built

a new housing property and we'll have that property in perpetuity and overall

that calculation is of net financial benefit to the council. So as long as that calculation

works, I think the principle of borrowing to invest and for financial benefit works.

What we need to make sure is we don't overload, and there's reference in that to this paper.

We don't overload either the HRA or the general fund or the council overall, and that's about

the quantum. The HRA currently has all of its borrowing plans in there and the HRA is

financially viable on the current assumption. So that's one of my main cheques is can the

HRA cover the borrowing costs of the assumed investment and the answer at the moment with

all the assumptions that we make is yes. General fund similar, we've got all of the cost of

borrowing of the planned borrowing to date is in our MTFS.

The MTFS has got pressures, as we know, we've talked about that before, and we're going

to have to address those pressures, and those pressures have got more since fair funding.

So as part of that conversation about how we address the overall position, we'll absolutely

have to look at the cost of borrowing and, you know, what our plans are in the future.

Just one more, if I may.

I don't think you answered my question.

which is unusual, but so, because I spotted the sentence at the end of paragraph 34 that

you quoted, and indeed, you know, everyone was nodding around the table when you said

that, of course, you've run that calculation, of course you have, you know, every confidence

you have.

My question was, how will that, or how can that calculation be shared with the committee?

Because as matters stand, paragraph 34 and the final sentence is a conclusion, and it's

an assertion.

Scrutiny is about looking at the working,

looking at the assumptions, and challenging those.

At the moment, we don't have the material to do that.

And I do appreciate it's not as straightforward.

You could deluge us with spreadsheets,

and that might not be helpful either.

So I do understand that it's not a straightforward ask.

But to be clear, my challenge wasn't,

have officers done this?

I absolutely believe that officers have done it.

And we all know you've done it.

The question is, how can we be brought in

So we can scrutinise the assumptions.

Mrs. Murray, is that…

Yeah, that's a fair challenge.

So let me take that away and think about that.

We do have a lot of detail that goes into…

This is specifically about the Housing Revenue Account section of borrowing.

A lot of detail does go into the HRA business plan and the budget setting paper.

So if we take that away and have a look at how that can reflect the question,

That would go in in the first instance that would go to housing committee, but we can definitely pick that up as part of the next

scrutiny of

Treasury and borrowing

Which this committee I think is due to get in February so can you if you leave that with me?

I'll see what we can do on that

That's something that perhaps might come out in terms of the formal budget papers

We're going to see in the new year anything else on this otherwise. I've come to councillor apps. I think she's been waiting

cancer apps

The other thing that struck me during this discussion is you've talked about it keeping

on top of this quantum and the balance regularly.

Could you give us some sort of idea about what regular means?

I mean, is it once a week?

Is it once a month?

And then presumably at the point where we realise that this is not of net financial

benefit, then there's another decision to make as to what then happens. But while it

is of net financial benefit, we presumably, this policy is continuing, it's when that

changes that we would have to review, or make a separate decision about how we're dealing

with it.

That's a good question. So, I mean, the cyclical nature of how we set budgets and review budgets

and bring budgets for decision sets that timetable.

So we set budgets every year, we report out -turn every year,

we report quarterly to cabinet in year position.

We set our HRI business plan, we set our budgets.

So they come twice a year.

So in terms of member scrutiny,

I think the regular pattern is every quarter

or every six months or every year,

depending on which part of that scrutiny there is.

I'm not looking at it weekly.

But we are looking at it regularly to feed that,

but also on trigger points.

So if, for instance, something new came up, at that point,

we would have to make sure.

So the HRA business plan is a really good example of that.

If something comes up and we put something into the business

plan, we have to step back and see whether that

has an impact overall.

And if we did, and it did have an impact,

then at that point we would have to come back, as you say, and review some of our potential assumptions

and then bring the impact of that in front of members.

The point is at the moment we're okay, is what I'm saying.

We've got lots of potential additional spend on our existing stock that's coming through.

That's the definite direction of travel is that we'll have to invest in our existing stock

And at that point, we'll need to make sure that we are running these figures through again and not, as I said earlier, overloading the HRA.

Okay, so just so effectively, it's coming through about every six months, it's been at the moment.

And if something sudden, difficult would happen, something awful happened that affected it, again, that would be picked up immediately.

Councillor Apps.

Thank you very much.

I suppose I'm very much mindful of the risks of having an ageing council stock of buildings

that actually some of the challenges actually making sure that we make sure that we are

not going to face problems with deterioration of that stock before we're able to make the

repairs and making sure that we are actually fully, that we're investing enough, but within

what we can manage in terms of borrowing.

So that's a really hard challenge for all of us.

On – but on that, I know that we've decided to go for 50 years of borrowing.

That's the length of term that we're borrowing against.

How was that decided?

Did we look at shorter borrowing terms and see what impact that would have?

Just to kind of get some idea of what the thinking was from the finance team on that.

Thank you.

That's a good question.

So, we've used an average of 50 years, recognising that, number one, that's the longest term

you can get a PWLB loan for.

It doesn't mean that's what we would go for necessarily, but it's a good benchmark.

and I suppose it's a weighted average between the length of time that you would have the

new asset that you build, that you've borrowed to fund. We'll have properties beyond 50 years,

but then also for investing in our existing stock, the useful life of that investment

would be lower than 50. So it's a benchmark that we apply. The majority of our borrowing

in the HRA is specifically for the new build and we would expect those assets

to last beyond 50 so I think there's a prudence in there definitely.

Thank you. Councillor Graham. Thank you. So in answer to Councillor Richard -Jones

you you noted that the equivalent 10 -year figures for borrowing on the

General Fund were 134 million and today's we can add the 200 million in

and paragraph 33 on existing stock and 670 million new borrowing,

paragraph 34.

So that's already over a billion pounds of borrowing to which then

in terms of the administration's policy,

we then need to add the 129 million in paragraph 38 for what's already there.

So that's, am I right in thinking that this administration's policy

is to incur borrowing of over 1 .1 billion pounds?

Yes, so investment of 1 .1 billion funded by borrowing, yes.

But investment funded by borrowing, so as I said earlier,

there is an alternative side to that borrowing.

And to Councillor Richards -Jones's point about the lifetime cost,

it's one side of the coin, but a coin has the same diameter,

no matter which side you're looking at.

On the previous basis on which we looked at these,

borrowing of over 1 .1 billion would involve total costs of that debt of

well north of 2 billion pounds more like two and a half billion pounds is that

correct? I don't have the figures on me but yeah I mean so this is the point I

think that that needs to kind of come out quite clearly if we add up the cost

of borrowing on top of the borrowing that we've incurred it will always be a

significant and scary figure, it will always be. If you calculated how much you repay on

your student loan, you wouldn't go to university. You know, the number is a scary, scary number.

But you invest in that borrowing because you think there will be a financial and non -financial

benefit of you making that investment, and that's what we're doing.

I mean, it's quite ironic given that we're usually lectured by the other side, but we

shouldn't look at council finances as though they related to household or personal finances

and should look at them on some different basis.

I'm sure I've had Councillor Dickard then say that in the past.

But I do accept Mrs. Mary's point.

However, so let's just deal with the principle.

Let's ignore the cost of a debt interest for a moment.

That's borrowing of over 1 .1 billion when we are, by the end of this month, going to

plunged into a financial crisis due to the three -year settlement which will

drastically reduce our funding. Can I ask the cabinet member for finance, given

that we are going into a financial crisis to which she has as of yet no

answer, how it possibly is wise to borrow so much money upfront?

Councillor Linn, just on that question perhaps Councillor Graham touched on fair funding

Perhaps you could give an update in terms of where we are just briefly and then answer the the question on

On borrowing and I don't know if counsellor Dickerton wants to come in on the policies that sit behind the borrowing wall. Mr. Chadwick

On fair funding yeah

It's not ideal obviously

We do have a transformation programme and we do have reserves which buys us time and we are working on efficiencies

This is manageable it it's it's affordable. I've said this several times

We review this regularly and if at any stage this does not look like it's affordable. We will adjust the plans

Council to come in on kind of the policies that will deliver and what this investment is going to deliver for residents in the back

Yes, I think I think it's firstly really important to separate the HRA spend and the general fund spent

fund because of the distinct separate pools of money that's coming in through both of

those.

And as we said, the HRA borrowing is viable.

But I do think so that the moral line in question here, particularly in response to the general

fund, does relate to the HRA because of the temporary accommodation costs.

So I think we can both agree that the cost of temporary accommodation is a kind of new

an appalling phenomenon that is a real drag on the general fund.

And therefore, using the financial muscle of the HRA,

which I think there is, again, a principle around a public asset

council housing, developing new council housing

for the future generations who can benefit from it,

if that also comes with the benefit of trying

to reduce the cost of temporary accommodation to the general fund,

is a sound and smart financial decision.

Now, it's a sound of smart financial decision because the Conservative Party were going

to build some new council homes in their own programme.

We just disagreed with the level of council housing because you were going to do a cross -subsidy

model on the existing land we had.

And because land is so rare and finite and for future generations we didn't want to have

to spend money on buying expensive land with much more to spend on bricks and mortar, we

took the decision to front -note on building the council housing on our public land.

So I think those are the key kind of political, moral, philosophical differences around that

decision -making because one was maybe a bit more short -term and ours is honestly and frankly

a long -term project.

The bit that hasn't been covered and I think that Councillor Apps's point was really important

to is we have a very ambitious development programme, but we are acutely aware of the age

of our stock.

And so I think the future strategic questions around balancing capital programme investment

in an ageing stock alongside the new bills, and I think that's the fault line that scrutiny

is going to be really helpful for and that I'm taking as the most kind of serious political

question facing us over the next couple of years, not worrying too much about the financial

risk in what is essentially a mortgage to deliver an asset that generates

rental income for the council and performs all the social goods we know

council housing does.

Thank you. Councillor Graham.

Well, I'm Councillor Dickard, I might be surprised to know that I agreed with more than I disagreed

with in his answer. And I do agree with his general points on temporary

accommodation. However, what is not right to say is that

that's a purely financial decision or that the council's administration's decision to flip the Thousand Homes Programme is a purely financial decision.

In fact, given the bill costs on that Thousand Homes Programme, to keep it as it was and

instead put the money that is going to have to be borrowed into buying up existing properties would be cheaper.

You'd get the same number of social rent units and in fact you'd get more social rent units for the same amount of money.

And actually, to deal with the temporary accommodation

phenomenon, if you're just going on a financial basis,

it would be more of what you are in fact doing in Tooting, which

is buying up or paying to use a hotel rather than creating

social rent units in order to bring that temporary

accommodation bill down.

It's not very popular in Tooting, I have to say.

But the general principle of that,

that you actually use money to extend

the number of temporary accommodation properties,

That would save more money than going for the extra social rent units.

So the fact is that the administration has taken a political choice to go for social rent units than a new build

over what is financially most advantageous and would reduce the level of borrowing.

Councillor Dick de Manargam to Councillor Boulton, I think he wants to go.

So I think the mistake made there is to remove the grant funding that we get from the GLA on the new builds,

which I think changes the sums.

But there's a strong value point there.

So we have started to purchase and do what we call

right to buy back at much higher figures

than the previous administration did

because there is a cost involved in it,

but we can also leverage in some GLA grants.

So we have expanded the right to buy back programme.

There is the question I raised about the age of stock.

So a new gold property with all the EPC ratings and the you know, I just have to say they are stunning

Amazing buildings that we're building they have a much longer lifespan. So there's a there's a balancing act to be made

But over the last couple of years the market in London is falling or stalled for the first time in very very many years

And there are counter cyclical moves that you will have seen that we've made

particularly around kind of section 106 style decision -making and I think it's absolutely

reasonable that we start thinking again about whether we can ramp up the purchasing power

of those buybacks.

Now there's always going to be a tradeoff between the amount of grant we can leverage

in, the use of a site, the value of a new build as opposed to buying an older property

and all the different calculations that are made.

But I think we made the right decision to certainly invest in a kind of new generation

of stock that will have a much less long -term capital

work spend on it.

But I think the bit of your question

that I'm going to accept is that we are,

in particularly the last year or so,

entering a period in which it is a smarter time to really ramp

up some of those buybacks, particularly given cost

inflation and particularly given the questions of the cost

of density on the larger towers.

So it's a balancing act.

And your scrutiny is always welcome to help

us make the right choice.

And I like the idea that now you would

like us to buy back more council houses as well rather than opposing council

housing so we can agree on that.

I'm very pleased to hear about the expansion of the council house buying back programme.

Councillor Graham.

I was just going to say that was a policy under the previous administration and it was always a

frustration to me that we had actually had a fund I think it was about 20

million we'd accumulated in order to purchase properties in that way that we

we hadn't managed to use at that time,

and which his administration has benefited from receiving.

Of course, we generated that fund through the home purchase

grants, which I'm pleased have continued.

I was concerned that they would not be.

There was obviously something that was quite frequently

opposed by the administration at the time.

There was a certain level of scepticism, shall we say,

at the very least.

And I think that what he's potentially losing sight of with the exclusivity of his focus on social rent

is actually the aspiration of other people living here who won't qualify for social rent homes

to be able to have a chance of owning a home and living in the borough in the long term

rather than renting and then having to move out.

Thank you, Councillor Graham.

I am keen to move backwards and forth between the two of you,

But Council Dickerman, then I will come to you, Councillor Bum.

Yeah, that is the political line.

The political line is we have focused on that social and council rent.

On the squeeze middle, the private renters, our licencing scheme is there to support that.

And we are, as a corporate body, campaigning for rent control.

We think rent control is the quickest and fastest way to make the lives of people who live in ones with affordable.

I know you won't be a fan of that, but I think rent control is an absolute, very important policy to push.

No, I won't. I'm going to move on to Councillor Belton.

It's the quickest way to increase people's rights.

Councillor Belton, let's move on.

I know I've been sitting in this chair, or similar chairs, for quite a long time.

And I've seen most policies go round and be advocated by people on, I would describe as on the extreme right.

Well, okay, perhaps not extreme right, on the fairly right, and on the fairly...

But I never expected to hear this strong advocacy for municipalisation, which I seem to remember

40 years, 46 years ago, was much opposed. It's funny the way the world goes around, isn't it?

Just a comment. Thank you, Councillor Bousley.

Councillor Critchard. Yeah, thank you.

The one thing that I find quite tricky from the other side is the cost of our borrowing

is a scary number of 1 .1 billion, but we're a local authority who I think looking at the

accounts have an annual turnover of around a billion anyway.

And one of the things I think that we can do a disservice to our residents with is putting

very scary numbers in front, big numbers in front of them, without giving them the context

of what the council actually pays for, what its turnover is, what it funds. And if I find,

quite often I just ask people, well, what do you think, firstly, what do you think your

council tax funds, what percentage do you, of our budget do you think it is, always way

off beam. What sort of numbers do you think the council has as a turnover?

Maybe a hundred million. Also absolutely way off beam. So one of the things I

think we need to remember is the context of the borrowing. We also need to see

through the prism of the size of our authority and what our authority does.

And that is important for residents to understand. It's easy to be to say this

is a large sum of money but we deal in large sums of money. You look at our

accounts, I'm looking at the long -term asset that's in hundreds of thousands of

pounds, it's already, that's three thousand two hundred and thirty seven

million, something like that. 3 .2 billion is our assets, that's a big number and

that's the sort of numbers we need to be thinking of and being clear about to our

residents that that's the sort of size we deal with. Thank you Councillor

Critchley. I'll come to you Councillor Graham. I guess your point is looping back to the

start of the conversation as I think probably we're drawing this conversation

to close around why there aren't necessarily those numbers in the paper

because actually it's part of a broader context really and it's helpful when

we're looking at this paper in terms of that budget setting process to assure

ourselves on the processes and the decision -making here rather than just having tables of numbers

in a way which actually don't necessarily help because there's a broader context.

But Councillor Graham?

Yes, well, I was just going to make a point.

At the moment, the 129 million that has been borrowed is internal borrowing.

But all of this internal, potential internal borrowing could become external if it's financial

circumstances of the council change.

And I think if you went to any resident or nearly any resident and asked them, do you

think it makes sense for Wonser Council to go from no external debt to potential external

debt of 1 .1 billion pounds, they would not think that a wise idea.

I don't think anyone on the whole would think that was a sensible position to get to from

a position where we've managed to avoid having debt in any significant way to suddenly having

that liability hanging over us at a time of extreme financial uncertainty being created

by the funding pressures and reform on funding from this government.

And perhaps if there's room for disagreement with this, what the administration could do

is ask residents.

Now, many councils consult on their budgets, so beyond the business community, which is

the legal requirement.

So if they're so confident, perhaps they could include a formal budget consultation

in which they ask residents as a question whether they think it is sensible to go from external debt of nothing to external debt of potentially 1 .1 billion pounds.

Thank you. Councillor Critchot.

Do I get a right of reply as my…

Councillor Critchot, yes, come on.

Okay, thank you. I just would say is we need to be firstly you need to be careful

You need to think about the question you ask

right

That's always the difficulty and I do find that we're not as clear as we could be with our residents

And the second thing to remember is that we budget on external loans of payback

currently

That's our policy, is that we want to pay down the debt.

There are other ways of funding debt, as you know, and that's covered in paragraph 36.

Should we be in that position?

And I'd also comment is, obviously, we do not yet know what fairer funding is going

to give us.

We're obviously somewhat anxious about it, but equally, as a policy, it's something

that where I came into this business because I believe that money should be shared, particularly

going to people who need it most and areas that need it most. That's one of the things

I came into politics for. So I just say, yeah, we just need to be careful not to scare our

residents and also not to assume the absolute worst. We're going to get an option. We know

we going to discuss it amongst committee about what fairer funding means to us

and at that point we'll be able to think about what our next actions will be.

Thank you Councillor Critter and just the point on consultation I think

it is a point that we've touched on a little bit at work programme in the context

that perhaps in terms of capital programme and I think there is an ambition shared

amongst members to understand how perhaps we could think about greater

resident engagement in terms of our budget and what that might look like in

the future so I think there is an opportunity for us as scrutiny members

to engage in that discussion and what hearing resident voices in how we spend

our money looks like. It's not something the council has really done before you

know for a long period of time so it would be a brave new world so I think

there is an opportunity for us to feed in on that and in terms of how we would

pose the question in any event I think Councillor Critchard is right that

again in framing the question Councillor Graham only frames one half of it

because I think you would have to share with residents again you know what

what that investment is delivering, whether it's repairs,

sexual housing, regeneration of our estates,

and what we've heard during the discussion tonight

is in fact the borrowing costs are outweigh,

sorry, the costs of rents and the cost

of the temporary accommodation outweighs the borrowing cost.

That's the full picture that's been quite clearly outlined

in the paper that we obliged to share

with residents equally.

Councillor Apps.

Yes, on that point, you know, I think we'd need to pose the question as well in terms

of a consultation, which is are you willing to underinvest in our housing stock to such

a point that it would mean that people were living in indecent accommodation and potentially

unsafe accommodation, and also potentially factor in the financial risks of that, too,

Because there will be financial and reputational risks that would come along with your policy of not actually investing in those buildings.

But I did note in paragraph 22 that it did state that the council has long held an intention to borrow to fund investment in the borough.

So I wanted to get an idea from Mrs. Mary about how long that's been in the pipeline, how those ideas have developed.

So certainly in the general fund we've talked about borrowing for I would say at least five

years.

We used to have capital receipts at a level that we were able to avoid borrowing because

we would use capital receipts but that's not the position we're in at the moment.

In terms of housing, the Thousand Homes Programme, when that was first decided, relied on borrowing,

but as has been mentioned earlier, the mix of units was such that it was a cross subsidy model,

so the level of borrowing was significantly less and a policy decision to change that.

So I would say that is more than five years, actually, for the HRA, but yeah, that's my memory of it.

Thank you. I am keen to move on. Councillor Graham?

It was a very quick point. Firstly, whatever questions are asked in the public consultation,

one that began, are you willing to underinvest? I don't think it would count as a neutral question.

I think it might rather prompt certain answers, push polling as the opinion form of the economy.

I was going to say, Gordon, I am avoiding bias.

No, but there is actually a broader point there, which is it is possible to invest and

invest in many of these things that need to be done without borrowing so much money if

a different approach is taken to capital receipts.

And the administration is choosing to take an approach to capital receipts that requires

all of this borrowing.

There are alternatives available if one is willing to see some private sector involvement,

and some private sector, dare I say, profit,

in order to subsidise things that are for the public good.

Thank you.

Oh, Councillor Dickerton would like to come in,

but I think I might wrap up the discussion.

Councillor Graham, you've made your point.

I was trying to possibly bring it back to an area

where I felt there was agreement.

So I think we're noting the paper,

but I did sense there was some agreement

amongst committee members.

It isn't something that's touched on in the report

around buybacks and kind of recognising policy there

and the opportunity to grow that.

Particularly mindful of what we're going to discuss

in the next paper.

So maybe there is a recommendation there

that we're also endorsing that approach

in terms of the council spend.

Okay, so we're noting that paper for information

and then moving on to a paper on managing demand pressures.

5 Managing Demand Pressures (Paper No. 25-424)

So as with the previous agenda item,

We're again thinking about our role in terms of the budget setting process and members

have asked for this paper on managing demand pressures in our statutory services, specifically

temporary accommodation, adults and children's social care, where we've seen growing pressures

and some overspends.

So the report outlines the pressures in these areas and the actions that are being taken

in response to mitigate those pressures and welcome involvement of members tonight and

considering our broader council -wide strategy as well to deliver efficient and

effective services across the council in response to those current demand and

budget pressures.

So we have officers who've patiently waited all evening and

I'm very grateful for that from each of the directorates here.

So I'll invite them to the table.

So they'll provide a short introduction on the pressures in each of the directorates

and the actions that are being taken to mitigate.

And then we'll come back to Mrs.

for questions. So I don't know who would like to start. I'll allow each of you to introduce

yourself as you start.

Good evening, councillors. I'm Paul Chadwick, again. I'm the executive director of Residence

Services, I'm here predominantly to talk about, well,

actually solely to talk about the homelessness

issues and the phenomenon, I think it was called earlier,

of the rising costs of temporary accommodation

that are related, of course.

I'm here personally as exec director really just to stress,

I'm not going to dive into the weeds.

I'm going to try and stay in the balcony on this.

Pretty strategic.

but I'm here personally really just to stress how important we are treating this.

It's probably in my two months as exec director,

equal first amongst my priorities for the former housing division director,

alongside all the efforts we're putting towards the handling of all the concerns raised by the social housing regulator.

And I'm going to just stress for a moment that I'm here for this item alongside Michael Hallick actually.

He's also here to cover off the children's services issues as well.

But to Councillor Corners point earlier, we have deliberately and

thankfully seconded Michael over from children's service for a big chunk of his week for the next six months and maybe more.

Keeps saying that, don't I?

to help out on exactly these kinds of issues.

And we're using his skills for the new directorate,

especially in terms of, I think it's fair to say,

anything transformation related, anything, you know,

his wise words around anything budget related,

and anything, and the old links here,

doesn't it, anything data driven as well, we're using.

Michael's expertise to support us in this territory.

So, probably, the other thing I would say is that you've got a report before you, of

course.

You've all read it.

You've all seen the scale of the problem.

You all knew some of it already.

Significant overspend driven by significant additional numbers at kind of somewhere around

4 ,600 households relative to original predictions of around more like 4 ,000.

It drives that five and a half million pound overspend.

And you've also got in the paper a list of mitigating actions

that of course are predominantly short -term actions.

They don't really list the wider points

that Councillor Dickerton was making earlier

around investment in new stock and regeneration to provide

those new homes for those that are homeless.

It deals more with what's right in front of us in terms of process and the like.

I will stress that that list is work in progress.

This report was actually written and finalised before myself and Michael, working with the

cabinet member, instigated a new set of workshops actually using a specialist consultant called

Basis.

And we're edging towards the end of a set of workshops with that company alongside our

homelessness TA teams, alongside ourselves, that's generating some more ideas, actually,

and they will form the part of an emerging action plan over the next few months.

Of course, this is not something we can tackle overnight.

We have a rough measure to consider, all of which we will address the overspend to an

extent in the next financial year, but we cannot possibly eradicate this in short order.

So just to say, I suppose myself, Michael, and Councillor De Kloet, we all have a different

view on the workshops today.

We've all been involved in at least one of them.

But I touched on some of this at the housing OSC and the other week.

The way I paraphrase the work done today, the more recent work done today, is this, I guess.

That there's probably an ever greater focus needed on prevention, prevention of people, early preventative measures.

keeping people away from being homeless through very quick prior advice of all types.

Actually some delivered by our own offices, some delivered by support agencies including citizens aid.

That's the right term, isn't it?

Thank you, thank you, Councillor.

Citizen's advice.

I thought I'd get you something on.

Some of that preventative work is more at the other end,

actually, about preventing people

from needing to stay in that temporary accommodation

for long periods of time, giving them support

to get out of that temporary accommodation

perhaps quicker than this case at the moment.

Related to Michael's role, having much better data -driven

processes, much quicker processes early on especially,

getting that early advice to prevent homelessness

to see more quickly to people through better, quicker processes, having throughout the whole

of our process a more data -driven approach.

So we have data, but in my view, I think certainly in your view, it's data that can be improved,

that can be more usefully used by the officers on the ground to really focus in on where

their efforts bring most added value.

And probably, finally would be my summary, that list is going to be lengthened by the

need to remove distractions.

You know, kind of there's a lot of distractions placed against those officers who are working

hard on the ground trying to tackle all these issues.

Distractions like just too much time spent on dealing with unsuitability of bed and breakfast

accommodation.

You know, lots of time spent on that.

so we're going to be trying to tackle that some more.

Obviously, part of that will be the quality of that bed

and breakfast accommodation.

And probably finally for me, a resume of that work

will be that a much more test and review -based approach

to new ideas.

There's lots of new ideas, but let's try them out.

Let's try our ideas and review how well they've worked.

And of course, that, again, links

to data and quality of data, because you can't quickly

review the trial of an approach without having good data,

and quickly to hand data that really does kind of give you

a feeling as to whether that thought worked.

Or actually discard it and move on to something else.

Yeah, that's a summary of the kind of work in progress

that will lead to that mitigating list getting

perhaps not longer, perhaps more focused,

I'd say, not necessarily longer, perhaps more focused

on earlier activities than later activities in the broad.

So, yeah, that's my summary.

It's a serious problem, both in terms of dealing with homeless people, of course,

and being a compassionate statutory authority in that world,

and yet having a course to tackle the kind of serious overspend

that I can't contemplate it carrying on at those levels.

for long, none of us can, can we?

So with that, I'm just gonna see whether Michael

has got any extra comments, I'm sure he's not shy.

Evening Michael, Director of Business and Resources,

so contact to housing, but also doing finance

still in children's, and yeah, two months in,

but I think that data element is important,

it helps you get up to speed very quickly,

quality data can tell a very good storey very quickly,

and you can actually get a really good understanding

relatively quickly of a situation.

And this is maybe naive, but it is two months in,

but it does feel like it is something

we can make progress on.

We're doing some things well,

but there's that element of pre -prevention and prevention.

I know there has been investment there already,

but using our data, using our tools like LOOF

to understand our customers and our residents better,

and get in there early and prevent that doorstep situation,

which is possibly higher than it could be.

Thank you very much, Mr. Hallock.

I'll move on to Mrs. Evans on adult social care,

and then I'll come back to Mr. Hallock on children's,

and then we'll move to some questions.

I know members will be keen to dig in a bit.

Sure, thank you.

Good evening, councillors.

I'm Sarah Evans, Director of Business Resources

from Adult Social Care and Public Health.

I guess the report sets out that Adult Social Care

and Public Health is a director that continues

to face budget challenges, as do many local authorities.

These are largely driven by continued increases

in demand for services, increasing complexity of care,

and market pressures which are driving those increased costs.

The Directorate has had a transformation programme for a number of years,

and there are a number of work programmes in place with actions to address these challenges.

And those actions include aiming to manage demands,

such as increasing use of short -term interventions

such as reablement.

We also have a strong digital and care technology programme

which aims to increase the use of care technology

within care packages to prevent, reduce,

and delay the need for long -term care,

helping our residents to maintain independence

for a longer period of time.

We also have work programmes around managing costs

because as well as increasing demand we have the increasing costs arising from those market pressures,

which include kind of joint commissioning, work at a regional level,

and working with our providers to work through those rising costs.

Also using benchmarking tools to help with negotiating care rates.

Having said all that, we do have an overspend this year.

There are significant risks that continue,

but we will continue with these mitigating actions.

I'll stop there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Evans.

And Mr. Hallock on children's social care?

Yep, on children's.

To a certain extent, we have an opposite

to certain adult social care in that our demographic trends

are declining population of children,

which does allow for an underlying trend of lower demand.

The problem is that complexity of need,

socioeconomic pressures and so on has created complex,

complexity of need has increased definitely.

Anything to do with special needs,

Councillor Corner and yourself have heard this many times,

but in our Children's Committee,

that's anything to do with special needs,

high needs is growing at a rate

that's above population growth.

However, in social care, I think our practise model

really has helped with ensuring

that we manage demand effectively.

The counter issue there is that placement costs,

an expensive placement was 250 ,000 pounds a place

five years ago, it's now a million plus.

That is a lot of money and it is a challenge to budget when you just have to have one placement like that.

Practise model of keeping children at home, obviously for social care they are balancing risk and holding risk day in day out.

That is the day job for them.

It is a challenge.

We have a lot of statutory responsibilities and regulations.

So as the paper says, five or six years ago we had 50 children in residential placements.

If we had the same now, the same cost,

that would cost us 10 million pounds more.

We did bottom out at about 12,

and demand has risen in the last two years

with that complexity of need, as I said.

So that is a challenge, but the main thing we can do

to manage demand is really keep children at home,

keep that practise model in place.

Thank you, Ms. Tullock.

And then, Mrs. Marion, I think you want to add,

in terms of how we're stitching those challenges together, Council -wide.

Yeah, okay. So I think actually having the three services sitting next to each other

is kind of quite fitting, not least because part of our recognition that we need to work

better together, and actually that was one of the key lines of inquiry that came out

quite helpfully, I think, from the Committee. We're working on, as part of our transformation

portfolio approach, a demand management stream that really focuses, it's referenced in the

paper, but it's really going to focus on the overlap and the potential benefits you can

get from looking at our caseloads and our client base across those three services.

So my world, I work in Venn diagrams and I've got three circles of children's, housing and

And there is definite overlap either between children who are presenting to the service

because they're living in a chaotic household, often linked to social care and or housing

situations.

So looking at those three together, the overlaps and the prevention aspect and linked to something

Michael said anyway about what's happening in housing has been happening in children's

a while, using the data that will underpin really understanding what's happening and

what we can predict might happen and where we need to put our resource.

I've spent the past couple of days talking to bidders who have bid for the chance to

be our transformation delivery partner and some of the tools that they've got available

really, I think, are going to make a difference in this area.

We just don't have that quantum and that capacity and that capability within the council.

So to get that external resource in with the skill set that they've got.

And they've got absolutely proven models that they can apply to our data.

So I think we're going to see some quick wins and some significant wins.

I don't think we're going to eradicate, as Paul said, we won't eradicate all budget pressures

in this area.

But we'll certainly give it a good go.

I think with that approach.

Thank you, Mrs. Mary.

Before I move to questions, I suppose

you've touched on transformation.

Just to remind members, we do have

a paper on the transformation programme in January,

which as Mrs. Mary says, has that demand management

portfolio theme.

So just if members during the course of this discussion

are outside, want to think of any key lines of inquiries

in that area, arise from this discussion,

please feed those back and we can try and get

some information on those in the paper in January.

So questions? Councillor Apps?

Thanks very much. I mean, I think we can all agree that not only is temporary housing a huge drain

and a very bad thing for our council, it's also not a great thing for those individuals and those families

who then end up in temporary housing. It's usually not housing that you'd want to stay in long term.

I had a question actually, a small question which is about, I think it refers to one of

the main causes of temporary housing being family exclusions, does that mean family breakups?

But secondly, and just to kind of get an idea of why we're using that terminology, and certainly

some of my heartbreaking cases have been cases with domestic abuse victims who've had to

out and making sure they're safe and so how we're making sure we're properly resourcing

those.

But also there was the issue about private sector leasing that was mentioned on page

28 which I didn't actually know that much about before and it took me a minute to get

my head around it.

But it does say that there's plans to rapidly expand that scheme.

Can you say, obviously that's a good hope, a good intention, but do we have a plan for

and how we're going to make sure that we do roll that out, and how are we encouraging

some of the landlords to come forward to get involved in that scheme, because it does seem

like a really good thing to do.

So Chadwick?

I'll try and get into the weeds a little.

So friends and family evictions is one of the bigger drivers of homelessness, which

which is a term in this new world of ours.

And it does relate to all sorts of pressures on families living often in cramped conditions together.

Can include divorce, there's a long list of families heading towards divorce.

18 year olds, frankly, being thrown out by their parents for one reason or another.

Sometimes that relates to your second point around domestic violence, of course, which

in the way I see that, and I need to be compassionate, is that there are three main areas of particular

the demand on temporary accommodation, friends and family evictions,

evictions from our private housing sector, and often no fault evictions,

which you all know is gradually going.

And the third territory is domestic violence.

I suppose part of my view on all of this is that we need to find

can more sensible, more practical, more straightforward, faster approaches to the first two categories

give us room to be particularly compassionate for that sector of our residents who are suffering

from domestic violence.

And that is a sector actually that includes non -borrow residents, not least because of

our accreditation around domestic violence as an authority, or strong accreditation.

Your last point I'm going to pass on unless any of my colleagues can say more.

What I would say more about the leasing scheme, short -term leasing scheme is that yes, it's

a part of that raft of measures we can adopt.

What we haven't got, and I think I touched on this with Michael earlier, is a way of

measuring its cost versus its benefit.

So I'm sort of being a little bit measured in my view on it right now as to whether apps,

you know, it really will generate the benefit that we're expecting.

I'm just being a bit measured because I am slightly new to this world, of course.

I don't know where Councillor Dickerson might want to say more or not, I'm not sure.

Anything more on private leasing?

I'm conscious of time.

So I'll come to Councillor Dickim, do you want to come in now?

Well, let's go to Councillor Hedges and there may be a few points to pick up towards the end.

Thank you, Chair. I think this question is probably more aimed at the cabinet member,

but just to say thank you to everybody for your updates.

Just looking at paragraph 32, we talk about over the past three years that obviously the government has provided significant funding

in regard to some of these pressures such as homelessness.

If we go on the assumption that the fair funding review

is gonna pull a lot of that money away from Wandsworth,

I know we mentioned here that we do use,

we have had to use reserves to plug the budget gap.

I would like to ask the cabinet member

what's her medium to long term solution

that is sustainable rather than just relying on the reserves because clearly the reserves

won't last forever. Thank you.

Thank you for your question. It's reducing demand pressures where possible and that's

where the transformation programme comes in and officers are working hard now building

up the case studies and you will hear business cases and you will find out more in January

about that but it's really trying to get on top of demand and I think Sarah's

talked about some work being done in adult social care with contracts but

it's it's good controlling demand. Thank You Councillor Corner. Yeah thank you

chair this essentially just re -asking the question I asked out of turn earlier

really is genuinely a really helpful and insightful paper this and it's really

interesting insight to get from across the directorates as well but yeah just

wanting to ask again about what the read across is between the different

directorates it seems to me like children's and adults would have

similar lessons that can be learned and we might be able to achieve what's been

achieved in children's in adults. Mr. Halleck you mentioned you know the one

off high costs of some of those special needs placements.

But in housing, it would seem to me

that you perhaps got less of that risk,

and therefore, you know,

there's different considerations there.

So I realise kind of it is comparing apples and pears,

but there must be kind of common cost levers

across the piece that we can pull.

And then just following on from that,

obviously what's kind of almost seems to have taken us

by surprise a little bit, is the massive increase in demand

of high -cost placements and temporary accommodation.

What is it that's the barrier here

for effective forecasting of that?

Is it just that the numbers were just much higher

than anyone anticipated, or is there something we can model

to see what the future impact is on the Council

over the next five or six years?

I'll just comment quickly on the first.

Yeah, two points.

One around effective forecasting, that was the latter point, and then the first point

about that opportunity to come together.

And I just endorsed, I think I said it at the top, Councillor Cornyn's comment around

the opportunity for officers from different directors to come together.

I think as Mrs. Mary touched on, the opportunity in this paper for us to actually pull together

and for members to be sitting around it and officers to be sitting around the table from

a different director, I think, is a benefit

and positive progress in and of itself.

So thank you again.

And I'll let you answer the question now, sorry.

I don't have much to say.

I was actually gonna say, Ms. Mary said

we all did together quite nicely,

but one of the benefits of myself now working

across housing and children's is that link up.

Obviously, families in a temporary accommodation stats

aren't great when it comes to attendance

and educational outcomes, and they even send.

So, and then we've, obviously, children grow up

and they become adult social care

and those costs transfer, so it is all linked up.

Yep, Mrs. Evans.

Thank you, and I was just gonna say,

I mean, clearly there is a lot of learning

that we can do across the directorates,

and as Ms. Mary said, we have demand management portfolio,

but I think it is important to note,

and I think Mr. Hallock touched on it earlier,

around the demographic pressures are different

in children and adults.

So if we look in adults, we know between now and 2039,

there's a 30 % projected increase in the over 85 population,

which means that our demand management actions

need to work on that and take account of that

to make sure those placements are available.

Councillor Connolly, did you want to come back or move on to Councillor Graham and then

I've got Councillor Belts and then quick shot.

Just to quickly come on to that, to follow up, I think that does make sense. Has that

demographic trend, have those demographic trends, have they been built into forecasting

and do we have an answer to that forecasting point about how we can preempt some of these

challenges that it seems to me we haven't been able to preempt for whatever reasons in previous years?

Just come on quickly. So in high needs we actually have a very sophisticated tool that we've

piloted with the DFE and is actually a traded service to other councils via our

our data team and children's but that feeds in all the variables refusal to assess

population growth is quite sophisticated and so can be done I think on the social care element

forecasting that one child that's gonna cost

a million pounds is harder than when you've got

higher volumes, smaller actual numbers,

possibly more variables though,

or the same amount of variables,

but just trying to get that one right

compared to a whole trend is much, much harder.

And I think in adults, I'll let Sarah answer.

Thank you.

I mean, in adults we have similar,

so we do do that demand forecasting,

And we have done that so that we understand the kind of pressure that we're trying to mitigate as we move forward.

And as Mr. Halleck said, in terms of those high cost placements,

we try to kind of take account of that as much as possible.

But increasingly within adult services, well, we're seeing some very high cost placements coming through,

which can swing the forecast quite significantly.

And that's driven partly by complexity of need,

which I referred to earlier,

but also partly by the pressures

that health are facing currently as well.

And we're seeing kind of differences

in terms of continuing healthcare funding

being removed from service users, et cetera.

So it's all those factors that we take into account.

And as much as we try to forecast it,

we are seeing kind of unforeseen areas coming forward.

I'm going to allow you to have a follow up.

I'm going to come to Councillor Graham.

Sorry, I'll come back round again.

Thank you.

So in paragraph 15, the paper notes the uncertainty following the Renters' Rights Act, which

has contributed to some landlords exiting the markets, increasing pressure on our temporary

accommodation.

and likewise the general instability in the private renter sector as landlords leave,

I'm quoting, landlords leave due to tax changes and cost pressures.

This paper was obviously written before last week's budget,

which amongst other things increased the basic rate of tax on property income by 10%.

What impact assessment have the officers made in terms of temporary accommodation

as landlords seek to pass through those costs in higher rent or exit the market at a high rate.

Mr. Chaddell, have we been able to do any modelling on that yet?

No. Not yet. Indeed, it's a wider point that our, you know, this is one of the reasons that we've got Michael's skills on board to help, exactly that kind of modelling.

We talked about demographic differences between children's service and adult services.

It's a far more complex set of reasons for homelessness that I've described earlier,

which makes modelling difficult, I think.

Councillor Cramb, you pointed out a couple of new factors which are very important to

model in, but I'd have to say we are in territory at the moment that we're going to have to

think through that.

At the moment, what we're relying on in the main, and you see in the paper, is London -wide

data that essentially says we're about the same as everybody else.

Well, we need better data than that.

We need our own kind of understanding, a more complex level of understanding than just indicated

by other boroughs' data.

So it's not a complete answer, Councillor Graham.

I'm admitting we need to do more work on it, and that's part of our plan.

Councillor Graham, do you want to answer?

Yes, I mean even if we can't put numbers on it, I think it's a fair assumption that if tax changes and cost pressures on landlords have been contributing to the problem,

then further tax changes that are increasing those cost pressures are not going to make it better and are highly likely to make the problem and the costs we're facing worse.

Well, I think – sorry, ticket is red, I agree with that.

In the round, though, there are other factors obviously coming to the sisters, including

the removal of no -fault evictions.

So again, it's difficult to model.

So just on the point of things that might be coming, because Councillor Dickardam mentioned

rent controls as something that the administration wishes to pursue.

Now, amongst economists, about as close as anything gets to a consensus is the appalling

effect of rent controls.

Indeed, one famously said that rent control appears to be the most efficient technique

presently known to destroy a city except for bombing.

Can officers point to any example they are aware of anywhere, at any point in history,

anywhere around the globe which has successfully seen conditions improve under rent controls?

I'm not sure that that's a fair question. Councillor Graham, Councillor Dickerton, would you like to say anything on rent controls?

If you want to come to the table. I think on Councillor Graham's broader point, I think in terms of paragraph 15,

I think officers have been very clear that we need to do greater work in terms of data and understanding demand through the front door.

And I think that paragraph is very clear that

impacts in terms of landlord provision of housing is just is just one aspect and it not the top aspect in terms of what is

Driving demand into temporary accommodation at the moment. So whilst we must be modelling on that. It's not the only modelling and data

We need to understand we need to understand all those factors that are driving temporary accommodation at the moment a council a decadent

Brain control is so and I can't even begin. I know it's hard to know where to begin

Rent control is such a longstanding evidence policy that is used across the entire world.

Currently, we even have a form of rent control in this country at the moment.

Landlords cannot just put up rents to obscene amounts.

You can challenge them.

So the idea that rent control is something that is some kind of dangerous phenomenon

is a kind of fantastical right -wing myth that has led to the total immiseration of an entire generation of people.

The removal of the 1988 Housing Act, which removed rent controls in Britain,

is what has led to the catastrophic situation that faces us now in which we spend 5 .5 million pounds a day as London Borough Councils on temporary accommodation.

And has led to an entire generation of people living precariously with half of their incomes going on rental prices.

So rent control is not just something that we support,

but that is totally economically evidence.

Then obviously right -wing economists

don't like rent control.

They don't like half of the things

that social democracies do,

but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't do them.

I'll allow a very quick comeback, Councillor.

No, okay, I'm happy.

Councillor Belton has been waiting a long time,

so I will move to Councillor Belton.

And I wanna join this debate.

I will move to Councillor Belton.

You should let Councillor Belton chair the meeting. He chairs plenty of meetings in the past.

He has been waiting patiently and I am very conscious. I am going to move on to Councillor Belton.

Can I ask one very simple question first, Mrs Evans I think.

There is a care home mentioned on Para 18 bullet point 1 that is recently closed. Which one was it?

It was Meadbank and it closed as the provider kind of changed their approach to the market.

So that was the reason.

You mean the one on Parkgate Road, which is a bit more than, not what I quite think of as care.

I think it was in, if it goes back far enough, didn't the council have something to do with it many years ago?

I don't know, unfortunately.

I can cheque that.

One of the problems with local authorities, I think,

is it's very difficult for anyone to define their core business.

People are always talking about the core business, the core business.

There are just so many core businesses, it's such a complicated thing.

Is providing care homes for the elderly or for children who we think need them, is that a core business?

Is providing housing for people who can't afford it, is that a core business?

or is the core business just collecting rents and rates?

What is the core business?

Now, if you think as I do, and I suspect Councillor Dickerson does,

that to a certain extent the core business includes these other things,

then even the most powerful advocates of facilities management

have always said you shouldn't privatise your core businesses.

And what I find so sickening about so much of this,

And I can get strongly about this as Council Dickerman, any time you like,

is that the party opposite, I'm sorry to do this, but Council Graham raised it.

The party opposite spent 30 years privatising all the social care and

children's care units they could possibly lay their hands on and

were encouraged by governments of both persuasions, I have to admit, to do that.

And now it's becoming a real issue and it's in private hands and

private operators can put up charges, move out,

put us into a really difficult position and we've got this in all those two particular areas.

As for housing itself, Council Graham talks about rent.

Ever since they took control locally, the sector that's grown fastest and

largest by a very long way is private rented.

Actually the amount of owner occupation as a percentage

has gone down slightly over a few years.

Obviously social sector's gone down quite a bit

and the largest growth has been private rented housing.

And does the housing situation get better

as we have more and more private rented?

No it doesn't, it gets worse and worse every year.

And they've got the nerve to sit there and talk around about rent controls, whatever

it may be, when they have created much of this.

And I just absolutely, it's a modest irony at some levels to hear them talking about

what should be done about it.

But actually I've been sitting here listening to this stuff for 40 years and it just gets

worse under their control all the time.

So please, Councillor Graham, just forget your own ideology for a moment.

I've got to forget mine, because this paper is about, frankly,

little detailed stuff about working together better, which I hope works really well.

And I hope that covers the fringe efforts.

But you're not going to solve the basic problem by this kind of, sorry, Councillor, you know that.

I mean, you know that.

So that's my comment.

Thank you Councillor Borta. Councillor Critchard. Thank you chair. Right, three parts of this.

The first one I've heard both Mr. Halleck and Ms. Evans talk about demand management.

One of the things if I was listening and I was say a parent of a child who needed special

help was the words demand management could make me think that maybe my child

wouldn't get it or my older, my frail elderly relative wouldn't get help. So

one things I'd like the officers to explain is how what demand management

looks like from a resident perspective. So that's the first thing. The second

I was interested in what Mrs. Mary said about the overlaps.

Sort of a question is, it seems to me that one of the fundamental problems,

that one of the fundamental issues we have to solve is housing.

Because from what Mr. Hallock said, for example, is if children are housed well,

they go to school, you get better effort, you get better results,

and they then may not cause a further demand on social services.

That currently is an unquantifiable benefit,

but presumably it will be, if this all works,

an unlooked for benefit that will affect our overall budget position.

And the last one, Mr Chadwick, was,

I'm very interested in the ideas of the test and review

and keep things at work.

discard things that don't. Local authorities tend not to be as agile as they might be on this sort of work.

Have we started on anything specific where you could say,

yeah, we had to look at this, or is that something we might hear more of later?

Not in my tenure yet. What I would say though is the team that were with us in the workshop,

the homelessness, the TA team, were really keen on that thinking.

I think they felt, yeah, why not?

That's great.

I think for the first time, perhaps they felt relaxed

about that as being a sensible approach,

and we're being given the permission to do that.

I don't know whether that is fair.

I'm sure they've done testing review before, but.

All right, okay.

Yeah, and so there's a wider example

that Mr. Hallie's just whispering in my ear,

which is we are testing,

and we will review the kind of really widespread use of magic notes in the housing teams.

Something that there have been barriers to before and that those barriers are now removed

and they are all very keen to, well not all because we can't afford all our staff to be

honest right away, but that is an example of where we are testing the review across

quite a wide range of our housing teams.

Could you just remind us what magic note?

Yes, Michael will do that, Councillor.

It's an AI integrated function that allows our, and in the TA space it will be the case

officers to have live translation, take notes straight into their phones, you just put your

phone down and you can have a really excellent transcription of the meeting if you need it.

That can just be copied and pasted into the system you need.

The idea is just to save admin time.

So we piloted in the social care and children's.

It saved a day of a social worker's time.

Two hundred social workers cost 2 .4 million pounds of time a year.

Obviously, that has to be translated into efficiencies and what they're doing with that

time.

But that is what it is.

So an example of the barrier against that.

So there was quite a bit of reluctance.

There was the sight of the figure,

the tens of thousands of licencing costs

that were attached to the use of that.

Because all we see is actually that the investor's save

is huge, potentially is huge.

And working back at the cost of an interview,

say a statutory interview for homelessness,

we worked it back to being about a foot per use of magic.

It's about three pounds an hour.

You can imagine the additional speed, the time saved massively outweighed that three pound an hour cost.

So yeah, that is a good example, thank you Michael, and more to come.

Thank you. Was there anything else?

Yes, I asked about, sorry.

Yes. I asked about what does the amount of management look like for residents.

And I think I got sort of the answer to that if we realise some of the benefits realised by better housing,

may come through. I saw Mrs. Mary Nod.

Yeah.

Anything to note on what demand management means for a resident?

Shall I go, if I start on that?

Because I think it's a really good point, because I think we use these terms,

but it is about what that actually means.

And I think it's important to say from an adult social care perspective,

I mean, clearly we're governed by the Care Act.

So everything, you know, all we do, we have to meet eligible care needs.

So that's first and foremost in terms of what we do.

And in terms of demand management, for us, it's really around that prevention route.

So we talk a lot about prevent, reduce, delay in terms of those needs for long -term care.

So what it might look like is instead of a traditional style care package, we might kind

of use care technology within that to help.

So it's about, for us it's about changing

how we provide the care as opposed

to not providing the care.

Thank you.

I think that's helpful.

I think we need to get upstream and we

need to focus on prevention.

I'm sure Mr. Hallett would probably add the same

in children's social care.

But I'm not going to allow him.

I'm going to move on to some more questions, if that's OK.

Councillor Graham.

I'm just conscious of time.

I'm sorry.

I'll be very brief.

I just want to respond to a couple of things.

So first of all, Councillor Belton

said that owner occupation increasing in Wandsworth

wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

I actually agree with him on that.

Other things being equal, owner occupation going up

would be a good thing, particularly

if it means residents who are renting privately

in the borough being able to own.

That would be an excellent thing.

The problem is when it's not just that PRS is declining here,

but where it's declining everywhere because

of the hits on landlords, meaning there's

nowhere else for people to go.

That, as this paper says, is increasing

the temporary accommodation costs this council is facing.

So that decline in PRF is directly causing some of the financial problems we have because

it's not just going down here, it's going down everywhere.

The second point you made was about private social care providers.

And actually, the problem is not that they're private, the problem is the lack of competition.

You know, a monopoly or a monopsony where you've got a very few providers who are able

to control prices has never been good for the public sector as a customer or in general.

And if you have a monopoly or a monopsony, the only way to deal with it is by very strong

regulation if you can at all.

And it's the lack of competition that has caused a problem.

And as I've said previously at this committee, I have no objection to this council trying

to set up its own institutions in order to undercut the prices currently being offered

by a handful of providers who are able to charge whatever they like at the moment because

of the regulated nature of that marketplace.

The third point, and I'll stop I promise, is just to respond to what Councillor Dickardam

said because it's not right wing economists who think rent controls are bad and everybody

else is fine with it, it's left wing economists as well.

The only people that think rent controls are a good idea are the same crackpots behind modern monetary policy,

modern monetary theory, MMT, which also rather helpfully stands for the magic money tree.

I'm not going to pursue this conversation about rent control.

This really isn't within the limits of the paper.

If we want a whole conversation about rent control, I think there has to be a different paper.

And I know there would be responses on either side, but we're not going to continue talking about that.

Councillor Belton, did you want to come back?

And then I'm going to come to Councillor Corner and then the final question from Councillor Fraser because we're up against the guillotine.

Very briefly, when we were privatising care homes in the 90s, and I know this backwards,

when we privatise them into all separate units under separate companies,

and within 10 years they'd all merged and collectivised and created their own monopoly.

That's, we couldn't control the legislation that stopped that.

That's how we had monopoly carers, care services in this borough.

Not because, in fact, the way they privatised it, but that's what happened.

That's the way the private sector works.

Haven't you learned any theory about that?

Councillor Dickerton?

I just want to correct an empirical point because obviously the amount of temporary accommodation increase that has been taking place over the last decade has happened

Directly in line with the increase in expansion of the private rented sector. So that that that argument doesn't make any sense

There there is a problem at this sharp end now

whereby we know that the moment you start to regulate things and change things that there will be a

Shrink in the supply and that that's the kind of tragedy of this whole situation

Is that we're kind of marched up a hill and then any changes we try and make?

Are shaking up what is a kind of powerful monopoly holder as we're talking about from the landlord

So I just wanted to correct that just so that people understand the historic reasons. We've ended up in this place. Thank you Councillor corner

But I certainly think that a deep dive on rent controls

Housing committee is actually very important because it's a significant issue facing the borough no matter what side you sit on

I think just I think for for the work of this committee. It'd be really

interesting and

Important to be able to track

how demand pressures are increasing or reducing over time so that we can we can

track kind of budgets versus actuals and forecasts versus actuals as well.

Obviously if you if you walk a hundred metres and you're one degree out it

doesn't really matter. If you walk a hundred miles and you're one degree out

you end up in a completely different place right. So it would be really

interesting if we can have like stress testing or scenario analysis on the

forecast so that the committee can see the, and the whole council can see the range of

scenarios and future worlds we might find ourselves in over the next five years and

consider policy in accordance to that.

It's also just generally a very interesting, it would be a very interesting thing to do

just to get under the skin of what might happen in the future.

Can the officers deliver that?

I think there's agreement and nodding and I think there's an opportunity within the

demand management portfolio of the transformation programme,

again, what I understand is that is looking at data

to be informed and to kind of track and understand

what we need to do to mitigate and consider

some of those pressures.

So there might be opportunity to return to that point

in January, but I'm not gonna come to you again,

I'm gonna come to Councillor Fraser, I'm sorry.

Thank you, as you approach the end of the night,

my final question is kind of trying to bring us away

from what has sort of ended up in the debating hour

of the final part of committee and kind of going

into political ideology.

So I kind of want to bring it back to more to our residents.

And actually, Councillor Critchard

spoke about the reason she became a Councillor.

Mine was housing.

I don't know how representative we are

as Councillors on this committee,

but I'm someone who's lived in this borough for 15 years

and has rented and still continue to rent.

I'm not sure as Councillors how representative we are

of the what, I think we're about a third

of the borough who rents.

So actually thinking about those people

and I think housing is the one area

that cuts across all of these,

making sure our kids and our vulnerable adults

are housed in warm, comfortable homes,

whatever that might look like in TA, in PRS,

in owner -occupied housing, and actually thinking

about what we can do there.

So I kind of want to bring us back at the end of the night

to think about our residents who are here to talk about tonight,

and not about rent controls, political ideology,

left -right, privatisation, none of that,

but really actually how we can help those.

Pardon me on the shoulder.

So yeah, and then just thinking about that,

We've obviously got things like the homelessness prevention grant, like how are we using that?

How are we trying to end the night talking about how are we actually helping our residents

in whatever housing that is and how are we using that grant that we've got at our disposal?

Councillor Chadwick, I'll give you the last word on this paper before.

Sorry, I've done that again twice.

I always do it at about this time.

I suppose the way I would express it is that demand management for me in this new world

of mine, relative to the new world of mine, for me is about trying so hard to work with

our residents on giving them the best advice possible for them to make the right choices.

So it's being compassionate by getting in early,

checking with them whether they know where they're heading.

They know, for example, that actually it's

better to have a conversation, a supportive conversation,

perhaps, for example, with their father or their mother

or somebody they're in dispute with.

At the heart of it for me is just our being compassionate and really truly working with

people to give them a sense of how difficult it is actually to be homeless in temporary

accommodation and actually give them all the tools and information possible for them to

decide that isn't in many cases the best approach.

So I'm not I'm not I'm just kind of more kind of answering it from from the heart really in terms of the sort of

spirit that I want to

Enter into into this new new director

Okay, I know counsellor Dikodem is indicating but we have reached the guillotine

So I am going to ask members to note the information in this report

I'm going to move on then to thank you very much for officers for

assisting us on the on the report and for staying thank you so moving on then

6 Finance OSC Work Programme (Paper No. 25-425)

to the work programming we've got this paper to note the current work plan and

to consider the approach to its further development I'm I know Councillor Graham

you've raised a request for members allowances to be on the work programme I

apologise that there was a delay in responding to your request but that will

be on the work programme in January.

Can I come to Councillor Graham even though it's

after the ability?

Yes.

Yeah, OK.

OK, fine.

Thank you.

I'm grateful for your apology, although actually you

have nothing to apologise for yourself.

You are not to blame for this issue.

But I appreciate that it will, the item that I have notified,

and later find, in fact, on the 25th of September,

will now be discussed in January.

But the point here is that members of this committee

have a statutory right to place items on the agenda of an OSC,

provided it is relevant to the terms of reference

to the committee.

It's a matter of the law.

It's not just a matter of can we have it

or would it be nice to have it.

it's a legal duty for the council to comply with requests that we make when we exercise our statutory right.

And this has been mishandled in two ways.

Well, in the first way, I gave the notice for the previous meeting on the 9th of October.

And I gave it within the period that we as always accepted as constituting the notice period

and with previous requests had been accepted.

and was then told that it was being reinterpreted in terms of the notice period to exclude it,

meaning that there was actually notice for this meeting and not the 9th of October.

Now changing the practise in that way in order to exclude an item, I think, without warning,

when that's the expectation that we had every reason to think that was going to be accepted

given it had always been accepted in the past.

I don't think that's acceptable in and of itself.

But then we have the situation in which at the same time that point was made,

it was also argued that the item was not relevant to the terms of reference

of this committee because it was something that shouldn't be looked

at by any overview and scrutiny committee, which is in itself a departure from the law

which says we can look at everything,

and a departure from our constitution, which

says that things that are within the scope

of regulatory committees must nevertheless

be able to be scrutinised by an OSCE.

And so I wrote again to remind the chief executive

and the monitoring officer that I had made the request,

that the request was still valid,

and at this point on which it was argued

it should have been excluded, did not hold.

and I did say before the agenda was published.

And yet, I got no response, and the agenda was published without the item,

to which I had a legal right to have it included.

And I only received any reply this morning saying that I was in fact correct,

and it was regrettable that it hadn't been included on the agenda,

and would I like to include it now,

when there's no warning for any of the members of this committee to look at it.

No ability to supply a paper.

And it's just not an acceptable way to go about upholding the rights of members,

all members of this council.

It's cavalier. It's actually unlawful.

And I appreciate that this will be discussed in January.

but I think it needs more than some regret. I'm glad that you've

apologised. You have nothing to apologise for but I'm afraid there are others that

do and have not given an adequate apology to this committee as a whole, let

alone to me. Thank you, thank you Councillor Graham. Mrs. Murray. Thank you.

So I just wanted to come in as probably the, I was going to say the only officer left, but

this earlier and there has been some delay and an unintentional delay and we

do as an officer group apologise for that I do think some of this does need

looking at actually so we will take it away we'll make sure that this gets on

to the agenda in January and we'll address some of the things that have

led to some of the frustrations that could have been avoided because I do

think and we have accepted that this hasn't necessarily as a as a whole come

out as as good as it can sending you an email today that we know you didn't pick

Until you know couple of hours before the meeting that wasn't intentional, but that's obviously caused some of the frustration

So we'll take that you know take that away and look at it

seriously

Thank you for that assurance

councillor

Can I ask a really simple question um

The it's a legal requirement to publish as soon as practicable

The allowances and expenses paid to Councillors of the last municipal year as soon as possible.

The municipal year ends in May.

This Council used to always publish it by July because that came to the general purposes committee.

It was late last year by several months.

We are now, I mean, more than six, seven months.

What's the delay?

And why has the Council been in breach of the regulations for more than seven months?

Sorry, are you able to assist with that order?

Well, I can address that.

I've been assured that that should be published very, very shortly.

We're not in breach of any regulation in that there isn't a time frame attached to a regulation

appreciating that as soon as possible.

The reconciliation hasn't been finished.

There has been an issue with the reconciliation.

So in terms of finishing it, it hasn't happened, but it is imminent.

Look, I'm grateful for that answer, but I just simply don't understand this.

This is the allowances and expenses paid to 58 people.

This should be available broadly at the touch of a button plus some officer verification.

Timelines cannot, as soon as possible, cannot mean it takes more than seven months to produce

financial information, simple financial information for 58 individuals. It's not

an answer to say it's still awaiting verification or reconciliation. That is

not an answer particularly when the council used to be able to produce this

two months after the end of the municipal year.

I, Councillor Richard -Jones, I can assure you it hasn't been finished and it is imminent so it is the answer I'm afraid.

We are over the, we are over.

And we can look at why. There is an issue with the reconciliation in particular, one area of it that hasn't necessarily always been in the reconciliation in previous years.

I can't go into... I think we can discuss that perhaps when we share it with you and tell you what the issues are with it.

But as I said, it's imminent and we haven't delayed that in any way other than, you know, it's just taken an unfortunate amount of time to get to the bottom of it.

Councillor Graham.

Very briefly, because I appreciate we're at the guineas in the middle.

The point is that it was always produced in July, year after year after year, no matter

what had happened the year before, because it was required to come to the General Purposes

Committee.

And this administration has removed the requirement for many things to come to committees.

And suddenly, the moment that restriction is lifted, two years in a row it's been December.

Last December, it was only published after we pointed out it hadn't appeared, and we

given an apology and told that next this year don't worry we'll be better we can

get back to doing it in July given then that is as soon as reasonably

practicable and always was it is now December again it's further behind than

it was last year it is clearly unlawful Thank You Councillor Graham clearly

we're raising this discussion under the work programming paper I think I think

we've taken it as far as we can clearly there's some questions that you want to

and that we'll have answers to,

and we will have a paper on it that's been committed to

in January on the members' allowances,

so we can go into further detail

when we actually have some of the information

in front of us.

So I'm asking the committee to note the contents

of the work programming paper.

Unless there's anything else, we'll do that.

And then we've got items seven and eight,

which we're also noting the information on.

That's the annual complaints report

and the key performance indicators.

And that brings us to the end of the meeting.

Will it be considered by the committee and discussed at a later date?

It was quite clear at the previous work programming meeting that members didn't want a substantive

agenda item on these minutes and I think maybe you and Councillor Richard -Jones arrived

late where I did indicate and I had set out in the agenda very clearly that if members

did want a substantive discussion on these agenda items that those should be indicated

beforehand and we took all questions on those papers as part of the first item

on the agenda and that's fine and now I understand why there are questions on

the KPIs yeah apologies that you missed that actually I welcome this whole

practise of having items on the paper distributed to committee as a matter of

course but not actually taking up loads of time at the meeting I think that's

good practise and I welcome something we should do at housing as well thank you

very much good good evening councillors thank you

We welcome your comments

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Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Wednesday 3 December 2025, 7:30pm - Wandsworth Council Webcasting

Finance Overview and Scrutiny CommitteeWednesday, 3rd December 2025 at 7:30pm

Agenda

Slides

Transcript

Map

Resources

Twitter

Forums

Speakers

Feedback

Votes

1 Minutes of the Previous Meeting

2 Declarations of Interests

3 Customer Service (Paper No. 25-422)

4 Treasury Investments and Borrowing (Paper No. 25-423)

3 Customer Service (Paper No. 25-422)

4 Treasury Investments and Borrowing (Paper No. 25-423)

5 Managing Demand Pressures (Paper No. 25-424)

6 Finance OSC Work Programme (Paper No. 25-425)

Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Wednesday, 3rd December 2025 at 7:30pm