Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Thursday 22 January 2026, 7:30pm

Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Thursday, 22nd January 2026 at 7:30pm

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3 Improving the Financial Resilience of Residents (Paper No. 26-19)

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4 The Council's Transformation Programme (Paper No. 26-20)

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4 a) Report on behalf of the Opposition Speaker for Finance on the Members' Allowances Scheme (Paper No. 26-26)

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5 Work Programme (Paper No. 26-22)

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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.

Hello, good evening, everybody.

Welcome to this evening's Finance Overview and Discretionary Committee meeting.

It's lovely to see you all here.

My name is Councillor Stock and I chair this committee.

I will now ask members of the committee to introduce themselves in alphabetical order.

So, Councillor Apps.

On a point of order, Chair, I do apologise, but on a boring point of order before we start,

public committee meetings were made open to the public in 1971 or 1972.

71 was it?

Thanks.

We were first, by the way, but it doesn't matter.

And your party were against it.

But that's beside the point.

But there is no point in actually being open to the committee, to the public, if there are no agendas, they can't follow anything.

There have always been agendas in there, to my knowledge, and unless one has arrived in the last five minutes, there aren't any there now.

And I think if we I know the public are not here in millions

But if we're going to go through the pretence of them taking part that ought to be agendas at every committee meeting

Sorry

Thank You

Councillor Belton

I think I can ask the clerk whether we can make sure during the course of this meeting that an agenda gets placed into the

public gallery

and I can make sure from my perspective in this committee that happens on the

next time we meet in a few weeks time and Democratic services can take away in

terms of that being the case across the board with other committee meetings as

well because as you say public involvement is very important obviously

if there are any members of watching members of the public watching then

papers are available on the council's website as well for you to look at so

returning then to just ask members of the committee to introduce themselves

Councillor Apps. Good evening I'm Councillor Apps Shaftesbury in Queenstown Ward.

Councillor Belton. Good evening Tony Belton Battersea Park Ward in Battersea.

Councillor Corner. Matt Corner at Ninelms Ward. Councillor Critchard. Thanks Anna Marie Critchard.

I'm the deputy chair of this committee and I represent Tooting Beck Ward.

Councillor Fraser. Good evening Claire Fraser South Badham.

Councillor Graham. Councillor Peter Graham opposition speaker

for finance. Councillor Hedges.

Councillor Lindsay Hedges of Ballin Ward and opposition speaker for business culture and

I've forgotten the other one already sorry. Voluntary sector. Thank you. Sorry.

Thank you.

Councillor Lee.

Jessie Lee and I'm Councillor for St Mary's Ward.

And Councillor Richard Jones.

Thanks, Chair.

Alan Richards -Jones, Councillor for Northcote Ward and Leader of the Opposition.

And we also have Councillors Acanola, our Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Voluntary

Sector Business Engagement and Culture.

Yes, I am here. Thank you and Councillor Ireland our cabinet member for finance.

Thank you. So first of all moving on to item one on the agenda the minutes of the previous

meeting. We have the minutes of the meeting held on the 3rd of December last year to agree.

Do members have any comments on the minutes? No? Members happy to agree the

minutes? Perfect, thank you very much. Moving on then to item number two,

declarations of interest. Are there any declarations of either pecuny or other

vegetable or non -registable interests at all? No? Perfect, thank you very much. Okay

moving on then to item number three, the paper on improving the financial

resilience of residents. So as the paper notes, ones with residents have been

affected by a series of financial shocks in recent years, most notably COVID -19

pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and as a result more households

are struggling to make income cover the cost of living. And I think it was

interesting, I found in the paper that the ONS survey in October stated that

87 % of respondents cited the cost of living as the most important issue facing the UK today

So I think it is important issue for us to cover so locally here in Wandsworth

We've had a 50 million pound cost of living programme and delivered a wide range of support that's touched on in the paper

But it's clear that there's a new normal of people struggling to make ends meet

So I think as a committee we were keen to understand how the council's focus is shifting

towards initiatives that support residents to become more resilient, financially resilient in the long term,

rather than just necessarily having to deal with a financial crisis when they hit it.

So I'm pleased that we are joined by Bethany Pepper, our cost of living programme manager,

and Alex Wilson, our director of revenue services, to provide an update.

And we also have, as mentioned in the paper, I'd like to welcome Sarah Chapman,

the advocacy and communications manager from Wandsworth Food Bank.

Thank you very much for giving up your time to join us this evening. So as as outlined in the report

It's proposed that we hear from miss Chapman in relation to our key lines of inquiry around how the council is taking into account

Resident staff and stakeholder feedback in measuring the success of our programme today

So hopefully you'll be able to share some stakeholder feedback on the impact of our projects

And how we are working with the food bank to support residents locally. So is that agreed by members?

So first of all, what I propose to do is to hand over to Ms. Bethany Pepper to give an

instruction to paper, and then I'll move over to you, Ms. Chapman, to give some introductory

remarks.

Then I'll take some questions to you first, Ms. Chapman, and then questions to officers.

But if anybody wants to come in at any point in between, that's fine, but I'll try and

manage it in that way.

There's been a request from members, Ms. Trapp, particularly when you speak, if you can move

towards the middle of the table.

I know this table is not ideally shaped for everybody to see, but just some members can't

see you.

So I'll hand over to you first, Ms. Peppa.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

So as outlined, the paper provides an overview of work delivered across the Council to support

residents to build their financial resilience.

So that includes highlights from the cost of living programme, but also wider core activity and organised around those key lines of inquiry

identified in advance and

So you've actually covered something I was already going to which is

Just how significant an issue the cost of living remains

Four years on from starting the programme off for three and a half

and so you talked about the 87 % of

respondents who continue to cite the cost of living as one of the most

important issues facing the UK. That was just from October last year and but

that's reflected in our local data as well.

That's reflected in our local data as well so

citizens advice Wandsworth data shows the number of clients visiting them for

cost of living related issues remains consistently high and is a new normal of

people who are struggling to make ends meet day to day.

So it is quite a lengthy paper.

We tried to cover each of the key lines of inquiry

in some detail.

But I will highlight, I think, a few projects that really

demonstrate how our overall approach has

moved from crisis support to longer -term resilience.

So if I start with a low -income family tracker,

quite a few members of this committee

were able to attend a briefing on it.

But it is a platform that allows us to target campaigns

and casework at low -income households.

So since we started using it in early 2023, it's brought in over 21 million in lifetime

income to over 7 ,500 ones worth of residents.

Primarily so far that's been through campaigns, but we are continuing to develop how we use

that platform.

So one of our recent highlights has been the award -winning partnership with Thames Water

and Policy and Practise, and that has automatically enrolled over 1 ,000 households onto social

water tariffs.

And increasingly, we are also seeking to use the platform to identify smaller cohorts of

residents who can benefit from more intensive support and casework approaches.

So in a similar vein, we've recently expanded our internal capacity to deliver financial

resilience support with additional staff members in our financial inclusion team, council tax

and housing benefit overpayments, housing benefits, and our discretionary support team.

So by embedding those offices in our existing teams, they can provide that specialist advice

on welfare benefits, debt management, and repayment as those members of the public become

known to those teams.

And a similar vein again, working with Citizens Advice Wandsworth, we funded two financial

resilience navigators.

So they are working directly with residents who engage, or sorry, struggle to engage with

traditional services.

In particular, those are likely to be people who can get stuck in cycles of support and

then disengagement.

So that pilot project got fully underway in September of 2025 and is really based around

the premise that that kind of support ultimately can both reduce demand on services in the

future but also benefit that individual by moving them out of that cycle of crisis and

support.

So that's quite a lot on benefit cheques, debt management, and those are really key to financial

resilience, but income maximisation isn't just about that.

So supporting residents into secure and well -paid employment is also key, and work in that area

is led by our work match service, including through the delivery of two new programmes focused

on residents who have dropped out of the jobs market or who are struggling to find employment.

And we've also expanded courses available from within lifelong learning to include more courses focused on English and maths

preparation for employment interview skills CV writing

and so a

few final points the voices of residents staff and partners are really key to designing and delivering services that work for residents and this

Paper sets out some of the routes through which we receive feedback and act on that feedback

So I'm also really pleased to welcome Sarah from Wandsworth Food Bank to talk about how

we have worked together to support residents with their resilience.

So in terms of next steps, we are now starting to map activity across the Council and our

wider community that is seeking to tackle poverty.

And a core tenet of that approach and of the government's guidance newly released on the

Crisis and Resilience Fund is that tackling poverty means addressing the root causes rather

than just treating the symptoms.

So our focus now is about ensuring we utilise the remainder of the cost of living fund,

our existing base budgets, and the new crisis and resilience fund to continue with the best

of the cost of living programme and strengthen further work that builds resilience.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And thank you again.

I think you touched on the low -income family tracker briefing that was put on for members

a couple of weeks ago alongside policy and practise and I think it was very informative

for the members that were able to attend so thank you again for that.

Ms Chapman.

So we're still recovering from the Christmas cough that most people had.

So thanks so much for inviting me here today.

I've been involved in Wandsworth Food Bank since the beginning in 2013 for eight years

as a trustee and volunteer and since 2020 as a part -time advocacy manager.

I'm going to share some of what we do and what we're seeing at the food bank and how

we've been working with the council recently to support local residents with their financial

resilience.

So on average households referred to food banks like ours are left with just £104 a

week after housing costs to cover food, energy bills, travel, toiletries and other essentials.

This is only 17 % of what the average UK household is left with after paying their rents or mortgage.

Ipsos research found that half of people receiving universal credit experienced hunger in the last year,

and almost a quarter had to access a food bank or other charitable food provision.

Locally, two -thirds of people who are referred to our food bank are disabled or have long -term

health conditions.

Almost, thanks very much, almost one -third are caring for family members who have a disability.

Eight in ten people referred to us can't work at the point that they use our food bank because

of poor health, disability, or care responsibilities, and they're relying on Social Security payments

slightly universal credit which are inadequate to cover the cost of essentials.

The remainder are either looking for work and we often signpost people to work match

and other job clubs or they're in low paid part -time work which again isn't enough to

cover the essentials.

So local people we meet are often having to make really hard choices between paying their

rent to keep their home, topping up their prepayment metres to keep warm or being able

to afford sufficient food for themselves and their children.

And the stress on people and families in this situation is immense.

During 2025, we provided 13 ,000 emergency food parcels

to people referred to us by local statutory and community partners,

with 63 % of parcels going to households with children.

We supported 2 ,430 unique households at least once.

Many people we meet at our six food bank welcome centres across the borough aren't receiving

support and advice to resolve issues that are causing hardship when we meet them.

That's why what we offer is more than emergency food parcels, vital as that short -term crisis

help is.

So our trained volunteers support people to find further help, and we also provide expert

advice and support through our food bank advice project, which we've run in partnership with

of our advice since 2015.

During 2025, our Food Bank Advisors supported

648 local people across a range of issues,

with an average income gain of more than

£1 ,300 per person, as well as support

around financial resilience and budgeting.

Key advice areas were accessing disability benefits

like personal independence payment,

both from claim right up to appeal, and dealing with priority debts, with council tax arrears

being the most common debt, followed by fuel debt.

Nine in ten people supported by the Food Bank Advice Project said it had helped them reduce

their stress and anxiety, and half said it helped reduce their need for emergency food

aid.

Being able to offer longer -term person -centred support like this to resolve financial difficulties

and build financial resilience is key to what we do.

And also key is working with our partners

and local communities to ensure everybody

gets the right help long before they need

to use a food bank.

That's why I really welcome everything that Bethany shared

and everything that's in the paper.

And our work with the council,

particularly in the last few months.

During the last year it's been really great

to work with council officers like Alex, Bethany,

and Rebecca on the Money Advice Roadshows with two of them based in two of the churches

where our food bank welcome sessions are in Tooting and Battersea.

We had the council's flyers in all our food bank centres for the weeks beforehand and

invited everybody to them.

And it was really good.

It was like a really warm invite.

We could let them know exactly what was going to happen, who was going to be there.

It was a good opportunity to meet people face to face.

And people told us they really appreciated being able to talk face to face with council

officers and other advisors like Citizens' Advice and the Law Centre, especially all

in one trusted community space.

We've also really welcomed the opportunity to work with the council around council tax

debt and the use of enforcement agents to recover debt during the last year.

So in conversations at the Foodbank Centre and in a survey of our Foodbank guests, we

found that council tax debt recovery policy, especially the use of bailiffs, was causing

people increased anxiety and distress, as well as pushing people further into financial

hardship and problem debt.

Our survey found that half of Foodbank guests had struggled to pay their council tax and

had debt in the previous 12 months.

One in five had experienced enforcement action

for council tax debt in the previous 12 months,

with most, in fact 75%, having bailiffs come to their door.

Three quarters of those who'd had bailiffs at the door

reported a significant impact on their mental health,

stress, anxiety, depression, and suicidality,

with many having to access mental health services

as a result.

42 % weren't receiving council tax reduction,

despite the majority of those surveyed having a disability or long -term health condition,

which made them quite potentially eligible for it.

So I and a group of Foodbank guests who'd been affected met with Councillor Ireland,

Alex, Gavin Downton, and Anna Funk from the Council Tags team in April last year,

shared our findings and our guests shared their experiences.

Together we asked the council to consider three things.

One was to stop using bailiffs to recover council tax from residents receiving tax reduction

because we know by your scheme these are people on the lowest incomes and often with vulnerabilities

or caring responsibilities.

And instead offer a more flexible person -centred support and affordable repayment plan instead

which we felt would be a real win for the council and for the residents.

We asked them to take practise steps to contact and support more people to apply for council tax reduction because we kept meeting people who should be getting it and weren't.

And to ensure all council communication was clear and demonstrated fairness, compassion and the how can we help attitude to try and help increase trust and engagement between the council and residents in problem debt.

So I want to say a huge thank you to the Council and all of its officers involved, because

less than a year later, it's implemented all of these three recommendations.

We really welcome the new extra financial inclusion officers that Bethany mentioned,

who I believe are already helping residents on the lowest incomes make affordable council

tax repayments, rather than receiving an often terrifying from the door from Bayliss.

We really welcome the council practically using the low income family tracker to identify

1600 local households who are likely eligible for council tax reduction and inviting them

to apply.

And on a personal level, I really want to welcome the way that Councillor Ireland, Alex,

Gavin and Anna listened to our guests who quite bravely shared their experiences, which

I'm sure weren't easy to hear.

And they responded so positively and practically and treated the guests with such dignity and respect.

Our guests felt seen and heard.

Thank you.

So I hope that's helpful and I hope a lot of this may resonate with the coming crisis resilience fund.

The power of short term crisis helped to engage people and ensure situations don't spiral further.

And person centred advice and support to help people become more financially resilient longer term.

I know that we and many of our voluntary sector colleagues would love to work with the council to help make it the best crisis resilience

fund scheme possible and maybe even see Wandsworth borough be the first borough that doesn't need to have a food bank anymore

Thank you

Thank you, what a great point and I'm sure probably members from all across the committee would absolutely share that ambition

without a doubt so

I don't know if Councillor Rile, I don't know if you did want to come in at all now,

just obviously Ms. Chapman referred to the meeting that you had with the food bank earlier

on in the year.

I don't know if you wanted to share anything on that now or whether to come to you later

on that.

It was a pleasure to meet service users and you.

We learnt a lot.

I mean, hearing storeys about how people are struggling,

these are people that something goes wrong in their lives,

one small thing, and it all snowballs,

and it's very, very difficult to recover from that.

And I hope we did give you respectful.

I hope we listened to you, and I hope

that we can continue cooperating with you.

Thank you.

I actually have experience of running the small food bank.

During lockdown, I was involved with people that did shopping for people who were shielding

and other people that couldn't get out.

And these are people that live very local to me and I'd never interacted with them before.

But we learned a lot and people were very much struggling, couldn't afford to eat.

So the shopping service turned into a small top -up food bank.

We're not trying to compete with the bigger food banks, we couldn't.

The idea was that somebody might use one of the larger food banks

and then you get towards Thursday evening, the weekend,

and they run out of food.

So we set up a small service.

Anyone could walk in off the street.

You didn't have to be referred.

No appointment.

And we just gave away two bags of shopping.

And again, I met other people that lived locally to me

and I never encountered before.

I was able to give them advice on dealing with the council.

but that then developed that we realised that even wasn't enough because some of

the service users either can't afford to use electricity, we have three people who

were sleeping rough on Wimbledon Common or people that just didn't have the

facilities to cook. So that then developed into another service that we

started last September where we provide families just 30 users at the moment

with a takeaway meal once a week. And the storeys you hear, I don't think

People realise you know there's there's people that are working. They're leaving home really early in the morning

In the dark they're working full -time they come home from work

They're existing on sandwiches, and it's just one evening a week

We provide them with a hot nutritious takeaway meal with good quality ingredients

and they actually get to sit down with their families and speak with their families may have a meal together and

It it's made me feel a bit humble really I grew up in very poor deprived circumstances

but honestly not in the same way we managed to sit down and have a meal together always and

It's these people are living amongst us and you know

When I want to reach as many as possible and to give them the help. Sorry. Thank you for indulging me. Thank you

Thank you. That's cancer. Thank you very much for sharing that as well. Um, so questions

members to miss Chapman counsellor Bolton

Thank you

Thank you, Mrs. Chapman, for your presentation.

And also thank you, Ms. Bippa, very interesting.

A couple of questions that occurred to me.

I'm not an expert in this area, I don't pretend to be.

But judging by the storeys you tell about, and by storeys I don't mean make -up storeys,

but the storeys you tell about how working together has made such a big difference on

council tax debt.

I imagine that we'll be working together, that is you and the council, we'll be working

together on defining the details of this new crisis resilience fund.

I mean that's one question that I'd like to know the answer to.

Secondly, you mentioned people in work being helped by your work.

It was actually a small, I have to confess, it was a smaller percentage I thought than I had expected.

You didn't quite put a percentage, but of the number of people you do assist,

could you put a guess on what the percentage are that are in work

and what kind of incomes are they getting?

Are they not, they're presumably on minimum wage,

but they're all at pathetically low wages,

which I personally, I'm not suggesting you would,

for a moment, but I personally would back down to the loss of power of trade unions

over the last few years, which has been a social disaster for this country.

Some party ought to learn that, but they won't.

So just those questions.

Yeah, so well, from our point of view,

we would love to work with the council

on shaping the crisis resilience fund

and sharing any insights we have involving our guests.

And I know citizens advice,

Wandsworth carers have already been in touch with me

about are we gonna be able to help shape this?

And I think there's, yeah, I think we're really up

for doing anything we can do to help

to just make it as great as possible.

Can the Council of Officers say anything about working with...?

Yep, I would like to, thank you, Councillor.

We absolutely see the power in working together with our voluntary sector to help shape what

we do around spending the Crisis and Resilience Fund to make sure that it reaches the people

that need support in our borough.

I think the – just reflecting on the meeting that we had with you at the food bank, I think

that showed us also the power of involving our voluntary sector partners in shaping how

how we deliver our services and learning from them through direct engagement with some of our residents about where we could do things better.

And I think that's really important and I absolutely welcome that approach and

that's certainly how I think we've had an awful lot of success from that.

Not just in terms of working with Wandsworth Food Bank but with other voluntary sector organisations

that operate in this borough.

Yeah, and your second part of your question,

I'm actually just working on 2025 research at the minute.

I will be able to get you exact figures on,

we collect data on people whose only income

is social security, when it's a mixture of earnings

and social security and earnings only,

or no income with no recourse to public funds.

So I can get you that probably in a couple of weeks.

But anecdotally, the people I meet at the food bank are,

yes, on minimum wage is often in kind of insecure work

that care is when you're just paid for the amount of time

that you're with somebody, not for the time

you're travelling on the bus, that kind of thing.

Jobs that don't have sick pay, holiday pay,

zero hours contracts.

And then we do sometimes help people who,

we were helping a nurse from St. George's

a couple of weeks ago, but she had a combination

of her child was out of school,

so she couldn't work as many hours,

but all her costs obviously remain the same.

So it's those kind of things that we see.

Yeah, no one on a big salary comes to the food bank.

Thank you very much.

Councillor Corner.

Thank you, Chair.

I have a couple of questions for officers, but I'll start with my question for Ms. Chapman,

and thank you for your presentation to the committee.

I really appreciate it.

There are six ones who have food bank sites around the borough.

Would you be able to just paint a picture for us about which of those food banks are

most in demand?

if there are any specific local trends that are impacting some commute parts of

the community more than others in those geographic locations and what the what

we as a committee should be aware of about those. Thank you, good question.

So yeah if you go to oneswithfoodbank .org .uk and the locations tab you can see

exactly where our food bank centres are. We're in six locations across six

state of the week on Fridays we're in Battersea

and in Roehampton.

Our busiest wellness centres are on Tuesdays and Fridays

at St. Mark's in Battersea.

And followed by Roehampton on a Friday afternoon

and Tooting on a Thursday morning.

If when we, in our research, when we do it,

We map postcodes of people helped.

And if you map that over a map of indices of multiple deprivation, it exactly matches

with that.

So I'm sure with your knowledge of the borough, you can imagine where most families are coming

from.

So Roehampton ward, Falkenbrook ward, Tooting ward.

Yeah.

But again, we'll be hopefully publishing this quite as soon as we can.

So you'll be able to if you want ward data we can do that

Yeah, whatever is helpful. Does that cover everything you asked councillor corner?

Do I come back to yes, please that will try and gather up because then there might be some questions that follow on so councillor Fraser

Thank you very much for your presentation.

The remarks you made, I think mine was leading on to something that you raised.

You touched on a little about co -production with the crisis resilience fund.

And obviously we know and kind of through our work with councillors that the way often the best solutions are shaped with those inputs from the users and from our residents as well.

So I'm just interested to know whether it be through, you mentioned the Crisis Resilience

Fund, whether there was anything else about how feedback you've received from service

users has influenced either kind of the work that you're doing at the food bank or work

with the council and anything you see moving forward that might help in terms of co -production.

Thank you.

I think when we set up the food bank, we were lucky enough to have a group of people who

in hardship and had used food banks in other boroughs.

And so they were absolutely instrumental to us in like,

if we have to have a food bank because times are tough,

how do we make it as most dignifying respect

for the space as possible?

How do we make it a kind of okay place to come to,

not a horrible place to come to?

So that was key to how we designed our kind of

welcome centres, which are kind of cafe style layouts,

coffee, tea, sandwiches, high levels of volunteers

so that we can have one volunteer stays with a guest

all the way through.

We encourage volunteers to have a cup of tea

with the guests so we're sharing that together,

not just kind of watching someone have a cup of tea.

And then also just that, how to have really compassionate

conversations with people.

we talk to our volunteers and some of our volunteers who have used the food

bank help share what does it feel like when you first come to the food bank.

How can we help people feel as comfortable as possible and then sort of through

that we've introduced things like fresh fruit and veg because we know how

important that is to people in bread and eggs so that's now available to

everybody as well as the kind of standard emergency food parcel but also

that longer term piece about having the advice and the support and also really

knowing all the other support that's available in the locality like the one

stop shops which is also co -located at St. Mark's which is really helpful. Say on a

Friday we meet someone who discloses they're experiencing domestic abuse if

it's safe for them to wait till the Monday we can say come back to the same

and we will welcome you and show you into that.

So I think having those listening conversations all the time

with people using our feedback is good, but then we also do surveys

and feedback forms and things like that to have a bit more practical.

I think feedback we have from guests about Council,

I mean, something that people have really appreciated is the Access for All scheme.

Just removing barriers to going to the gym, taking your kids for a swim,

going to the fireworks, going to the theatre, it really makes a massive difference to people.

And I was just thinking of a guy we helped who's worked really hard at,

I mean this is a very small number of people at the Food Bank are there because of problems with addiction,

but this guy, that was his struggle.

And he's worked really hard with the local services,

and we helped him sign up for Access for All.

And I saw him last week, and he's been clean for about a year,

and he's been channelling his energies into going to the gym.

He's got his kids back coming to stay with him at weekends.

And that was a really key piece, as well as the kind of advice

and being able to get housed that our Food Bank Advice

project helped that access for all was a really fantastic extra piece of his recovery.

Does that answer your question?

Thank you, Councillor Apps.

Thank you, that's really inspiring actually.

And it brings me on to the next kind of question that I would have following from what you've

because obviously the council is, we're trying to move forward with being more innovative and

tackling poverty in a more systematic way. So you know we can make poverty history literally in the

borough and we now need to engage the community and the voluntary sector and kind of in that sort

of collecting that data and making sure that we're mapping out and absolutely covering all the areas

of potential poverty there.

Are there areas that you think we should be focusing on?

One thing that struck me from what you said is one of our key bits of data could be that

we know it is likely that people not paying their council tax are struggling, not always

the case but often the case.

So that's a key bit of data.

But are there other areas of data or service provision that you think we should be looking

at to make sure that we integrate that into our mapping process?

I think that came through strongly in our Council tax survey and conversations that

people said we know we have to pay our Council tax, it's not that we don't want to, we just

can't pay that big amount all at once.

So yeah, that's absolutely right.

Well I think for instance we know the groups most likely to need to use our food bank groups

groups that are over represented are food bank compared to the general population are unpaid carers,

people who are disabled or long term health conditions, social housing tenants.

People with larger families, three children more, but

although hopefully that will change in April.

and black people are overrepresented by a long way

at our food bank compared to the general population.

And all of these things speak to kind of wider

social and economic injustices that residents can face.

Yeah, so I think, I mean, we're very happy to share that data.

I know Systems of Ice and the Food Bank Advice Project

that has really good data on sort of demographic data,

but also advice areas data,

and they can go sort of quite deep into them.

So that might be a good place to start as well.

Thank you.

Did you want to come back?

Well, just to say yes, it will be good to see

most of those families with three children or more

being helped to lift out of poverty,

and working out any families, the minority of families who that won't apply to,

making sure that we're assisting them in other ways as well, I guess.

Which, thank you for all your work on that.

Thank you, quite right. Councillor Critchow.

Right. Thank you, thank you for coming to see us.

And I think I probably ought to say, hopefully the whole committee will agree with me,

is we would want to extend our thanks to you and all your volunteers because I think it's fair to

say that the fact that you have a group of people who do this as volunteers that's what keeps it

going as well and we all need to understand that and be grateful that there are people who have

the time and the inclination and the patience to do such to help you. I then had a couple of

questions. Then the first one you started to answer, which was in the paper I found

the way we've been describing poverty quite dry. There's a lot of statistics. I think

I now have a better understanding of the sort of people who are coming along because of

what you've said. And I just wondered if the officers have anything else that they might

like to think about, about how the sort of people who have to come and how we describe

what problems people are facing that everybody can understand. Because I think there's often

a level of almost blame or thinking people ought to be able to manage better. And actually

there are other things that cause problem or sometimes they are managing

and then there's a crisis like the nurse you described who was unwell which

actually throws everything out. So I just wondered if first of all if there's

anything any other group that you feel we ought to just be thinking of when

we're thinking about who comes and what it means to them and then I've got a

of the questions after.

Yeah, I mean maybe a couple of extra groups would be people,

particularly women, experiencing domestic abuse

and the kind of economic abuse aspect,

but also if they've had to suddenly move,

that can be a really difficult, obviously, situation

in many ways, but including financially.

And so having good support for people in that situation

would be really good and I've forgotten the other group that I was thinking of.

I'll come back to me.

While you think of that I would just say, can we certainly, I echo what Councillor

Critchild said about thanks to the volunteers. I would ask if we could particularly minute that in our minutes.

Yeah I'll come back to you Ms Chapman.

Yeah, I think it's really important sort of embedding dignity in all council language

because that builds trust and engagement and you know I think sometimes not just the council

but anywhere, you know people on low incomes are sort of described as vulnerable or things

like that and actually I have to say the people I've met at the food bank are some

of the most resilient people I have ever met who are coping with far more than I

have ever had to. One lady I think I met a couple of days after the announcement

of scrapping the two -child limit and she's a mum with five children and she

said when I had our children we were both working I was with my husband and

And then we had our fifth child who was disabled,

had a birth injury and was disabled.

And the toll on the relationship meant that they split up.

And she is now caring for the children on her own,

caring for the disabled baby,

and had to claim benefits for the first time in her life.

And she, I said, oh gosh, have you seen the news this week?

And she said, I heard something,

what does that mean for me?

It was amazing to be able to say it means you are going to get support for all of your

children, not just two of them.

She got really emotional and said that means I won't have to use the food bank again.

That is the kind of situation that we see every day.

Just that impact where policies really, really do impact people and are so key.

Thank you.

The next couple of questions are sort of heading a bit towards the officers here.

There are two things that I'm thinking about. Firstly, there are clearly unquantifiable benefits to the programme.

And in the paper, what I don't get a sense of is avoided costs.

Now, I do think they may be very difficult to identify because they're avoided.

I just wondered if we can give some thought to how we measure or the fact that we're making

an early intervention with, say, the debt support and all the other things where that

is where we might get a benefit later on.

I'm not saying it's easy.

And I was actually going to suggest that perhaps we as a committee might think about making

a recommendation to have a look at is there any way to identify what we think we're saving

in that way.

I appreciate the answer.

It's too difficult.

But I don't know if that would be something that we could look at.

OK, because obviously we're doing it because we think it helps

and it helps because people then are able to manage alone.

So, that's the first question, if that could be...

I don't know how we have to...

Do you want to take that now, Ms Wilson?

I was just going to think of a few examples

of where we might be able to measure that through early intervention.

One of the things, obviously, through the work that we're currently doing

and will be doing more of through the work with the Crisis and Resilience Fund is looking

at sort of catalyst to crisis, so not dealing with the symptoms but being more preemptive.

And what that should do is reduce demand on voluntary sector offerings, demand on council

services, access reductions in people having to access the crisis funds and

also things like discretionary housing payments. So there's inevitably you know

ways of measuring it we just it just needs some some thoughts around how we

would collect that data.

Ms Wilson I wasn't expecting you to be able to answer I just

think maybe for the next time that and I'm sure the committee will discuss it

That's one thing. The next thing, sorry, was I've always been interested in every contact counts.

And what is also clear from the paper is that the way you get hold, you find someone who wants, who needs the help, is in myriad different ways.

And I also was wondering, it's another sort of possible recommendation, is whether we should try and increase the rollout.

I was thinking about partner agencies like GPs and schools. Almost everyone

invariably ends up at the GP if they can be the sort of people they also in a

position where they can signpost even through leaflets. There's a huge number

of people in GP surgery and they spend a lot of time sitting there looking at the

wall waiting for something to happen. I know because I used to run one and it's a

And then, and that might be another recommendation.

And then the last thing I was going to comment about was,

I noticed that a lot of the people, this is in the paper about who goes to the CAB,

are also our own council tenants.

Now, the way the council has been dealing with people who are in council tax arrears

and trying to make that handleable for people.

The other thing I would be interested in is whether there is more work we can do about our own tenants,

getting them before they get to the bailiff stage.

Because my experience from casework is often people just go into a sort of a total funk

and actually the first time you see it is you get the bailiff letter and they've turned up at an

advice session. So whether there is work with that group of people, it's 33 % of the people who go to

CAB, whether we could also work more with those to try and get them early. Thank you. Miss Wilson,

no doubt you want to come in, particularly on the last point. Yes, obviously referrals to

enforcement agents is absolutely last resort as is evicting anyone from

council properties and the housing rents financial inclusion team does a

significant amount of work and actually leads the way on has led the way in

terms of kind of council response to helping support households who are

to pay their rents through their financial inclusion work.

So they do a lot of work around things

like establishing payment arrangements

to help tenants pay their rent

and also cover any areas that they might have.

They work really closely with them

to do some of that work around

longer term financial sustainability.

So that means helping them to apply for benefits

and other support.

so that might be getting access to social tariffs for different things.

So getting them access to support that they're entitled to

but not currently receiving.

They do a lot of early intervention work.

So they, for example, do tenancy workshops for all new tenants

to make sure they understand that the responsibility

for paying their housing costs

is a priority debt and they need to make sure that they treat it as such, but also in making

sure that they're very clear about what support is available to them should they be struggling

to make those payments.

And then even advice around managing their budgets and that kind of thing all forms part

of that early intervention and education work.

And then they have built in the use of Lyft and other data

as part of their sort of data -driven engagement

with residents so that they identify those

in most need of support and then proactively engage

with them at as early a stage as possible.

And it's, you know, all of that support is

about helping sustain tendencies and avoid the possibility

of having to use enforcement agents or evict people from their homes.

And then on the point about making every contact count, and I think I have a related question

if I may.

So I think we're doing really great work in the kind of financial inclusion team and the

work of the financial resilience officers, but they obviously sit within the council.

I think this kind of is a similar point to Councillor Critchard's.

residents who are struggling or may be struggling in the future might not think to come to the the council and it's great that the

food bank and

Citizens advice have got awareness of these schemes

But I just wonder when we think about building that community resilience

How far we are on the journey of making sure that kind of other smaller community

Organisations or others working on the ground kind of are aware of what we're we're doing and that the door is open for that

support

I just wonder if you could touch on that as well as the,

maybe that's similar in terms of opening up,

making every contact count training to those organisations

as well possibly in terms of their awareness.

Yes, I can talk to that point.

So absolutely it's been a core part of the cost of living

programme is trying to make everyone as aware as possible

and go to voluntary sector forums,

all of those kind of ways, doing leaflets.

But we still know that we are missing people.

So one of the key things that's come out through the Crisis and Resilience Fund guidance

is this concept of warm referrals rather than just signposting.

And one of the four strands under CRF is investment in community connexion, whether that's

a digital platform or some kind of network convening.

That is one of the four things that we do need to deliver under that fund.

and we've been having conversations literally today and will continue to with partners across

the borough about what that should look like.

There are existing platforms like ReferNet that perhaps haven't been used fully, whether

those are the right thing to go back to or not.

There's all kinds of conversations and lessons to learn from what hasn't worked, definitely,

but yeah, it has to be a core tenet of our CRF design.

And so yes, we will absolutely be looking at that more.

Thank you, that's good to hear.

And Councillor Acanoe, did you want to come in on that point?

And then I'll come to Councillor Hedges.

Yep, sure.

Just touching on how we communicate with a wide range of voluntary sector organisations next week.

For example, we have the Voluntary Sector Network meeting.

I think there's something like 72 different groups which are signed up online.

20 will be coming into the town hall to actually where we will share information with a wide

variety of voluntary sector organisations about, I think actually someone from your

team is coming to talk about cost of living, all the grants that are on offer, access for

all, everything that we want to offer because actually we find that the best way to get

existing networks and that is why we are working closer with the voluntary sector

services like yours and like many other organisations across the whole of

Wandsworth and I've already been sent there are people watching this and they

say you've done a really good job Sarah so thank you.

Ms Chapman, do you have any comment on that point about kind of sharing kind of knowledge?

I don't know if there's a bit left field, but I think our experiences, and sometimes

the social work teams with the high turnover might not always know what the council's own

provision is, so we're quite often telling people about it.

And then also just the general involvement of public health.

I don't know how or to what extent the sort of finance team and public health are working together on this.

I know the council's mental health strategy,

I think one of the four pillars is about tackling poverty because of its impact on health, particularly mental health.

And for instance, we have lots of community mental health teams referring to us,

Particularly when people's disability benefits stops,

and the system's really hard to navigate anyway,

but especially if you have experienced

mental health difficulty at the time.

And so whether or not those teams can access

financial inclusion support directly,

rather than having to refer them to us,

and then we help them do it,

we would love to be cut out as a middle man.

And that if that kind of advice and support could be embedded in community mental health teams, for instance, that could be amazing.

Thank you, hopefully we will capture that.

Councillor Hedges.

Thank you, Chair.

And firstly, thank you to all the officers and to Miss Chapman.

Really appreciate everything you do and the work that you continue to do as well.

So very well done and your storeys are very moving.

I was sitting here thinking, I don't know if I can actually ask a question because I

just feel quite moved by what you've said.

But what I am keen to understand is, obviously in the last six months we've seen inflation

go up by 3 .4%.

That's a significant amount when we first started a few years ago on the finance committee.

I'm just keen to understand if you've seen more people coming in and also, just to say

I was really shocked by half the visitors that come to see you struggle with paying

council tax debt.

So with the worry that our council tax may go up in a few years' time, it worries me

that we may not have the infrastructure to deal with.

You may need to grow, basically, but no keen to understand the six -month trend if there's

a correlation to inflation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Hedges.

I think we, yeah, I'm not able to speak in the last six months.

I think what we see, what we've seen in the last year is what we've kind of seen every

year that the winter months are really difficult when people are trying to heat their home,

keep the lights on for longer, that kind of thing.

That's just sort of remained the same.

I think inflation is going up and food and sometimes staples of food are hit hardest

and people on the lowest incomes spend the bigger proportion of their income on food

and more well -off families.

So it is really difficult, but I think it's not as difficult as it was when inflation

was much, much higher and prices were kind of, you know, people were telling us, you

I used to be able to go and buy pasta for this amount of money because people know how much things cost in granular detail

And which shops are cheaper, you know, they're really

it's like a military operation for low -income families to find the best prices and

So I think it's probably a few years ago that we saw that more

Where pasta had doubled or the price of cheese people like I can't afford cheese anymore and that kind of thing

So yeah, it's kind of more just more of the same at the moment I would say

Like cancer hedges, I'm struggling about this question. I'm not sure that's fair or not. But by the way, I hope you're cold

From what you've seen and that's obviously an awful lot

First of all, whether it's a fair question, do you think, except for where criminal events

take place perhaps, can you see that eviction or use of bailiffs is ever really justified?

I mean, really justified in the sense that obviously it achieves a short -term end, but

what it does to the people at the receiving end of it and who picks up the pieces afterwards,

Do you think it's ever justified, do you think?

I can imagine maybe if you've got someone really wealthy

who just doesn't want to pay a bill, maybe.

But for the people we meet, it really is a question of,

I can't, I literally haven't got the money

to pay this bill right now.

I do know I have to pay it,

but can I do that spread over time?

And I think there's a lot of evidence

that the costs of using bailiffs in terms of human costs,

costs to mental health services,

costs to GPs when people visit because they're so stressed,

sometimes knock on impact on social services

because of families in distress,

outweighs the money that is returned from it.

I think, is it around a court, like from the councils,

your data, you get about a quarter of council tax debt back via bailiffs and that for low -income

families has come I would argue a bigger holistic cost than that and there is a better way of getting

that money back which is often much more effective. Yeah. Thank you for that. Councillor Corner. Thank you. I have a question for officers. I'm really interested to read about the work of the

financial resilience officers and I'm just wondering if officers could just paint a picture

for us about the various activities that they undertake and the levers they can pull to

support residents and make a difference to their household finances beyond the low income

family trackers.

I'm thinking mostly about the kind of appointments that they have with residents and I'm interested

in if residents can kind of have an ongoing relationship

with these people and work with them over time,

or is it just kind of you have an appointment

and an assessment or a model like that.

And then the final bullet point on page 28 of the pack

talks about how 24 Wandsworth residents

have received extra support or welfare

because of conversations held by

the financial resilience offices.

But that's over a period between April and November 2025, which is eight months.

Sorry, yeah, eight months.

So 24 people being helped over eight months is three a month.

There are three offices.

So is it really correct to say that the offices are only helping kind of one person or household

a month?

They must be doing a lot more.

Also, I'd like to hear a bit about that and understand what kind of return for investment,

to want a better phrase, we can expect from that team going forward.

So I think it might help if I just ask a clarifying question.

Is it the financial resilience navigators or the financial inclusion officers within

the council?

Financial resilience officers mentioned on page 28.

Okay.

of whom three have been appointed to council tax and housing benefit overpayments.

But if that's part of a wider team, if you could set that out for us.

Yes, yeah, absolutely.

And yes, so I think that specific statistic relates to work that the benefits team have

been doing themselves.

So before that extra officer came into post, so that's something they've been doing as

part of their core activity rather than something that specific one officer has been delivering.

So I think in terms of the kind of levers that they can pull, the ways that they can

work with residents, we are developing that still, I think, for the three new offices

that we've got in.

So those are the ones in, I'm going to get them all now, Housing, Benefit Overpayments

and Council Tax, Discretionary Fund, and so on, Housing Benefit.

But we do have quite a successful case study of having that extra officer within the rent

collection financial inclusion team.

So I think that's on one of the previous slides, the slide before about embedding financial

inclusion.

It's got a lovely picture of that officer actually receiving an award.

So that's where you can see that specific officer has worked with 290 residents over

the period between April and December.

So I think the exact targets and outputs for each officer

will probably differ a little bit depending on the team

that they're in.

So for example, this office has been

able to do quite a lot of high level, relatively quick

turnaround stuff that's seen these great results.

I think that there will be some of them who

will have to do more returning work going back,

doing longer work with those residents.

So the purpose of embedding them in those teams is to make sure that the approach they

take works for the different teams that they're in.

So yeah, I don't think that there's a single kind of output or target for each officer

that we could put across them, but we're trying to extend the impact that we've seen through

this one officer that has been an extra officer in post, if that answers that question.

and how can people engaging with the team,

can they kind of build a relationship

with the named officer over time,

or is it a kind of drop in approach and model?

And how can, how are residents informed

about this team's availability?

Yes, so they can build a relationship over time.

Primarily, I think we are identifying the residents

as part of outreach and using Lyft,

as opposed to taking referrals directly from residents.

But if somebody were to say to a council tax officer,

I'm struggling, that would then be a referral to them.

So there's not a form people can fill out on the website,

but they absolutely will be directed

if they come into those teams and say that they are struggling.

But yes, they certainly can have more than one single conversation.

The reason I asked about whether it was the navigators you were talking about

is because that's again a kind of step up in the level of intensive support.

So if even our own financial inclusion team has somebody who is probably going to need

support over say a six month period, they might be better directed to the navigators

because they do even more intensive support.

So it's almost a ladder of how much support does someone need.

Thank you.

And then just one final very quick follow up.

Understand that the council had commissioned a report or received funding to receive a

report to Commissioner about the causes of low pay in Roehampton. Has that report been

finalised yet? I'd be quite interested to read it. I understand that the date of publication

was going to be checked this month.

Yes, so there has been a slight delay, I think, in appointing the research partner for that.

So that was led by economic development.

The reason that there was a delay was because there were some other boroughs potentially

who were going to come in and add to that and do a wider piece of work on low pay across

southwest London.

But I think we are now just going ahead because we don't want to hold off any longer.

So it's not ready yet, but it is in progress.

When can we expect to be able to read it?

I would need to come back to you and I will also cheque with economic development colleagues.

Okay, before or after the first day of May?

I genuinely don't know but I will come back.

Number picked out, complete random.

If we can get it by then great but it sounds like you can't.

I can't, I don't think that it's anticipated to be a super long piece of field work.

I think that they think it can be done relatively quickly but I couldn't put a date on it now.

Thank you, Councillor Ayles.

Thank you, I think it's been a really great session actually, really interesting and moving

as some of our colleagues have said. But I know that this is an area where our two cabinet

members, Councillor Akinola and Councillor Ireland, have really shaped a lot of this

agenda and really led in this area. So I was keen to hear from them to kind of wrap up.

Firstly, what are the areas where they're kind of really proud of something that's been

achieved, which might sound a bit of a sop, but I'd also like to know about where they

think the next area of challenge is coming for them in this area. Thank you.

Councillor Apps. I'm not sure if Mr. Connor is going to be able to speak, but I guess

the part that I'm most proud of is the way that we initially started this piece of work

with the Cost of Living Commission and how we engaged with our residents. And there's

actually develop the way that we work with our voluntary sector, our businesses, and our residents.

So I think this is, it's changed the way that we operate across the council, not just in this particular area.

And the anti -poverty work that we've been doing, but in all other different departments as well.

So I'm quite pleased about that.

And I know that I've heard from residents, and I'm sure you all have as well, that they feel that the council is more approachable.

We've actually asking for their thoughts on how we have acted and how we plan on acting and moving forward

And the support that we offer to them in places that are suitable for them

So part of the cost of living Commission

We did go out into the communities and meet them and not just expect everyone to come to us at the town hall

Which can be quite oppressive and is also

Historically a place where bad things happen as well as people get married and also christen their babies and stuff

but historically bad things happen here.

So I'm most proud of that work.

And a work in which we can always get better

at listening to our residents,

listening to the voluntary sector as well.

I'm particularly pleased that we've just agreed

to put a whole bunch more money into the grants,

Wantsworth Grants Fund to support our voluntary sector

to do what they do best.

And I just hope that we can continue for this,

the way that we work with our residents,

listening to people to be spread across

across all of the rest of the departments and that they're really more integrated into the work of the Council.

Thank you. For me, it's – we've moved from crisis support to building resilience.

And I'm really proud of some of the LIFT campaigns. I know you've won awards.

I mean, just looking at pension credit, I think we're about to start another campaign, Artme No. 4.

but I know we've helped over 500 pensioners and that getting that benefit opens the doors to so much more.

It's worth over 10 ,000 pounds more than that now.

And I think what you've achieved so far is that over 17 million pounds worth over the lifetime of these households.

I like the better off and I like the entitled to calculators.

But I think we still got to reach more people and trying to persuade people

to trust us and to approach us and to tell us when they're in trouble,

because like you say, nobody is going to lose their home

as long as they engage with us.

So it's just that's the challenge, getting people to open up to us

and approach us.

And you do a lot of good work in that, which is very good.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Fraser.

Thank you. So yeah, so my question, and I think actually Councillor, I can always tease me up for that one,

because actually it was talking about the cost of living commissioners and actually have we had any feedback

from them on how the findings have been shaped and have you had feedback from them on how things have progressed?

So, probably a year after we brought the recommendations to this committee, we wrote out to all the

commissioners and then obviously there's an appendix to the paper we're discussing now,

which sets out the progress we've made on the recommendations from the Cost Living Commission.

We sent that out to all of the commissioners and we got some really positive feedback from

them about how the recommendations are being taken forward with some specific reference

to the work in Roehampton.

As Councillor Acanola said,

we went out in the community with the commission.

When they went to Roehampton,

it kind of really had quite a significant impact on them.

So that was one of the key themes

that came through the report.

So that was a key kind of positive strand we had back.

Thank you.

I think then we will leave the discussion there.

Thank you very much, Ms. Chapman, for joining us.

I think it really has added a lot to the discussion,

and it's been humbling.

It's been great to celebrate what we've achieved,

but also look ahead at what more there is to do.

Because I think clearly the statistics

show this is a new normal, and the challenges

that families are facing in the borough is real,

and in some instances increasing.

I think it's been a shame that we haven't managed in some way

linger on some of the innovation.

I think we've touched on it a little bit.

But just to celebrate those members of staff

who've won awards, I think the Thames Water work

has been celebrated nationally, that's really good.

We didn't get to touch on the fact

that we're part of the innovative pilot

with the DWP about ILove.

I think, really look forward to what we can achieve there,

because we've already achieved 21 million

for residents across a lifetime already,

and with added accurate data,

potentially that could be more.

So yeah, there's more that we could discuss,

but we have got other items on the agenda so unfortunately we'll have to

move on. Was there any, are we noting the report or I know Councillor Critchard you

had some recommendations that you were kind of alluding to. Do you want the

members of the committee to consider those? Yes please if that's okay. So the

two I had were increased rollout of every contact counts to partner agencies

like GPs and schools and my note was trying to get others. We've talked a lot about our

partners in VCS but it's elsewhere. And the other one we talked about was investigating

how we can report avoided costs. I've left that quite open, we've talked a bit about

that but I, whether that has to be a sort of a recommendation for you from here, is

that okay?

If members are supportive, I think the – on the point about making every contact count

and taking Ms. Chapman's point, I wonder whether we should also include the point.

And Ms. Pepper referred to it in the report, I think, about how we have done some work

to increase awareness across the Council of the Financial Resilience Navigators.

But that piece of work that Ms. Chapman pointed to about awareness within our own Council

staff and statutory partners of this work.

So perhaps that could also be picked up as part of that recommendation and council about him. I

Was wondering don't like making policy off the cuff, but I was wondering whether amongst our PIs

Mostly I forgot what that stands for, but you know what I mean

Those yep should be

evictions and use of bailiff staff amount and you know use thereof

Yeah, I'm obviously with a target to reduce them.

Yeah, Mr. Connolly, is that data that we even carry?

Maybe we can note that we can look into whether we – I know there can be issues about what

we actually managed to gather.

But.

So I think in our key performance indicator set,

we have indicators which are directional,

which we can benchmark and which we set targets for.

So I'm not sure that that specific indicator

would fit within the key performance set as such.

However, obviously there are kind of update reports

that come to committee where things like that

could be covered or equally kind of the anecdotal work

that's done around that kind of prevention work

again could bring that in.

Perhaps we'll, Councillor Condon,

do you want to comment on this point?

Yeah, I mean, it's very interesting information

and it would be of use to the committee to understand it.

It would be useful as well just to have a briefing

from officers about how this could work

in a practical sense.

if we are committing or have the ambition to not use bailiffs at all except that you know in the

perhaps not in you know except with the exception of perhaps the case of someone who just

Has the money but is refusing to pay they might actually create perverse incentives

But it would be really interesting to hear kind of a detailed officer piece of work

Maybe the way that I would miss listen, did you want to come in now? I was just gonna say

I think that's interesting.

I think a lot of the work that we're doing around using data to help us segment debt

so it's clearer about separating out those who can pay but aren't versus those that can't

pay just because they don't have the means to do so.

So I think the approach around how we use, what recovery action we take should be very

different for those two kind of cohorts of households and we're certainly

working in that way already. I'd suggest maybe as a way forward is perhaps this

is we can note that this is an area that we've talked about this evening and

it's of real interest to members and I think post -election maybe this is

something that could be looked at in more detail as a separate part of this

3 Improving the Financial Resilience of Residents (Paper No. 26-19)

broader piece of work on on financial resilience and we can understand what

data we hold and where we're making decisions here.

That's what I propose as a way forward on that.

So we have Councillor Critchard's two recommendations.

I thought Councillor Belton, you might have come in

on the point that you made in the lift briefing

and which Ms. Chapman actually referred to as well

about communication and this ambition to strive

towards making sure we use dignity and compassion

and respect in our communication.

I think that is something that we touched on

a bit in the briefing and maybe that's something as well if members would be

minded to we can we can note that as something that we would recommend the

council continue to take forward fine so we will note those so recommend those

note the report and move on then to the next item on the agenda thank you very

noting thanks to miss Chapman and officers thank you so much um so moving

4 The Council's Transformation Programme (Paper No. 26-20)

on then to item for the council's transformation programme so members will

recall that at committee in October last year we heard from the council's chief

executive Mr. Travers regarding the council's new comprehensive

transformation programme delivering this transformation is about rethinking what

we do and how we do it and perhaps a mission for it might be if there's a

better way to do it let's find it so and what we want is we want a more

resident centric digitally enabled organisation that delivers quality

services to residents obviously within a sustainable budgetary framework

that's what is ahead of us. So members are keen to understand more about the

programme three months on from when we heard from Mr. Travers outlining the

initial portfolio so members we're welcoming tonight Mr. Wills Fleming

Transformation Director and he will provide an introduction to the report

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Chair.

As you pointed out, September's Cabinet received an update on the MTFS, which set out our ambition to establish a Council -wide transformation programme.

And this report is intended to give a high -level overview of the progress we've made since that point in time.

As you've touched upon, the programme is centred around delivering an ambition to be a truly responsive Council to the changing expectations of our residents.

and also to respond to the challenges we face around increasing demand and a new financial

context.

I think it's important to stress at this stage we are at the early scoping stage, so you'll

get a sense from the report that we're very much in that kind of diagnostic phase.

But the report tries to set out the progress that we've made around resourcing, including

the appointment of external expertise to support the programme, and some of the governance arrangements

that we put in place, including how we'll manage things like demonstrations of value

for money and benefits.

And I'm happy to take any questions that you have on the paper.

Thank you.

Councillor Graham, I think you had your hand up.

Thank you.

So on page 59, it talks about one of the four key outcomes of the transformation programme

being a balanced MTFS.

So, as a preliminary question, obviously it then notes the rising demand for services

and increasing costs.

Now, we had the MTFS figures in September, at which point the funding gap for 26 -27 was

21 .7 million, rising to 37 .1 million, and then by 28 -29, 51 .2 million.

Are those figures more or less the same now as they were in September or have they come down?

Do you want to take that, Mr. Wells -Fellyn, or should Mrs. Murray take it?

Yes, sorry, Chair. I think that's probably more appropriate for me.

The figures are currently being reviewed.

the main change since September, as you all know from the briefing we had a couple of

weeks ago, is the provisional finance settlement and the impact of the fair funding review.

So, no, those figures aren't the same, and there'll be an update to the next finance

committee with the latest figures.

Yes, because you partially anticipated my next question, but I'm taking it that just

the rising demand for services and increasing costs, that aspect, that financial funding

gap aspect is still approximately around 50 million by 28 -29?

Well, some of that, yes, but some other items have been identified. We've got a reduction

in our actuarial valuation on the pension fund, for instance. We've identified some

efficiencies early on as well. So it's not just those figures that will impact on the

bottom line, but in that kind of range. And then the fair funding impact would be on top

of that effectively. Okay, so on page 54 it says that the intent of the

transformation programme is to reduce the council's costs by 45 million pounds a

year ongoing in three years time. So as things stand and the fact that 45

million is quite ambitious given if you compare it to the change programme and the

level of savings secured by that but let's just assume that the

transformation programme was a complete success on that 45 billion.

That still wouldn't actually close the gap just for rising demand for services and increasing

costs.

But we know on top of that 50 million, we then see in terms of fair funding by 28, 29,

around an additional 80 million.

So where is that £85 million going to come from if it isn't going to come from the transformation

programme?

Mr. Mayor, do you want to comment now?

I can give an initial answer, definitely.

The transformation programme has been set at an initial starting point of £45 million

and I think the paper is honest enough to say that that's a figure that is a starting

point that we will review.

I mean, until we get the detailed diagnostics, we won't know whether that's higher or lower

than it could or should be, and James will be able to talk about that a bit more.

When we come to talk about the budget at the next meeting, we have got other things that

we can and we should be looking at in order to deliver a balanced budget.

So we've got reserves, we will be looking at how we deploy our reserves, and we've got

options around counter -attacks, then we'll be looking at what we need to do with that

as well.

but the point at this stage is the transformation programme isn't able to identify the exact figure

because we haven't done the detailed work that will determine whether we need to go

bigger, better and bolder effectively.

Before I come back to you, Councillor Graham, I'm going to bring in Mr Wells -Flemming

just on the comment in the paper around the initial ambition being to reduce the Council's

cost by 45 million and just to understand that figure and the opportunity for it to

move up and down, perhaps if it's going to be used in some maths, perhaps we can just

understand where we get to with that figure and how it could change.

Yeah, absolutely. The 45 million pound figure referenced in the paper is a starting statement

of intent and an ambition. We think that's an achievable figure based on conversations

with executive directors, budget setting processes, based on work done elsewhere, based on external

or support that we've got. Do we have an ambition to stretch beyond that? Absolutely if possible.

What I'm not going to do is sit here now and give you a cast iron guarantee on any fixed

figure. We will do the detailed work. We present the results of that detailed work at the appropriate

moment in time, and that will set out very clearly what each element of the programme is

going to be delivering in terms of financial savings alongside the service improvement

elements that we're also going to be delivering as part of the programme. So it's a starting

ambition and we'll be clear to update everybody about how that progresses over time.

Councillor Grant, thank you.

So I understand that, I understand that it's initial, but the point is if the initial figure

is 45 million, we're not going to get it to 130 odd million, and therefore there will

still be a gap.

And to turn back to Mrs. Merritt's point, as she rightly says, the only remaining levers

to pull, unless there are going to be spending cuts beyond this, and even then there are

certainly things you can cut when you're talking about statutory services, that these reserves

and these council tax.

Now reserves are not ongoing, they run out.

In fact, this level of gap would see the 166 million of usable reserves currently to be

left this April exhausted before you got to the end of the three -year period.

So that only leaves council tax, doesn't it?

On this transformation programme and with the level of reserves we have, the only way

to achieve the balanced MTFS is to increase council tax.

Is that correct?

Who would you like to answer that question, Mrs. Merrick?

These are all discussions that we will have, number one in February, but also that medium -term

financial strategy in September will sit alongside the outcome of that first diagnostic phase,

So I think we will know so much more in the summer because we'll know, as has been said,

whether the 45 million is the right figure, whether it could be more, what the scope is

to push it further.

We'll also know more about the direction of travel in terms of the finance settlement.

We haven't got the final settlement yet.

We've done a consultation response around the level of funding that we've been given.

So there are factors we don't know yet.

We've set a target as an ambition and we will continue to push that and we will continue

to look at reserves and we will continue to look at council tax.

I can't really say more beyond that other than that September report is going to be

a really significant part of how we tackle this and that's when we'll know more about

it.

I will give you one more question as you didn't speak on the first paper but then I will move

on because I do have more hands.

Given what you just said, nevertheless it is right to say that the Labour government

is assuming that we will increase this Council, this administration will increase Council

tax by more than 80 % after the elections in May and is withdrawing of funding to an equivalent

sum.

That is correct, isn't it?

It's a factual question.

The modelling that government has done does assume a notion or level of council tax.

It doesn't dictate or confirm that that is what we have to do.

It gives us the power to do it and it makes an assumption within its modelling.

Beyond that, it is clear, government has made it clear that council tax remains a local

decision.

But there are no other options available because we've just discovered three minutes right

now.

Let's go through some other questions, but there's a whole paper.

Councillor Fraser.

Thank you very much, Chair.

And actually, I was reflecting on

part of this on the conversation that we had on the last paper

and think about kind of co -production and working with residents

and those who are affected, really.

So I guess it's probably just to understand what and what your vision is

or what your thoughts are in involving meaningfully involving residents in this

and thinking about through the single front door

and any revised services, any thought you've given

to involving them, because they'll be the ones

who are most affected as part of this.

Yeah, thank you.

And just to echo the comments earlier,

it's actually really helpful to follow an item

like the item that we just have,

because it's a really live example of the power of working,

not only working in partnership with the voluntary sector,

but also the power of engaging with our residents

and our service users to design the solutions.

And I think there isn't gonna be a one size fits all

through the transformation programme.

So this isn't gonna be, we're gonna go out

and we're gonna talk to people about this

slightly like academic bureaucratic thing

around the transformation programme.

What we will absolutely be doing though

is engaging with our residents

and engaging with service users

about the impacts of the changes

that we're proposing directly with them.

So in some instances that will be very targeted.

So if we think about some of our social care area,

that'll be talking about working with

those targeted service users.

some of our customer service changes,

it's a much broader engagement process.

So as we work through the next six months

and we start to shape some of those business cases,

we will be really cognizant about capturing the impact

and when we get into the design phase,

then we're into that kind of co -design

and that co -production, working with those service users

and impacted residents, absolutely, yes.

Yeah, and I think, sorry, just to add to that,

I think the point, and sorry,

because it leads on from the last point,

I think sometimes you see when it's taken

from what you have termed as that academic and business case,

sometimes you see them when it does reach end users,

some of that language isn't.

So I think reflecting on some of the points raised before

about that caring language and softening it,

untailoring it to those audiences

will be really good when it gets to that point.

Yes, I was just going to say,

and I am always conscious that in this kind of forum

we will invariably talk about money a lot.

And that's absolutely fine.

That's why we're here,

and I expect that to be an ongoing process.

How we talk about the services we deliver outwardly

need to be very different.

And so I will apologise in advance.

In every meeting I sit in front of you,

if I tend to talk in a sort of a slightly technocratic way.

No, but it's really important that we recognise

that the kind of programme construct that we talk about

and the way we manage ourselves internally

is very different to how we go out

when we engage with our service users

about the impact on them.

And so I appreciate the fact that you've raised that point

so early in the meeting, thank you.

Councillor Lee, did you want to come in on this point

and then I'll come to that?

Yeah, just to come in on this point

on sort of the co -production,

I also wanted to ask the same sort of question

but about our staff, our frontline staff,

how will we engage them with the co -development

of this project?

And yeah, obviously they are the frontline

who will be working with our service users.

Yes, thank you.

I'm sure, I'm guessing there will be a question later in the meeting about the external partner,

for example, that we've appointed.

One of the key criteria that we set ourselves when looking for a partner was a track record

in really working with our services.

So we absolutely didn't want the slightly stereotypical consultants who come in and

have a set approach do it to us.

We were looking for a partner that has a track record of coming in, working with our frontline staff,

working with our team leaders to really understand the local context,

because lots of people will talk about the kind of local government context, and there's some truth in that.

But every area is very different.

And so it's really important that those solutions and those business cases are driven from frontline services.

And, you know, I think we certainly hope that we've appointed a partner that has a very

strong track record in doing that.

Thank you.

Councillor Richard -Jones.

Thank you, Chair.

I want to go back to the finances, if that's okay, because I've got a few follow -on questions

from the exchange between Ms. Mary and Councillor Graham.

So as Councillor Graham outlined, the Council's medium -term financial strategy already shows

a deficit of 50 million going forwards. Add to that the reduction in the grant we get

from government, from the fair funding review, which is 80 million, that gives a deficit

of 130 million. Assuming the transformation programme on its own terms achieves its maximum

aspiration by 2029. That gives a surplus of, or saving of 45 million. So we are still in

an annual deficit then of 85 million. And Ms. Mary said there were two ways that we

could, or there were two levers we could use to deal with that. The first was reserves,

and Councillor Graham pointed out that the total usable reserves at the moment are 166

So assuming we just relied on reserves, within two years the reserves are gone.

Then Ms. Merry referred to council tax options, which I think is obviously speak for council

tax increase.

She then spoke about a report coming to this committee in September where there'd be more

financial information available.

But it's fair to say that nothing could come along by September that is going to fundamentally

change that picture and there won't be council tax increases.

Is that correct?

So it's a good summary of the position that there are actually three levers.

There's reserves, council tax, and a revisit of the transformation programme.

and the important point about the summary is we will know more about the outcome of the diagnostic phase

if we need to crank things up and there's the ability to crank things up, we will.

So I think that's as much as I can say on it.

Council tax is one of the three levers, absolutely it is, and we will have to look at that.

And any administration will have to look at that, but to do that without having done this diagnostic work,

I think at this point is speculation that I think we should probably leave until September.

I can't really say more than that, other than they are the options and we will have to look

at them all and we'll have to look at them seriously.

To follow up to that, if I may, the first is that it's true that the diagnostic exercise

could prove to be just like the Fair Funding Review lobbying exercise, whereas the results

could actually turn out to be far worse for us than we were anticipating.

That's one point.

That could make life worse.

The second is this.

So the other council that we're aware of that is also facing a very punitive settlement

in the fair funding review is Kensington and Chelsea.

And they characterise – it's a very similar magnitude of grant funding that they're

losing actually.

And they characterise it as 60 percent of their controllable budget.

What is it? How could we express that in similar terms in Wandsworth?

This 80 million reduction, what percentage is that of our controllable budget?

I don't have that figure to hand because I'd have to determine what controllable meant, but I can definitely get that.

Okay, we'll work on that. So I've got quite a lot of hands now to say.

I'll come to Councillor Apps, Hedges, Critchard, Belton and then back to Councillor Graham.

Thank you very much. So I'm very interested in how we get member involvement at this kind of time

with we're thinking about you know and what kind of programme we're going to have to introduce new

councillors who arrive in May to the scene you know how they understand our processes but also

So it would be really important for them to understand and for us all to understand how

this programme is developing and have proper input into its development too, so that we

can help shape it as the political administration and councillors.

I had the opportunity to go to, I think I might have mentioned it before here actually,

I had the opportunity to go to a London scrutiny event.

And at that, there were some consultants,

Newton, who gave a display and a presentation about their work

with, I think, Southampton around care homes

and about reducing demand.

And it was incredibly, I have to say,

I've worked with some pretty shoddy consultants previously.

I have to say, I was very impressed with this

Because it showed the level of data analysis that took place

in order to make sure that they understood the picture,

and then set some very firm, real, objective objectives,

if you know what I mean.

So I'm keen to know, first of all,

how will we make sure that members are involved

in some of these discussions and how this programme shaped?

And the consultants that you've commissioned,

And can members have the opportunity to have some real engagement with them and

learn about what process they're planning to take forward?

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Aksen.

And perhaps as well as touching on member involvement, Councillor Apsen touched on the

external consultant which you touched on in your oral opening and in the report.

So perhaps it is a good time now for you just to kind of explain their involvement in this

Programme which which seems like a different step and a new step for as a council and how that's going to impact the programme as well

Yep, so and so I can confirm that we're still not formally in contract, but we're a preferred bit of staging

We're beginning the process of getting into contract

So Newton so Newton Europe are are the other consultants that will be our external partner

I'm really pleased that you had a positive experience with them with them at the event again

As I said earlier, we were really keen

that we worked with a partner that had that track record.

And you touched on another really key point,

which I'm really pleased that you raised,

around the level of data quality that goes into it.

I know there was a brief reference

to the previous change programme.

I've heard a lot about the previous change programme here.

I'm not here to speak about the previous change programme.

I have the benefit of having only been here for a few months.

What I am really clear is that anything

that we present to you through this programme

will be based on data and evidence,

and we will be clear about where we're targeting improvements.

We will be clear about how you will measure

whether we have achieved that,

both financially and non -financially.

And so that's why it was really important

that we had a partner that built the case with us

using that deep data approach.

And it's no secret, in my most recent role previously,

I was in Southampton,

so I have first -hand experience of doing that,

and so I'm really pleased that

that was a positive case study that you've seen.

I think in terms of wider member engagement,

clearly we are at the very early scoping stage.

Obviously, exec directors, as they're starting to think

about the areas for exploration,

they're talking to their cabinet members.

I have experience with, in other places,

of doing much more, much broader engagement with members,

and I don't see any reason why at the right moment

that Newton shouldn't come and present

some of the emerging findings,

some of their experience elsewhere,

and some of their expertise,

both within the public sector,

But also within the private sector because we've also picked a partner that has experience across sectors

And so I'm happy to take away an action to think about how we can programme that in at the right at the right moment

during the course of the work

Thank You councillor hedges

Yes, sorry.

Thank you, Chair.

I think you can hear me okay.

Thank you for the report as well.

What are your key delivery risks for the transformation programme and what contingency plans do you

have in place to ensure savings are made?

just thinking about that 45 million figure.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

So on the 45, I think we've said this a few times now,

it is our starting point.

So that 45 is not predicated on detailed business cases

and therefore understanding the precise risks

around the figure won't be possible

until we've actually worked through that detail.

I think with these kind of programmes,

I think every authority is different.

Some have a deep and rich experience of delivering this kind of large -scale programme.

Some authorities don't.

I think it's fair to say certainly in recent history, perhaps here in Wandsworth, we probably

haven't had that same level of experience.

And so I think one of the key risks is the pace at which we will have to work to.

I'm not interested in kind of – I don't want to relitigate the kind of conversations

about burning platforms, et cetera.

I think irrespective of a financial situation, when you set up a programme of this nature,

you have to create a sense of pace and a sense of urgency.

That doesn't have to be driven by a cliff edge financially, but it has to be driven

by an ambition to want to make improvements.

And so I think one of the key risks that we have to make sure that we don't fall into

is that we don't leave our staff behind in that journey, that we don't leave you as members

and decision makers behind in that journey, and that we're really clear about the objectives

that we're setting at the very beginning,

and we're really clear about how we are measured,

how we are measured against that.

And then, of course, we need to make sure

that we have the proper risk management frameworks

in place across the programme.

And the report touches on some of the slightly dry governance

that we put in place, but it's really, really important

to a programme like this, that there is visibility

and transparency across the layers of the programme,

and that we are airing and sharing the right levels

of risk and the mitigations that we're putting in place

in forums like this so we can be challenged and so you can have assurance that we're delivering

and that we will deliver ultimately.

And your contingency plan if we don't make the whatever the figure is?

I think that's probably a question for the September MTFS update. As Fenella has touched

upon there will be a number of levers around that. I think by the time that we get to that

September MTFS update, we will have had the first batch of detailed business cases coming

through and I think that's the point where we will be able to sit down and make that

judgement about how confident we are.

The paper touches upon in quite a light touch way at this stage sort of red, amber, green

ratings.

I put that in there deliberately because when I come in front of you again at regular intervals,

I suspect we're talking quite a lot about red, amber, and green.

I'm a firm believer in being really transparent about our confidence levels

Not just within the overall figure but within the individual savings line that will make that up

And so we will be really honest about where we think we have the greatest areas of risk

We will be really honest about why we think that is and some of the steps that we're putting putting in place

But I think it's slightly premature to talk about

Contingencies when we haven't sort of quantified the scale of the opportunity yet

Thank you for that. Councillor Critchard. Thank you. Just first of all before I ask

me a question I just wanted to pick up on something else, something that's been said.

Obviously it's been clear there is a potential funding gap. We've talked about, Mrs. Mary has

talked about the levers that are available to us. What I do think is worth us all reflecting on is

we do not know what the landscape is going to be like in say two years time.

We've already been through Covid, we've been through the war in Ukraine,

we have a very, let me say, a slightly wobbly person on the other side of the pond.

We've also done some things ourselves, like we've invested in a new special needs school

and some of those things that we've already done could well affect what the demand is.

It might affect it one way, it might affect the other way.

I understand the need over there for an immediate answer now,

but that is not what's coming our way.

And I would just say is I think we need to be quite aware that we've already done some things.

there are other things in the governments that are likely to happen through government

that may affect what we want. For example, I'm just going to say our three biggest spends,

I think I'm correct in saying, are temporary accommodations, special needs and adult social

care. If anything happens that shifts those externally and reduces them, obviously the

amount of funding we will need will be different. That was just a response. I actually had a

specific question. I've got another one somewhere else but you can do this one first. We like

to see a business case, so we like to be sure that what we're doing actually is going to

have benefits. But what I would also wonder about is how a delivery at pace fit with the

long development of the business cases. So we're looking at an outline business case

in July, so that's six months down the road,

full business cases by this time next year.

I see the need for it, but I also want to know

how we're going to manage if we spot things

that we can do quickly,

agilely that will make a difference straight away.

Where is the scope for that in the programme?

Thank you, and apologies.

In trying to simplify the timeline diagram,

I've probably suggested it's slightly more binary,

by the way, that actually is.

So it is absolutely fair to say

that we will need a number of months now

through May, June time to firm up those business cases.

And I think we use terminology like outline business case.

What is absolutely clear to us is

we're not gonna force ourselves to wait

to do everything through the exact same timeline.

So I've tried to give an indication of that

in the pictorial timeline,

that some of that work will move straight

into implementation much faster than other pieces of work.

We also need to be aware that we're not starting

from scratch.

We heard in the previous item,

fantastic work that's already ongoing,

which fits firmly into how we intervene earlier

and how we manage some of our demand

and support residents.

So we're also looking about how we build on existing work.

That might be going a bit faster,

it might be a bit further.

So whilst I think that it's fair to take away from this

that the overall timeline is targeting July

for the next kind of significant update on the programme as a whole, there will absolutely

be things that we will be doing subject to approval and policy decisions, et cetera,

far earlier than that.

And as we touched on earlier, we know in September that we have to update the MTFS, and so it's

really important that we're doing that on a confident basis.

And that can't just be about we've got a nicely written business case.

Ideally we want to be saying, and we've also started delivering some stuff, and we can

see the benefit coming through, and therefore that is one of the things that gives us confidence

But that will carry on that will carry on delivering so so yes, we need to put the rigour in there

But we also need to be flexible enough to say you know what that business case is good enough where it is right now

We're confident done the assessment on it, and we can also see the progress start happening now through implementation

Thank You councillor Belton

Thank You chair

I'm not terribly interested in the specific details of where the amount of money that we might need or might not need,

because clearly it's so variable at this stage.

I'm also, I've also been around, this is for your benefit, they ought to know,

long enough to know that I've been through other disastrous changes which are going to result in council tax trebling and quadrupling before.

one was the change from rates at this time without number.

Things just happen and change and they have to happen and change.

I'm interested though quite in how you picked on the 45 million.

It could have been, I mean, why not 34 or 47 or 50?

I mean, I'm just vaguely interested in that because I'm not quite sure I get that.

But that's not really my main interest.

This is obviously involves a lot of re -engineering,

of re -engineering, perhaps an old -fashioned word, but re -engineering of the whole process.

And one of our number called the leader is well known for just comparing the Council,

at least in private, with Netflix and how it operates.

Now the problem with that example, I always think, is Netflix is its own select customer

basis and we all know in this business I'm sure you do that in almost any field

certainly social services and many others 20 % of the population maybe even

10 % of the population actually cause 90 or 80 percent of the work and it's just

the way it happens and and many of those people are not necessarily very

digitally well known or skilled.

I'm sure you're gonna say that we of course

look after the interests of those people

without those kind of skills.

But I really want to know how you're gonna prioritise that

and make sure that's the case.

Thank you, so if I take the first prompt,

I think it was a question about the basis

for the 45 million.

So that's a starting point for getting,

you're absolutely right, why not 44, why not 43?

I can't make a strong case for it being

either of any of those three numbers.

What I would say is the number's been arrived at

through a couple of things.

So a series of conversations with directors

and service owners who understand their budget.

Clearly, that's also been based on

where our current spends are.

So we, as someone's touched upon,

We know where our large areas of spend are.

We also know what other places have done.

And there's a reason that we've got some external support

to kind of, on board to support us with that.

So we're confident that the 45 million pounds

is a sensible starting point.

Earlier caveats that apply, we will refine that

as we go and be really clear about the details.

So you're absolutely right,

because that's a 50 million pounds target

or a 40 million pounds target.

I think the important thing is that we show

the scale of ambition, that this is a substantial programme

that it has a substantial element of financial savings expected,

albeit that that needs to be couched within a genuine desire

that this is about delivering better outcomes as well.

And I do think it's really important that we emphasise

that delivering more effective and efficient services

and having them be cheaper, they are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, the opposite is often true.

The more efficient, the more responsive, the more automated,

that they are the cheaper services for us.

If I can interrupt on that point very briefly, Chair, if you don't mind.

So, it's obvious, otherwise the paper wouldn't be allowed to be here, but that 45 million has got buy -in from all the directors.

They're prepared to say, my area, whatever it is, yes, five million is the reasonable amount.

So, it's got buy -in across the board.

Yes, clearly we don't break that 45 million pounds down yet across service areas, but absolutely.

I think, you know, I've been pleased and, you know, I feel really positive about the

level of support both politically, kind of within the leadership and certainly within

Cabinet and at a senior officer level that no one has said to me, oh my goodness me,

that's completely unrealistic, I'm really worried about it.

Everyone recognises the scale of the challenge and they recognise the scale of the opportunity

and it's been absolutely endorsed by senior officers, yes.

I think the important thing to take away from that is we often in local government compare

ourselves to our neighbouring councils.

I think one of the things that we are trying to get across and I think the leader does

this as well is that our residents don't compare us to our neighbouring authority if they have

a bad experience. They compare us to their retail bank and how they are accessed. So

I think if we recognise that how we are judged now has fundamentally changed, and this isn't

universal, but large parts of our resident base do expect a different type of service

than the ones we would have been offering 10, 15, 20 years ago. So I think our starting

premise needs to be slightly different and think about what a responsible organisation

actually looks like and redefine what good looks like.

On the digital inclusion point, I'm a firm believer that I think certainly in the 10,

15, slightly more years I've been doing this kind of work, I think the landscape has shifted

quite a lot.

When I first started doing this work, the kind of digital inclusion was really, really

important because we had a significant portion of people who couldn't access services online

in a meaningful way.

And obviously we will need to present this

and make this case for any changes that we propose.

But I think the proportion of those residents

that don't access or can't access service

or don't have family members that can help them

is probably far smaller than we think,

certainly for some of our universal services.

Clearly when we get into services like social care,

for example, the landscape is different.

But clearly any changes that we make

will be cognizant of the impact across the piece,

no matter how small, including those that can't access

digital poverty, for example,

so it's something that's really important that we look at.

So we will absolutely be cognitive of all of that

within the business cases,

and obviously equality impact assessments, for example,

will accompany all of those changes.

So you're absolutely right to flag it,

but I do think it's important that our starting point

is that the vast majority now of people

do expect that digitally enabled responsive service,

and so we should start our design principles

from that point.

I think that's a good point.

Just on this very point, kind of backing up what Councillor Belton is saying really, I

do agree with you about digital.

It is the way that most of us choose to kind of, and actually want to, I do not want to

have to phone somebody up, however what I would say is digital skills are not only learnt,

but as people age they can also be unlearned.

And that's something, you know, the sandwich generation, we kind of started seeing this

and our parents, et cetera.

So sometimes that's because technology has moved on

and they haven't learned that.

And it can also be because of cognitive decline.

So I would ask that we make sure that we do put additional effort

into making sure we support those residents, where

that's the case.

Albeit, on the whole, we're a pretty young borough.

We do have a sizable older population.

Thank you.

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you.

Councillor Graham.

Thank you. So we're obviously all aware that ordinarily there is a referendum limit on the amount we can increase council tax,

which has been 5 % for some time and will be 5 % for the budget that is about to get set and council tax setting that will apply to April onwards.

However, as part of the fair funding settlement, the government has given for 27, 28, 28, 29 only,

so the two subsequent budgets following the next one, the ability to increase tax beyond that threshold.

So can I just ask Mrs. Mary, when she said that we will need to look at that as a council,

and that any administration will need to look at that in terms of council tax increases

to meet the gap that we're anticipating.

She meant look at increases in council tax that go beyond the referendum threshold and

use that freedom that the government is providing.

So one of the levers we've been given is no referendum limit for those two years, you're

right with that.

So that's absolutely something that will have to be discussed as part of the MTFS.

Yes, I would expect that.

I'm not saying I would expect us to use it, but I'm saying we would have to consider it, yeah.

So given that any administration will have to consider using that freedom to increase council tax by more than the referendum threshold,

can the cabinet member explain why the leader of the council said,

We don't want the freedom to increase council tax beyond the 5 % referendum limit, and my administration won't be using it.

In other words, he has ruled out, considering what the Director of Finance has just said, any administration must consider.

Why has he done so, and how is that a coherent or responsible position?

I wouldn't attempt to answer for the leader. I think you need to ask the leader those questions.

But I would say we will be making a decision about council tax for 26, 27 and a few weeks.

Anything beyond that is the next administration and we can't make decisions about that.

That is a decision for the next administration.

I'm sorry, when the leader of the council said my administration won't be using it,

and you're now saying that you can't say what the next administration will do, are you suggesting

that the leader of the council won't be the leader when we get to the next two budgets,

or are you contradicting him and saying that actually it will need to be looked at, and

that the administration might be using it?

I'm saying neither of those things but you seem to be accepting that Labour will win the next election.

That's quite interesting.

I'm accepting nothing on that. I'm trying to work out what your administration...

Now, if this is some semantic game whereby you're saying that a Labour administration led by the Leader of the Council

after May is not the same as my administration when he's talking about it.

So that in other words, he's making a pledge not to use the freedom he doesn't have, then

I think the lecturer will draw his own conclusions from that and you are far less likely to be

in charge after May.

But you have to come clean here.

Either you say that you can only set council tax one budget at a time and that you won't

comment on a budget until it arrives or you can do what the leader did and strongly imply

that for the next three years, in the only two years that the freedom exists, that we've

just heard we must look at whether we use it has been ruled out. Which is it?

I'm so sorry. I don't actually understand what you're saying.

It's very, very clear.

Are you able, and just answer for yourself, if you are still the cabinet member for finance,

not for this budget, but either of the two subsequent ones, do you rule out using any

increase above the referendum threshold?

I can say it's the decisions about council tax will be made when we have all the information.

I don't believe in speculating. I think it's so important that financial decisions are made are informed decisions

And once we will know more in September you've heard that from the officers

So you're not ruling it out. Are you you're not ruling it out?

You're not rulings out are you

Counts Lebelton I was merely going to say the same more as you chair

but actually we're talking about a paper which is entitled the council's transformation programme.

I think that's what we've been talking about.

We're not talking yet about the council's next budget.

And council...

And objective number one is a balanced MTFS, council member.

And of course you know that when one talks about a council administration,

one always means until the next election.

As I pointed out to you, well it's already been pointed out by Councillor Ireland, that you're assuming that there's going to be labour.

Well that's very interesting.

Councillor Graham, I'm not going to bring...

The Premier doesn't have an all -debt sort of...

No, Councillor Graham, I'm not going to bring it back in.

To bring it back to the paper, I think we're clear that with the announcement of the three -year settlement,

there is a bigger gap than we had anticipated at a previous MTFS.

and there's indication that we're going to have another MTFS in September,

which is going to kind of outline the journey ahead.

So I think the question that I had, and you touched on it a little bit,

Mr. Wells -Bloeming, in terms of a question on risk.

And you talked about your experience in this area,

but I just wanted to talk a little bit about pace and what we can do

and what your experience kind of shows you,

kind of helps us deliver a programme like this, which has to have real scale at place,

and what can be the potential blockers?

What do we need to be aware of to make sure we can progress this programme quickly

to really understand what it can deliver?

Do you mean within the scrutiny committee or members in general?

So I think decision making is always really key around pace.

So I appreciate the comments earlier about the kind of business case process,

but the reality is we have a May election,

So we know that key decisions before that

aren't going to be possible.

What I would say is, as we go through the few months

up post that period with the new administration

at that point in time, there will be a series, I'm sure,

of decisions to make.

Some of those will be constitutional decisions

that need to go through cabinet formally.

Some of them will be probably within the office of schema

delegation, but will need consultation.

And so I think one of the key barriers

to pace is always that decision making.

But it's also about a risk appetite

in terms of decision making.

So without rowing back at all on the point I made

about it being driven by data,

there will always be some decisions

that you have to make with imperfect sets of data.

So no matter how hard you work on it,

you have an imperfect or an incomplete set.

And so I think there'll be conversations

for us all to have around,

you know as officers to make recommendations

and to be clear about the trade -offs.

But that risk appetite about how you make quick decisions

and then implement them, I think will be a really key factor

over the sort of the sixth month period post -May.

Thank you.

Councillor Connor?

Thank you for the paper.

I just had a question really about the evolution of this,

from the change programmes and now the transformation programme,

and how it's being governed.

So, you know previously we had this being run out of the chief executives office. There's now talk about

portfolios and these are being led by

executive directors

And then there's the role of Mrs. Olson as well. He's presented at this committee and this paper is now

actually in the name of Mrs. Miss Popovici.

Could you just outline, you know, who's actually

the senior officer team responsible for delivering this,

how is the responsibility and accountability

for the programme disseminated across the work streams

and what's the role of Miss Popovici

and Mrs. Olson in leading this?

Yeah, thank you.

So the governance diagram within the report

tries to set this out.

So we have a top level transformation board,

the chair and therefore the senior responsible owner

for the transformation programme is the deputy chief executive,

Ms. Popovici.

And so her role is to act as sponsor

for the overall transformation board.

You'll also see that there's a line into director's board,

which is part of the normal standing council officer

governance, which clearly the chief exec chairs.

Then at that portfolio board level,

the report sets out that we're currently

structuring the programme.

And I deliberately use the word currently,

because conscious of everything I said about,

as we shake the programme over the course of the next few months,

that may change.

But we have eight portfolios currently and each one of those portfolios is sponsored and therefore owned by an exec director

of which

Sam Olson is what is is one so we have the top officer team is directly responsible

for everything contained within within the programme some of those portfolios have a direct correlation to a

Directorate and some of those portfolios are deliberately cross cross cutting and obviously there's been a degree of

having to separate those out across EDs to make sure that we've got a senior responsible owner for each of them.

Thank you. Councillor Critchard.

Thank you.

Yes, it is on.

Yeah, it is working, isn't it? Yes.

I think I'd probably also like to echo what the Chair has said and what Councillor Bailton has said,

that obviously what we have in front of us is a paper on the transformation programme.

We're now in a position where there have been a lot of changes, particularly around AI and

around, as Mr. Wills -Flibbing says, about the way residents expect to

access service and the speed at which they want to respond.

I think I'd probably comment is councils tend to compare themselves to other councils,

though actually residents probably don't. Residents actually probably always have

decided whether they looking at the service they might get at John Lewis or

somewhere else so they obviously look at that sort of side thing. And the first

thing I probably would like to sort of be reassured that I appreciate that we

don't necessarily know that this is going to give us everything that we

might want, but obviously I would hope that the members opposite agree this is looking

at our services, trying to improve them, trying to make savings and efficiencies is something

that any forward thinking council should be doing.

And I hope that's something that everyone round this table, round this round table can

agree.

I also then had a further pick up.

Councillor Belton partly dealt with a question that I had around the partly digital inclusion.

I think my particular focus was what we heard from the previous paper was very much about

lots and lots and lots of different ways to reach people who are in need, who need our help,

But they may not want to do it by coming directly to us.

I think my plea is to make sure that that aspect of work, that aspect doesn't get lost.

I didn't quite pick that up as strongly as I would have wished.

So can I say that is we also need as a council to remember there are loads of people who will deal with us digitally.

I must say I do prefer to speak to a person quite often.

But there are people who will deal with us because they put in a request for something

and their new bin bags and they get them back.

There are other people who actually need to be encouraged to join us.

So please let's not lose that as part of the transformation.

And the last point was a small technical point.

I notice on page 63 you're engaging with the Council's internal audit function.

I'm sure the members of the Audit Committee will be quite interested in hearing a little

bit more about that and also wondering whether that might mean we get reports of audit as

well.

I'll go in reverse order simply because I struggle to remember the first two points

so forgive me if I do and by all means redirect me.

So on audit, on the subject of whether a report goes to audit committee, I mean, that's not

for me to, my preference is that we try and channel the updates through a single forum

just because it avoids duplication, but we are absolutely working with the audit function.

And look, often with these programmes, there's kind of a slight wariness around audit, but

I'm the opposite.

So when we talk about how we give delivery confidence and how we give assurance, part

Part of that is we open ourselves up to be transparent and to be challenged.

One of the first conversations I had when I joined here was speaking to colleagues in

the audit team about how we factored this programme into their forward plan of work.

So if that means we have to bring a specific update to audit committee, I'm absolutely

fine.

But every update you get from me, that kind of audit level assurance should be woven through

everything I say.

If there are key lines of inquiry, for example, that you have on particular points in time,

I am happy to factor those in.

I am also happy to come in front of any committee that I am requested to attend.

On the point about responsiveness, use the John Lewis example, I think my comment earlier

was more about the private sector experiences that we are compared to now versus 10 years

ago is different.

So it may, for some sectors, for some cohorts, it will absolutely still be John Lewis, I'm

sure.

But whereas it might have been John Lewis and it might have been that kind of quality,

that very intensive, like long engagement, now instantaneous responses, instant reactions,

everything now, there's an increasing expectation within increasing portions of our population

that that's how council services should be delivered as well.

There's nothing wrong with that at all.

That clearly though puts pressure and strain on services that are often designed,

not historically not to respond in that way.

But your point about not assuming that one size fits all is absolutely valid and taken.

And again, we need to be really, really clear about, and this isn't for the record, this isn't for

me or any other officer to decide, that this will be part of that decision making process that members will absolutely take.

What is the expectation that we want to set our residents and our service users and

our customers in the case of in concern of our businesses about the service levels and

the responsiveness that they should expect, the channels that they should be able to contact

us on, and the ones that we would rather they didn't contact us on.

So that is a decision that we won't take in isolation within the programme.

It is we will produce the evidence, we will produce a business case that shows the pros

and cons and the financial implications and the service implications of it, and that very

much sits in that kind of policy and that member decision -making space.

But you're absolutely right to flag that it isn't a one -size -fits -all.

Thank you. Then Councillor Apsen will wrap up the discussion.

Thank you. So Wandsworth has been seen as quite an innovative borough over a long period

of time actually I'd say. Certainly in the 70s, 80s. Yeah. Even some of the innovations

I might not have liked but they were certainly innovative. And as sort of seen within that

local government community as being kind of forward thinking.

Are there areas, you know, looking again at technology, more at the sort of back end rather

than the sort of customer facing, are there areas of development that we're kind of seeing

coming through new examples where we're using technology?

I'd also ask, is there a sort of low hanging fruit as well?

I'm particularly thinking like, for example, of our housing department where a lot of the

interactions are person to person, whereas maybe some of the service users might prefer

some more digital interaction if that was more promoted?

Are there some areas of quick wins

that we might achieve as well?

Thank you.

I'm almost slightly loathe to use the phrase low hanging

fruit.

It is one I do use.

Because it also implies that it's just been hanging there

and everyone's just been ignoring it and not taking it

and it's so easy.

So will there be areas that we can address more quickly

than others?

Absolutely.

Obviously, housing is going through a much wider

improvement journey.

I think it's probably what I would say about that,

about housing is of course there are absolutely quick

things we can do to quickly improve that

and we are already doing that.

I don't want to underestimate the scale

and the complexity of some of those issues

and how deep they go.

It's very easy to kind of fix a superficial

frontline interface and give the illusion of responsiveness,

but the amount of work that has to happen

back through the system, back through the processes

and we're looking at our team

and looking at our staffing culture in some areas as well,

That takes longer.

So there'll be some things that we will absolutely

look to address quicker.

I think there are, I've managed to go through

this whole session without, I think, using the phrase AI.

So let me say it now.

It is an area that is developing at such a pace

it is almost impossible to keep up with.

Clearly, it is an area that the private sector

is exploiting already.

It is an area that there is great innovation

in the public sector.

It doesn't have to be that all staff are gone

and a robot does it.

There are simple things like how we manage our contracts,

for example.

AI can have a really important role

in terms of going through the thousands of pages

of all of our contracts and identifying

where we're not maximising the opportunities

and the benefits on it.

So we will look for some of those quicker wins.

I don't wanna paint a picture that everything

within that sort of 45 million pounds target,

whatever that target ends up being, is going to be super easy and we can just buy an app

and turn it on.

So we will absolutely look at those opportunities.

We've got a partner who's got a lot of experience deploying AI within both the public and the

private sector.

And we'll bring some of that stuff forward.

And when I spoke earlier about some stuff being able to go forward into implementation

sooner than others, there'll be areas like that, I suspect, where we can deploy some

of the kind of ready -made tools that will help us.

but that won't be the sole answer.

And ultimately, our people are one of our key resources.

And so working with our people, working through those changes

with our people will always take a bit longer than some of those

technology -based initiatives.

Thank you, Mr. Wells -Vangert.

And thank you very much for that discussion.

I know we're at the early stages of this programme,

but clearly it's going to be an important part of the work

that the Council has ahead of us.

So thank you very much for outlining that tonight.

And no doubt we will meet again.

So thank you very much.

So I think we are noting this report as for information.

Is that agreed?

Thank you.

Then moving on to the report on behalf of the opposition

4 a) Report on behalf of the Opposition Speaker for Finance on the Members' Allowances Scheme (Paper No. 26-26)

speaker for finance on the members allowances scheme.

So just to confirm, this item's on the agenda at your request

in accordance with the procedural rules.

Members have all got the current members allowance scheme

in their agenda pack.

I know at the Key Lines of Enquirer meeting we discussed you providing a paper, but that hasn't been possible.

So in the absence of all members of the committee knowing what points you want to raise,

I would be grateful if you could please just set out for the members of the committee,

firstly, kind of the points that you want to raise so we kind of understand where we're going with the discussion. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you.

And it's probably less painful to explain it verbally than if you expect people to read papers on this.

So, first of all, it's disappointing that this has to happen at all.

The only reason I've put this on the agenda is because I could not get answers, adequate

answers or explanations via email from officers.

And so it has been necessary to put it here to finally be able to ask the questions that

I wanted properly answered.

So this all goes back to the council meeting on the 11th of December 2024, so well over

a year ago now, where we suddenly had, not on the original agenda, but placed as a matter

of urgency by reason of special circumstances.

And it said that these circumstances that while the report is for information and not

decision in the interest of transparency that this report is presented to this council meeting

rather than to a future meeting, which is all very convoluted.

But it was also confusing because although it said the report was for information and

not decision, it attached in two of the appendices of Appendix 2 and Appendix 4 members' allowance

schemes that very much appeared to be for decision, not least because it said in relation

to those years that Wandsworth Borough Council hereby approves a member allowance scheme

which will take place from the 1st of April 2024 and again on the second appendix on the

1st of April 2025.

So it appeared to us that these were decisions.

So let's just take the appendix 2, the 2024 scheme, the one that is now, that needs to

apply.

So, it said here by a proof, but also the report explained that it was not possible

to apply a percentage inflation uplift that year because there hadn't been a percentage

pay settlement that year.

Rather, there had been a fixed sum pay settlement, and therefore, although London Councils had

given some advice about how this could be translated across as a percentage, actually

what the scheme said you could do without coming back for approval didn't exist.

Now, when I eventually got the answer that because London Councils had given advice as

to how the flat rate could be converted, it wasn't necessary and it was still automatic.

Well, that doesn't make sense to me.

It says that we can only automatically apply percentage figure.

There was no percentage figure.

We could choose to disagree with London Council's advice.

it should have been a decision for this council as to whether it took London Council's advice on how to translate a fixed -sum

settlement into a percentage figure.

It was not brought to us and we are told that this was even though this did not comply with the scheme,

this was automatic and was this was for information only.

And it also appeared to be for decision because of the special circumstances in nature of being dumped onto the agenda in that way

because actually London councils have provided that advice on the 25th of November.

So it was weeks beforehand, well in time to get it onto the agenda,

yet none of this stuff appeared on the agenda of the council until very close to the meeting,

after the agenda had been published, and it hadn't come to general purposes.

So, now, the answer I eventually got in March of last year was that because the scheme appears

in the Constitution and would say that GP shouldn't get constitutional papers anymore

or didn't have to, therefore it didn't need to go to GP.

The trouble is it was also a financial decision.

It wasn't just a change to the Constitution.

It was a financial decision.

And actually, the terms of reference of GP picked up the financial decision even though

It wasn't necessary to take the constitutional change there.

So again, in my view, GP was incorrectly

bypassed in terms of bringing the papers,

and it was a decision.

And then we turn to Appendix 4, because that's

what you've got in front of you right now.

That was produced at the same time as the scheme for April

2024.

So we got a scheme for 2024 and a scheme for April 25 published at the same time.

This doesn't make sense if they weren't for decision.

In fact, it's worse than that because the figures in the scheme for April 2025 were

the same as the figures in the scheme for April 2024, which is precisely, as all those

who are on this council prior to 2022 will remember,

is how we froze council tax by producing a scheme ahead

of the year, which stipulated the same rates

as the previous year, negating the inflation increase.

If this were, well, I'll get onto that.

It doesn't make sense for a, if you're treating it

as a non -decision amendment, which

is what the council's position eventually is,

that this was just an amendment that officers

were able to make under the inflation uplift,

why you'd produce a paper that didn't have the inflation

uplift in it.

So that is convoluted, but it's as simple

as I can try to explain it.

And hopefully, if I now put some questions,

we can start to get clarity on where we actually are.

So let's take that paper at Appendix 4, which is the scheme for this year,

which is the one you have provided, and turn to paragraph 40.

Do we have that?

Well, it was circulated by email, certainly.

So paragraph 40 says...

I can't get into my emails.

Is it circulated?

is that a page 10 of the circulation? It's paragraph 40 of the allowance scheme for 2010.

Has anybody not got it? I can try and... So is it also being added to the papers?

Yes, yes, it's on the papers list on the website agenda item 5 I think. On the website.

Is it 4a on the website? 4a on the website.

And it's the additional documents, not the paper.

Yes. So I'd like to ask Mr. Chaudry where it says in paragraph 40,

this inflation index shall apply for the next four years.

Which years those are specifically? Which of those four years specifically?

So, Councillor Graham, you raised this question in email correspondence, and there was a response

to that in which I explained to you that the provision in paragraph 40, which was approved

when this the term of this administration commenced in 2022 and the

reference to the four years in paragraph 40 has remained unchanged and the period

that reflects sorry the period that that reference is the period of this

council throughout this period that paragraph has been throughout any papers

that have been presented to council whether for information or decision that

period has been left unamended.

And so the provision applies for the four years of this Council.

And if there is any intent by this Council to continue,

intent by this Council to apply an inflationary increase,

then that will be a decision for the next Council to make.

Right. That isn't an answer to my question.

What I asked was in paragraph 40, where it says the next four years,

what specifically are those four years?

please just list those years by number.

I think, Councillor Graham, I've answered that question.

This scheme was approved by this council in 2022 and the four years referred to are the

four years from 2022.

If we look at the front of this scheme, it says with effect from the 1st of April 2025.

It does send in paragraph 40 the next four years

That must be the next four years from the 1st of April 2025 because that is when this scheme takes effect, correct

No council Graham, I keep saying the scheme was approved in 2022 and paragraph 40 has remained the same

The problem with that position

is that

It says the next four years and rather than what the law actually says, what the members'

allowances regulations say is that if you just change the rates, that is not deemed

to be a change to the scheme.

Now on my understanding, what that actually means is that we should still have the scheme

not with effect from the 1st of April 2025, but rather the scheme with effect from the

1st of April 2023, but with a note amending, which doesn't count as an amendment for the

purposes of the law, the rates for this financial year.

So it would still say 2023 at the start was when it took effect, but that it would be

updated within, which meant that when it said the next four

years, it wasn't contradicting the scheme effect

and the hereby approves and the taking effect date.

Now, you've chosen not to do that,

and you have a paper which says it takes effect

on the 1st of April, 2025, and that the inflation index will

apply for the next four years, which must mean 2025, 2026,

2027 2028 which is not compatible with the law is it?

I will sound like a broken record here Councillor Graham but I I can't keep

repeating the same point this scheme was set in 2022 and that provision

paragraph 40 has remained unchanged and the reference to the four years is the

four years agreed in 2022.

Are there any other points on the scheme that you want to raise?

Or is your fundamental question about which financial year this scheme will no longer

have the effect of the inflationary uplift outlined in paragraph 4?

Do you have just, I just want to understand, do you have any other points?

Yes, I will move on to the other points.

We've had an answer.

I don't think that answer is coherent, but I'll move on to my other questions.

So I would like to ask if it's possible, and indeed,

Appendix 2, Mr. Chowder's position

is that he brought forward a scheme that was merely

an amendment of the 2023 scheme, even though it says,

hereby approves, and it gives a commencement date, the 1st

of April, 2024.

His position is that Appendix 2, that scheme for 2024,

was a simple change that could be done under delegated powers

in line with the decision in 2023 that updated the figures and therefore by

applying the inflation uplift. Fine. That makes sense for Appendix 2. That makes

sense for the scheme for 2024 as far as that logic runs. Why was it deemed a good

idea or necessary at all to also produce a scheme for 2025 at the same time

giving the same figures.

Why was it necessary to have that scheme for 2025 at all?

Why didn't you just produce a scheme for 2024

and then deal with 2025 later?

So, Council Graham, it's always a good idea

for transparency purposes to have as up -to -date

document as we can.

So, if we had a document that stated

that the allowance scheme was as amended in 2020,

I think when we took the paper in 2024,

December 2024, was for 2024 and 2025.

By producing another paper for a scheme that was,

in effect, the same scheme that would continue

from 25 to 26, that bringing that paper to council

enabled me to produce a paper that would be

attached to the constitution at the appropriate time and it would be available.

But it doesn't, I suspect it now, you know, your next question will link to what the effect

of that publication was on the inflationary increase.

And my answer to that would be is that it had no effect.

The inflationary increase would not be known until later on in the year and as it was known

towards the end of 2025, that's when the inflationary increase was applied and the amendment was

reflected in the constitution accordingly.

Actually, it wasn't my next question.

My next question was that if it was so urgent that the agenda should be changed and this

be added as a late paper in order to provide the scheme for the following financial year

in December 2024, why is it now not urgent at all, transparency doesn't demand anything,

and there is no scheme for 2026 yet produced?

How could it be incredibly urgent to provide appendix 4, giving a scheme for the year ahead last year, but provide no scheme for the year ahead this year?

So it goes back to the provision for four years, Councillor Graham.

The scheme as currently as approved is a scheme that came and is applicable from 2022 for the four years.

When the next council is elected, the allowance scheme will be one of the first items will be considered for determination in terms of how this council wants to take it forward.

That's why there isn't a further paper that is coming forward as a foreign information paper to council.

I mean, I don't think that makes sense because we get to the 1st of April before we get to

the election.

It is obviously, if an administration after the election wishes to change the scheme,

it could do.

But last year, your position was it was urgent and necessary to show transparency to produce

a scheme before we got to the financial year.

And now this year it isn't. I don't understand.

So, Councillor Graham, in the allowances order, members of the allowances scheme order that we rely upon in paragraph 10 .6,

if an amendment is to be made which takes effect on an allowance payable for the year in which the amendment is made,

the scheme may provide for the incitement to such an allowance as amended to apply with effect from the beginning of the year in which the amendment was made.

That in fact means that even if the amendment is made post -May of 2026, the effect of the

amendments can go back to the beginning of the year.

That doesn't explain why the transparency would demand one thing and then not something

else last year or something else this year.

But I will move on from that point.

How many other points do you have out of interest?

I feel I have some restless members.

I come back to the point I try to get answers to these questions by email and fail.

Just understand that your peers are feeling restless.

Three more points.

So, well, three basic points.

I'll see what the answers are.

So, right.

I believe that your position is, therefore, that if a scheme is produced which says taking

effect from a given date namely in this in this case it was April 2025 and that

scheme is produced before the uplift figures the inflation the percentage

inflation figures for that financial year are available and merely states the

rates from the previous year without alteration the uplift will still apply

during that financial year? Yes, Councillor Graham, because the uplift is not known

until towards the end of the year. So can you tell me why the scheme which applied

from the 1st of April 2021 which was produced before the uplift figures were

available with the same rates and allowances as the previous year did not

see an uplift made automatically. So, Councillor Graham, I'd have to go back. This is before my time.

It may have been that Council took a specific decision not to apply the uplift. It did not. It passed a scheme

which did precisely what the scheme you published did, which is to stipulate

rates before the financial year had been arrived at that were the same as the

previous year's rates. But what that actually did was freeze council tax, and

it is identical. The wording of that 2020 freeze members allowances, I apologise.

Sorry, you are quite, what?

Slip of the tongue there.

Slip of the tongue.

I don't know.

I wish that we might still see some freezes to council tax, but I'm not sure we are going

to get many of them from the next administration. But let's take that back.

So why is it that the first scheme that was produced from the first of April 2021 is word -for -word

identical and was produced in exactly the same circumstances and yet the effect of that

was to freeze council tax and yet, and for follow, done it again, freeze allowances and

yet the residents are going to get really confused.

Thank you, Councillor Cripshire.

And yes, and yes, you're saying that a paper produced in exactly the same circumstances

with exactly the same wording has not done that this time.

What accounts for that difference?

There is no difference, is there?

Just to be fair, let's be fair to officers.

I think Ms. Chaju did indicate he wasn't here at that time.

I'll let him answer.

Thank you, Chair.

I don't think I was here and had specific response.

I did start in 2021, I think May or June thereabouts, but I'd have to go back and have a look.

The provision is a standard provision.

It's in the local authorities members allowances order in paragraph 10 that makes a provision for an annual uplift.

Whether an annual uplift is applied in a specific year is an automatic provision.

It can be applied automatically as it is part of the scheme, but the council can determine not to apply it and that would require a decision.

But that's not actually what happened.

And more to point, that's not just the way this council chose to freeze council tax, that's the way other council...

Allowances, that's the way that every council has chosen to freeze allowances.

That's the mechanism available.

What I would like you to explain is on how a counsel could go about freezing allowances

on your view without having to first increase them in a scheme and then counteract that

increase because that's not what any of them do.

And yet that is logically the only way that would be available to freeze allowances on

your argument.

Why is it that this counsel didn't do that?

no other council that's phrase and allowances has ever done that.

They would have had to have seen, even though they published a scheme

that stipulated the rates, it would still have had the percentage increase.

It would have had to have gone back again. Yet none of them ever have.

So how is your argument consistent with not just the practise of this council,

but every other council in the country?

So I think the question, as I understand it from Councillor Graham there,

and perhaps you can clarify how many more points you've got,

is how the council can freeze members' allowances, what's the mechanism for freezing council allowances at a future date?

Yeah, one is not to have a provision as is in paragraph 40, that's the easiest way to do it.

The other is to take a decision on each year when the public sector pay settlement is announced to not apply the increase.

I just note again that is not what happened here, is not what happened elsewhere.

So either Mr. Choudry's position is that this council acted unlawfully and other councillors have acted unlawfully,

or his own procedure was unlawful, but he can't have it both ways.

They can't both be permissible.

Only one of those two things can be the case.

And he's currently trying to say that both of them can be, and that is not acceptable, and it's still not answered.

I will turn to a final question, because clearly we're not going to get this, but

I hope members will understand, this is not an acceptable position to be in where the

answers we are getting contradict our own practise and that the practise of every other

council in the country.

And it's just not explained.

It's just hand gestures wafted away.

That is not legally acceptable.

But I'll turn to the final point.

Why is it that given there was no percentage increase, which is what paragraph 40 says,

You know, paragraph 40 says that you have to apply the same percentage increase as the

annual negotiated local government pay settlement for London.

Now, we have already heard, indeed the Council paper in December 2024 stated that there was

no such percentage increase and that London Councils have provided some advice on a percentage

that might be approximate to it.

Given that there was no percentage increase, why did the monitoring officer choose to take it on himself to apply a percentage, albeit under London Council's guidance,

and how is that not actually a decision outside the scheme and the permitted delegations of the scheme?

Members have raised concern about, Councillor, your approach towards officers.

Can we just bear that in mind, please? Let's make sure we keep it respectful around the table

I appreciate you want to put your questions, but members are concerned that we keep it respectful. Okay?

So Casa Graham will recall that council meeting and he asked questions around the same point at that meeting and

I advised him at the time that unusually

I did seek leading councils advice on the approach and that advice confirmed

that the approach was lawful.

And, you know, Council Grey, you've made statements

about the approaches taken by every other council.

I'm afraid I'm not in a position to give that sweeping assurance

that we do something entirely different to every other council in the country.

I've certainly been monitoring officer a number of authorities

and have taken a similar approach

and they have not been determined to be unlawful.

Just coming back on that, I asked for an explanation of why,

when the allowance scheme says that it can only be upgraded by a percentage increase and there wasn't one,

how that could nevertheless still be applied.

I did not receive an explanation.

I received an appeal to authority.

We got advice and the advice said it was okay.

What did the advice say?

What is the explanation?

That was my question.

So Council Groom, I don't have it to hand, but at the time that I produced the paper

and the approach I took advice and the advice was that it was an acceptable approach.

How is it an acceptable approach? What justifies that approach? What is the argument?

Councillor Graham, I think this tragedy has indicated he doesn't have that in front of him. I do understand that.

I think Councillor Richard Jones wants to come in, so perhaps you'll give way to him for a moment.

And I think this is your final point, because I think members are restless.

Thanks, Chair. It's a really brief question. The advice from leading Council, was that in writing or was that over the phone?

It was over the phone, Councillor Richardson, from recollection. I can't remember if it

was followed up in writing.

We don't know and we will never know what the explanation is.

You've asked quite a lot of questions this evening. Mr Chaudry, is there anything else

that you want to add or put or record in public?

and I think we'll be drawing conversation to advise.

It's a standard provision and in some years, members, there is a percentage increase

to the local government based on it in other years.

There is a fixed sum recommended depending on how the negotiations are produced,

how the negotiations progress.

And the advice that we get from London councils is the advice that we follow

in terms of the application of this inflationary uplift unless there is an instruction that

it's the wish of council not to do so.

Did London Council say that it was you could just apply the figure they gave without going

back for a decision?

Did they give that advice?

No, Councillor Graham, that wasn't asked of them and they didn't give that advice.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you very much Councillor Graham for raising those points. Thank you Mr.

Choudry for providing a response. I sense Councillor Graham that you feel that

there is outstanding points but I think I will leave it there for the discussion

this evening and I do propose moving on to the next agenda item now. That's fine

but I just wanted to reflect what we've talked about so far doesn't even come on

to the fact that even to get to this agenda item, I was unlawfully refused a statutory

right at the previous meeting.

There is a consistent documented and unarguable sequence of unlawful decisions and rulings,

and I'm sorry if that frustrates administration councillors, but it is alarming, and the point

is these are the things we can see, and there will be other decisions and other legal guidance

being undertaken that we can't see. And it disturbs me that on the one aspect

that relates to us and we can observe, so many mistakes have been made and it you

know these things only get flushed out with someone launches a judicial review.

I'm not about to JR the council over these matters but somebody may JR the

council over other matters and if this is the state of our legal advice and

decision -making we have a serious problem.

Giving your opinion on that clearly you know we have heard tonight the

monitoring officer's advice and we have to take that as our legal advice and his

advice to us is that the existing scheme is is lawful and that's the legal advice

that we're getting tonight. Councillor Apps. My only point was that if you

wanted us to really engage with your arguments would have been really helpful

to have it in paper a few days before as I think you made an undertaking that you would.

So it is quite difficult to follow just these verbal updates from you.

So I just wanted to make that clear.

Okay, Councillor Graham, I know that you would want to come back to that but let's move on

and I think in relation to how this matter has come onto the agenda, I think Mrs. Murray

to be fair at the previous meeting was very gracious in saying, you know, I think maybe

the actual council's actions in relation to this have fallen below the standard that we would usually accept.

But this has been, you've had an opportunity and it's been lengthy and we've had time on the agenda to give to it.

So I propose that we note the report in terms of the members' allowances scheme

and we move on to the final agenda item which is the work programme.

5 Work Programme (Paper No. 26-22)

So do members have any comments on the work programme?

This really only does cover the last meeting that we have in a couple of weeks time.

We'll be back here again, our last meeting before the election.

And we've agreed then at that meeting that it will be focused on pre -decision scrutiny

of the budget, both the revenue and any additions to the capital programme, and also a paper on

growth.

And thank you to members who attended the Key Lines of Inquiry meeting on Monday where

we talked about aspects that have been covered in that paper.

So I ask members to note that report for information and I'll close the meeting unless there's anything else.

Thank you. Thank you very much members. Thank you.

We welcome your comments

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Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Thursday 22 January 2026, 7:30pm - Wandsworth Council Webcasting

Finance Overview and Scrutiny CommitteeThursday, 22nd January 2026 at 7:30pm

Agenda

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Votes

3 Improving the Financial Resilience of Residents (Paper No. 26-19)

4 The Council's Transformation Programme (Paper No. 26-20)

4 a) Report on behalf of the Opposition Speaker for Finance on the Members' Allowances Scheme (Paper No. 26-26)

5 Work Programme (Paper No. 26-22)

Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Thursday, 22nd January 2026 at 7:30pm